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Plum, Almond and Chocolate Cake

Plum, Hazelnut and Chocolate cake (Recipe by Mary Cadogan)

This beautiful recipe comes from the BBC Good Food website. I have adapted it and my adaptations are in bold.

Ingredients

175g butter, plus extra for greasing
500g plums
175g light muscovado sugar (I used dark)
175g self-raising flour
175g ground hazelnuts (I used ground almonds)
3 eggs
1 tsp baking powder
50g dark chocolate (70 per cent cocoa), chopped (and I added 100g of dark choc chips)
2 tbsp hazelnuts (I used almond slivers)
2 tbsp redcurrant, damson or plum jelly (I used Key Plum Jelly which I made last Autumn and which is quite tart so as to counter balance the sweetness of the cake)

Cake ingredients

Using the butter paper to grease then line the tin

Halve and stone 4 plums, set aside for later, then roughly chop the remaining plums.

Four plums halved, the rest roughly chopped

Put the sugar, butter and ground hazelnuts, into a large bowl and beat with a wooden spoon or electric hand mixer for 1-2 mins, until smooth and light.

Well mixed

Eggs and flour added

Adding the dark chocolate chips

Chopped up plums added

Plum bits mixed in

Mixture in the tin

Arrange the halved plums over the top of the mixture, pressing them down lightly, then scatter over nuts.

Halved plums added

Bake for 40-50 mins until the top is golden and the cake feels firm to the touch. (It took 1 hour and 15 mins in my oven and many comments on the BBC website say the same. I covered the top with tin foil after the first 40 mins.)

Baked

Cool in the tin for 10 mins, then turn out, remove the paper and cool on a wire rack.
Heat the jelly, then brush over the top of the cake before serving.