Plum, coconut and lemon syrup cake- moist, bright and zesty, topped with juicy summer plums and best served with a bit of yogurt or whipped cream.  Jump to Recipe 

I thought it was time to bite the bullet and write my first blog post – it seems to be one of those things that it is easy to continually put off, thinking that I am ‘not ready’ yet or my blog doesn’t look ‘quite right’. Making this blog has been a lot easier said than done: I had no idea of the time that would go into obtaining a domain name, finding a host, and setting up my site. While still far from perfect, let’s be honest – the only people that will be looking around here for the time being will be friends and family who I have specifically told about this blog (or, more likely, forced them to have a look while peering over their shoulder!). Also, as I just recently learned, new blogs do not appear on google searches for a looong time: think 6 months of blogging before google might consider featuring it.

However, to those aforementioned family and friends – please make this cake. It has been on high rotation in the Brick household this summer and has been devoured in silence (interspersed with “mmm”s – a definite seal of approval) by everyone who tries it. The tangy, sweet-sour flavour of the plums blends with the buttery coconut cake and zesty lemon/lime syrup for a spot on summer treat.The first time I made it this year, I used a recipe with slightly greater ingredient quantities, which for some reason caused the plums to sink through the batter. The cake, while still complimented, was not quite how I had pictured it, being slightly heavier and eggier than when I made it last summer (pictured below).

I switched to a slightly different recipe, with about 25g less butter, 1/4 less sugar, and slightly less of the other ingredients and it turned out perfectly. I have made it successfully multiple times now with this recipe, so if anyone knows what the difference was, please let me know!

It is a cake with a short season – here, stone fruit availability is limited to a couple of brief months over summer until by mid-February you are never quite sure when you will arrive at the local fruit and vege shop only to find that they have disappeared. However, the plums can be substituted for other seasonal fruit: in winter, tart chopped rhubarb mixed through the batter after the dry ingredients works well with the coconut and lemon flavours.  It could also be made with other stone fruit or berries, though I have yet to venture from the hard to beat flavours of ripe red plums.

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