There’s always a story with me, so if you want to know the origin of this cake read here for how I tweaked the recipe from my first attempt and here for how to make your own burnt honey. I hope you enjoy making it
Burnt Honey and Plum Cake
Ingredients
Plum filling
- 350 g Plums You will only need 200g cooked plums, reserve the rest for eating with youghurt and burnt honey
- 1 Tbls heaped brown sugar 20g
- 1 Tbls Lemon juice (and zest reserved for cake)
Dry Ingredients
- 150 g Cake Flour I use La Campagnia "00" or Champagne Valley Stone MIll 00 cake flour
- 75 g Almond Flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
- ¼ tsp salt
Creaming Ingredients
- 200 g castor sugar
- 125 g unsalted butter
Wet Ingredeints
- 3 exl eggs
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 10 drops almond essence
- 50 g burnt honey substitute with molasses
- 20 g Delicato Olive oil or cooking oil of your choice
- 50 g Double cream plain youghurt
topping
- 30 g almond slivers
Garnish
- 250 ml cream
- 1 Tbls icing cugar
- 1 Tbls burnt honey
- 200 g fresh fruit of your choice strawberries, figs, blueberries, rasberries, gooseberries
Instructions
Plum filling
- It's best to make the plums the night before so they can cool down. Cut the plums in half, remove the pit, slice each half into 5 slices and the each slice in half. The first time I made the cake the size of the plums was too big and most of them sunk to the bottom of the cake. You are looking for cubes the size of your pinkie finger tip. Add them to a medium size saucepan, along with the sugar and lemon juice. Place on medium heat until cooked and still holding their shape. This should be about 5-7 minutes. Once cool, drain off all the juice and reserve 200g of plums for the cake as well as all the juice.350 g Plums, 1 Tbls heaped brown sugar 20g, 1 Tbls Lemon juice (and zest reserved for cake)
Cake batter – Preheat oven to 160ºC fan assist
- Remember – Baking requires room temperature ingredients. Add the butter, zest and sugar to a stand mixer with paddle attachment and beat until creamy, light an fluffy. 3-5 mins. .125 g unsalted butter, 200 g castor sugar
- In a separate bowl whisk together the flours, baking powder, bicarb and salt. Add dry ingredients to the creamed butter and mix for about 30 seconds. It will resemble dough150 g Cake Flour, 75 g Almond Flour, 1 tsp baking powder, ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda, ¼ tsp salt
- In a separate bowl, lightly whisk eggs and add the rest of the wet ingredients, the essences, honey, olive oil and yoghurt. Stir to ensure an even mix.3 exl eggs, 2 tsp vanilla extract, 10 drops almond essence, 50 g burnt honey, 20 g Delicato Olive oil, 50 g Double cream plain youghurt
- With the machine running at a slow speed, drizzle the egg mix into the flour and butter mix and beat until smooth and combined. Increase the speed when all the egg mix is in. Beat for about 1 min
- Pour batter into 2 x 15cm cake pans (will be about 420g each), Add 100g of drained plums to each pan, sprinkle with 15g slivered almonds
- OR use the 1 x 22-23cm pan (about 860g batter) and top with 200g plums and 30 g almonds
- Bake in preheated fan assisted oven. While they are baking heat up the reseved plum juice
- 23cm pan will need about 50-60 min
- 15cm will bake for about 43-45 min. If it looks like its burning, cover with tin foil. Remember do not open the oven fast and only open after about 35 minutes of baking. Remove from oven and brush with reserved plum juice. Leave in pans for 15 min before removing and place on wire rack to cool.
- Once cool, decorate with a dusting of icing sugar and fruit of your choice
- Serve with tea
- It works very well with cream or yougurt. I also swirled in a tbls of burnt honey into the yoghurt to give it a caramel flavour