Jill's Recipe: Plum Cake

My lovely friend and neighbour Annette gave me a huge bag of British plums picked from her friend’s garden. What do you do with delicious plums? Turn them into this super easy moist and spicy plum cake! Perfect with cream, custard or on its own with a cuppa! Yummy!

Ingredients:

Butter - for greasing

2 tbsp Demerara sugar

500g plums

For the cake:

175g butter

175g Dark muscovado sugar

140g golden Syrup

2 eggs - beaten

200ml milk

300g self-raising flour

½ tsp Bicarbonate of soda

1 tbsp ground ginger

1 tsp mixed spice

Method

Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. Grease and line the base of a 23cm square cake tin with baking parchment. Butter the paper generously and sprinkle with the demerara sugar. Halve the plums and arrange in the base of the tin in 1 layer, cut sides down.

For the cake, melt the butter, muscovado sugar and syrup in a large pan over a low heat, stirring until smooth. Cool for 10 mins, then stir in the eggs and milk. Sift in the flour, bicarbonate of soda and spices, then mix to a smooth batter.

Pour the batter into the tin, over the plums, and bake for 45-55 mins until firm to the touch. Cool in the tin for 10 mins, then turn out onto a wire rack and leave to cool. Will keep in the fridge, wrapped in baking parchment and foil, for up to 5 days or cut into bite sized pieces wrap in cling film and freeze.