This recipe caught my eye for how well it resembled one of my mom's adapted recipes that combined cultured yogurt and fruit from my native country of Romania. She has made it with both sweet, wild, and tart cherries, blue berries, apricots, raspberries, peaches, pineapples--whatever you can imagine, she's done it. You can brighten the flavor of this recipe by adding lemon zest, line zest, orange zest(whatever the citrus). Citrus zest and true vanilla essence, extract or seeds are a fabulous combination in any dish: these two work together like no fragrance in any department store(no matter how expensive) could ever pull off. I'll also add 2 things that I think will make people a tad less depressed: 1. Plums are fine & all, but if you soak them in booze they take on a completely different life of their own. Not only do they flavor any rum or brandy with a lovely red color & fruity taste, but once you take them out & put them in a pastry, people are just floored like you discovered some hidden exotic forbidden fruit known only to you, the poor little plum, & alcohol you soaked it in. 2. Think streusel: I wrote this recipe when I hated life. But this recipe will change your life: 1 cup(denoted C) soft salted butter 1 1/2 C whatever unbleached flour on hand 1 1/2 C brown sugar (add 1/2 C treacle to your 1 C sugar) 1/2 tsp baking soda 1/2 tsp baking powder 1.5 C oatmeal Combine & top at 350 degrees for 45-1 hr. You can add chopped nuts of your choosing.

A pure classic. Plums have actually been our least favorite fruit so far. We like various combinations of blueberries, raspberries, apricots, strawberries, and nectarines.

love this torte and made several times with plum. now its apple season and decided to try the apples.
It seemed a little to dry
any suggestions

After reading the directions, I realized it doesn't say how to prepare the pan for the batter. Butter the pan only, butter it and add flour to the pan, butter it and place a baking sheet?

What do you do, so it won't stick to the pan?

The perfect recipe for our cornelian cherries, which are very tart.

This is huge favorite cake in our house. Every fall at least a couple are made with those lovely and oh-so-brief little Italian plums. Everyone asks for the recipe and hosts beg to keep any leftovers. Thank you so much for the link to the article about adaptations.

There is a very similar recipe in the Fannie farmer cookbook. I substitute a smaller quantity of canola oil for the butter, and add a little yogurt for texture. I also add vanilla.

For the folks who have commented that a whole teaspoon of cinnamon sprinkled on the cake is much too much, I definitely agree, especially concerning the delicious but very pungent spice cassia, which is currently sold as cinnamon.

But the difference between enough cinnamon in 1983 and enough cinnamon is likely due to the fact that the handling and sometimes the spices themselves, have changed, sometimes drastically.

When I was being taught to cook in the early 1950's, my mother (like the great majority of her Depression-era generation) was obsessively frugal - which included hanging on to any kind of spice until the very last tiny dusting of it was used, no matter how many months, or years, that might take. As time passed, of course, the contents of that container of cinnamon (true cinnamon, aka Ceylon cinnamon) gradually became milder and milder. We home cooks used a full teaspoon of cinnamon in recipes because the spice might be a year old when we bought it, even before we started hoarding it.

These days, for the true taste of home, I still buy Ceylon cinnamon.

We have egg allergy in our home. Anybody tried skipping or substituting eggs?

i have been making these since little blue plums cost SIX CENTS a pound - and still make enough for a nice stack of them in the freezer.
-i leave the plums cut side up on the batter.
-i toss the plums with 2T lemon juice and 1T sugar while making the batters, and spoon this juice over the cakes before sprinkling cinnamon.
-same lemon.sugar and sub cooking apples plus 1/2C raw cranberries for winter gifts.
-same lemon,sugar over scalded/peeled peaches or nectarines.

always popular!
-same lemon,sugar

I used "rose water" for a dried apricot (halved apricots facing sliced side up) torte. Also, used an apricot preserve glaze with dried rose petals and whole almonds as decoration. Rose water has an amazing flowery flavor. Rose petals have a wonderful ability to go with both savory and sweet dishes.

I have a standing order to bake the original plum torte when my brother and/or nephew visit. They have been known to schedule their visits during plum season. They are purists and complain when I make any adaptation. The cake has traveled to Venezuela on a regular basis.

Any thoughts anyone about substituting oil for the butter?

My mom would like to know whether to grease and-or flour the spring pan, and whether to use butter or oil (what kind?) if greasing. Thank you for your response to our concerns.

I make mine in a cast-iron skillet -gives it a lovely crust!

My sister, Janet Schwartz, found this recipe many years ago and we've both been making it and its variations ever since. I have discovered 2 additional tweaks:
1. Cut the baking powder to 1/2 teaspoon. This keeps the cake from completely covering the fruit,
2. Cut the plums in quarters. They will stay visible at the top of the torte, rather than sinking heavily to the bottom as halves will.l

I use olive oil instead of butter, and twice as many plums (24 small or 17 large), setting the plum halves on edge in the batter.

This is my favorite cake. My mom makes it every year and freezes them so she can bring them out long after the plums are gone. But the first one is served fresh with whipped cream for my early September birthday. I finally learned this year where she got the recipe, so I bought a spring form pan to make it. My unfortunate problem: I ate all the plums. The New York Times here, with the adaptations, has thankfully provided me with a solution. My own personal variation will be using eggs from my own chickens.

I had Italian plums with little moisture and lots of flesh, so I reversed this recipe and sautéed the plums, cut in fourths, in butter and brown sugar, not to the point of caramel. Then I put the mixture in the bottom of a 9-inch cake pan that had been greased. The cake batter went on top, and to lighten it I separated the eggs and folded in the beaten whites before topping the plums. It became an upside-down plum cake, and a nice variation.
Cheers...

Forgot ... also for vegan version (see earlier comment), skip the eggs, substitute with applesauce.

Make it vegan: substitute the dairy butter for a vegan butter, such as Earth Balance (so delicious, you'll want to put it on everything) and serve with coconut whipped cream.

Veganized, it's delicious in its own right, but if anyone needs another inducement to try it just google "dairy cow cruelty."

Have used both gluten free mixes with and without xantham gum to good result. I like the recommendation from Smitten Kitchen who recommends waiting a day before cutting into it and by gob, she was right. Bake in the evening and enjoy the next day. I was wondering about freezing so thanks for the info on how to do this.