Oh my gosh you guys. I am obsessed with this cake.  Obsessed.

My sweet neighbor, Amanda, brought me over a giant bag of plums this week.  Giant.  This sweet, delicious fruit is amazing to just eat fresh, but she brought me so many, I thought “I better find something to bake with these!

I found a recipe for an upside down cake using plums.  I wanted to make mine a bit thinner, because rather than have this be a full on dessert, I thought it would be perfect to have a slice with a cup of afternoon tea.

I decided to bake it in a tart pan, so I modified the recipe just a bit by cutting the ingredients for the cake part in half.  If you’d like a thicker cake, the recipe is over on Bakingdom.

The best part of this cake is the brown sugar/butter/preserves caramel that the plums are laid out on before they are baked.  That stuff is amazing eaten with a spoon, and even better after it caramelizes in the pan.

Got plums?  Whip this baby up in 10 minutes.  It’s not only delicious, it’s beautiful and very impressive looking.

Enjoy!

Recipe modified from Bakingdom

Ingredients:

For the topping:
3 tablespoons butter
1/2 cups packed brown sugar
4 teaspoons of seedless jam.  (I used blackberry- apricot, strawberry, grape- whatever you have will work just fine)
6 Italian plums, pitted, and sliced into 8ths.

For the cake:
3/4 cups all purpose flour
1/2  teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons milk (the higher the fat, the better)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 tablespoons butter, room temperature
1/3 cup sugar
1 large egg

Directions:
Preheat your oven to 350°.  Grease and flour a 9-10 inch pie pan, cake pan, tart pan, or spring form pan.  Line the bottom with parchment paper.

In a small saucepan, melt the butter, brown sugar, and jam together.  Heat on low for about 2 minutes, then remove from the heat.  Pour into the cake pan and set aside to cool.

Arrange your sliced plums (very prettily) along the bottom of your pan.  This is where the artist inside gets to come out.

Make your cake batter.  Cream together the butter, sugar, and egg until mixed well.  Add the milk and vanilla and mix well.  Then add the dry ingredients and mix until just combined.  Spread over the top of your plums.

Bake for about 25 minutes until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.  Set aside to cool for about 5 minutes, and then flip over onto a plate or platter.  Serve warm with ice cream, or cool and serve with powdered sugar and whipped cream.  Enjoy!