Plum Cake

About a month ago, I stumbled across a listing on foodgawker (which, by the way, is an extremely dangerous thing) for a dimply plum cake. The original post and the recipe, over at One Cake Two Cake, can be found here. Laura, the author of that post, got the recipe from Dorie Greenspan, author of many cookbooks. She modified it slightly; the only change I made was to substitute a few drops of orange extract for orange zest. These lovely plums sacrificed themselves for the cause:

I had to use a 9-inch round cake pan, and, as Laura notes in her post, there's really no way to fit all of the plums no matter how they're arranged; out of eight, I managed to fit only five and a half. But the finished product turned out well:

The only trouble I had was that it was not cooked through in the center, which is symptomatic of my more-or-less really crappy electric oven; I have trouble with most baked goods. However, what WAS done was absolutely delicious--the brown-sugar cake held up well but was not hard or dry, and the plums were so juicy.

If you're looking for a new kind of cake, I definitely recommend making this one, but only if you're sure your oven is up to the task!

-Cate-