plum

For a few short weeks each year, it is stone-fruit season. As I previously highlighted the peach, when I saw these plums at the Farmer’s market, I couldn’t help but pick up a bunch and feverishly search for an interesting recipe to use the lovely purple jewels. Ironically, I found another UK dessert, so had to translate it like I did for my brownie recipe. With a scoop of vanilla ice cream, this cake made for a nice ending to a summer-night. Recipe Adapted From: the passionate cook Orange Glazed Plum Cake 5 – 6 medium plums 14 tablespoons (7 oz) butter ½ cup orange juice ½ cup brown sugar, packed ¼ cup white sugar ½ cup ground almonds, packed ** 1 1/3 cup self-rising flour ½ heaping cup of oatmeal For Orange Glaze 1 cup confectioner’s sugar 1 tablespoon Orange Juice ¼ tsp. vanilla extract (optional) Preheat oven to 350 F Beat the butter and sugar until pale. Add the eggs and orange juice and beat until well incorporated. Mix dry ingredients, ground almonds, oatmeal and flour until well incorporated. Slowly add to the wet mixture until you have a smooth dough. Wash and stone the plums and cut them into bite-sized pieces. Add the plums to the dough and gently fold them in until well incorporated. Grease a one pound bread pan with butter and then line with parchment paper. (The butter helps the parchment stick to the pan and prevents any sticking, should the dough leak through). Pour the dough into the pan. Bake for 50-60 minutes, until inserted skewer comes out clean. Rest for 20 minutes and then remove from pan to cool on a cooling rack. While cooling in the pan, mix together the three ingredients for the Orange Glaze. Drizzle over the cake (I used a spoon to drizzle little lines across it, but you could also just spread it with a knife over the top). Serve warm or room temperature with a scoop of ice cream, or as desired. Tips: This is more like a coffee cake than a pound cake. It is not very sweet. If you like a sweeter dessert, I would suggest doubling the glaze recipe and pre-slicing the cake to get glaze all over each piece. Another idea would be to sugar the plums before adding them to the batter. A final tip would be to add a scoop of sweet ice cream or whipped cream to the top of a slice of the cake to add more sweetness to the dessert. ** I made my own ground almonds (but you could use almond meal or almond flour) by taking ½ cup of almonds and grinding them in my food processor.