Plum and Amaretto traybake
There’s this weird tradition in Oxford (and Cambridge) where once someone’s finished their end of year exams they get ‘trashed’ – aka they get pelted with whatever their friends can find at the local Tescos. Being Oxford based my whole life I’ve seen numbers of students crawling onto the high street covered in shaving foam, silly string and paint, but it wasn’t until the past few weeks that I got to do some trashing of my own. After a slightly surreal shopping trip we arrived at exam schools, belted up with prosseco, honey, ketchup, party poppers and confetti, ready to celebrate the freedom of some of our friends from the clutches of revision! This was the result… (RIP Nik’s sub fusc)…
Afterwards came the jumping into the river, the crash back to reality, and then a growing chorus of ‘food?’ being passed around. That’s where this fab amaretto plum cake came in. At uni I didn’t have the chance to bake as much as I would have liked as I was short on time, ingredients and equipment, so since coming home I’ve been going a little crazy in the kitchen and have been making way more than I can feasibly eat. Therefore when I headed back up to uni I thought something like this tray bake would be the perfect thing to share with lots of de-stressed students – and it was!
Recipe
Serves 16
Time: 1 hour
Ingredients
- 200g Butter
- 200g Caster sugar
- 4 Eggs
- ½ tsp Almond extract
- 180g Self-raising flour
- 85g Ground almonds
- ½ tsp Baking powder
- 100ml Milk
- 2 tbsp Amaretto (optional)
- 3 Plums
Method
- Pre-heat the oven to 180˚C. Line a roughly 20 x 15cm cake tin with butter and baking paper.
- Put the butter and sugar into a bowl and beat together with a wooden spoon until pale and creamy.
- Add the eggs one by one and whisk them in. Then add the almond extract, flour, ground almonds and baking powder. Then add the milk and amaretto, and whisk it all together to make a smooth batter. Pour the mixture into the lined tin and smooth it over so it evenly fills the tin.
- De-stone and then cut the plums into 1/8s. Then scatter them over the top of the cake, pressing them into the mixture a little. Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes until risen and golden brown.
- Leave to cool and then cut into 16 squares.
Thanks for reading!
Emma x