Ed's Plums....

It's that time of year again, the nights are drawing in, I'm starting to wear vests and the leaves are making beautiful patterns on the ground.
This also means it's the time for my friend Ed to grow another year older (a year in a day - amazing)...

Ed & Meredith

There is a rather long story behind why I made Ed this cake this year and I'm a little uncertain of the facts. But it involves a friend's wedding, Meredith (above), her love Alex and the eating of cake or rather the eating of Ed's slice of cake but not by the man himself.

The cake was a Plum & Almond...

Ingredients:
2 punnets of plums
360g Butter
360g Sugar
6 Large Eggs
240g Self Raising Flour
150g Ground Almonds
2tsp Baking Powder
2tsp Vanilla Extract
A large tub of Creme Fresh
A little extra sugar for browning the plums

Method:
This recipe is to make a sandwich cake so use only half the amount of ingredients for each the sponges - unless you want to make one big cake.

You may want to do this bit the night before so you can 'set' the plums - but i don't think it matters either way.
Pre-heat Grill to a medium heat.
1. Start by slicing the plums into segments and laying them into a patten onto (i didn't do this bit) baking paper on the bottom of a spring bottom cake tin. This is going to be the top of your cake.
Sprinkle with Sugar and place under the grill until they start to juice a little and you can see them turning.
Pop them in the fridge for a couple of hours or better still over night to set.

Pre heat the oven to 200c
Butter, line and put together your round 23cm/9" baking tin with the sliced plums in the bottom.
Next - Remember to only use half the ingredients or make the lot up and only use half the batter
2. Take the other punnet of plums and cut up into rough 1-cm chunks.
3. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy
4. Add the Vanilla extract and mix well
5. Add the egg bit by bit, adding a spoon full of sieved flour if it curdles.
6. Sieve in the rest of the flour, baking powder and ground almonds and fold in. You may find that not all the almonds sieve - add these to the mixture once you have mixed the rest.
7. Now fold in the plum chunks - again just half the amount.
8. Very gently cover the sliced plums with the mix and pop in the oven for around 35 minutes.
9. When it comes out it should spring back to touch and a knife should come out clean.

Now make the other half in exactly the same way or add the other half of the mix to a freshly cleaned tin or if you are very fancy and have two of the same size tins you should have two haves of cake that look a bit like these:

  

Let them cool and then dolop on loads of creme fresh to your bottom half and pop into the fridge to chill. When you are ready pop the top half onto the bottom and bob's your uncle. You're done.

I was a bit worried about sticky crumb mess, but turn's out this makes ace pub cake.

Happy Birthday Ed

xx