Nigel Slaters Plum Cake

Thursday I got in and put on the telly to find myself half way through Nigel Slaters Simple Cooking.
Until recently I imagined Nigel Slater lived the life of a bachelor looking after his mother in a Victorian terraced house, then I saw the dramatisation of his younger life Toast and learnt that his mother had in fact died when he was a boy and I had it all wrong.
If you've ever seen Simple Suppers or Simple Cooking you will know he has a brilliant kitchen, he really loves ingredients and he makes cooking seem very easy and he likes eating what he cooks too! I love the way he always gets his meat and fish from the fridge, wrapped in little paper parcels tied with string. He must have a lovely butchers, even the best butchers round here still only use plastic bags.
Anyway, the programme was half finished but I watched as I tried to encourage Lauren to get herself ready for bed while he got together an interesting assortment of ingredients and proceeded to make a plum cake. When it was cooked he cut a steaming hot slab of cake, covered it in jam topping and tucked in, it looked very delicious indeed.
I headed straight for the computer, noted down the recipe, logged onto Ocado and added the ingredients to my weekly shop.
So here courtesy of Nigel is the recipe...

Plum Cake

• 250g/8oz plain flour
• 1 lightly heaped tsp baking powder
• 1 level tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1 lightly heaped tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 lightly heaped tsp ground ginger
• 200g/7oz golden syrup
• 2 heaped tbsp thick honey
• 125g/4oz butter
• 125g/4oz light muscovado sugar
• 350g/12oz plums
• 2 large eggs
• 240ml/8fl oz milk

For the spicy plum jam topping

• 5 plums
• 1tbsp light muscovado sugar
• 1tbsp butter
• 1tbsp syrup from a jar of stem ginger
• double cream, to serve

1. Set the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. Line a 24cm/9½in square cake tin or baking dish.
2. Sift the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, cinnamon and ginger into a bowl.
3. Warm the syrup, honey and butter gently in a pan until everything is smooth and melted. Stir in the sugar.
4. Set aside and allow to cool slightly.
5. Halve the plums, or quarter them if they are very large. Remove the stones.
6. Break the eggs into a bowl, pour in the milk and whisk lightly to mix.
7. Pour the golden syrup mixture into the flour and mix with a large, metal spoon. Pour in the egg and milk, stir until you have a loose batter without any traces of flour.
8. Tip the mixture into the lined cake tin, drop in the plums and bake for 30-35 minutes.
9. For the topping; halve and de-stone the plums and add to the same pan as you cooked the syrup and honey. Add the sugar, butter and the syrup from a jar of crystallised ginger. Cover and leave to cook down.
10. Serve the cake with a generous topping of the spicy plums and a dollop of cream.

I only had a 21 cm tin which made the cake deeper than it needed to be, so I ended up having to cook the cake for a good 20 minutes longer, the fruit makes the cake very moist and it had a delicious crust which was crisp on the edges and a bit chewy and sweet. I didn't have enough plums, but I did have some figs so I added those instead and for the topping I used some fresh pears straight from the garden. I added some cream to the topping, which made it into a creamy butterscotch sauce - oh I didn't have ginger syrup so I used a spoonful of golden syrup and some ground ginger.

I should say this was gorgeous, ideal for a cold, winters evening and even more amazing for something so spiced and fruity Lauren absolutely loved it!