![]() There are versions where the sugar has been cut back to 3/4 cup (feel free to, although I didn’t find the 1 cup too sweet at all), plus versions with other fruit (blueberries, apples or cranberries too) and even a low-fat version with mashed bananas and applesauce. This cake has been around for so long, it’s seen its fair share of variations as readers demands for tortes for all seasons and food trends far exceeded the reach of the original recipe. Seven years ago: Summer Squash Soup, Giardinera and Orange Chocolate Chunk Cakeįrom Elegant but Easy and The Essential New York Times Cookbook, Six years ago: Spaghetti with Chorizo and Almonds and Couscous and Feta-Stuffed Peppers Two years ago: Pear, Cranberry and Gingersnap Crumbleįive years ago: Bread Without A Timetable, Black and White Cookies, Balsamic Glazed Sweet and Sour Cippoline Plums, previously: Plum Kuchen (this cake’s yeasted, German cousin), Dimply Plum Cake (from Dorie Greenspan a wonderful cake that I have to confess just got bumped among my favorites for this one, oops), Single-Crust Apple and Crumb Pie (with a shortbread-like lid, perfect for this time of year), Sugar Plum Crepes with Ricotta and Honey (if nothing else, for the easiest crepe recipe for beginners or crepe-phobes), Hazelnut Plum Crumb Tart (a bit of a project, but worth it) Although it will be hard to resist (deep pockets of plum puddles and all that, believe me, I know), what’s true of most cakes with fresh fruit - that in the oven, the fruit softens and bakes, but upon resting, the sweet juices seep out and become one with the cake around it, making it so incredibly moist, decadent and almost custard-like around the fruit pebbles that you won’t regret waiting - is triply true here, when there’s just so much fruit for so little cake. The second magical thing that will happen, if you take my advice, is to always start eating this cake on the second day. Two magical things happen when a massive heap of purple Italian plums are added and the cake is thickly coated with cinnamon and sugar, the first is that the cake rises up around them and buckles them in, leaving the cake riddled with deep pockets of jammy plum puddles that impart a sweet-sour complexity to an otherwise simple butter cake base. There are only four brief, simple steps, and the batter seems so simple (“like pancake batter,” says Hesser) that you might have understandable doubts about the greatness of this cake. There are only eight ingredients, seven of which you probably have around and, if you took my hint earlier this week that “buttery plums” were coming later this week, you might even have the eighth. As if anyone would dare.Īmanda Hesser, who compiled and tested 1,400 recipes dating back to the 1850s, when the New York Times began covering food, the James Beard award-winning 2010 Essential New York Times Cookbook, said that when she asked readers for recipe suggestions to include the in book, she received no less than 247 for this one, and suspects that is because it’s a nearly perfect recipe. First published in the New York Times by Marian Burros in 1983, the recipe had been given to her by Lois Levine, her co-author on the excellent Elegant but Easy), the recipe was published every year during plum season between then and 1995, when the editor of the food section told readers they were cutting them off, and it was time to cut it out, laminate it and put it on the refrigerator door because they were on their own if they lost it. It is a famous plum cake, so renowned that I suspect half of you out there have already made it, and the rest of you will soon commit it to memory, because this cake is like that - it is worthwhile enough to become your late September/early October staple. This may look like an ordinary piece of plum cake, but it is not.
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