Spiced Plum Cake

 

I really struggle with finding good light for taking my food photos this time of year, when the days are getting shorter and the sun is finding its way differently in the sky. It always takes me a few weeks to adjust to it all. Oh well! 

 

I hope you won't let poor photography dissuade you from baking what is a really lovely cake.  I adapted the recipe from one I found on a site called Once Upon a Chef. It looked really nice and I had picked up a couple of punnets of purple plums at the shops as they were on offer.

 

I adore plums, they are one of my favourite fruits.  I was quite disappointed in the plums we bought the other day. They were mealy.  I hate mealy fruit.  The only way to really use them was to cook them, hence the cake.

 

I'll be honest here and say I think its really bad that you should buy punnets of mealy fruit at this time of year when fruit is so fresh and readily available!  Bad. Bad. Bad. Shouldn't happen! 

 

Mind you, checking the label, upon closer inspection I see that they came from Spain. Why are we importing plums from Spain at a time of the year where fresh plums are ripe and ready for the picking and eating here in the UK?  So disappointing!

 

I shake my head when I think of it all  . . .  shouldn't happen.  Just shouldn't happen.

 

Anyways, this is  a really lovely cake.  I am afraid I over-cooked mine a tiny bit. The skewer kept coming out looking like it wasn't cooked in the centre, so I would pop it in for a few more minutes. 

 

So my edges got a bit crispy, but not in an unpalatable way at all!

 

As Todd was eating it he kept mumbling all the while, this is a really good cake . . .  love this cake  . . .  more cake please  . . .

 

He is a very lucky man.  He can eat cake until it comes out his ears  . . .  and pour cream all over it when he does  . . . .

 

And he never has to worry about any of it sticking to his thighs . . . 

 

Or his bottom, or his neck, cheeks, arms, etc.  . . .  I really don't think its fair, but it is what it is!

 

This is a beautiful cake  . . .  filled with the lovely flavours of cinnamon, nutmeg and cardamom and that almost jammy fruit, which is tart and sweet at the same time.

  

For brunch or for dessert, this is one cake you won't want to miss out on . . .  and the perfect way to use up less than perfect plums!

Yield: 8

Author: Marie Rayner

Spiced Plum Cake

A beautiful cake that is perfect served for brunch with hot cups of coffee or as a dessert with scoops of vanilla ice cream.

ingredients:

• 210g plain flour (1 1/2 cups)
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp each ground nutmeg and ground cardamom
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 115g butter softened, plus more to butter the pan (1/2 cup)
• 190g white sugar, plus 2 TBS, divided (1 cup + 2TBS, divided)
• 1 large free range egg
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 120ml whole milk (1/2 cup)
• 1 pound fresh plums, pitted and quartered

instructions:

How to cook Spiced Plum Cake

1. Preheat the oven to 180*C/350*F/ gas mark 4. Butter a 9 inch spring form pan really well and dust with flour, shaking out any excess. Set aside.
2. Sift together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and cardamom. Stir in the salt. Set aside.
3. Cream the butter and 190g/1 cup of the sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg and vanilla, adding a spoonful of the flour mixture if it starts to curdle. Add the milk alternately with the flour mixture, beginning and ending with the flour mixture. Spoon the batter into the prepared pan, levelling it off. Scatter the plums over top decoratively. Sprinkle with the remaining 2 TBS of sugar.
4. Bake for 60 to 70 minutes, until golden and a skewer comes out clean when inserted into the cake.
5. Run a knife carefully around the edge of the cake to loosen, and then loosen the sides of the pan. Leave to cool on a wire rack. Cut into slices to serve. You can dust this with icing sugar if you want to pretty it up a bit!

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I am not really sure what I will have to share with you tomorrow. I am going to leave it as a bit of a surprise.  I don't think you will be disappointed at any rate, or at least I hope that you won't! 

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Apple Pie Danish

 

I always like to bake Todd a treat at the weekend.  Because we are both retired, the weekend can easily blend into our weeks, so I like to do something which marks these two days apart from the other five.  It is so easy to lose your weekend when you are not working any longer.  I try to mark Saturday and Sunday as still being special days in our lives. 

 

For the most part (with a few exceptions) I only bake at the weekend.  Sunday is set apart because that is the day we go to church.  We don't shop on Sundays or order takeaways, we have designated Sunday as our day of rest.

 

I usually try to make Todd something special to enjoy with his early morning cuppa. I am not one much for hot drinks, but Todd he is so British . . . .   he really needs his morning hot cuppa. 

 

That can be a barley cup, or a hot chocolate, sometimes an herbal tea.  So long as it it wet and hot, he is happy.  Adding a tasty bake into the mix increases his joy factor two-fold!

