Italian Plumb Brown Sugar Cake

Last week at work we saved several palates of beautiful Italian Plumbs!! The boys and I brought home a bunch, cleaned them, froze two gallon bags full of plumbs, made a batch of plumb wine, and
then THIS.

I found this recipe on Lydia Bastianitch's site. It is a fantastic cake and the layers of plumbs are a fun surprise. It is not super difficult. Joseph pretty much did the recipe himself. It does have a few prep steps, but all the work is worth it.


Italian Plumb Brown Sugar Cake

Ingredients:

cake:
3/4 cup butter, softened
1 1/4 cup brown sugar
3 eggs
2 egg yolks
1 1/2 tsp lemon zest
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
18 Italian Plumbs, pitted and halved

topping:
2  cup flour
1/2 cup white sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup butter, softened

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare an 8 inch springform pan by spreading it with butter or shortening and dusting with flour.

2. In a mixer combine butter and brown sugar until well incorporated. Add the eggs and yolks one at a time until well incorporated, then mix in lemon zest and vanilla.

3. In a small bowl combine flour, baking powder and salt. Gradually add the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients. *those of you familiar with cake recipes might be wondering at this point...where is the milk? Don't worry, there is not mistake, this recipe is different, but it works*

4. Spread half of the cake batter in the bottom of your prepared pan, then arrange half your plumbs in a layer on top of your batter. Cover plumb layer with the remaining cake batter, and layer again with plumbs.

5. In a food processor or in a medium bowl by hand combine the topping ingredients. They should be pretty dry and have large chunky crumbles. If the mixture is more wet, and not crumbly add a little more flour.

6. Sprinkle the topping evenly over your last layer of plumbs. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour and 15 minutes. Let the cake cool for 10 minutes then continue to cool on a wire rack.