This year is bringing an unexpectedly early season for soft fruit. I was thrilled when my friends at Elwell Fruit farm, Bridport, came to see me armed with the most glorious plums. I preserved some, froze a few and made this gorgeous sponge with roast plums – Lizzie
Ingredients
- 400g plums
- 200g butter
- 250g demerara sugar (plus extra
- for topping)
- 4 eggs
- 300g flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
For the sauce
- 75g walnuts, roughly chopped
- 3 tbsp caster sugar
Method
- Place the plums in a baking tray and roast them in the oven (190ºC/gas mark 5) for about 30 minutes until softened. Tip them into a sieve, over a bowl, and leave them to cool, collecting the juice to make a quick sauce.
- Once cool, remove the stones from the plums (just squish ‘em out – it’s strangely satisfying!).
- Line a 22cm square cake tin with baking parchment.
- In a large mixing bowl, beat together the butter and demerara sugar, until light and fluffy. Add each egg, beating well in between each one (you can add a tablespoon of flour if the eggs curdle).
- Fold in the dry ingredients.
- Spread half the mixture into the prepared tin, and cover with an even layer of the stoned plums and finish with the last of the cake mix.
- Scatter the walnuts over the top, and bake in the oven at 180ºc / gas mark 4 for 45 minutes until golden on top and a skewer comes out clean. As soon as the cake is out of the oven, sprinkle demerara sugar over the top.
- Meanwhile put the reserved plum juice with the caster sugar in a small pan over a medium heat. Bring to the boil and simmer until the liquid is reduced by half.
- Serve in slices with a drizzle of plum ’sauce’ and a dollop of clotted cream!
From her tiny bakery in West Dorset, Lizzie Baking Bird creates sweet and savoury bakes. You’ll find her at Dorset’s farmers’ markets and shows. A member of the Guild of Food Writers, Lizzie has won numerous Great Taste Awards. Find her on lizziebakingbird.co.uk
You don’t specify how many plums, or the weight of them. While we can obviously hazard a guess, for those of us who may lack confidence in our innate baking abilities it might remove a potential source of anxiety!
It does look delicious. And I love plums, though friends with trees near me in Sherborne say this year hasn’t been a patch on 2025 for the volume of fruit, presumably due to the dry spring & summer.
You are absolutely right – we had missed the plums off the ingredients list when moving the copy from the magazine to the website! Apologies – it’s 400g, and is now in its correct place!