Working Girl Cooks!

This weeks Tuesdays With Dorie Recipe was chosen by Michelle of Bake-en. She chose the Dimply Plum Cake. I'm not a very big fan of cake or muffins or any baked good with fruit in it (except cobblers...I LOVE cobblers!) but after looking at the recipe for this cake I was pretty convinced it was going to be good. The recipe is very simple and uses very few ingredients, one of the main ones being brown sugar (YUM!). I decided to take advantage of the fact that I live two blocks away from the San Francisco Ferry Building and woke up early on Saturday morning to go to the farmer's market. I wanted to find the perfect, most ripe and luscious fruit to use for my plum cake. I walked wide-eyed around all the stands, weaving my way through the crowds eyeing all the colorful and wonderful fruits and vegetables like a kid in a candy store. It took me almost an hour to go through every single stand, overwhelmed by all the different kinds of fruits and vegetables they were offering. Eventually, after much scrutiny, I decided on some small, dainty little pluots. They were so sweet they almost tasted like candy! I bought two different kinds: Dapple Dandy, yellow, firm, and very mild tasting, and the flavor king, deep red, juicy, and very sweet. Mmmm.....this cake is going to be good, I thought to myself as I walked home, treasures in hand.

The cake was very simple to make and I was surprised at how beautiful it turned out. I never bake things this pretty! The batter was so yummy. The brown sugar in it really gave it a nice caramel flavor. And it wasn't very sweet which I liked because the cake does not overpower the pluots. I decided to bake this cake on Saturday morning to serve on Sunday dinner. Dorie says in her book that the longer you let the cake sit, the moister it gets. So I let it sit at room temperature (covered in saran wrap of course) for almost two days....

and she was soooooo right. Yum! Moist, slightly sweet, fruity. Yum! It was very good! Probably the only fruit cake I would bake...and eat again. Eddie even liked it...and he hates cake! That's how good it was.