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<\/a>\nWhat I thought about saying next was, “The citrus is coming! The citrus is coming!” (In the privacy of my own head, I spout this kind of garbage the way Old Faithful does boiling water.) I decided against it, but during the thirty seconds when I was considering and then reconsidering, I remembered a walk I took with the dog a few weeks ago. A little boy down the street was having a birthday party, and from the skull-and-crossbones flags tied to the laurel hedge along the road, I gathered it was pirate-themed. There was some marauding role-playing going on in the yard as I passed by, lots of running and yelling, and from the other side of the hedge, I heard someone confess, “I don\u2019t like to whip her, but I really need her to run fast, because the British are coming!”<\/p>\n
Which would be alright with me, actually, because they make good plum cakes.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve written about a lot of cakes over the years, but time and time again, the ones I return to are these: everyday cakes, no frosting, no ceremony. This particular example comes from Nigel Slater<\/a>\u2019s Tender, Volume II: A Cook\u2019s Guide to the Fruit Garden<\/a>, a tome if ever there was one. The thing weighs 3.8 pounds. I could probably spend a few years cooking only from Tender<\/a>, and if anyone out there is looking for a project, well, my friend, there\u2019s a whopper for you. The two volumes live on a special shelf next to my desk, and last week, that shelf was where I went when I found myself with several pounds of rapidly ripening plums from my friend Wynne at Jerzy Boyz Farm<\/a>. We buy hundreds of pounds of fruit from her every year for the restaurant, and she\u2019s taken to calling me “sweetie.” She knows what I like.<\/p>\n Anyway, I had this box of plums, so I went to Nigel, and Nigel placed before me the words Pudding Cake of Honey, Cinnamon, and Plums<\/span>. I think I could stop this post right here and you would know everything you need to know, but I will say just a little more, because as it turns out, this is going to be my new go-to cake. It\u2019s a cinnamon spice cake with plums, and as the name implies, it\u2019s dark and very tender – damp<\/i>, as I once heard Nigella Lawson say. What\u2019s particularly interesting is that it uses three kinds of sweetener: golden syrup, honey, and brown sugar. When I was making it, I was convinced that it was going to be a toothache-inducing mess, but I can now say with confidence: DON\u2019T CHANGE A THING. The sweeteners each bring a different flavor, and together, they give the cake real depth and warmth. And the plums aren\u2019t sweetened before they get dropped into the loose, caramel-colored batter, so they retain a nice sourness as they sink and soften.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t the kind of cake that you reserve for company; it\u2019s a Tuesday-night sweet. It\u2019s also a Wednesday-afternoon, coming-in-from-the-rain sweet. It is also, if you\u2019re open to it, a totally reasonable breakfast. I don\u2019t like to use the word perfect<\/i>, because I am fickle, but I\u2019ll say it here. I think this cake is perfect.<\/p>\n Happy fall.<\/p>\n P.S. I\u2019ve fallen in love with the ease, speed, and accuracy of metric weight measurements, particularly in baking. From now on, the recipes I post here will use both cup and weight measures.<\/p>\n\n<\/a><\/p>\n Nigel Slater\u2019s Pudding Cake of Honey, Cinnamon, and Plums<\/h2>\n
Adapted from Tender, Volume II<\/a><\/span><\/h3> \n \n <\/header>\n\n