Plum and Blackberry “Afters”

Another Sunday is here and the urge to put off doing useful things by spending my time doing a spot of extreme baking has over come me yet again. Today we had a leftover selection of plums that needed cooking down since The Boy picked up a carrier bag full for 50p earlier this week (God Bless Leicester Market). And so Plum and Blackberry ‘Afters’ was born. It’s not quite a cake and it’s not quite a pudding, but it does taste nice and that’s what counts.

Ingredients

200g self raising flour

150g caster sugar

125g butter

2 eggs

1 tsp cinnamon

Few drops of vanilla extract

8 ripe plums, stoned and quartered

100g blackberries

Sugar and cinnamon for dusting

Method

Preheat your oven to 180’C.

Cream together the butter and sugar. Add the eggs, cinnamon and vanilla extract and beat together until smooth.

Gently mix the flour into the batter and mix until you achieve a smooth consistency.

Pour the batter into a greased ovenproof dish.

Press the plums and blackberries into the top of the batter. I used blackberries from a picking session a couple of weeks ago straight from the freezer and it worked fine. Put in the oven.

Realise you wanted a flavoursome, crunchy top and take it back out of the oven. Sprinkle cinnamon and sugar over the top of the dessert. Put back in the oven and this time leave it.

Takes 40 mins to an hour to bake, depending on how thick your mixture is. I used quite a large flan dish it only took 40 minutes.

Leave to cool slightly to help it set and enjoy!

The Boy has proclaimed this dessert ‘A Good Thing’. It has a nice combination of textures – the crunchy sugar top, a very light sponge and the sweet and sharp of the fruit. It is quite wet inside, which is why I wouldn’t describe it as a cake, but it really shows of the flavour of the plums and is all round a bit nommy – even if I do say so myself!!