plum ricotta cake

plum ricotta cake

• 9 Mar 2024

So you know how I am about plum cakes. Well Danielle Alvarez's strawberry ricotta loaf was so delicious, I figured it would taste great made with plums. 

I was meeting some friends and with plums readily available in the fruit shop, I decided to make a plum version of the ricotta cake. I baked the plum cake in a round tin and to prevent the plums from sinking to the bottom of the cake, I put a layer of plum slices in the middle of the cake then topped the cake with some more plum slices. 

Here's the recipe for you which makes an 8 inch cake. For all my recipes I use a 250ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional gas oven so if your oven is fan forced you may need to reduce the oven temperature by 20°C.

Plum ricotta cake

Ingredients

1 tbs sugar

8 plums, pitted and sliced

165g plain flour

60g wholemeal plain flour 

1 and 1⁄2 tsp baking powder

1⁄2 tsp fine sea salt

60ml milk

100g ricotta

3 eggs, at room temperature

1 tsp vanilla extract

175g room temperature unsalted butter

200g caster sugar

1 tbs lemon rind (about 1 lemon)

Method

Preheat the oven to 175°C conventional. Grease, and flour an 8 inch cake tin and line the base with baking paper.

Sprinkle the tbs of caster sugar over the sliced plums and set to one side. Combine the flours, baking powder and salt in a bowl. In a separate bowl, combine the milk and ricotta. Set both bowls aside.

Crack the eggs into a small bowl (do not whisk) and add the vanilla extract. Set aside. 

Place the butter, sugar and lemon rind in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and beat on a high speed until the mixture is light, fluffy and almost white in colour. This will take about 5–7 minutes. Stop the machine and scrape down the sides as needed. With the machine running, add the eggs, letting one slide in at a time, and waiting until each egg is fully incorporated before adding in the next.

Stop the machine, add in half the flour mixture, and turn the machine on to low speed to just combine. Add in the milk-ricotta mixture and mix until combined. Finally, stop the machine again and add in the remaining flour mixture. Return the machine to a low speed and mix until it all just comes together. 

Spoon half the batter into the tin and top with a layer of plum slices. Gently spoon the remaining batter over the plums and top with the rest of the plum slices. Bake on the centre rack for 60-70 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. Let the cake cool for about 15 minutes before turning out to cool on a wire rack. 

It came out of the oven looking and smelling pretty good. 

I'm planning to make another version of this cake using raspberries and nectarines and almond meal instead of wholemeal flour. Hopefully the nectarine season will last a little while longer, otherwise that version might have to wait until next year.

See you all again next week with some more baking from my kitchen.

Bye for now,

Jillian