This morning I made Italian plum cake. My ten-year-old was helping me and it occurred to him to ask, “Are we going to Nana’s house tonight?” “No,” I answered. “Is someone coming over for dinner tonight?” he asked. “No,” I said, getting curious. “Why?”
“Because you’re making cake so I thought it must be a special occasion,” he told me.
“Aha,” I said. “It is a special occasion. Italian plums are out, and thus it is time to make Italian plum cake!”
In the old days, people thought that if we could just have more of the good things we had, our lives would be better. I’m here to tell you that’s not always the case. Italian plums prove my point.
Here in California, we get Italian plums once a year. Actually, they’re prunes, but when you say prunes, people think prune juice, which is not at all what you’re supposed to think when I say Italian prunes.
Italian prune plums (which is another things they’re called, though redundant) are not really very nice to eat raw, but they are very nice to bake on top of a cake. They’re a simple thing, really, good for a few uses, and we look forward to them every summer. When they appear in our market, I snap up a couple of pounds of them, and make this cake:
Italian Plum Cake
1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 eggs, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 pounds Italian prunes or a mixture of prunes and nectarines
Sugar and cinnamon for topping, mixed
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Grease a 13×9 inch Pyrex pan. (I’m lazy and spray it with non-stick canola spray.) Cut the prunes in half and remove the stones. It can be fun to include some nectarine slices to create a nice design. Cream the butter and sugar on high until smooth, then add the salt, eggs, and vanilla. Mix until smooth. Measure the flour and baking powder into a sifter and sift it over the batter. Mix until smooth. Dump the batter in the pan and smooth it out to the edges. Arrange the prunes on top, cut side down. Try to put them as close together as possible — they will shrink as they bake. Sprinkle liberally with cinnomon sugar. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes. Eat warm with whipped cream or ice cream. Eat leftovers for breakfast, if you know what’s good for you.
This is not a recipe from my childhood. This is a recipe from my husband’s aunt’s childhood. She gave me a recipe written in her own beautiful handwriting, and I can’t find it. So this recipe is adapted off one I got on the Internet. But they’re all pretty much the same. It’s not cuisine; it’s hearty, simple fare that you can’t help but love.
And the thing is, if I had the ability to make it any day of the year, I wouldn’t enjoy it nearly as much as I do. It’s a humble cake. The prunes aren’t really the magnificent fruit you’ll find, but they do nicely on this cake. It’s a festive, end of summer feeling to make this cake. I am sure that if I could make it anytime, I probably wouldn’t.
Last time I visited my parents before they left Michigan, I stopped in astonishment at the display of cilantro in the grocery store. Cilantro in Michigan? Artichokes? Oranges out of season? Apples from New Zealand? When I was growing up, the grocery store fresh food aisle was pretty dismal in the winter. Stored apples, stored potatoes, stored cabbage. It was easy to see why our German forebears had invented things like sauerkraut and pickled fish to liven things up over the winter. By the time I was a kid, of course, we got all sorts of frozen vegetables (and canned and froze a lot from our garden), but to see fresh, exotic things was rare. We had bananas, oranges, the occasional pineapple. Things that travelled well or cost a lot so they were worth the shipping. I’m not advocating a complete return to this.
But on the other hand, when the first fruits of spring come into season, isn’t it just the most magnificent feeling if you haven’t had one in the intervening months? As a believer in the ways of Michael Pollen, I try not to buy things that are shipped across the world for many reasons. But along with the ecological reasons I don’t buy stonefruit in the winter, I just plain don’t want it. My kids beg for a nectarine or peach from New Zealand, but I’m willing to wait.
Not to be too cliche here, but good things do come to those who wait.
Except when you believe that the Italian Plum Cake will last till you get to it the next morning. I walked into the kitchen as I saw the last bite disappear into my husband’s mouth. Another year of waiting, and antipation. Thanks, honey!
