TWD: Dimply Plum Cake

I'm not real happy with this photo - I had lost all the natural light by the time the cake was ready to be cut (and I haven't learned enough about my new camera to figure out how to compensate). It looks wonderful in the book, however, and I knew the flavors of plums, cardamom and orange would come together beautifully. The recipe calls for ground cardamom and I was pretty sure I had bought some cardamom seeds for some recipe I made ages ago (and I'm thinking at least 5 years or so). As I'm sure most of you foodies out there are aware, there is some sort of statute of limitations on how long spices hold their flavor. I don't have any idea as to how long that may be because I keep them around despite this "rule" and they always seem just fine to me. Case in point, my cardamom seeds - after I unearthed the jar from the deepest darkest reaches of my spice cabinet - were still incredibly fragrant. The only challenge was to grind them up to put in the cake. I'm sure you all have received gifts from people and wondered "when the heck am I ever going to use this" and consider pulling a classic Seinfeld "re-gift"? Well, might I suggest you rethink that strategy in the future - you never know when that gift might come in handy. From another deep, dark corner of the same cabinet, I pulled out a gift I've had for years and never used: a mortar and pestle set and it worked like a charm for the task at hand:

All I ended up having to buy for the recipe was one orange and the plums (which were on sale this week - Prudy would be so proud!).

This made for a pleasant change over the cost of the last TWD which was filled with lots of delicious, but expensive chocolates (white, semi-sweet, bittersweet you name it!). As a side note, you really, really must make those cookies, they were divine - just make sure to have a glass of milk on hand to accompany them, they're pretty rich.

This cake came together very easily as Dorie follows a pretty straightforward cake baking protocol. I have to tell you that before I even I got this cake in the oven, the house smelled amazing - cardamom has an exotic, but somehow at the same time homey, fragrance that's hard to describe (as if that weren't obvious from the oxymoron I just wrote, sheesh...).

The cake looks lovely with all the plums on top doesn't it? The recipe calls for 8 plums, but I could only smoosh 7 into my 8x8 pan, and that's only after I quartered the seventh one.

Dorie says to bake this for 40 minutes, but at 40, the knife I used to check it with came out fully coated in batter. I left it in for 5 more minutes, but it probably could have used more. Unfortunately, the tops were getting quite brown and I didn't want to risk drying out the edges. As a result, the middle pieces were a little underdone. I wonder if this was because my plums may still have been cold from the fridge when I placed them on top of the batter? My advice would be to let your fruit come to room temp before making this.

My girls really liked this cake the night I made it and ate it while it was still warm. I think I actually liked it better the following morning after the flavors of the orange and cardamom really came together.

A question for my fellow TWDers out there - can anyone tell me why Dorie calls this cake "Dimply"? I've just been wondering since I read the recipe. Is it the plums - do they have a dimple? Sorry, maybe I'm just clueless on this one.

Thanks to Michelle of Bake-en for selecting this week's recipe. My take on this is that it's a great breakfasty-type cake which is quite nice with a cup of coffee and a friend :-)