Plums a Plenty Posted on 17th January 2012
I have been lucky enough to be growing or been given so much beautiful fresh produce lately. Our tomatoes are thriving in this sunny, rainy mix-master weather and the greens are going bonkers. The other day we visited our friend’s farm and picked a bucket of juicy ripe plums that we have shared around, but still, left us with more than we could munch on.
So I have been busy cooking and baking with plums. First thing I did was make a big pot of poached plums using Stephanie Alexander’s recipe. I have been very satisfied with my café quality breakfast of muesli, vanilla yogurt and plum compote this week and it’s made a lovely desert when all the other fruit’s been eaten up.
The other standout plum recipe was the cake I baked on Sunday for a friend’s BBQ lunch. Also from Stephanie’s “The Cook’s Companion”, she calls it her favourite plum cake recipe so why on earth would I make any other? All I can say is it didn’t disappoint. So much so, that I am about to bake it again tomorrow. What really stood out was the way the cake base stayed light & moist like your best teacake and didn’t get soggy from the fruit (which can really wreck a good cake).
So here are the two recipes just in case you get lucky with plums too:
Poached plums
Ingredients: 1 & ½ cups water, 1 cup white or red wine or port, ¾ cup sugar (I only put in ½), ½ vanilla bean split, 12-15 plums, halved. Method: 1. Bring all ingredients except plums to a simmer, stirring to dissolve sugar 2. Cook for 5 minutes 3. Slip in plum halves and simmer for 10 minutes, then allow to cool in liquid. 4. Refrigerate in an airtight container for up to a week.
Mieze’s Plum cake
This quantity is for a 28cm tin, which is pretty large. It can easily be halved and just use a 20cm tin instead.
Ingredients: 275g softened butter, 250g sugar (I used 200), 200g plain flour, 200g self-raising flour, pinch of salt, 3 eggs lightly beaten, 100ml milk, 1 cup ground almonds or fresh breadcrumbs, 20 rip blood plums, halved and stoned. Topping 125g butter, 200g sugar (I used 100), 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon, 4 eggs.
Method: 1. Preheat the oven to 180 deg C and lightly grease a 28 cm spring form tin 2. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy, then mix in flours and salt 3. Add eggs and milk to make a soft dough (the mixture should drop easily from the spoon) 4. Spoon batter into prepared tin (it shouldn’t fill more than a quarter of the depth as the cake rises a lot) then sprinkle over almonds 5. Arrange plums, cut side up on top, starting around outside edge and working towards centre Topping (you can start preparing this earlier to give the butter time to cool) 1. Melt butter and stir in sugar and cinnamon, then allow to cool 2. Whisk eggs well and stir into cooled butter mixture 3. Spoon over and around plums on cake 4. Bake for 1 hour until cake tests cooked in the centre. 5. Serve warm with cream or ice cream. Any leftover cake can be warmed, wrapped in foil, in the oven at 180 deg C for 15 minutes.
