Using some Plums

Tues 19 Sept 2006

I happened to be having a read through of Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries when I spotted a recipe for a plum cake. Despite loving stone fruit as a rule I've never been a plum eater. I don't know why but there you go. No sooner had I seen this recipe than a colleague offered me a pile of plums from her rather abundant tree. I figured that if I was ever going to start liking plums then a cake was as good a place as any to commence an education ...

I didn't mess with this recipe too much - after all, my experience has been that Nigel Slater's recipes are bang on (if somewhat prosaic in their description). Though I did opt to do it all in the food processor ...

Preheat your oven to 180C and grease and baseline a 22 cm round springform tin.

In the food processor, beat 150g of caster sugar (I used a mix of caster sugar and golden granulated, Slater specifies unrefined golden caster sugar) with 150g of unsalted butter. Beat them together until pale and creamy. Add three eggs and mix well. Then 75g plain flour, mixed with 11/2 tsp of baking powder. Finally mix in 100g of ground almonds and finish off by adding 50g of shelled walnuts which you've coarsely chopped.

Tip this into the cake tin - it will look quite flat but don't worry. Top with good handfuls of stoned, quartered plums. I think I used about 10 but it could have handled a couple more. Just scatter them over evenly and then bake the cake for about 40 minutes. A skewer should just come out clean.



Easy peasy and absolutely delicious!

As an aside, I used quite tart plums, parts of which turned a bright green when the cake was cut!

tagged with: plums, cake

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