Wonderfully moist Fresh Plum Cake by Nigel Slater
This is another lovely cake from Nigel Slater. (The other one is here) I love this recipe because it is easy to make and once cooled needs no further decoration. It is ready to serve warm with cream as dessert or cold with a cup of tea. Any stoned fruits are good in it, apricots, nectarines etc., but it is very useful for that punnet of plums you brought home that are still hard as stones a week later. “Ripen at home” me arse! Its not the Med here in Kerry!
The only change I made to his recipe is the addition of almond extract to highten the almond flavour. His recipe also says 16 plums, (!) but I saw the programme it was based on and he was using a local tiny plum, so four or five ordinary plums will do the job just fine.
6oz/150g soft butter or margarine
6oz/150g brown sugar
3 large eggs
3oz/75g self raising flour
3 ½ oz/100g ground almonds
2oz /50g shelled walnuts chopped
Teaspoon of almond extract (better than essence)
4 or 5 plums stoned and quartered.
Preheat the oven to 180c/gas4. Prepare an 8 inch square or a 9 inch round cake tin.
Beat the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time beating well between each one. Sieve the flour on top of this mixture and fold in lightly. Fold in the ground almonds, the almond extract and the chopped walnuts.
Scrape the mixture into the 9 inch/23cm lined cake tin. Place the quartered plums on to the cake mixture. They will sink into the cake as it cooks.
Bake for 40 to 45 mins then test with a skewer. Remove the cake from the oven and leave to cool in the tin for 15 mins before turning out.
For today’s cake I used chopped hazelnuts as I did not have any walnuts despite having what I thought was a well stocked cupboard. Not like me to be caught out! Hubby has been complaining about the lack of cake, making do with shop biscuits…….. no harm to make him appreciate my efforts.
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