Today I baked this absolutely scrumptious chocolate plum cake ftom the Marie Claire Luscious book to take over to my mum & dads for an afternoon visit. I chose a recipe with plums as growing up my grandparents had some plum trees in the back yard so we were always eating plums, home made plum jam & plum cakes of course! As they have sadly left us we no longer have the pleasure of these treats anymore though I wanted tomake something using plums for nostalgic reasons.
The cake is heavenly, the plums almost completely breakdown into a syrup which seeps into the top of the cake & the sugar topping is so good you now it is doing very evil things to your waste line. We served it with double cream which was just perfect.
Chocolate Plum Cake
165g (3/4 cup firmly packed) dark brown sugar
280g (2 ¼ cups) plain flour
185g unsalted butter
2 tspns baking powder
3 tblspns dark cocoa powdeer
¼ tspn salt
230g (1 cup) castor sugar
3 eggs, lightly beaten
185ml (3/4 cup) milk
16 small plums (550g), stones removed, cut in half
ice cream or thick (double/heavy) cream, to serve
Preheat oven to 180c (350f). Put the brown sugar in a bowl with 30g (1/4 cup) of the flour & mix together. Add 3 tbspns of the cold butter (leave the rest at room temperature to soften) and rub the butter in with your fingertips until the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs.Sift the remaining flour into a mixing bowl along with the baking powder, cocoa & salt. Put the castor sugar and softened butter in a separate bowl & cream together using electric beaters, then add the eggs & mix well. Add half the flour mixture, then half the milk, mixing well after each addition. Mix in the remaining flour mixture, then the remaining milk.
Pour the cake batter into a greased 25cm (10 inch) spring-form cake tin & arrange plums on top cut side down. Sprinkle with the brown sugar mixture & bake for 50-60 minutes, or until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean.
Remove the cake form the oven & allow to cool before turning out of the tin. Serve with ice cream or cream.
4 comments:
That looks heavenly, suppose we could kid ourselves by thinking how healthy the plums are.
What kind of plums were they? I love love blood plums and they'd go really well with chocolate I think.
And yup, it looks totally scrumptious!
I love blood plums too though none were available so just chose what looked the ripest on the day
That looks divine, ange! Your description of the plums breaking down into the cake is totally inviting, as are the pictures.
xox Sarah
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