spiced, plum, upside, down, cake, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, olive, oil

After seeing thisfantastic Plum Tart recipe at Sugarlaws, I decided I needed to make something with plums. Plums bake beautifully, when they’re at high temperatures the heat causes the purple skin to bleed into the yellow flesh and creates this gorgeous magenta to yellow color-blend. Not only that, but plums have a unique taste that is sweet and tart at the same time, kind of like Granny Smith Apples. I decided to make an old-timey English style dessert, the kind that might accompany an afternoon tea service, but make it a bit healtheir with the use of extra virgin olive oil and whole wheat flour. You don’t taste the wheat at all, it just fades into the background behind all the delicious spices and the juicy sweet tannic plum flavors.

The cake’s great blend of spices give it an autumn-esque flavor (I had recently purchased some ground cloves on sale and was looking for an opportunity to use them, so spice cake it was!) that always reminds me of cozy days spent indoors. The cake came out wonderfully, as is evidenced by the fact that when I brought the cake over to my friend Alana’s house me, Alana and her mom Melanie managed to eat half the plum cake in about 20 minutes. I want to go out and buy somemoreplums to makemorecake just thinking about it…..I’m pretty positive you’ll like it as much as we did.

And just one quick note— to make the cake unmold from the pan easily, I recommend lining the bottom with parchment paper. Nothing is more sad than an upside-down cake with all the fruit still stuck inside the pan.

5 from 1 vote

Spiced Plum Upside Down Cake

Course Dessert

Keyword cake

Servings 12 people

Ingredients

Pan Coating

1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon unsalted butter

Spiced Plum Upside Down Cake

3/4 pound fresh plums
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon flake kosher sea salt
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup extra virgin olive oil
3 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract

Instructions

Pan Coating

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease an 8-inch cake pan and line the bottom with parchment paper.
For the pan coating, sprinkle the 1/3 cup sugar over the bottom of the pan. Cut the butter into small pea-sized bits and evenly distribute across the bottom of the pan.

Spiced Plum Upside Down Cake

Cut the plums in half and remove and discard the pits. Place them in a single layer, cut-side-down, on the bottom cake pan.
In a large bowl, mix together the flour, cinnamon, baking powder, allspice, cloves, nutmeg, and salt until combined. Set aside.
In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, mix together the granulated sugar and the olive oil. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the vanilla and almond extracts and mix until thoroughly combined.
Add the flour in two increments, mixing until *just* combined. You should now have a smooth, and fairly thick, cake batter.
Pour the cake batter over the plums in the cake pan. Place the pan in the oven and bake for about 1 hour 10 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out relatively clean.
Allow the cake to cool for 15 minutes before flipping it over and inverting it onto a plate or cake stand and removing the pan. Peel off and discard the parchment paper. Allow the cake to cool, then transfer it to a plate and slice and serve.

Discussion

AlanaKatzner says:

This was so good! I seriously don't remember eating half of it, all of a sudden it was just gone haha

Birgit says:

It sounds so delicious, I'll try to make this as soon as possible. 🙂 Thank you for shearing it!

Eva says:

Thanks you guys! It is SUCH a good dessert, my boyfriend Jeremy just requested that I make it as his birthday cake next month, and considering all the other tasty cake options, it says alot about how yummy this cake is 🙂

Jade Sheldon says:

It's so weird, Cory and I just made a pluot (hybrid of a plum and an apricot) tart the other day!!

I absolutely LOVE pluots. They have a great flavor and their skin is so eerily transparent, makes for a very pretty fruit!

summersher says:

What a pretty cake! Love the colors. I'll have to try this… maybe with some other sort of fruit though- good plums are hard to come by here.

I think it would work very well with apples, since those kinds of spices always seem to pair well with them 🙂

Ann says:

Soo good! Wow. I used a jigger of honey liqueur (the Spanish Quarente Tres) in place of almond extract, and that was great. Next time I would cool the cake completely before inverting it, maybe let it cool an hour?

Kathryn Hart says:

I love this cake. It’s great for dessert or an indulgent breakfast too. I added whole cardamom seeds. I have made it correctly a few times though I always have trouble with the plums sticking to the paper instead of to the cake. I have also made it completely wrong and not blended the oil, sugar and eggs first but put everything in one bowl and mixed it with a spatula- and that was definitely a mistake.