Since it's summertime, I'm trying to knock out a bunch of the cakes with fresh fruit. I went to the farmers market and since they did not have the right plums, I bought pluots. Pluots are a hybrid of a plum and an apricot. I tasted one and loved it so I figured it'd be great in a cake.
For some reason I decided to cut these pluots into half circles rather than the normal fruit quarters. Big mistake. The cake looks like a planet with craters... or a cake with sliced hot dogs. yuck.
I served it at a dinner party at my parent's house and wouldn't let anyone see it until it was sliced. The slices are much better since you can't actually tell what the cake itself looks like:
So on to making the cake. It was probably one of the top 5 easiest cakes I've made so far from Rose. The only annoying part is making the caramel for the bottom of the pan. Caramel is always temperamental.
So first up: caramel sauce aka sugar and water.
Then you slice the pluots. As I mentioned, for some reason I decided to do circles instead of wedges. They kind of look like tomatoes.
Then you arrange the fruit in the pan on top of the caramel sauce. First the pluots. Then the blueberries. Finally, you place the batter on top in giant blobs and then spread it out.
What was so easy about this cake was the batter! No dishes- all you do is just dumb some basic ingredients in a food processor and you're good to go.
Thoughts:
It was not as good as I was hoping for. The fruit was too thick on the ends and the cake was really, really dense. Maybe I did something wrong there or maybe it's just supposed to be that way.
It got pretty mixed reviews. My mom only ate one bite but she's hard to please anyway. Her favorite cake is the white cake at the grocery store so it's hard to make a cake that she likes just because they are so different.
A few people said that they really liked it because it was so dense and some said they didn't for that reason. Most people ate about 3/4 of their slice and left the end- as did I.
Would I make it agian? Probably not. It was ok- not good but not bad. (sorry Rose!)
Rose's Heavenly Cakes
plum and blueberry upside down torte- page 12
I like the idea of plum rounds because they look a bit like polka dots! I had to go look at my version and it looks a lot juicier...maybe that's why yours came out so dense?
ReplyDeleteYour mom and my sister have similar tastes!