Martha Stewart's Plum Cake

Being Summer, all our neighbours and relatives have been giving us plums in copious numbers. But, I’m not complaining. I’m a lover of stone fruit and absolutely adore the sweetness of plums. However, not even my exorbitant daily intake of the plums seemed to reduce the number of plums in the fridge … It was as if God was listening to my pleas for some innovative idea of how to not waste this beautiful fruit, because there it was, this plum cake recipe on my facebook page. Now obviously, Martha Stewart is one of the pages I follow on facebook. She is an amazing woman, and if you don’t follow her already I highly suggest you do. She posts several times a day and always plants seeds in my brain of what to cook next.

 

Her plum cake, was the perfect answer to my ‘how not to waste plums’ question – because even though this cake doesn’t use many plums, I ended up making it for several different purposes in the one week.

Martha Stewart most eloquently summarises this cake in her description: “this moist, lemony plum cake needs little more than a dusting of confectioners’ sugar.”

After a Summer full of Greek sweets, drenched in syrup, abundant with custards and overly rich and decadent, this cake was a delightful and refreshing treat, not to mention comparatively much easier to make than a Greek dessert.

Ingredients:

175 grams unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for greasing pan

1½ cups plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled)

1 teaspoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon salt

½ cup packed light-brown sugar

½ granulated sugar

3 large eggs

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

2 teaspoons finely grated lemon zest

¼ cup sour cream

3 large plums, halved pitted and cut into eighths (the plums I had were small as they were organic so I used 6 and cut them in half)

Confectioners’ sugar, for dusting

Method:

Preheat oven to 190 degrees Celsius. Butter an 8-by-2-inch or a 9-inch cake pan and line the bottom with a round of parchment paper. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt.

Using an electric mixer, beat butter and sugars until light and fluffy. With mixer on low, beat in eggs, one at a time, until incorporated; beat in vanilla and lemon zest. Beat in ½ the flour mixture, then sour cream. Add remaining flour mixture; mix just until combined.

Spread batter into pan and smooth top with a knife. Arrange the plums on top of the batter in whatever design you please.

Bake cake until golden, about 30 minutes; loosely tent with foil and bake until cake pulls away from the side of the pan and a cake tester inserted in center comes out clean, about 35 minutes more. Let cake cool completely in pan. Run knife around cake edge and remove cake from pan. Dust with confectioners’ sugar before serving.