First, please allow me to wax poetic over my butter picture. I am so proud of this picture. That top chunk there just happened to fall and land on its point just as you see it here. What luck! It brought a little bit of beauty to an otherwise ordinary day. (And now I'll wane with all the poetry)
A bit of the finished cake. It was SO pretty...and it smelled SO good...and I was SO pleased.
Andy as "Dimply Plum Turtle". He wanted me to point out how his shell is just peeking above the water just like those little plums...what, you say you got it? I told him you would, but he insisted.
Wee bit sinister, no?
As you can see I bought black plums because they looked prettier for some reason than the red plums, and I didn't see any Italian Prune Plums, though I was looking on Sunday and Monday was the OFFICIAL first day of fall, so I was probably jumping the gun. Italian Prune Plums are known for their punctuality (is that a word): neither early nor late.
There was some debate as to how many plums one could stuff on top of this cake. As you can see I got 12 halves in there in comparison to the 16 Dorie says she usually uses. Though I do want to point out that the picture in the book looks suspiciously like there are only 3 plum halves in a row. Anyway, I wanted a plum for breakfast so I am making the excuse that I could only fit in 12 halves.
I followed the original recipe as written. I did include the cardamom (man, that stuff is expensive! I'll be looking for excuses to put cardamom in everything just so I can get my (x-number) dollars worth out of it (sorry for the censorship...hubs might be reading this...babe, seriously just don't ask how much it cost...its better this way)).
And now for the gory facts of life: all good things must come to an end. My small group and I set upon this pretty little number before it knew what happened. They were SO impressed with how pretty it was, and they all seemed to find it tasty. There was a suggestion that I take the skin off the plums before cooking next time as they were difficult to cut with just our forks.
Make this cake. It is simple; it makes an impressive presentation; it smells delicious; it tastes even better; it is great for breakfast. If you are so unhealthy as to eat cake for breakfast. No further comment.
