Classic Plum Cake

Everyone should have a good plum cake recipe. And this is it. So easy to make and adapt, it comes together in a few minutes and looks beautiful. This recipe calls for prune plums, but any plum will do. If you're out of cornmeal, simply use a full cup of flour. It's an incredibly forgiving recipe, so feel free to play around with extracts, herbs—even different fruits.

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3/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup salted butter, softened

1/2 teaspoon of vanilla or almond extract

Zest of one lemon

1/3 cup cornmeal

2/3 cup unbleached flour, sifted

1 teaspoon baking powder

2 large eggs

24 halves pitted prune plums

Sugar and lemon juice for topping

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Heat oven to 350 degrees

Cream the sugar, zest and butter in a bowl. Add the flour, baking powder, salt and eggs and beat until smooth

Spoon the thick batter into a 9 inch springform pan (if using smaller or larger, adjust baking time). You can also use a regular pan, but make sure you grease the bottom and then line with parchment paper and grease again.

Place the plum halves skin side up on top of the batter. Sprinkle lightly with sugar and lemon juice—use more lemon juice if your plums are sweet and more sugar if they're tart.

Bake for an 1 hour, approximately. Adjust bake time to the heat of your oven and size of pan. Cake is done when golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean.

Remove and cool. This cake is gorgeous with whipped cream or good vanilla ice cream.

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