 

Especially when it is something as delicious as these Apple Pie Danish!  Yum yum!

 

These quick and easy drop Danish are bound to become a real favourite of yours as well.  I confess they use a prepared Baking Mix.  I make my own from scratch and keep it in the freezer (as it is sometime I don't use really often.)  You can find my recipe for that mix here. 

 

If you are not keen to make your own from scratch, you can use Bisquick or Tea Bisk, which is what I used to use many moons ago. Do they even still make it?  Or has Bisquick taken over?  

 

You add some sugar and cinnamon to the baking mix and then you cut in some butter.  Milk is stirred into give you a thick yet still drop-able mixture.  Not as thin as cake batter, but not so thick that you feel the need to roll it out. 

 

You then drop the dough by heaped dessert spoons onto a lined baking sheet.  If you look at these spoons above the second spoon from the left is a dessert spoon.  (The others are from left to right, Soup, Tea and Coffee spoons.)

 

I use a small damp teaspoon to make a dip in the centre of each mound of dough.  I dampen it so that the dough doesn't stick to it.  Makes it a lot easier.

 

The centre is filled with chunky applesauce.  I make my own but you can use any good store brand chunky applesauce. If you want to make your own you can find my recipe here.

  

I like it to be a bit chunky so I don't mash the apples up too much. It is lightly sweetened.  You can add cinnamon and nutmeg to it, but I like it just plain.

 

You spoon a bit of this applesauce into the hollows and then you bake them.  Don't be overly generous with the applesauce, but don't be stingy either.  Bear in mind that sauces like this can expand when baking, especially if they have sugar in them.

 

You bake them for about 15 minutes, until they are puffed and golden brown all over and especially on the bottoms.

 

Scoop them off onto wire racks to cool just a bit and then glaze with a cinnamon glaze.  Easy peasy.

  

Todd really  REALLY enjoys these.  I think apple anything is his favourite thing! 

Yield: 12

Author: Marie Rayner

Apple Pie Danish

ingredients:

• 280g of baking mix (2 cups)
• 1/4 tsp each cinnamon & ground nutmeg
• 2 TBS sugar
• 65g of butter, softened (1/4 cup)
• 156ml milk (2/3 cup)
• chunky applesauce (about 1/4 cup)
• 1/4 tsp each cinnamon & ground nutmeg

For the glaze:

• 90g icing sugar (2/3 cup confectioners sugar)
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg (optional)
• 1 TBS warm water
• few drops vanilla extract

instructions:

How to cook Apple Pie Danish

1. Preheat the oven to 220*C/425*F/ gas mark 7. Lightly butter a baking sheet.
2. Measure the baking mix, sugar and spices into a bowl. Whisk to combine. Drop in the butter and using a fork, cut it in until crumbly. Stir in the milk. You should have a nice stiff but drop-able dough. Drop by rounded dessertspoons onto the prepared baking sheet, leaving 2 inches between each one. Using the back of a damp spoon make a well in the centre of each. Drop one heaped teaspoon of applesauce into each well.
3. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes until golden brown, and browned on the bottoms. Remove from the oven. Whisk together the glaze ingredients until smooth. Drizzle this over top of the danish while still warm and serve immediately

Created using The Recipes Generator

 

I confess that I really enjoy them also, even if I really shouldn't.  I know  . . . . Me<----- little="" nbsp="" no="" or="" p="" willpower.="">

Up tomorrow: Pork Fried Rice and Chicken Tenders with Oriental BBQSauce.

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Blackberry Bakewell Pudding

 

One of my favourite magazines to buy (aside from Country Home)  when I was bringing up my children was Good Housekeeping. They always had great recipes in them, plus collectible recipes, which yes I always collected, and crafts, useful articles, etc.  I used to clip out the recipes that I thought looked good and save the craft patterns and any articles I thought would be useful. Every Christmas they would have a Gingerbread House on the cover.  So lovely . . .  I always aspired to make one like theirs, but never quite managed it.

 

They have Good Housekeeping Magazine over here in the UK as well, although now my family is grown I never really buy it.  I do find it difficult to resist their seasonal and Christmas special magazines however! 

 

This year I have collected their Spring collection and the Summer one and the other day I was in the grocery store and spied the Autumn one.  You know Autumn is truly in the air when the magazines start presenting you with autumnal pleasures!  I could not resist this.  a quick glance through it and it was destined to land in my grocery cart!

 

And it has only taken me two days to bake up this lovely Blackberry Bakewell Pudding recipe that graced its pages.  Our blackberry bushes are filled to overflowing with those lovely berries at the moment.  Every day Todd goes out into the yard he brings back another plastic tub full of them.

