A Plum Job

This year promises to be a good one for fruit trees. The English apple season has started earlier than ever before thanks to the freezing temperatures of winter which put the trees to sleep meaning that they awoke in the unuaully warm spring with vigour ensuring lots of blossom and good pollonation. I would imagine that this reasoning extends to all fruit teres and a friend’s plum trees were certainly laden and I came away from an afternoon visit with bags of fruit, sweet eating plums that vanished quickly and a sharper, darker variety that begged to be baked.

I always forget just how lovely plums can be, the hard, tasteless fruits found in supermarkets are nothing in comparrison to those picked ripe from a tree. My tiny garden enables me to play with pots of compost and seeds resulting in harvests of salad leaves, slug ravished radishes and of course the essential courgettes. But what I would love, more than anything, would be a fruit tree. A tasty variety of pear or even apple would be a thing of joy, the blossoms, the fruits, the weeks of pies and chutneys, baked goods and compotes.

But a plum tree would be just perfect.

Eager to get started with the bags of fruit I came home with I looked for something quick and easy, this Oat Slice recipe from Delia.

I added some ground cardamom (from about 8 pods) as it pairs well with plums and is one of my favourite spices, I reduced the cinnamon slightly to a level teaspoon rather than the suggested heaped one to make it a bit more balanced. This really took no time at all to bring together, the nutty oats contrasted beautifully with the sharpness of the plums and the earthiness of the spices. You could adapt this to use a wide variety of fruits and I bet the addition of some chopped nuts in the oat layer would be divine.

There were still plenty left and a weekend poker evening meant hungry guests to share with. I didn’t want the stress of pastry and a pie, and a crumble, whilst one of my favorite puddings wasn’t right either. Nigel Slater’s Tender Volume II provided the recipe for a pudding like cake. There was homemade ice cream brought by one of my guests and  I popped some of the remaining plums in a pan with the juice of an orange, a table spoon of sugar, a cinnamon stick and some crushed cardamom pods and reduced them to make a sharp yet deep and spicy compote to cut through the richness of the cake. I upped the spices from the original recipe by once again adding cardamom and also half a teaspoon of ginger and  teaspoon of vanilla. I also used butternilk rather than milk.

Honey, Spice and Plum Cake

(slighty adapted from Nigel Slater’s recipe in Tender Volume II)

250g plain flour

Tsp baking powder

Tsp bicarb

Tsp cinamon

1/2 Tsp ground ginger

Ground cardamom from about 10 pods

Tsp vanilla extract

200g golden syrup

2 tbsp honey (NS specifies ‘thick’ but I used standard runny honey which was all I had to hand)

125g butter

125g light muscavado sugar

250g plums, halved (or quatered if large) with stones removed

2 large eggs

240ml buttermilk (or milk)

Preheat your oven to 180C, grease and line a 24cm square tin

Sift together the flour, baking powder, bicarb and spices

Gently heat the golden syrup, honey and butter until the butter is melted then add the sugar

Whisk together the eggs buttermilk and vanilla extract

Stir the syrup mixture into the flour mixture using a metal spoon then the egg and milk mixture, stirring until no traces of flour remain

Pour the mixture into the tin then drop in the plums (vague)

Bake for 25 minutes then cover loosly with foil and bake for a further 10 – 15 minutes. Switch off the oven but leave for a further 15 minutes then remove from oven and allow to cool in the tin.

I can’t help but wonder how Nigel comes up with these recipes – is it based on one tried and tested perhaps handed down or has he (or a minion) experimented with different baking times and options? I’ve not come accross a recipe before that states you should leave a cake in a cooling oven as part of the baking process.

I’m not sure whether a little longer was needed in the oven – you can see the dense moist crumb, and that the plums have sunk to the bottom, but it didn’t taste under done in any way. Not that there was any way to test this theory but I suspect well wrapped it would keep well being so moist. This one disappeared swiftly.

