Plum tuckered out!

I've had a big day of cheffing. As well as this morning's batch of Pilfered Plum Preserve I've made a big pot of bolognaise sauce in one of my thermal cookers, a zucchini slice (in the oven), some Minestone-ish soup (on the stove) and now the very last of the plums are baking into a dessert cake.

There weren't all that many plums left, praps a cup and a half. They were pipped and then tipped over the bottom of a greased loaf dish. 

The cake batter is easy:-

3 tablespoons butter
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup self-raising flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup milk

Melt the butter and then mix all together. Beat till smooth, then pour over the fruit.  I used plums because I had them but stewed apple or tinned fruit also work well.

I often make a topping to go over the cake mixture.  It's also easy!  My mum would put it on plain cakes to jazz them up a bit and slices of those cakes regularly featured in my lunchbox, during the days when we lived on a farm and had eggs to spare.  The spicy cake topping recipe was my great-aunt's.  (Gwen was a wonderful cook and used to make the prettiest pink icing roses for my birthday cakes when I was a little girl). 

Here's the method:-

3 tablespoons flour
3 tablespoons sugar
3 teaspoons mixed spice
1 tablespoon melted butter

Mix together and sprinkle over top of cake. Cook as usual.  I don't remember how long I left the cake in the oven.  It was probably about 40 minutes at 180 degrees.   The topping becomes lovely and crunchy when cooked.  The plums were pleasantly tart and it was a fine dessert served with some ice cream!