I have wanted to make the NYT plum cake for years, but never felt confident in my baking skills. This video has given me the confidence to make it, both the NYT way and your way Helen. Thank you! Now, I'm off to buy some plums!🙂
I having been making the NYI plum cake for 40+ years, I always mix the sugar with the zest of a lemon. It gives the cake an extra ump! I also use crystal sugar on top it adds to the crunch. I can’t wait to try your recipe it looks great.
Love how your kids happened on your version, and how the plums found their way to the bottom so nicely! I'm trying it first. My mom grew up on a farm and had to help bake for the farm hands. There was no KitchenAid. Or time to consider temperature of ingredients or creaming techniques. Even when she moved to the city and became a working mom, she barely had time to grab ingredients from the fridge and start hand mixing! Her simple fruit and batter cakes were the best.
This is timely because I have almost-ripe purple plums on my backyard tree! I LOVE plum cake. Your recipe is similar to mine. Can't wait to bake soon! Thank you Helen!
Wow! I didn't know that creaming properly was so technical and took so long. Thanks for that information! I didn't see your previous video on creaming. It's good to see a post from you. It has been a few weeks. Welcome back!❤️
I baked NY plum cake many times, I decided to try yours yesterday- and what a success it was !!! Turned out absolutely amazing! The cake is so soft, fluffy, it is not too sweet, and plums just taste great in this cake! It is a great addition to my recipe book. Thank you greatly for good video and great recipe!
WOW! Both cakes look absolutely wonderful!! I would have to flip a coin to see which one I would make first. Thank you so much for teaching me how to cream butter and sugar! Loved that video!!!
helen you made recipe easy to understand and very versatile and very quick , because sometimes life can be very stressful , and there are times where you end up with little ingredients and little time , and sometimes cooking can be another exhausting chores , so i thank you to bring out the joy of cooking
I made this cake this morning. I had neither labneh nor sour cream but instead used some home made yogurt. It came out delicious and light with a "velvety" texture. EXCELLENT!
What amazing timing, my granddaughter gave me alot of plums yesterday. They are a mix of sweet and not so sweet.... I guess I am making the Helen version.
I've only ever made the Marion Burros NYT 1983 cake with Italian plums (from the farmer's market -- they only place I see them), which have a very short season (essentially, September in the US). I'm not a technical baker, don't have a stand mixer -- just a hand mixer -- and an antique and rather iffy oven from the 1950's, and it always comes out spectacularly. Interesting note from the Times comments says this is basically an Obstkuchen, apparently a classic of German baking. In any case, it is spectacular with Italian plums. I may try to adapt Helen's version, sans stand mixer, with Italian plums and see how it goes (and labneh is easy to get here).
A hand mixer might actually be better at creaming butter and sugar since you can move it around and get all the way to the bottom of your bowl. Unfortunately, I don't have one. I know some amazing bakers without stand mixers, so don't sell yourself short :)
This is genius, Helen!! I love how you broke everything down. I especially loved you getting down to the nitty gritty in the Times recipe--shows how precision in recipes can really make a huge difference. And as you said, most people will be happy with homemade anything as long as it is sweet and tastes good.
Idk what I'm doing right but every time I make nyt plum cake I kinda slapdash it and it turns out great. Use any berry instead of plums if you want too!
My German host mother made a big plum cake in a rimmed cookie sheet. I feel like the base was a sponge cake, the plums stayed on top, and then it was coated with a plum jelly glaze. It was so lovely.
Helen, I learn a lot from you, you have so many good tips and insights. Your channel changed my approach to cooking - I've become more rigorous with testing, weighing and note-taking. With your details, I feel confident to tackle big projects, to the point of baking this NYT plum torte and finding it really easy! It was absolutely delicious and I think it is a nice recipe to keep alongside the tarte tatin and your pear/ginger tarte. I want to thank you immensely for all your videos and attention to detail. Hugs from Brazil.
thank you for another great recipe. a couple weeks ago, I was baking a plum pie, the recipe for which called for farmer's cheese as one of the batter ingredients. I substituted it with plain feta cheese and kind of hoped for the best--and to my surprise, the pie came out insanely tender and moist (in a good way). the plums did require more prep though--the recipe called for cooking them in a pot with the juice and the zest of one orange and a bit of corn starch. my plums were definitely in the "not amazing" category, but perhaps because of these additional ingredients, they also turned very tasty.
Oh man, this timing! I literally made the NYT plum torte last night. I reduce the quantity of batter when I make it to maximize the fruit-to-batter ratio. I love the italian/prune plums that are in season very briefly this time of year so I might just have to squeeze in a second plum dessert while I can.
