This Polish Plum Cake is a delicious coffee cake made with a very simple batter, fresh plums, topped with crumble and icing. It’s made with Italian Prune Plums, sometimes called Empress plums, prune plums or Węgierki in Polish. These European plums are small, dense, and egg-shaped, with blue or purple skin and yellow, firm and juicy flesh. Their pits separate easily from the flesh. These plums are perfect for baking and are usually available at local markets in late summer, from the end of August to early October.
A 12-inch tart baking pan works best for this recipe, but a springform will do as well. Alternatively, you can use a 9-inch deep dish pie pan. In this case, the batter will be spread in a thicker layer and rise higher during baking. To make sure that the cake is baked through, adjust the baking time by adding about 10 more minutes to the original baking time and make the toothpick test before taking it out of the oven.
Polish Plum Cake
Course: DessertsCuisine: PolishDifficulty: Simple8
servings20
minutes40
minutesThe Polish Plum Cake tastes great for brunch or dessert.
Ingredients
- For the batter
100 g / 3.5 oz butter, softened + extra for greasing
100 g / 3.5 oz sugar
2 eggs
200 g / 7.1 oz all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon vanilla sugar
2 level teaspoons baking powder
4 tablespoons milk
- For the topping
500 – 600 g / 1.1 – 1.3 lb Italian Prune Plums
cinnamon
- For the crumble
70 g / 2.5 oz sugar
70 g / 2.5 oz butter, softened
100 g / 3.5 oz all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon vanilla sugar
- For the icing
2 heaping tablespoons confectioners’ sugar
1 tablespoon boiling hot water
Method
- Prepare the crumble: in a mixing bowl, combine all ingredients and knead with fingers until crumble forms, then place in the refrigerator.
- Rinse the plums, cut them in half, and remove the pits.
- Prepare the batter: in a bowl, stir together flour and baking powder. In a second bowl, combine butter with sugar and vanilla sugar and beat, using a mixer, fitted with paddles, until light in color and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well between each addition. Gradually mix in the flour. As the last ingredient, add milk. Mix briefly, on medium-high speed, to combine all ingredients.
- Preheat the oven to 190C / 374F. Adjust the oven rack to the middle position. Grease the baking pan and generously sprinkle with flour. Shake off excess flour.
- Spread batter evenly in the pan. Arrange plum halves on top, cut side facing up. Sprinkle with cinnamon and crumble. Bake for 40 minutes until golden on top.
- Take cake out of the oven and let cool down completely. Prepare the icing by stirring confectioners’ sugar with boiling hot water until you get the desired consistency and the icing is creamy and shiny. Using a spoon, pour icing over cake. Let the icing set before serving.
