plum and almond cake

plum and almond cake

• 30 Nov 2015

Summer is just around the corner and with one 42°C and a 38°C day already, it's going to be a hot one. Summer means stone fruit and when I saw plums in the fruit shop this week, I knew it was time to make plum cake.




I recently made a rhubarb cake which had some whole almond meal in the batter and I thought I'd add some to my plum cake recipe. Whole nut meal adds texture to the cake but it also makes the cake nice and moist.



Plum cake is always popular with my workmates so I took this one into work with me. It went pretty quickly, which is always a good sign. The cake is really versatile and works really well with apricots, raspberries, nectarines and rhubarb. You may need to reduce the cooking time a little.

Here's the recipe for you. For all my recipes, I use a 250 ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon. All eggs are 60 grams and my oven is a conventional oven not fan forced, so you may need to reduce your oven temperature by 20°C. If you'd like to make a 23 cm cake, just double the ingredients but the baking time will stay the same.

Plum and almond cake 

  

Cake Ingredients 

5 small plums 

1 tablespoon caster sugar 

125 grams (4 oz) unsalted butter 

100 grams (½ cup) caster sugar 

1 tsp grated lemon rind 

2 eggs 

1 cup self raising flour 

½ tsp baking powder

¼ cup (35 g) finely ground whole almonds

60 mls (¼ cup) milk or plain yoghurt  

Method  

Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F. Grease and line the base and sides of a 16 cm springform tin with baking paper.

Cut the plums in half and remove the pits. Slice each plum half into quarters and sprinkle a tablespoon of caster sugar over the plums. Set aside.  

To make the cake, cream the butter, sugar and lemon rind together in a bowl until light and fluffy. Add the eggs and mix until combined well. Sift the flour and baking powder together and stir through the ground almonds. Add the flour mixture alternately with the milk to make a soft batter. You may not need to use all the milk. 

Spoon the batter into the lined tin. Decoratively arrange the plum slices over the top of the cake, gently pressing the plums down into the batter. Bake the cake for 50 minutes to 1 hour or until the cake tests cooked when a skewer is inserted into it. 

Cool the cake in the tin for about 15 minutes before turning out to cool on a wire rack. 

Can you believe Christmas is almost here? I'm doing Christmas week again on the blog so I've been baking up a storm for the past month. I still have one more thing to make so the end is nigh. 

See you all again next week,

Bye for now,

Jillian