'Plumb' cake

UPDATE - I made this cake again today (16/03/2012) and the cake looked much better than before. The first time I made it I used homemade vanilla sugar in place of caster sugar and I preferred that to just using caster sugar.Making vanilla sugar is easy and really makes your end products outstanding.At least for me maybe because I absolutely love vanilla and anything to do with it. I got black plums thinking it was blood plums,my mistake but the taste was still exceptional. They were on sale so I had to get them!!And also for the topping,I previous used vanilla sugar instead of cinnamon sugar as stated in the recipe but today I thought of trying to follow the recipe exactly,well I cheated a little by instead of using all cinnamon sugar,I mixed vanilla with cinnamon but somehow the cinnamon flavour was still quite strong. Thank God I didn't use all cinnamon sugar. The dough was very tacky to handle but I manage to handle it better this time. Since I halved the recipe again this time, I found the 9" pan a little too big for it so maybe a pan between 6-8" would be good. And this time I made sure I didn't roll it out quite thinly like previously because the recipe stated roll out thickly.But using a big pan with little dough,I guess it was still quite thin but not as thin compared to the last time.

Before actually reading the recipe I was kinda excited to make this cake,thinking it would be fairly easy to make,well it was but it's more of a tart but with a thick base kinda cake,something very different. Because the blood plums were slightly sour, it gave the cake a nice balance of sour and sweet.The dough was quite tricky to handle,(because the base was tricky to handle,it was rather 'thin' as the base,it was partially my fault for rolling it slightly bigger as the base was only meant to be half way up the side of the tin but mine was right to the top and quite imbalanced!),maybe because the recipe required sour cream but I did not have sour cream handy with me.It's quite difficult to get sour cream in my hometown, so I omitted the sour cream with just pure cream,should have reduced the cream but anyway I made half the recipe because I was not sure of the outcome of the cake.Would I make it again? Maybe but not anytime soon, perhaps when the next season comes,which is next year.hehe.Blood plums are very expensive in Malaysia. 6plums for RM 20.

Adapted from MMCC,

1/2 the recipe.

Dough

3/4 plain flour

3/4 self raising flour

125g cold unsalted butter,chopped

1/2 caster sugar

2 small egg yolks

65ml pure cream

Crumble

1 cup plain flour

3/4 cup caster sugar

85g cold unsalted butter,chopped

6 blood plums,washed,halved & stones removed

vanilla sugar, for sprinkling

1. Start this recipe the day before serving. To make the dough, put the flours and butter in a bowl and use your fingertips to mix them together, until the butter is evenly dispersed and the mixture forms crumbs. Add the sugar,egg yolks and cream and mix together using your hands. When soft,sticky ball of dough is formed,wrap in plastic and refrigerate overnight.
2. To make the crumble,use fingertips to combine the flour,sugar and butter until crumbs form. Refrigerate until needed. Remove the dough from the fridge 30 minutes before using.
3. Preheat oven to 180C. Grease well a springform cake tin. Place the dough in between two pieces of baking paper and roll out the dough thickly,to fit the base and halfway up the side of the tin. Line the base and side of the tin with the dough, then place plums on top,arranging them very close together. Sprinkle the crumble mixture over the top of the pums and then sprinkle with vanilla sugar and bake for 1 1/2 hours or until the cake is golden on top and cooked through. If unsure, bake for a further 10 minutes. If the sides are browning too fast. Line the sides with aluminium foil.
4. Serve warm or at room temperature with double cream or ice cream.