Dimply Plum Cake

This week's recipe was selected by Michelle from Bake-en. Unlike Michelle I am not very fond of plums. I think the California council did too well with their advertising for prunes. You know how they want stopped selling them as prunes and now they sell them as dried plums? Well, that might have worked for some people, but for me, all it did was make me think of plums as prunes and that took them right off my list of foods to eat!

I loved that this recipe called for cardamom. However, I will add more than a scant 1/4 teaspoon if I ever make this again, because I barely noticed it was even there.

And, for sure I won't be using plums. I'll probably use my most favorite of stone fruits the lovely and delectable peach.

I do want to warn everyone, though, about the product that I did purchase for this cake. I was pretty excited when I found these "Petite Plums" at the Kroger. There were seven in the package and they seemed to be about the right size for topping the cake. (Others had said it was difficult to get all the halves on top of the cake.)

I ransomed Melissa's "Plum Bites" from the Kroger because (a) I am a sucker for a cute product name! and (b) I was sure they would be a perfect size for the cake. Now that I had to toss a third of them due to their rotten centers I am convinced that the bite was soley to my pocketbook and I am not a happy woman! It isn't clear in this photo - but the damn things were also organic, which of course explains the high cost of their ransom!

I should have remembered Red Chief and left them there!

Luckily the rotten plums were the last two I opened, so all I had to do was rearrange the other plums on the top of the cake and then bake it. It got darker than I expected. I baked it in a 9 * 9 pan and perhaps should have cut back more on the time.

It was well received at work, but I found the cake to be extremely bland if you did not eat it with a plum slice in your mouth. Well, even then it was bland, but at least with the slice of plum it was extremely moist. I loved the saturation of color that the skin of the plum gave to the body of the cake. I may revisit this cake and try different variations of it, but as the original recipe stands it is a non-repeater for me.