Dimply Plum Cake

This was my first experience cooking with plums. It's also been a full week since I've updated. After my last computer malfunction, I've been trying to restore all my old problems, but some are giving me more problems than others (er...photoshop, namely) so I can't get the coloring right on most of my pictures. Fortunately the pictures taken this week were at my brother and sister-in-law's house where they have plenty of sunlight. Curse the designer of my townhouse and the north-only windows. This week's Tuesday with Dorie recipe was picked by Bake-en.

My mom was visiting in town the same day I made this, and she brought with her an ice cream maker and some chocolate almond ice cream batter (recipe to follow...eventually). We tasted this cake after enjoying some of the chocolaty goodness, and I really think it took away from the flavor of the cake. It just ended up tasting dry and plain. I had some leftovers the next day and it tasted moist and flavorful - I didn't know plums could be so good until I tried those leftovers. It could be the fact that it was able to sit for a full day and move the juices through the cake, but I'm betting it's just the overpowering ice cream.

This is one of those recipes that's very open to variation depending on what sort of fruits you have lying around the house. Oh, and I learned from this experience - when sinking fruit into a cake, make sure you put all the fruit into place first and press them all down at the same time. I ended up with a lopsided cake because my first row pushed extra batter to one side, and it kept moving over more as I added rows.

Recipe - Baking: From My Home to Yours, by Dorie Greenspan, p. 41