Italian Plum Torte

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This plum cake recipe comes from one of my favorite magazines – Chocolatier (which seems to be published under a new name now – Dessert Professional since its merge with Pastry Art Design and Frozen Desserts magazines). The two main reasons why I was first drawn to this recipe were how elegant the cake looks and how ridiculously simple it is to make. The prep is practically fuss-free and the taste? Divine! Below is the recipe (published December 2002):

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
¾ cup plus 1½ tablespoons granulated sugar, divided
2 large eggs
8-10 Italian plums, halved and pitted
or 5 large red or black plums, cut in quarters and pitted
¾ teaspoon ground cinnamon
Heavy cream for serving

Position rack in center of oven and preheat to 350°F. Butter and flour 8″ springform pan; set aside. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt. In a 5-quart bowl of a heavy-duty electric mixer, using paddle attachment, cream butter and ¾ cup sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs one at a time. Add dry ingredients and mix on medium speed for 1 minute, scraping down sides of bowl with a rubber spatula. Scrape batter into prepared pan, leveling top with spatula. Arrange plum quarters or halves on top. Combine remaining 1½ tablespoons sugar and cinnamon and sprinkle on top. Bake for 45 minutes or until toothpick inserted into center of cake comes out clean. Cool on rack for 20 minutes. Run a sharp, flexible knife around edge of torte. Remove side of springform pan and serve torte warm with a drizzle of heavy cream on top.

Note: I have used just a regular, non-springform pan sucessfully; just make sure you butter and flour the pan well. Also, I normally use about 3-4 red or black plums, sliced and pitted (shown above), and if the plums are sweet, I would reduce the sugar used to sprinkle the top of the plums to as little as ½ – ¾ tablespoon. As usual, due to personal preference, I omitted the ground cinnamon. The cake is delicious served room temperature as well. Enjoy!

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3 Replies to “Italian Plum Torte”

  1. Hi Chris

    This looks divine – another recipe to try! Now that I’ve established from Flo (your cheh cheh) that all purpose flour is ‘plain flour’, could you let me know what is ‘one stick of butter’ equivalent to weight-wise, please? The butter packing is different here in the Uk and one standard block is 250g.

    Cheers!

    Lots of love,
    Aunty Lucy x

    1. Hi Aunty Lucy!

      How exciting to see you here! :D One stick of butter is 4 ounces which is about 114 grams. Hope that helps. Let me know how the cake turns out.

      Lots of love to all of you,
      Chris xoxo

  2. […] the cake bakes up perfectly and the fruit topping never sank to the bottomless abyss, lol. The base recipe originally came from an old favorite magazine – Chocolatier, and had plum toppings but here, […]

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