 

Having a tasty and novel way to use some of them up was exactly what I was looking for!   I do freeze a lot, but we like to enjoy some fresh as well.

 

One of Todd's favourite puddings (desserts) is the Bakewell Pudding, with its jam layer and rich almond frangipane cake topping.  He even likes the Bakewell Tarts you can buy in the shops with that sweet almond icing on top and the glace cherry decoration.

 

I knew he would absolutely enjoy this Blackerry Bakewell Pudding recipe!

 

Fresh blackberries are combined with a quantity of blackberry jam and layered on the bottom of your baking dish.   I had just made Apple & Blackberry Jam the other day (tis the season) so this was the perfect excuse to use some of that as well.

 

Once you have them in the bottom of the dish you make a simple frangipane cake topping to pour over top. 

 

It is said that the name Frangipane comes from a 16th century Italian Marquis named Muzio Frangipani.  I don't know if this is exactly true, but hey ho, it very well could be, especially if he held a certain fondness for the flavour of almonds in his cakes and bakes!

  

Frangipane is a mixture which is highly flavoured and composed of ground almonds . . .  in a cake, or a cookie, or a pudding.

 

In this instance ground almonds are combined with a small quantity of plain flour, some eggs, butter and sugar and spread over top of the fruit in the bottom of the dish.

 

This is also an ideal bake for a coeliac as you can easily substitute the small quantity of flour which is used for the equivalent in a gluten free flour and it won't make much of a difference, as the ground almonds (almond flour) make up the majority of this delicious cake-like topping!

 

I used my La Creuset heart shaped stoneware baking dish as I don't use it near often enough and I was making this for my sweetie-pie, so why not bake it in a heart shaped dish!

  

Once baked you top it with  a sweet lemon drizzle glaze.  You can serve it either warm or cold, with lashings of warm custard of cold pouring cream. I dare say vanilla ice cream would also go down a real treat!

Yield: 6

Author: Marie Rayner

Blackberry Bakewell Pudding

A delicious autumnal twist on an old favourite!  A rich almond frangipane, baked over sweet blackberries, with a flaked almond topping and sweet lemon drizzle glaze.

ingredients:

• 225g of fresh blackberries (2 cups)
• 50g of blackberry jam (1/4 cup)
• 175g butter, softened (3/4 cup)
• 75g caster sugar (6 1/2 TBS)
• 3 large free range eggs, lightly beaten
• 175g ground almonds/almond flour (2 cups)
• 40g plain flour (1/4 cup)
• a handful of flaked almonds

For the glaze:

• 50g icing sugar (generous 1/3 cup)
• the juice of 1/2 lemon

instructions:

How to cook Blackberry Bakewell Pudding

1. Preheat the oven to 180*C/350*F/ gas mark 4. Butter a 4 cup shallow baking dish.
2. Fold the berries and jam together. Spread in the bottom of the pan. Cream together the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Beat in the eggs a bit at a time. Fold in the flour and the ground almonds. Spread evenly over top of the berries in the dish. Sprinkle the flaked almonds over top.
3. Bake in the preheated oven for 40 to 45 minutes, until golden brown and a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Let cool for about half an hour, then whisk together the icing sugar and enough lemon juice to make a thin drizzle. Drizzle it over top decoratively and serve.

NOTES:

You can bake this ahead  and pop, cooled and well wrapped into the freezer.  To use, thaw out in the refrigerator over night.  You can either serve it warm or cold. If serving warm, reheat in a 180*C/350*F/ gas mark 4 oven on a middle oven shelf for about 15 to 20 minutes.  Drizzle with the glaze and serve.  Drizzle with the glaze once it is thawed if you are serving it cold.

Created using The Recipes Generator

 

I am sorry if I disappointed you by not baking the apple dessert for today, but I had the berries and I needed to use them now.  I will save the apple dessert for another time, so you still have that tastiness to look forward to.  Oh, and in the original recipe for this, they added the flaked almonds after baking.  I added them before, which I thought worked really well as they came out all toasty and nicely nutty!   

TASTES TO LOOK FORWARD TO IN THE WEEK AHEAD

(always subject to change as per our circumstances and life getting in the way) 

 

Monday: Country Style Casserole

Tuesday: Cheddar Chowder

Wednesday: BBQ Chicken with Honey Mustard Glaze

Thursday: Pillsburg Potatoes

Friday: Pan Seared Mahi Mahi with a Honey & Lime Coleslaw

Saturday: Irish Oatmeal Muffins

Sunday:  Dutch Gingerbread 

 

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