Plum and Cinnamon Loaf

This cake was going to be a half-sized attempt at Dan Lepard's tried and tested Stone Fruit Yogurt Cake, until I realised that I was lacking the necessary semolina. Not one to be easily thwarted, I used polenta instead and carried on!

I wouldn't usually buy fresh plums at this time of year, as they have been trekked halfway round the world, but the checkout till at Waitrose kindly printed out a coupon for a pack of 6 'Perfectly Ripe' plums at half price. This recipe used three plums - they were quite large, weighing about 80g each, I seem to remember.

One of my baking books tells me that a 20cm round deep cake tin is equivalent to a 900g (2lb) loaf tin, so I hoped that half the quantities in Dan's recipe would be OK in a 450g(1lb) loaf tin. It was a near thing - the batter filled more of the tin than I was happy with, but fortunately the cake didn't rise too much. I made a couple of slight alterations to the recipe, but nothing that altered it substantially from the original.

Ingredients
90g caster sugar + 2 teaspoons extra
90g softened butter +15g extra
3 large ripe plums
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
80g full-fat Greek-style natural yogurt
40g polenta
85g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon (optional)
1 teaspoon baking powder

Method
Line a 450g loaf tin with foil, pressing it well into the corners without tearing it, and grease with a little of the extra butter. Dot the remainder of the extra butter over the base, and sprinkle over 1 teaspoon of caster sugar.
Preheat the oven to 180C.
Halve and de-stone the plums, and cut each half into 4 slices. Arrange about 2/3 of the plum slices in the base of the loaf tin, and sprinkle over another teaspoon of sugar. Chop the remaining slices of fruit into small pieces.
Mix the flour, polenta, cinnamon and baking powder together in a small bowl.
Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, then beat in the egg and vanilla extract, adding a spoonful of the flour mix to prevent curdling.
With the mixer on it's slowest speed, stir in the yogurt, followed by the rest of the flour mix.
Fold in the remaining chopped plums with a spoon, then transfer the batter to the baking tin.
Bake for about 60 minutes, covering for the last 15-20 minutes if the cake seems to be browning too quickly. A test probe should come out clean of cake batter, although you might hit a piece of fruit which will make the probe look damp.
Leave for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a plate and carefully peel away the foil. If any of the fruit topping becomes dislodged, it can be gently put back into place. Cool before serving.

The slices of plums on top of the loaf were a really pretty pink colour - it was lovely to photograph something which wasn't brown! There was just enough cinnamon to taste, without it overwhelming the plums, which were both sweet and sharp and gave the cake a fresh taste which I've been missing all winter!

Incidentally, I was pleasantly surprised at how tasty the plums were, but I think I still prefer to buy fruit as locally and seasonally as possible.

Zwetschgendatschi

or, to put it more simply, plum tart.

This German speciality should be made with a type of plum (the 'zwetschgen' part of the recipe name) which is similar to a damson, but is often made with other varieties of plums, particularly if the cook doesn't live in Germany! The pastry is made from an enriched yeast dough, the plums are arranged neatly on top  and the whole thing is baked in a hot oven. What could be simpler?

I found many variations when trying to decide on a recipe - shortcrust pastry is an option, rather than yeast dough; a streusel topping can be added; some recipes sweeten the fruit before baking, some sprinkle on sugar afterwards; some recipes use breadcrumbs on the dough, before arranging the fruit, to soak up any excess fruit juice. In the end, I decided to be guided by the one recipe I had in my cookery books - this was a dairy-free Jewish recipe, but I adapted it to use dairy products.

The dough was made from a teaspoon of easy-bake yeast stirred into 250g plain flour. To this was added 1/2 egg, a tablespoon of honey, a pinch of salt, 50g melted butter and enough warm milk to make a soft but not sticky dough (I used about 100mls of the 125mls recommended in the recipe). After kneading for 10 minutes the dough was left, covered, to rise until doubled in size. The risen dough was knocked back and rolled out to about 1/2 cm in thickness. There should be enough dough to line a 25cm diameter, loose-bottomed tart case, but I wanted to use my new rectangular tart case, so was left with enough dough to also line a 15cm diameter cast iron skillet,

Quartered pitted plums were arranged in neat rows in the rectangular case and the tart was left to prove again for 20 minutes. Then the tart was baked at 190C for about 25 - 30 minutes, until the pastry was golden. As soon as the tart was out of the oven it was sprinkled with cinnamon flavoured sugar.

Before arranging the plums on the small round base, I rolled out 80g of marzipan to fit the case, and laid this on top of the dough. I also cut the plums into 1/8ths for this smaller tart - it helped get a tighter fit  of fruit in the small space. After the second proving, this was baked for the same time as the large tart and also sprinkled with cinnamon sugar while hot (4 tablespoons of caster sugar with 1 teaspoon of cinnamon was enough for both tarts, with some left over).

