TWD: Dimply Plum Cake

This week's Tuesdays with Dorie is from Michelle at Bake-En. She chose for us to make the Dimply Plum Cake from Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. It is a simple orange scented coffee cake batter with plum halves nestled into the batter. You can find the exact recipe here.


The substitutions I made were as followed:

• I used salted butter instead of unsalted butter and just omitted the salt that was called for in the recipe
• I omitted the cardamom and instead added 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger and 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon to the batter
• The original recipe indicates to use 8 plums and to place them 4x4 in the square pan. I guess I had large plums because I could only fit 3 plums in my pan, 2x3.

Notes:

The cake smelled wonderful while baking, my whole house filled with the smell of cinnamon. I baked my cake for 38 minutes even though the recipe calls for 40 minutes, and it seemed a bit over done, so you might want to check on the cake about 35 minutes into baking. The batter is very thick, and I had a hard time spreading the batter into the pan, so I coated a spatula with non-stick spray, and it seemed to make it easier.

This cake was very simple to make, and I really liked it. The cinnamon and ginger tasted great in the batter and went well with the plums. I would make this again with other fruits like peaches, pears, or apples. Next time I would probably slice the fruit and place it on top the batter instead of just placing the halves of the fruit into the batter. It is difficult to take a bite of the cake without taking the whole half of the fruit with you.