Recipe: Easy dessert is baked in a cast-iron skillet
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When a windfall of summer fruit comes my way, I typically freeze it if I can't use it all immediately. The trick is remembering to use the frozen fruit so there will be some room in the freezer for the next windfall.
About a month ago I received a bag of Italian plums from a backyard tree. Smaller and less juicy than typical plums, these oval plums freeze very well. They are freestone, too, and so can be halved and pitted easily. I filled a quart bag with the fruit.
This past week I was paging through my "Bake from Scratch Vol. 3" cookbook and found the perfect recipe for those plums: a skillet cake that could be either a dessert or a brunch cake. We had it with coffee in the morning.
This recipe really could be made with any stone fruit. The easier-to-find black plums would be delicious, though I think I'd try to find the firmest (yet still ripe) ones I could for this, just to avoid adding too much juice to the cake.
If making this for brunch again, I think I'd cut back the sugar just a bit and bump up the spices: The cardamom included here is lovely but I wanted a little more. (Use allspice if you don't have cardamom handy.) The amounts printed here are the original measurements.
Another note: Don't try softening the butter in the microwave -- it'll melt, and you won't be able to cream it with the sugar. Just leave it for a bit on the kitchen counter; with our current weather, it'll soften up right away, even indoors.
Plum Skillet Cake
From a recipe by Kelsey Siemens, in "Bake from Scratch: Vol. 3"
Serves 8
Ingredients :
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for buttering pan
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar, divided
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
The still-frozen plum halves sit on top of the cake batter.
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1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom (or allspice)
1/3 teaspoon fine sea salt
1/2 cup low-fat or full-fat sour cream
12 to 16 Italian plums, halved and pitted (if frozen, don't defrost before baking)
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon, for topping
Powdered sugar for serving, optional
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 9- or 10-inch cast iron skillet.
In a large bowl, beat the butter and 1 cup sugar until fluffy, a couple of minutes. Add 1 egg at a time, beating after each addition. Stir in the vanilla extract.
In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, cardamom or allspice, and salt. Stir about half of this mixture into the butter mixture until thoroughly combined. Beat in the sour cream, then gradually add the rest of the flour mixture until thoroughly incorporated.
Spread batter in the prepared skillet. Arrange the plum halves over the batter, cut side down. You may need more or less, depending on the size of your pan and your plums. (I used 32 halves in a 10-inch pan.)
Combine the remaining 2 tablespoons sugar with the cinnamon. Sprinkle over the top of the cake. Bake for 50 minutes to 1 hour, until the top is golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the cake comes out clean.
Sprinkle the cooling cake with powdered sugar, if desired. Serve warm or at room temperature.
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Garden Checklist for week of May 12
Get your gardening chores and irrigation done early in the day before temperatures rise.
* Plant, plant, plant! It’s prime planting season in the Sacramento area. Time to set out those tomato transplants along with peppers and eggplants. Pinch off any flowers on new transplants to make them concentrate on establishing roots instead of setting premature fruit.
* Direct-seed melons, cucumbers, summer squash, corn, radishes, pumpkins and annual herbs such as basil.
* Harvest cabbage, lettuce, peas and green onions. This heat will cause leafy greens and onions to flower; pick them before they bolt.
* In the flower garden, direct-seed sunflowers, cosmos, salvia, zinnias, marigolds, celosia and asters.
* Plant dahlia tubers. Other perennials to set out include verbena, coreopsis, coneflower and astilbe.
* Transplant petunias, marigolds and perennial flowers such as astilbe, columbine, coneflowers, coreopsis, dahlias, rudbeckia and verbena.
* Keep an eye out for slugs, snails, earwigs and aphids that want to dine on tender new growth.
* Feed summer bloomers with a balanced fertilizer.
* For continued bloom, cut off spent flowers on roses as well as other flowering plants.
* Got fruit trees? If you haven't already done so, thin orchard fruit such as apples, peaches, pears, pluots and plums before they grow too heavy, breaking branches or even splitting the tree. Leave the largest fruit on the branch, culling the smaller ones, and allow for 5 to 6 inches (or a hand's worth) between each fruit.
* Thin grape bunches, again leaving about 6 inches between them. For the remaining bunches, prune off the "tail" end, about the bottom third of the bunch, so that the plant's energy is concentrated in the fruit closest to the branch.
* As spring-flowering shrubs finish blooming, give them a little pruning to shape them, removing old and dead wood. Lightly trim azaleas, fuchsias and marguerites for bushier plants.
* Add mulch to the garden to help keep that precious water from evaporating. Mulch also cuts down on weeds. But don’t let it mound around the stems or trunks of trees or shrubs. Leave about a 6-inch to 1-foot circle to avoid crown rot or other problems.
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