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Plum & Citrus Drizzle Cake



I was thinking back to my childhood to try figure out when I got into cooking/baking. I remember when I was a teeny tot, I used to take discarded bits of vegetable,s such as onion skins, stick them into a bowl and make a “concoction”, adding ketchup and other such condiments that I could get my hands on. I would sit on the floor, mixing together the ingredients in my Pocahontas plastic bowl, thoroughly enjoying myself! My cooking methods haven’t changed all that much, nowadays I tend to use the parts of vegetables you can actually eat though!


Another memory I have is of biscuit making. Now I can’t be sure if it was in late primary school or early secondary school. I just remember having to do a survey to find out what sort of biscuits people like. I was always that person who would have loads of participants for stuff like that. You know when you had to get sponsored for something, I would tend to have the most people on my form. Mainly because our household was a busy one! Anywhooo results concluded that coconut, peanuts and chocolate were the most popular biscuit flavours. So I combined the three to make supposedly the best biscuit ever. OMG I just remembered the ingenious name I came up with for my creation…CHOCONUT! Ha. God knows how they tasted! 


Maybe I was on to something? I definitely was onto something with that name, so watch this space, choconut’s maybe coming your way int he future! I’ve been doing quite a bit of recipe inventing recently. I have my recipe notebook with me as a revise, and for some reason I have had moments of inspiration whilst making notes on NHS clinical governance (SNORE). Obviously, the NHS inspires me…I am telling you though, some of the recipes I thought up are so exciting! I don’t wanna give too much away but grated halloumi will be coming at ya next week!! 



Talking of halloumi, I realised something life changing this week. Halloumi is made from sheep/goat milk which means I CAN EAT ALL THE HALLOUMI. I am slightly allergic to dairy products, but only those from cows. I don’t know if its a lactose intolerance, all I know is I get eczema as a result. I did grow out of my allergy, but then the stress of uni brought back my eczema, and with it my dairy allergy. And I can tell you now, a bit of eczema is not going to stop me eating pizza haha! It does particularly suck at times like this when my eczema is already lingering and all I want to do is eat cheese and carbs! 

  


I think thats probably enough talk on my skin conditions. Let’s get back to the cake. Now, I have to apologise as I know plums are not currently in season really, but there seems to be a few lingering in the supermarkets and fruit and veg stalls, so this is your opportunity to use up the last of them. I do try as hard as I can to buy seasonal fruits. I had to stop my Mum from buying Strawberries the other day. We were at the fruit & veg stall at the little market in our town centre, and the woman was yelling something about cheap strawbs. I was dubious as it is definitely not yet strawberry season yet but we went to take a look. You would assume that as it was a farmers stall, they would be fruits & veg grown locally. You’d be wrong. The strawberries were from Spain so I forbade Mumma B from getting them. Things like bananas and grapes it is obviously hard to buy seasonally because we wouldn’t be able to buy them at all here! But berries are definitely something I only ever get in the summer! 

Recipe

This is a Plum & Citrus Drizzle cake as it uses orange AND lemon juice. I added extra plums to the original recipe and obviously used less sugar! I have made this cake once before and found that the amount of sugar it tells you to put on top is a ridiculous amount! Make sure your plums are fairly ripe before using them otherwise you’ll end up with a tart cake. Sadly I don’t mean a tart + cake hybrid, but a cake with tart fruit in! Original recipe found in this BBC Good Food book. 

Serves: 6-8 (depending on slice size!)
Prep Time: 20mins 
Cooking Time: 50 mins + 10 mins cooling
Skill Level: Piece of cake!

Equipment
Mug
Mixing bowl 
Chopping board & knife 
1 kg/2lb loaf tin (greased + lined with baking parchment)
Cooling rack

Ingredients
2 eggs + 1 egg yolk  
140g unsalted butter (softened)
140g self raising flour 
100g golden caster sugar
grated zest & juice of 1 orange (I didn’t have oranges so used 1tsp orange extract)
300g plums (un-stoned weight, half chopped into small pieces, half into wedges)

Topping
½ tbsp fresh lemon juice 
100g golden caster sugar
(+ 1 tsp of orange essence if you are not using fresh orange)

Method

  1. Pre-heat oven to 160c/140c fan/Gas 3. Beat eggs + yolk with a pinch of salt, in a mug or cup and set aside. 
  2. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
  3. Pour in eggs, a little at a time. Beat mixture in between each addition of egg. 
  4. Fold in the flour, orange zest and 2 tbsp of orange juice (or 1 tsp of orange essence).
  5. Fold in the roughly chopped plum pieces.
  6. Pour/spoon the mixture into prepared loaf tin. Arrange plum wedges on top.
  7. Place in centre of oven and bake for 50mins, until inserted skewer comes out clean. 
  8. Cool for 10mins before turning out onto cooling rack. 
  9. Mix together lemon juice, remaining orange juice (or 1 tsp of orange essence) and sugar.
  10. Drizzle over cooling cake. Leave to cool until set.
PLUMS ARE LIKE GIANT CHERRIES
 

Seeing as it has been pretty sunny recently I have been listening to a bit of Little Dragon. This one is my fave…

KBx 

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