I bought a kilo of plums and used roughly 600g for these two tarts. My recipe recommended 750g for one large 25cm tart.

The oblong tart was elegant in it's simplicity, and very tasty. The light sprinkling of sugar added enough sweetness to the plums, and I liked the way the plums held their shape; they were just cooked through but still looked fresh. The yeast dough pastry was light and made a nice change from shortcrust. Yeast dough could be considered  'healthier' too (or at least, less calorific) as it contains a much lower proportion of fat compared to pastry. I think I could have left the pastry a little thicker, and next time I will bake on a pre-heated baking sheet to try and get a crisper bottom.

The pastry was thicker on the small round tart, and this made it soft rather than crisp - reminiscent of eating a danish pastry. The sweetness of the marzipan, together with the almond flavour, made this tart much richer than the plainer one.

Both tarts are best eaten fresh as the sugar topping draws juices out of the fruit over time.

I didn't choose this recipe at random - this month's AlphaBakes challenge is the letter Z! This challenge is hosted alternately by Caroline, at Caroline Makes (who is the host this month), and Ros at The More Than Occasional Baker. The randomly chosen letter must be used as part of the name of the dish or as the start letter of a main ingredient - full rules here. I'm entering the oblong plum tart into the challenge; the round one isn't a traditional Zwetschgendatschi.

While thinking about the challenge I picked up several interesting recipes for various types of zucchini cake, so there might be a second entry this month, if I don't run out of time!

Stone Fruit Yogurt Cake, with Plums

I don't make this cake often enough, but when I do, I'm reminded of how perfect it is for using a glut of late summer or early autumn fruit. In this case it was some yellow plums from my mother's tree which needed to be eaten as soon as possible. As their arrival coincided with a lull in the recents weeks of frenetic activity, and I no longer have to worry about CT not liking fresh fruit, it seemed an ideal opportunity to return to this cake.

By the way, I'm ashamed to say that I was too wrapped up in getting my mother to and from hospital, as well as moving CT into his new flat over the last weekend, that I didn't have time to bake him a 'Good-bye' cake! He had to make do with a 'reduced to clear' chocolate croissant from Tesco's. (It was very tasty though!) He still has to return to sort and pack more books, and pick up the rest of his clothes, so I think a batch of something chocolate-y to take back with him will be in order.

But back to the Stone Fruit Yogurt Cake! This is another of Dan Lepard's recipes, from his Guardian column. Considering it's popularity among bloggers, it's quite a surprise that this recipe didn't make it into his recipe book 'Short and Sweet'.

I've previously made it using peaches and raspberries, but almost any fresh fruit can be used successfully. It's a very tender cake, not too sweet and subtly flavoured with lemon zest. The fruit, their juices and the extra sugar combine to make a soft, slightly sticky topping when the cake is turned out. It can be eaten both as a cake and a dessert, in which case a spoonful (or two) of creme fraiche is a good accompniment

I used just over half a kilo of plums, with 225g chopped for the cake, and the rest sliced and arranged neatly in the base of the tin. I only had two lemons, but this was enough to give a gentle lemon flavour to the cake batter. It's really important to line the cake tin with a leak-proof liner so that the juices aren't lost during cooking. This time I succeeded with the tin foil, as suggested, but the crumpled foil doesn't make for a very neat cake when it's turned out. This might be a case for a pre-formed cake tin liner, although I usually begrudge spending money on this sort of thing!

I'm really pleased I remembered this cake - it was an excellent way to use the plums, and made a change from the usual quick crumbles which I tend to make with fresh fruit.

Hopefully I'm now back into baking mode, as life can slow down a little now that CT is into his own place. There's still work to do there, which he will need help with, but all the really urgent tasks have been done. Thank goodness - we both need some rest before we tackle changing his room here into our new bedroom!

Autumn Plum Crunch Cake

I love Autumn baking. Plums, apples and pears and their natural association with spices and nuts suits my style of baking much more than trying to use the delicate summer berries. Those are best eaten as simply as possible and are often spoiled by cooking into cakes, I feel. Heavier cakes, packed with fruit and nuts, are also more in tune with the cooling days

This cake is very similar in outcome to Dan Lepard's Stone Fruit Yogurt Cake, but it wasn't quite as successful. My main mistake was to misunderstand the nature of the topping - I thought it was a syrup drizzle, but I think it was supposed to be more of an icing, to help stick down the crunchy sugar topping.  I cut down the sugar to make a drizzle to soak in and also added more fruit to the batter, which I think would have been OK without the extra fruit juice soak. The combination of the two was just too much moisture, and resulted in a soggy cake - fine for a dessert, but not good for a cake. The batter was also too thin to support the slices of fruit on top, and these sank into the sponge as it cooked. This might have been down to the size of my eggs, so I think I'd leave out the orange juice next time, if using large eggs.

