More with Julia: Oven-Baked Plum Cakes

Since I had done a Julia Child dinner recipe, I felt like I needed to try a dessert recipe as well. The plum cakes comes from Dorie Greenspan’s book, Baking with Julia. The photo looked rustic and homey and I love the idea of a individual size cake. The recipe can be found online here. Not bad at 204 calories per serving.

About two tablespoons of batter + half a plum for each little cake.

They are supposed to be made in ramekins but since I don’t have any I used a cupcake tin instead. Careful to not push the plum in too far because you want the cake to puff and bake up around it.

Sprinkled with light brown sugar before baking.

First cake out of the pan. The orange zest really comes through after baking. Fills the whole kitchen with a citrus scent.

Nothing like warm, fruit-based treats out of the oven. I topped them off with whip cream. My favorite kind of dessert. Pretty easy recipe. I would have liked a bit more cake per serving.

My recipe notes:

• If using a cupcake tin, I would add a little more than 2 tablespoons of batter at the bottom. Because the cupcake cup is small it doesn’t have much room for cake and if its too shallow at the bottom, the plum weighs it down and breaks through.
• Make sure the plums are sweet. The cake part is pretty sweet so in contrast, the plum was a bit sour. I did notice that the day after, at room temperature, the flavors settled and it was more balanced between the fruit and cake. I’m thinking maybe pluots, a hybrid of apricot and plum, may even work, as they tend to be not as sour.
• For sprinkling the brown sugar, the recipe calls for 2/3 cup (minus 2 tablespoons for the batter). That seemed like a lot. I only ended up using 1/3 cup. I thought it would be a bit much, unless I could concentrate it on just the plum to make it sweeter.