Rustic Plum Cake with Cardamom
This Plum Cake is a soft, cardamom scented cake embedded with sweet, juicy plums. This rustic cake is meant to be simple and homey. It’s a totally unfussy recipe.
You guys, I swear this recipe really is easy. As the word “rustic” in the name implies, this cake is not supposed to be a perfectly coiffed bakery style dessert.
The inspiration for this cake, as is so often the case, was the contents of my farm share.
I had a bunch of pretty little Italian plums and wanted to bake them into a simple fall treat.
You know I usually try to give you some background on a recipe. Sometimes I give an explanation of the science behind a recipe. Sometimes I take you through the trials, errors and minute ingredient adjustments that led to the final recipe.
Well, I did have to make this recipe 3x to get it right. But it’s not that there was anything particularly wrong with it to start. I just needed to make a few small tweaks to my original recipe to make a cake that I really wanted to eat.
How to make the best Plum Cake:
- The problem with the first go-round was that I had too much cake and not enough fruit. I know for some of you the term “too much cake” is heresy. But I’m fruit-obsessed and wanted just enough cake to contain the plums.
- My solution was to make 1/2 the amount of batter and bake it in a slightly larger pan.
- As long as I was redoing the cake, I added just a smidge more butter for a softer cake.
- The batter was a bit thin I also increased the flour by 1/4 cup.
- The result was better, but I still wanted more plum. (The hilarious Saturday Night Live episode comes to mind – “I need more cow bell!”.) So this is where you can imagine me saying “I need more plum”.
- For the third go round I used large black plums instead of the little Italian plums. The plum quarters were large enough that they could not be submerged in the batter. Now I had a cake with almost equal proportions of cake and plum. Just like I like it.
Scroll through the step by step photos to see how to make Rustic Plum Cake:
The cake is best the day it’s baked, preferably slightly warm from the oven (a scoop of vanilla ice cream wouldn’t be out of place).
It will keep, covered, at room temperature for a couple of days. After the first day it will get a little soggy, but it will still be very tasty.
Oh, and that hint of cardamom? It’s just the right warming touch to this lovely, unpretentious cake.
If you love this recipe as much as I do, I’d really appreciate a 5-star review.
Rusitc Plum Cake with Cardamom
Ingredients
- 2 large eggs (room temperature)
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 2 oz buttermilk (¼ cup)
- 5 ½ oz cake flour (1 ¼ cups, see note)
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ⅛ teaspoon table salt
- ½ teaspoon ground cardamom
- 4 oz granulated sugar (½ cup)
- 3 oz brown sugar (⅓ cup, divided)
- 5 oz unsalted butter (room temperature)
- 5 large plums (pitted and quartered)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350F. Line the bottom of a 10" springform pan with parchment paper or butter and flour the pan. (see note)
- Whisk together 2 large eggs, 2 teaspoons vanilla extract and 2 tablespoons of the buttermilk in a small bowl, set aside.
- Sift 5 ½ oz cake flour, ½ teaspoon baking soda, ⅛ teaspoon table salt and ½ teaspoon ground cardamom into a mixer bowl. Add 4 oz granulated sugar and 2 tablespoons (1 oz) of of the brown sugar. Mix on low speed for 30 seconds to distribute the ingredients.
- With the mixer running on low, toss in 3 oz brown sugar a tablespoon at a time. Add the remaining buttermilk and increase the speed to medium and mix 3 minutes to aerate the batter. With the mixer on low speed, slowly add the egg mixture in two batches. Scrape the bowl and mixer after each addition.
- Pour the batter into the prepared pan and spread to level. Place the plums, skin side down, in concentric circles over the batter. Sprinkle the remaining brown sugar over the plums.
- Bake until the cake springs back when pressed, about 45 minutes. Cool 10 minutes in the pan before releasing the sides.
- Serve slightly warm or room temperature.
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Notes
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Hi Eileen, made the cake and it was incredible! Left it out for a few hours to cool and put it in the fridge but it got moldy within a couple of days. Do you have any tips to avoid this? We had to throw it away 🙁
It got moldy in the fridge? That’s surprising. I just made this last week and we ate it for several days. Maybe one of your plums had some mold to start?
@Eileen Gray, I was really surprised too! Maybe you are right 🙂 not certain