The flavour was lovely, but the overall concept needs more work, although FB says she has made the cake with more visual success than I had - meaning the plum slices stayed on top! It would have been far too sweet for my tastes if I had used all the sugar in the topping, so I'm glad I did cut that down! I think making Dan's cake with plums and orange zest would be a better option, especially if you sliced the plums neatly to look good when the cake was turned out.

The recipe comes from the Good Food publication '101 Cakes and Bakes' but unfortunately isn't available on the Good Food website.

Ingredients
140g softened butter

140g golden caster sugar (I used 110g caster sugar and 30g light muscovado sugar)
2 eggs plus 1 egg yolk
pinch salt
140g SR flour
the finely grated zest and juice of 1 orange
200g plums, destoned, half cut into wedges, half roughly chopped (I used 4 large plums which weighed in at 350g; 200g looked a totally inadequate amount for a good flavour)

Topping
200g caster sugar (I used only 70g)
1 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice
 4 or 5 brown sugar cubes, roughly chopped

Method
Preheat oven to 160C and prepare a 2lb loaf tin.
Lightly beat the eggs and the egg yolk with a pinch of salt
Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
Beat in the eggs, a little at a time, adding a little of the flour if the mixture looks like curdling.
Fold in the rest of the flour with the orange zest and 2 tablespoons of the orange juice.
Gently mix in the chopped fruit.
Transfer the mixture to the loaf tin and spread evenly.
Scatter the plum wedges on top.
Bake for about 50 minutes until firm and golden ( mine took 60 minutes to cook!)
Cool for ten minutes in the tin.

At this point the original method turned out the cake onto a wire rack, and poured over a topping made by mixing the 200g caster sugar with the lemon juice and the rest of the orange juice, then sprinkling over the crushed sugar cubes. I left the cake in the tin, pricked the top with a cocktail stick and poured over the topping I had made with less sugar, before sprinkling over the crushed sugar pieces. I then left the cake to cool in the tin and soak up the juices.

Plum and Granola Crumble Layer Cake

My mother visited this week, to collect the maple biscuits and sweets which were her present from Canada, a small reward for harvesting our vegetables for us while we were away. She brought with her a bag of small ripe green plums from her tree, which had been hastily picked to prevent the wasps infesting them all.

I could have made a fruit crumble - indeed, I was very tempted to do so, as it's our favourite quick dessert, but with the blackberry season coming into full swing, there will be plenty of crumbles in the weeks to come!

After searching online for plum cake recipes, I decided to adapt my favourite fresh fruit cake recipe, mainly because it's so quick and easy to make - no waiting for butter to soften, long beating or slow rubbing in. The base cake dough gives a result which is quite dense and on the dry side - more like a shortbread/scone  texture - but when teamed with some moist ripe fruit it works really well. As I've done here, the dough can be made with a proportion of ground almonds, or just with all flour. Usually the top layer is the same as the base, but I decided to work in some granola to give the topping a more crumbly and chewy texture. Using chocolate granola added an extra dimension to the flavour and also gave the finished cake a distinct layered look. All in all this turned out to be a delicious dessert cake; if there were any criticisms at all, I would say that using a little more fruit would have been an improvement, and red plums would probably look better.

Almost any fruit can be used, but the recipe works best with fruit which doesn't produce too much juice when cooked - stone fruit (peaches, apricots, plums etc), apples and pears work better than rhubarb and gooseberries.

Ingredients
150g slightly salted butter
150g caster sugar
1 large egg
250g SR flour
50g ground almonds
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
100g granola (I used chocolate granola with added coconut)
roughly 350g plums, de-stoned and cut in half
a little icing sugar for dusting (optional)

Method
Pre-heat oven to 180C and grease and base-line a 20cm(8") round springform tin.
Melt the butter in a medium sized bowl in the microwave (or in a pan on the hob). Use minimum heat/time to just melt the butter. If it becomes too hot allow it to cool a bit.
Mix in the caster sugar, then the egg and beat until smooth. Then mix in the flour, ground almonds and cinnamon to give a soft sticky dough.
Transfer 2/3 of the dough to the cake tin and spread out into an even layer - use the back of a spoon or wet fingers.
Arrange the fruit in a single layer on top of the dough.
Stir the granola into the remaining dough - it should become drier and crumbly. Using fingers, crumble the dough over the fruit in an even layer.
Bake for 1 hour, covering if necessary to prevent over browning. Allow to cool for 20 minutes on a wire rack before taking off side of tin.
If liked, dust with icing sugar before serving. Serve with yogurt, cream or creme fraiche.