Tuesday, September 23, 2008

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.

5 comments:

The Food Librarian said...

Love the ginger and cinnamon addition - that sounds great. Wonderful looking cake!

Engineer Baker said...

Nice spice changes, and the cake looks wonderful. Great job.

Christine said...

Love the additions of ginger and cinnamon, perfect for the fall! Your cake looks delicious!

Jaime said...

i agree about this cake being hard to eat w/o the whole piece of fruit coming out! it's pretty, but not very practical. love your first photo!

Bungalow Barbara said...

I think this cake might be best with smaller fruit, or with large fruit cut in quarters or eighths. Love your spices!