Nettle and Quince

Autumn is here, majestically, and there are just a few more chances to eat plums before apples and pears, like cuckoos displacing another’s eggs, occupy our fruit baskets until spring.

In this season, plums signal cake — a streak of autumn riding on the rays of summer; the rhythmic reassurance of an oven heating after months of outdoor grilling and barely any cooking.

And to the point, I already have at least one October plum cake on these pages somewhere. It is a fine plum cake, but there can never be too many, and as a genuine ritual it bears validation.

Like many of my cakes, this one is easy. It is loosely based on a basic pound cake recipe, simply transmogrified by those plums, some lemon zest, and a scattering of buckwheat. An astonishing combination.

Plum cake with lemon and buckwheat

240g butter
Juice and zest from one lemon
1 lb (450g) plums (one or a combination of greengages, Victoria plums, Italian plums, quetsches but not the plump watery supermarket varieties that have no taste)
200g light brown sugar plus one or two tablespoons for the plums
4 large eggs
100g flour
50g buckwheat flour
1 tsp baking powder
100g ground almonds (or almond flour)

Preheat the oven to 175°C (350°F). Line with parchment paper and butter generously a 25cm (9″) round cake form.

Let the butter soften at room temperature.

Zest and juice the lemon. Set aside.

Wash, cut, and stone the plums. Toss the quarters with the lemon juice (not the zest!) and one or two tablespoons of sugar. Set aside.

Beat the softened butter and sugar thoroughly with a wooden spoon until creamy.

Add the eggs, one at a time, stirring well between each egg. Once all the eggs are incorporated, add the flours together with the baking powder, then the ground almonds and the lemon zest.

Gently add the plums to the batter and stir to combine. Scrape into the prepared cake tin, slide into the oven, and bake for about 40 to 50 minutes. The cake will be done when a knife/toothpick/skewer comes out clean (the juicier the plums, the longer it may take).

Let cool a little or completely before serving. As always, thick yogurt or clotted cream are fine companions.

This entry was posted on 5 October 2017 at 11:11 and is filed under At the market, Baking, Dessert, Easy, Fall, Seasonal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.