Plum Cake

Summer holiday has passed, this year we went to the beautiful Ireland. We drove around starting from south-east to south-west, going a bit up until Doolin ending in Dublin. It was the first time for us, we have been many times in England and Scotland, but never before in Ireland. We had good food, people are very friendly, the coast line is amazingly beautiful, sometimes even breath taken. But all good comes to an end and until the next we are back in Haarlem.

Anyway in those 2 weeks I hardly make special cooking and of course I didn't bake. I bought a book "Paul Hollywood's bread" with a lot of good bread recipes, now I just have to find the time again bake bread, maybe this weekend.

When I did the grocery shopping on Friday I saw that plums are now in season, they look great and they taste at their best, so I decided to buy some extra and make a plum cake.

The ingredients you need for a big cake, I think my baking tray is 35x24x5:

• About 12 plums cut in half
• 375 gr. caster sugar
• 300 gr. butter
• 3 eggs
• Zest of 1 lemon
• 250 ml buttermilk
• 1 a 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 425 gr. self-raising flour

To start grease the baking tray and cover the bottom with baking paper. Using a mixer, that is the easiest way, mix the sugar and the butter until very light and creamy. After that add the eggs, one at the time, keep mixing, then stir the vanilla extract and the lemon zest. Using a wooden spoon stir slowly and carefully the buttermilk and the flour.

Once is all well mix, don't do this to long, scoop the batter into the baking tray, make the top smooth. Then divide the plums with the cut side up. As you can see from my picture, I push my plums a bit down, that made that when the cake was baking the plums were covered. So my advice is, if you want to have a cake where you see the plums, just put the fruit on top and don't press them.

Bake in a 160 degrees oven for about 55 minutes, until golden brown. Serve with some icing sugar, it is absolutely delicious.