So, my first real fail of a recipe.  I should be happy it took 7 months to get there, however it means more baking for me today, and it thankfully it is a beautiful day!

Anyway, to get to it, since I want to get back outside!

I decided to cook a Smitten Kitchen cake for a 4th bbq and when I was told I was actually “doing dessert” for 17+ people I figured, I should probably making another cake too.  I had seen the Dimply Plum cake linked on her Raspberry Buttermilk cake recipe and figured, they’ll be perfect together!  So I tucked in to it.  The batter is really easy, but pretty sticky, be ready for a lot of banging your spatula against the bowl, and using multiple ones just to get it all out of the mixing bowl and in to the cake pan.  Then I started cutting the plums, and then I started looking at the small pan and the large amount of plums and I got confused.  So I just stuck as many plums as fit, which was about 6 halves total, and these were big halves, these were big plums.  I stuck it in the oven and went upstairs to read the comments on her post.  I finally found one that confirmed that her plums were tiny and most people hadn’t been able to fit 16 halves in the cake.  Okay- that made me feel better.  The cake became brown on the edges, puffed up around the plums and the knife I stuck in came out clean.  The cake was done!  I let it cool for the required 15 minutes and then I went to take it out of the pan to cool.

I tipped the pan, to get the cake to slide out- and then it happened.  The middle which wasn’t really all the way cooked broke, and the cake fell apart.  “I ruined the cake!” I yelled upstairs.  I got it all back in the pan and realized there was no going back, I couldn’t fix this.  The middle wasn’t cooked.  So, I took the cooked plums out to be used in something else (maybe a salsa!) and brought the ruined cake upstairs.  We ate the cooked parts quickly.  YUM.  This cake is delicious.  However, I realized while enjoying it immensley that it is more of a fall cake.  The cinnamon and orange flavor that prevails is perfect for an October evening, not so much a middle of summer finally it is sunny BBQ.

So, all in all the fail was probably okay since it was a little wrong for the occasion.  So what made it not work?  The plums.  Those suckers were way too big and the juices didn’t let the cake cook properly.  Next time, much smaller slices will go on and the cake will come out perfectly.  I hope!

Dimply Plum Cake