Plum Good Cake:Recipe

The great thing about becoming an experienced cook is that you can be more creative with recipes. By that I mean you can experiment. Once you know a recipe well you can make changes as you like; but even if you don't know a recipe well, with experience you can anticipate what the results will be like and make changes.

This morning I found a Plum Cake recipe that sounded good. I typically like my cakes to be less sweet so I decreased the sugar. I also had purple French plums instead of red plums so I altered the number needed for the recipe (French plums are sometimes called French prunes, you can see them in the picture above). My oven runs hot, so while the original recipe called for baking the cake for an hour, I checked the cake every 15 minutes and mine was done in half the time. I also used turbinado sugar for the topping because it crunches up nicely in the oven. Last but not least I changed the name of the cake.

Here is my version of:

Plum Good Cake

1 Cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 pinch salt
1/2 Cup butter; softened
1/2 Cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon lemon zest; grated
2 large eggs (I used one real and one fake egg)
10-12 French plums; halved & pitted
1 Tablespoon fresh lemon juice

TOPPING
2 Tablespoon granulated turbinado sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease bottom and sides of a 9 or 10 inch springform pan. If you don't have a springform pan, grease well, it will pop right out of the pan if you flip it upside down on a plate then invert onto a cake plate to serve.

2. Mix together flour, baking powder, and salt.

3. Beat together butter, sugar, and lemon zest at medium speed until light and fluffy. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition.

4. At low speed, beat flour mixture into butter mixture. Spoon batter into prepared pan, spreading evenly.

5. Arrange plum halves, skin sides up, on top of batter. Sprinkle the tops of the plums with lemon juice. I used a squeezed half lemon to dab the plums.

6. Mix together sugar and cinnamon. Sprinkle over top of cake.

7. Bake cake until golden brown, 30 minutes or until done. Transfer pan to a wire rack to cool slightly.

Note: t=teaspoon, T=tablespoon and c=cup

Feel free to make whatever changes you like to this recipe! And by all means change the name to suit.