Dimply Plum Cake (TWD)

Finally, we're breaking away from cookies this week! The Tuesdays With Dorie bakers worked on some really delicious cookie recipes for the past few weeks (the Granola Grabbers and Malted Whopper Cookies were terrific!), and I welcomed the break to do something different.

Michelle of Bake-en selected Dimply Plum Cake as this week's recipe. It was a really timely pick as we now have an opportunity use the last of the summer fruits before we head into autumn.

I've previously made this recipe using an 8x8 pan with wonderful results, so this time around I wanted to see how this cake would fare in a mini loaf pan, which had compartments for 8 minis (I reduced the oven to 325F and baked 20-25 minutes). This was a great opportunity to use another fruit, so I decided to make the original recipe as well as one of Dorie's suggested variations.

I made the base dough with any flavors/spices, divided the base dough in half and then added the appropriate spices/flavors. I ended up making the following variations:

- plums, lemon and cardamom
- peaches, lemon and basil (continue to scroll down to see pics)

Instead of using plum halves, I sliced the plums into quarters and laid down three pieces of fruit per mini-loaf. I guess this loaf took the description dimply pretty seriously:

The minis turned out just as wonderfully as a whole cake. I actually think that they held up better as time passed. This cake kinda turns to mush after a couple of days...the mini loafs held up for 4 days.

The fruit turns "jammy" and the flavors intensify after baking in the oven:

I love this cake, as the fruit on top tells you exactly what you're eating:
The peach version was an unexpected and delicious surprise, as it calls for some chopped basil in the dough. The basil lent a sweet, herbaceous flavor that complemented wonderfully with the sweet peaches.
This is a wonderful breakfast treat, and it comes together in a snap. For the recipe, check out Michelle's site. To see what the other TWD bakers created, check out the blogroll.