Last weekend I decided to bake an "Almond-Plum Buckle" with some beautiful golden plums I had purchased at the farmers market.
To make the almond cake batter, you cream butter, add sugar, eggs, vanilla, and almond extract, and then incorporate the dry ingredients (ground almonds, flour, baking powder, salt). Your pour the batter into a pan and then top it with sliced plums. I doubled this recipe to bake it in a 9-inch by 13-inch pan, and I used two and a half pounds of plums that I cut into quarters (my plums were on the small side). I ended up with so many sliced plums that I covered the entire surface of the cake batter with tightly-spaced rows of plums and I still had some fruit left over. I sprinkled on a mixture of sugar and cinnamon and put the cake in the oven.
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The cake was very rich and and buttery, and quite dense -- in the best way. The strong almond flavor was wonderful, although the cake was so decadent that the fruit definitely played second fiddle and almost seemed like an afterthought. The plums were very sweet with a touch of tartness from the skins, and cinnamon was the perfect flavor to bridge the cake and fruit together. I really enjoyed this cake and would love to give it a try with other fruits!
Recipe: "Almond-Plum Buckle" from epicurious.com.
Previous Posts:
To make the almond cake batter, you cream butter, add sugar, eggs, vanilla, and almond extract, and then incorporate the dry ingredients (ground almonds, flour, baking powder, salt). Your pour the batter into a pan and then top it with sliced plums. I doubled this recipe to bake it in a 9-inch by 13-inch pan, and I used two and a half pounds of plums that I cut into quarters (my plums were on the small side). I ended up with so many sliced plums that I covered the entire surface of the cake batter with tightly-spaced rows of plums and I still had some fruit left over. I sprinkled on a mixture of sugar and cinnamon and put the cake in the oven.
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Because my plum slices were so close together, there wasn't much room for the cake batter to rise between the pieces of fruit. I had laid on the plums skin side up, and the cinnamon-sugar mixture I sprinkled on before baking remained completely dry and untouched in the middle of most of the slices. When I cut the cake, the force of the knife desquamated many of the plum slices, as the skins had became loose during baking. That's why in the photo above, you can see some golden brown plum skins covered in cinnamon-sugar at the same time that you see the bright yellow flesh of some plums exposed because their skins are missing. The gorgeous yellow fruit made this look like a peach cake instead of a plum cake.
The cake was very rich and and buttery, and quite dense -- in the best way. The strong almond flavor was wonderful, although the cake was so decadent that the fruit definitely played second fiddle and almost seemed like an afterthought. The plums were very sweet with a touch of tartness from the skins, and cinnamon was the perfect flavor to bridge the cake and fruit together. I really enjoyed this cake and would love to give it a try with other fruits!
Recipe: "Almond-Plum Buckle" from epicurious.com.
Previous Posts:
- "Small Fruits Deliver Big Flavor: Plum and Blueberry Upside-Down Torte," July 10, 2012.
- "How Can Upside-Down Be So Right?: Plum Upside-Down Cake," October 3, 2011.
- "Putting the 'Cake' Back into 'Coffeecake': Plum Streusel Coffeecake," September 30, 2011.
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