Pflaumekuchen, My Family's German Plum Cake

Finally, finally, finally we're back on-line. We also have furniture (finally) and we're unpacked (finally!). I've been saving up a few recipes for this very day, but there's one I want to get out there right away: my family's pflaumekuchen, or German plum cake recipe. Now's the time for a couple of reasons. It's plum season, and September is the best time to find the Italian prune plums so wonderful in baking. (Look for those long, oblong-shaped plums, not the round ones you're probably used to eating out of hand.) Also, it's an old family recipe that I promised to you around this time last year, when I made a different pflaumekuchen. Although good, I vowed to return to my family's recipe this year.

Like the other recipe, this one has just enough crumb to hold the plums in, but in our version, there's no yeasted tart dough. Actually, it's mostly butter. And it has the structural integrity of, well, butter. In other words, not very much. So you can't expect pretty slices here, that buttery cake is in no way strong enough to support the weight of the plums, but it does do a wonderful job of soaking up the purple plum juice as it bakes. Actually, it reminds me a bit of the Nantucket Cranberry Pie I made a while back, and which, by at least one account, might be the easiest cake out there. This one is pretty darn easy as well.

The recipe comes from my paternal great grandmother, and originally she called for a mixture of butter and shortening. I almost never bake with shortening, so the little can I buy for this occasion goes unused the rest of the year. As an experiment this time around, I decided to try it will all butter, and really see no reason to go back. But I'll give you the choice in case you have some shortening to be used up.

UPDATE: This recipe won first place in a dessert competition held by the Museum of Modern Art, New York. You can read about the competition on my post here, which also includes a recipe for a delicious cream to serve alongside.

Erna Welp's Pflaumekuchen, or German Plum Cake

15 Italian Prune Plums, halved and stone removed, but not peeled

1 stick butter, plus either 1/4 cup shortening or another 1/4 cup butter, softened

1 cup sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon vanilla

pinch salt

1 cup flour

1 1/2 tablespoons milk

Preheat the oven to 325F and grease a 9x13" baking pan and set aside.

With an electric mixer, cream together the sugar and butter/shortening until well combined. Add in the rest of the ingredients except the plums and mix until combined. Spread the batter out on the bottom of the baking pan (it will be a relatively thin layer, so use your spatula to spread it around and cover the entire bottom).

Place the plum halves skin side up in rows on top of the batter. Bake for 1 hour, until it passes the toothpick test. Cool before serving and enjoy!