Leave it to Deb to get me back in the kitchen! I mean, when that lady says “jump”, I’m the first to ask “how high?” so it stands to follow that when Deb says “make this plum cake,” I know it’s in my best interest to bust out the butter and search for some plums.
Except, as luck would have it, I didn’t have to search very far, because my neighbor, Martha, happens to have a plum tree in her yard, and Martha also happens to be quite generous (in general, but also specifically in plums), so as it happened, just as soon as I got it in my head to make plum cake, there was Martha, bag of plums in hand, to save the day.
The cake lives up to the hype. It’s a cinch to make (you could easily do it in the short span it takes for, say, a 6-month old to wear himself out on his play mat… just saying), looks beautiful, and tastes like it should — perfectly sweet, warmly spiced, and happily damp with fresh plum. I find it a perfect segue from summer to fall, using both the last of the season’s sweet, juicy fruit, and also a generous dash of warm cinnamon.
I actually made two of these plum cakes in one day — one for some neighbors who just welcomed their own new babe, and one for my own family to gobble up in a single (yep, just one) day. What I’m saying is, we need more plum cake. (Once plums are gone, I may give this another try with pears, although I don’t think Martha has a pear tree. Shoot).
In other news, I feel like I’ve typed “plums” one too many times today and now I can’t look at the word without feeling like it’s spelled wrong. Plums. PLUMS. Plummmmms.
I think it’s time for me to go.
And as an aside, we haven’t given Calder much solid food yet but we let him sort of gum and suck on a (ahem) plum and it was both amazing and hysterical. Boy loves him some PLUM.
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