Monday, December 19, 2022

Professor Plum Cake by Maya Corrigan #Recipe #Christmas

Today I’m sharing the recipe for a plum cake, an attractive dessert for a holiday or any day. This cake is part of a Clue-themed dinner menu from my 8th Five-Ingredient Mystery,  Bake Offed. The book takes place at a mystery fan festival, where café manager, Val, and her grandfather are volunteers. 




Granddad can’t pass up a chance to promote his Codger Cook recipe column and website to the mystery fans. He gives out menus for a Clue-themed dinner with dishes named for the suspects in the board game. Each dish has five or fewer ingredients. 



Plum Cake Ingredients

1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
1 cup self-rising flour, sifted
2 eggs
8–10 pitted and sliced red plums, enough to cover the top of the batter in a single layer
Optional: 1 teaspoon cinnamon

NOTE: If you use all-purpose flour add a teaspoon of baking powder and pinch of salt to the flour.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Cream together the sugar and butter in a large bowl. Add the flour and eggs and beat the mixture.




Spoon the batter into a 9-inch spring form pan.

Arrange the plum slices on top of the batter in a single layer. If desired, sprinkle with cinnamon.




Bake for 45 minutes. Let the cake cool. Remove the sides of the spring form pan before serving.

Serves 8.

Adapted from a recipe for Plum Tort by Marian Burros, via the New York Times.





Have you ever played the Clue board game (Cluedo in the UK) or seen the Clue movie? Do you have a special holiday-only dessert? 


📚


Val and Granddad attend a mystery fan fest that features a bake-off between contestants playing the roles of cooks to fictional sleuths. As Nero Wolfe’s gourmet chef, Granddad competes against Sherlock Holmes's landlady Mrs. Hudson, played by Cynthia Sweet. Granddad blames her for ripping off the five-ingredient theme of his Codger Cook newspaper column to use in her own recipe column and cookbook. When she’s found dead in her hotel room with a whistling teakettle next to her, he and Val sort through the festival-goers to find the one with the biggest beef against Ms. Not-So-Sweet.


Maya Corrigan writes the Five-Ingredient Mysteries featuring café manger Val and her live-wire grandfather solving murders in a Chesapeake Bay town. Maya lives in a Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C. Before writing crime fiction, she taught American literature, writing, and detective fiction at Northern Virginia Community College and Georgetown University. When not reading and writing, she enjoys theater, travel, trivia, cooking, and crosswords.


I wish you happy holidays full of good reading and eating!




6 comments:

  1. Yes, as a child I owned the CLUE game and played it a lot. I remember getting it for Christmas. Not the year it came out, but in the late 50's.

    Growing up the Christmas only dessert was always Mom's fresh grated coconut cake. Naturally every aspect of the cake was from scratch and took some time and strength to make. With the help of fresh frozen grated coconut and a cake mix, I know make the Three Day Coconut Cake which is very similar to Mom's other than you have to make it 3 days ahead of time.
    2clowns at arkansas dot net

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    1. Thanks for your comment, Kay. My mother-in-law always baked a made-from-scratch coconut cake for Easter. It was in the shape of a bunny. Your 3-day cake sounds terrific.~Maya

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  2. This sounds good and would probably work with other stone fruits, like peaches.

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    1. Yes, it works with other fruit. I’ve made the cake with peaches and also with apples. The juicier fruits work best.

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  3. I am gifting myself a copy of Bake Offed for Christmas!!

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  4. I haven't played Clue since I was in high school! I loved that game. I'm looking forward to reading Baked Off & making the Plum Cake. Our favorite holiday dessert is our daughter's pistachio pudding dessert.

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