- Lets hear it for the plums! Yay!
I haven’t made a cake for a while now but at the weekend I made a version of Dan Lepard’s stone fruit yoghurt cake from the Guardian recipes this time last year. I know Caroline makes this cake a lot – see her lovely summer version of this cake here. I had some dark skinned plums that hadn’t made it into the latest batch of plum preserves, and a little pot of mahlab, (obscure ingredient of desire sourced here) duck eggs which are great for cakes, and some yoghurt made with double cream (whistles and looks the other way).
I want to put it on record, that I’ve decided that I can make cake with pieces of fresh fruit in after all. The last time I attempted to make a cake with fresh fruit it went very wrong, have a look here:-
what can I say?
Using this recipe it came out like this:
- Just out of the oven
Once it was cooked, we left it to cool for a bit and then turned it out. With great restraint left it to cool and then ate it with some more of the supersonic yoghurt. Yum. I really recommend treating yourself to double cream yoghurt once in a while. It comes out like a cross between clotted cream and creme fraiche. I might put some it in some scones next.
- Oh Yes ! It’s looking good !
This cake made 8 glorious slices:
We had two test pieces the day it was made, and a further two pieces on Sunday afternoon for tea in the great outdoors, having burnt a few calories rambling in some fantastic woods in Gloucestershire.
Another two pieces were warmed up in the oven and then forgotten, thus evolving into an all together different sort of cake with a gorgeous crusty caramelised exterior which we had on Monday night; and the final two pieces a few nights ago with some extra cooked plums (microwaved with vanilla and cinnamon and a little sugar) and a little more cream yoghurt. School puddings were never like this….
- Ah memories!
Now it’s all gone.
To make divinely decadent yoghurt, or maybe what I made was creme fraiche? you take 200 grams of double cream, heat it gently till it just comes near the boil, allow to cool down, add two teaspoons of yoghurt and mix in and then leave to culture as you would any yoghurt you make at home. A perfect way to use up transform elderly cream that you forgot about in the fridge.
Zeb Bakes 
What a glorious cake indeed – such a lovely colour. I think upside down cakes are the best way to go with most fruit as it’s very hard to stop it sinking – in my experience anyway. I think creme fraiche is exactly what you made – that’s how we’ve done it anyway – although a spoon of buttermilk also works well. And Mahlab I’d never heard of – it sounds a bit like apricot kernals??
I invoked your name as I added the duck eggs :) I thought if it works for Choclette it might work for me! I was really pleased with the volume and structure of the cake, I’ve tried yoghurt cakes before and they ended up a bit dense. I’ve put a note about mahlab in the side bar. Yes, something similar to apricot kernels, you’re right.
Oh …, you beat my “plum” post by only a few days – we grow our own plums (only prune plums, not Asian) and every year it’s a battle with the hornets and the raccoons to see if we get any. So I discovered that if I picked them just a shade on the unripe side, they make a splendid kuchen – I’ve already made the kuchen, just not the post! BTW, that’s a great looking cake, and I’m sure with a taste to match.
Hey, your woods look very mushroomy – were you ‘shrooming?
Hi drfugawe, we’ve had plum season here now for about 5 weeks, though these aren’t home grown, I only use English grown plums: Opals and Victorias and Merryweather damsons so far this year. But unripe plums are great for kuchen aren’t they?
We ‘might’ have been having a look for mushrooms – it was a different woodland from my local ones, and in fact met a man who had a basket full of specimens he was going to catalogue for a local database, including a very perfect Death Cap. The woods were full of mushrooms but nothing that said take me home. No chanterelles like yours sadly.
A few amethyst deceivers that I thought about but in the end we just had a walk
Your version looks wonderful Joanna and full of delicious unusual ingredients too! You’re right, I do make this cake quite a lot because it’s just such a fab recipe – failsafe and adaptable to whatever is in season. I’m really glad you enjoyed it!
It’s always great to see other people’s cakes and the ones that work really well are the ones we all make again and again. I’ll def make this one again C :)
Duck eggs, mahlab and creme fraiche- not items I ever have on hand.
But the picture of that cake could induce me to go looking for them.
That is beautiful.
Gorgeous cake, Jo ! I’m so impressed it didn’t stick to the foil! The fruit looks positively luscious! :)
Whew! Double cream yoghurt….I’ve never tried this, but could be persuaded to…in small quantities ;). Your cake looks superb and the woods looks like the perfect place to enjoy it.
Interesting your comment on school puddings – the other night I saw a very entertaining ep. of Heston where he delved back to his youth and tried to re-create a ‘delicious’ school dinner! :)
Christine – we don’t eat much cream here, but I am always astounded by how it transforms food when I do. We usually avoid fresh cream, triggers asthma in one of us and gives the other indigestion, but ‘cultured’ cream seems to solve both those problems, I’m pleased I got round to trying it finally :D
I might make a treacle sponge one of these days – a real school pud.
Heidi, thanks ! You can make this cake with regular eggs and thick yoghurt and lemon zest as written originally and it will be just fine – or just put a mix of cream and yoghurt together, it would be good whatever I reckon :)
Celia, thanks for the prompt ;) I’ve amended the ‘what I did’ bit to say I oiled the foil; I love the way plums become this extraordinarily vivid colour when they are cooked
Joanna what a gorgeous looking cake. Cream yoghurt eh?…I think I need to give that one a crack.
Your woods picture looks very fairy tale-esque. Just need to find my red cape and basket (with sourdough) and go skipping through.
There be no wolves down Gloucester way, my dear, as we say in Bristle, though there be wild pig in the Forest of Dean not so far away…
Do try the yoghurt Brydie, you can always mix milk and cream if you don’t want the ‘extreme’ version :)
The cake sounds wonderful!! And now that I’m an official regular yogurt maker, I’m dying to try your creme fraiche!
It really is a great cake Abby, how is the yoghurt making going, did you have success with using the whey in bread?
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