Fruit Cakes

I love the request for a cake – a guide to help me whittle down the recipes I obsessively bookmark from other blogs and flag in my recipe books. Choice paralyses me, I want to use the tin of pumpkin I have in the cupboard; I have buttermilk nearing its use by date. The half full pack of wholemeal self-raising flour at the back of the cupboard nags at me. How fresh are the lemons in the fruit bowl?

So, when someone simply says in passing ‘I just love ginger cakes’ or ‘have you ever made a coffee cake?’ then I have a starting point, a purpose from which a plan can be formed, and I do love a plan.

My father specifically requesting ‘a cake’ provided the impetus for this particular Sundays early morning – into mid afternoon – bakathon. He is a frequent recipient of the fruits of my kitchen labours, but he asked and I baked. My dad loves fruitcakes and with the post Christmas overstock of dried fruit languishing in my cupboard, I set about choosing one. It felt good to reacquaint myself with the British books in my collection and the bags of blanched almonds left over from decorating the Christmas Cakes meant a Dundee Cake was an obvious choice. I waivered between a recipe from Leith’s Baking Bible and a Delia but in the end settle on Delia’s and you can see the recipe here (although the instructions for lining a tin from Leith’s were most useful).

Of course I can’t make just one cake, can’t be that decisive, but I didn’t anticipate the five that came out of the oven on this day. I added ‘Jane’s Fruit Cake’ and ‘Cherry Cake’ both from Marry Berry’s Baking Bible. I also baked two Marmalade Loaves but because of my lax blogging and the delay between baking and writing this I now can’t find the recipe. I know I made it and I know it was tasty (sorry to taunt) I know the recipe is there somewhere and will update soon (ish).

I’m not sure what my father made of the stack of foil wrapped cakes that I presented him with that evening but I have to say I enjoyed the Marmalade Loaf and Dundee Cake enormously. I’m not a fan of candied peel so would probably reduce this in the Dundee and up the citrus zest to compensate. The fruitcake initially tasted a little bland to me, perhaps the memory of the extraordinarily rich Christmas Cake is still fresh and spicy in my mind, but I found that after a day or two the flavours had matured and it was quite lovely. The Cherry Cake was hit with lots of people, which surprised me, I had many comments saying it was a favourite out of them all.

Jane’s Fruit Cake

May Berry’s Baking Bible

200g softened Butter

350g light muscovado Sugar

3 large eggs

450g wholemeal self raising flour

150ml Buttermilk

350g sultanas

350g currants

50g flaked almonds for sprinking

Preheat oven 140C, grease a 23cm/9” deep round tin and line the base and sides with parchment.

The directions in Mary’s books sometimes seem a little brief; often just mix all the ingredients till combined. As I use my Kitchenaid (but the principle is the same with a handheld electric whisk) I follow the sequence dictated in many US recipes, although admittedly these tend to be for pound cakes rather than fruitcakes. Anyway, my method of mixing below:

Beat the sugar and butter until creamed – approx 3 mins on high speed

Add flour and buttermilk in alternate batches, ending on the flour and mix until incorporated

Fold in the fruit and mix well

Spoon into the prepared pans and sprinkle with the flaked almonds

Bake for 3 – 3 ½ hours or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tin.

Wrap in more parchment and foil to keep moist.

English Cherry Cake

Mary Berry’s Baking Bible

200g glace cherries

275g self raising flour (I used wholemeal)

75g ground almonds

2 tsp baking powder

225g softened butter

225g caster sugar

4 large eggs

Oven 160C/Fan 140/GM3

Grease and line 8” deep round cake tin

Quarter the berries and wash and dry thoroughly

Beat sugar and butter until light and creamy, add the eggs one at a time scraping the bowl after each addition.

Add in the flour and mix well

Fold cherries into the mixture and spoon batter into the tin, leveling the top with the back of a spoon.

Bake for 1 ½ -1 ¾ hours

Leave to cool for 10 mins in the tin then turn out, peel off the parchment and allow to cool completely on a rack.