Plum Cake

This is my oma's recipe and a huge family wide favourite. There's not a branch in my family that doesn't look forward to this cake at our family get togethers in the summer. She uses the plums off the tree in their beautiful backyard and shares the rest of the plumbs with the family. We all attempt replicating her cake but it seems no one can make it as good as her, though she told me a came quite close the last time so I decided to share the recipe!

For this recipe you dont use youyr typical plumbs, you use damson plumbs. A smaller dark oval like plum that are only in season late summer/fall.

This cake is served best with a whole lot of whipped cream on top to balance out the slight tanginess of the plumbs, it is such a light and fruity cake, you could almost eat half the pan before even realizing it, then continuing because it's just that good!

Ingredients

for the Cake

• Damson plumbs (about one basket) 
• 150g quark (quark is the german, slightly dryer version of ricotta cheese, quark is not so easy to find though you can get it at costco but I've made the recipe with ricotta and it worked perfectly.)
• 80g sugar
• 7 tbs milk
• 7 tbs oil
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 300g flour
• 1pkg baking powder (or just over 1 tbs)

For the Crumble

• 2/3 cup sugar
• 2/3 cup ground almonds
• 2/3 cup flour
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 tsp vanilla sugar (optional)

Directions

for the cake

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
2. stir together wet ingredients and sugar
3. In a seperate bowl stir together baking powder and flour
4. mix 2 thirds of the flour mixture into wet ingredients
5. Pour remaining third of the flour mixture onto a clean countertop and pour the dough onto the flour, knead the flour into the dough
6. roll the dough out onto a large butter and floured cookie sheet until it reaches all the edges
7. slice the plumbs in half, remove the pit (which doesn't always come out with ease so it's easiest just to use your fingers) then cut each half lengthwise in half again so the the plum is cut into four wedges...Tip: I leave the four slices joined by the skin to make laying them on the cake easier
8. line up the plums on the cake in rows slightly overlapping so there's plenty of fruit on the cake, leave a little room around the edges or the plum juice will run under the dough while baking
9. sprinkle the fruit with sugar once it's all layed on the cake

For the Crumble

1. Mix cold butter, sugar, almonds, vanilla sugar and flour
2. mush together with your hands until little dry lumps form, crumble over your cake

Bake the cake for 45 minutes.