I just bought both of Heidi Swanson's cookbooks: Super Natural Cooking, and Super Natural Every Day. I appreciate that they have a good dessert section. Plums are in season right now and bursting off of tables at farmer's markets near me, so I decided to get some and try this plum cake from Super Natural Every Day. It was well received in the DeMartini home - though consumers said (positively) that it was more like a cobbler than a cake because of the large chunks of fruit in it. If I made it again (which I probably will... within the week) I'd put more fruit in it to up the cobbler factor.
A testament to how quick and easy this is - I made one and decided it wouldn't be enough for everyone, so I made a second one and threw them both in the oven by the time it was hot. (Granted, I had helpers for zesting and slicing.) For the second one I didn't have any lemon zest left, so I just used the juice from the zested lemons. Texture was different but the taste was still great.
Ingredients:
2.5 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 cup of fine grain raw cane sugar
1 T baking powder
1/2 t sea salt
2 eggs
1.5 cups buttermilk
1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
zest of 3 lemons
5-6 plums cut into thin wedges
3 T large grain raw cane sugar or turbinado
Preheat the oven to 400 and grease and flour an 11" cake pan. Mix the 4 dry ingredients in a bowl. In another small bowl, mix the eggs and buttermilk together, then add the butter (make sure it's not too hot) and the lemon zest. Fold the wet mixture into the dry mixture and blend just until it's all blended together. You can either pour all the batter into the cake pan and then add the plums on top, or (my recommendation) pour in half the batter, put in a layer of plumbs, then the rest of the batter and more plums on top. Sprinkle the large grain sugar over the top of the cake. Bake for 25-30 minutes (mine took more like 35) - put in a toothpick or a skewer and make sure it comes out clean.
People will ooh and aaah at the beauty of your cake, then gobble it up.
Looks so good! I have plums and lemons, now I just need an oven....
ReplyDeleteLooks so delicious!
ReplyDeleteAlso, I'm interested in hearing more about the two cookbooks as you read and cook from them! I borrowed her first from a friend and enjoyed reading it, but it was during a time when I was cooking a lot of familiar recipes, or just not cooking as much as usual! 101cookbooks is great.
ReplyDeleteI made this again and used peaches, and mixed a bunch of them into the batter then topped it with the rest. It was delicious - but it takes longer to bake, and it ends up being much more moist than a regular cake.
ReplyDeleteI just want to point out, since it deserves some attention, that this whole cake (which is pretty moist and heavy) only has 1/4 cup of butter and 1/2 cup of sugar in the whole thing. She lets the fruit do most of the talking.