I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! Roby (the husband) had to work on Christmas day but that gave me plenty of time to prepare a delicious Christmas dinner for him. I made country ham, biscuits, dark chocolate cranberry skillet cake, paleo bread casserole, collards, mashed potatoes AND this lovely plum cake, topped with “powdered sugar.” Yep. I went a little overboard considering there are only two of us. We’ll be eating leftovers for days. I brought the leftover plum cake into work this morning and while there were only two other people in the office – both of them really enjoyed this sweet coconut flour cake. 🙂
Last year, I shared my recipe for boozy fruit cake with all of you and while it’s still one of my all-time favorite cakes, I wanted to experiment with another type of fruit cake this year. I found some organic dried plums at the grocery store for a few bucks and decided I’d make Plum cake. Yeah, yeah, I know dried plums are called “prunes” but I hate the word prune – it’s a terrible word for something so sweet and tasty. Prune cake sounds like it’s meant for “old people,” but plum cake sounds classy, right? I wonder if I’m the ONLY person who over-analyzes food. Who does that? Me. I do.
I sweetened this cake with a bit of honey and apple juice. Anyone who is familiar with coconut flour knows that it’s dense and requires a lot of liquid and eggs. Well, in my opinion, this cake turned out moist (another terrible word) and delicious!
Now that Christmas is over, I suppose that means I’ll have to stop watching the Hallmark channel and those painfully predictable Christmas movies that I’ve grown to love so much. I’ll also have to delete my “Today’s Christmas” channel on Pandora so that I’m not tempted to listen to holiday music come January. Oh well, it was a great holiday filled with good food and good times – oh, and good presents 😉 Here’s my favorite gift (Instant Pot!) – I purchased it using Santa Rob’s credit card. I’m so great at pretending to be surprised, right?
And here’s Roby… with his “what the heck is this, Ashley” face… it’s a salt lamp, Roby. A salt lamp. Thankfully our families saved the day by giving him stuff he actually wanted (shoes, vest, hat, scarf, pjs etc).
Anddd here’s another picture of Plum cake. I’ll end this blog post on a sweet note. 😉 Hope you all had a great holiday!
Ingredients
Plum Cake
- 1 cup coconut flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 4 tablespoons organic palm shortening or ghee
- 1 tablespoon orange zest
- 6 eggs
- 1 cup apple juice
- 2 tablespoons honey
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 16 organic dried plums
Garnish
- 1 tablespoon arrowroot powder
- 1 tablespoon coconut sugar
- 1 13.5 ounce can of coconut milk, full fat, refrigerate overnight
Instructions
To Make Plum Cake
- Preheat oven to 350°F.
- Add all of the ingredients except for the plums to a stand mixer and combine until smooth.
- Pour the thick batter into a 9-inch spring-form pan and add the plums on top.
- Bake at 350°F for 40-45 minutes or until golden brown and a toothpick comes out mostly clean.
- Garnish with powdered sugar and/or coconut whipped cream (see directions below).
Powdered Sugar
- Combine the arrowroot powder and coconut sugar together in a small bowl.
- Use a sifter or a fine mesh strainer to sprinkle to powdered sugar over the cake.
Whipped coconut cream:
- Place a can of coconut milk in the refrigerator overnight. This will cause the cream to separate from the milk.
- Place the cream into a bowl and whip with a hand-mixer until fluffy. If you have a stand mixer, you can also use that to whip the cream until fluffy.
- Place the whipped cream in the fridge until you’re ready to garnish the cake.
Anna says
Just made it for dessert tonight and we all enjoyed it. 🙂 A few thoughts/questions: how do you sprinkle the sugar/arrowroot so beautifully evenly over the cake? Mine was… amateur-looking. And I did find it moist-ish, but I guess I’m not a huge fan of coconut flour in general. No matter what it always tastes kind of dry to me. So along those lines I started wondering what would happen if I added some applesauce instead of a little of the coconut flour and a little of the apple juice (btw, I used grape juice b/c I didn’t have apple, so the cake was almost chocolate-y looking)… And/or soaking the prunes in orange juice for a while before adding to the cake… Or in liqueur of some kind… 😛
The orange zest aspect of it was divine. I skipped the coconut cream because I’m feeling sick today and couldn’t get it together — maybe that would have helped with the unavoidable dryness of the coconut flour. Next time.
Thanks for a great recipe! Oh, we also had the bread casserole – a huge hit!
My Heart Beets says
Anna, glad you all enjoyed it! You can use a sifter or a fine mesh strainer to add the powdered sugar to the cake – I just updated the recipe to include that information, so thank you! As for it being moist, I guess that is a pretty relative term when it comes to coconut flour. Your substitution ideas sound amazing though – especially soaking the prunes in juice/liquer! I LOVE that idea and will have to try it the next time I make this. If you try it before me, let me know how it turns out 🙂
Anna says
Ha ha ha! The word “moist” is a family joke over here. 🙂 Cannot wait to try this incredibly delicious-sounding cake. Thanks!
My Heart Beets says
Thanks, Anna! Let me know what you think of this moist plum cake after you try it, haha. 😉
Susan says
Ashley, I hope you’ll be posting some recipes for the Instant Pot! I checked it out and bought one! Thanks for the wonderful recipes – you’re a genius with spices!
My Heart Beets says
Thank you, Susan! Yes, I definitely will be posting recipes using the Instant Pot – hopefully I’ll put together a few videos using it too 🙂
Eva says
That salt lamp cracks me up. My husband received the same one from his brother and had the same reaction! 🙂
My Heart Beets says
Eva, lol our husbands will grow to like them (I think)! 🙂
June Burns says
What a lovely cake! Looks like you had a great Christmas too 🙂
My Heart Beets says
Thank you, June! Hope you had a great Christmas as well! 🙂