End of summer: say good-bye to fresh juicy sweet fat peaches until next year. Welcome Italian plums, those tasty versatile little morsels. Because they are cling-free, they lend themselves easily to all kinds of preparations: jam & preserves, liqueurs, chutney, sautéing and grilling, compote and of course baking. Having just acquired 4 gallons of Italian plums at a local orchard, I have enough materials to try a few things. I might even see about drying some.

However, they were picked less ripe than I really care about (something about picking them before the skies open and dump several inches of water on us as storm/hurricane Hannah moves North). So I will let them ripen for a few days before processing a lot of them.

But I had to make something right away. I normally don’t bake too much sweets at home, but once in a while, I will bake a dessert with fruit. My husband was actually astonished when he realized that the cake was for us. He thought I was donating it to the Taste of Rappahannock, a fund raiser from the Headwaters Foundation, or some other worthwhile cause, as seem to have been the case several times recently as he gently reminded me. But, no, the lovely scented Upside Down Plum Spiced Cake was for us, and less than 24 hours after it was made, more than half is gone (hint: try it for breakfast, too, not just dessert.) I better go and make something else – maybe a tart? Continue reading Upside Down Plum Spiced Cake