How to make delicious Plum cake in 5 Easy Steps

We all love good cake, right? I have a really easy recipe for plum cake that I have perfected over the last plum season that I would like to share with all of you - and if I can bake it, so can you!

Hello there,
are you all enjoying the wonderful fruits and vegetables this season brings? I love shopping locally and therefore have bought quite a big amount of plums, peaches and grapes in the last couple of weeks. Also, a friend of mine has a plum tree in her garden and so we ended up creating this cake to make our husbands and kids eat some of them, too!

What you need:

for the dough:
60g of (soft) butter
120g of sugar
2 eggs
250ml milk
180g of flour
2 table spoons of baking powder

for the fruit layer:

1.5 kg (about 3 pounds) of plums - you can use more or less depending on your taste buds and the size of your cookie sheet
brown sugar
cinnamon

Before you start...
That's what I usually forget to do - you can still get the cake done if you forget about these steps, but it's easier if you do them...

take the butter out of the fridge
preheat the oven to 180°C
Prepare the plums (you can do this later,  if you want)

Step one:  the dough

You do not have to use this recipe - if you have your own recipe for a basic yellow cake or want to use a baking mix, please do so - this is supposed to be easy, remember? Also, a side note to my recipe - it usually calls for separated eggs and beating egg whites - you can do all this if you want, but it's not necessary for this cake :-)

mix butter, sugar and eggs until you get an even, somewhat runny dough
add the baking powder and about half of the milk, stir
mix in about half the flour
add the rest of the milk
add the rest of the flour
mix until smooth

Now, that wasn't so hard, was it? And the hardest part is done :-)

Step two: Spread the love dough
You can of course spray your cookie sheet or grease it or whatever you prefer to do - I just like baking parchment because it's so much less mess to clean up.

Put a sheet of baking parchment on your cookie sheet and spread the dough on top of it. make sure it covers the whole sheet

Follow me so far?

Step three: fruit layer

you can do part of  this step at some earlier time if you want - you can wash and cut the plums whenever you have the time.

Wash the plums
slice them in half and remove the stone
Quarter them if desired
Place them on the dough

Step four: finishing touches

In my opinion, there's really no such thing as too much cinnamon - or at least there was no such thing until I overdosed it on this cake at one point. Don't overdo it - the plums should still be visible :-)

sprinkle the cake with brown sugar
dust with cinnamon

Step five: bake
check the cake once in a while - if you push in a knitting needle (or any other long, pointy appliance) into the cake, it should come out without any dough sticking to it. Don't worry about the cake getting too dry - the plums provide plenty of moisture

Bake the cake for 45 minutes

Now, do you agree that this was really, really easy? You can add a frosting, if you like (not all over, just a drizzle), but I think it's great the way it is. Enjoy!

Take a deep breath and relax…

While the cake is baking, you can go ahead and get some of the holiday preparation stuff done that I talked about on Tuesday - believe me, TODAY is the day to start, if you haven't already. You can also still get your own Veelana Doll custom made for the holidays, if you want!

Keep creating,
Vee