This my favorite torte from NYT, I put the cinnamon in the cake batter instead. I also sprinkle sugar on the top before baking for a crunchy top. You can use other stone fruit as it does not have to be plums, but the plums offset the sweetness of the cake. The NYT cake does have soft spots from the fruits juice, but most I have served this to prefer this texture. But I live in Cali with lots of trilece cake eaters. If you are looking for a totally dry cake, this is not the torte for you.
Just baked your plum cake recipe. Had to substitute evaporated milk in place of heavy cream, which I didn’t have. No other changes were made; I even used a glass baking dish. The cake portion was very tough, and chewy. I’m certain I did not over-mix. I’m wondering if my substitution was the cause, as my batter was runnier than yours. It may have also been over-baked, as it was golden-brown at closer to 40 minutes, and pulling it out of the oven at 50 minutes yielded a completely clean chopstick. I’m wondering if it is more desirable to have just a few crumbs sticking to the cake tester. Flavor was absolutely superb, though.
Oh I'm going to have to make this!! Thank you! The lion and the unicorn Were fighting for the crown The lion beat the unicorn All around the town. Some gave them white bread, And some gave them brown; Some gave them plum cake and drummed them out of town! -- Lewis Carroll (and many before him)
#realcomment I've made this recipe and variations several times; It is always a hit! I now add 6 g of freshly ground mahleb* seeds to the batter and find it complements the flavor well. This recipe scales easily; I often make a one-third batch in a 7x7" pyroceram dish, which bakes in 35-40 minutes. I especially like that it works with imperfect fruit. Top quality plums are great on their own but less good fruit is better this way. Thanks again for the reliable recipes! *Acquired from the same middle-eastern grocer as pomegranate molasses.
How about use " INVERTED SUGAR SYRUP," it's said more sweeter than table sugar ( table sugar = 100 point, inverted Sugar Syrup = 130 point). It's said have small sugar crystal than table sugar so u can put the cake in refigerator without worry about ???
Oh these cakes look delightful! Thank you for sharing. I do have a question. I was watching a video some time ago, I'm sorry to say I don't remember who, but she is a former pastry chef and the recipe was for a cake. She said not to worry about over mixing after adding in the flour because gluten takes a long time to develop. This is why we knead bread for several minutes, to develop good gluten structure, but for cakes and cookies it doesn't develop gluten that quickly. Her logic makes sense to me. Even Chef John has mentioned not worrying about over mixing things, you just do it till everything is mixed in, why mix more if you don't need to, is his theory. I wish I had the knowledge and ability to actually test this one out.
"Cake" is a very broad category. For some cakes it probably doesn't matter. But testing this for some things is very easy. Here is a New York Times recipe developer that shows you what happens if you overbeat pancake batter: czcams.com/video/MECzpMfmt4w/video.htmlsi=QoM7IGOe8lpadpU-&t=387 For some butter cakes, you have to be careful not to beat too much after each egg goes in or you'll get tunnels through your cake. The answer as with everything in cooking is "it depends" :)
The timing might be different for different pan types, but you go by the knife or toothpick test. The time is only a suggestion. Yes, you can half the recipe, but it might be easier to make a third of it (since there are 3 eggs) and bake it in a 5x9 loaf pan. My kids have tested that and it worked just fine.
I would suggest you make 2/3 of the recipe (use 2 eggs and scale all the other ingredients down by multiplying them by 2/3) if you want to make it in a round 10" pan. You want to go by the area, not the volume to keep roughly the same thickness of the cake. I would put the spring form pan on another baking sheet since my batter is fairly thin (just in case it leaks).
Labne is significantly less rich than sour cream (even labneh that contains cream does not approach the fat content of sour cream), so I’m not sure I’d prefer it. In my experience cakes made with yogurt in place of sour cream turn out worse every time. I’ve tried coffee cakes for example that had Greek yogurt replacing the sour cream and they were markedly worse than the classic.
I find the NYTimes cuisine very wanting coming from people who are professionals... without the readers comments it is a gamble. Too much liquid, vague instructions, missed ingredients ... l have a problem beating butter for 3 minutes with a hand held beater so l'll go with your version without slicing the plums... thanks
You need a high enough fat content. Yogurts vary. If you have a yogurt where the first ingredient is cream and not milk, it would be similar to sour cream. You also need yogurt that is very thick. If you have a full fat Fage Greek yogurt, that might work well.
Alright, so I've just made the NYT plum torte, followed your instructions to a T and while the cake is superb in flavour, in my version, the plums all sunk to the bottom creating sort of a jam-like layer at the bottom of the cake with a fluffy cake on top. In your version, as we can see at 5:08, there's a distinct bottom cake layer with plums sandwiched in the middle. Any ideas what might have caused this? Hey, I am not complaining, the cake is still amazing but I'd like to know what I could improve on in the future
That's funny. This always happens to me with my plum cake. My plums end up on the bottom and that's impossible to fix since the batter is very liquid. So I just want to make sure you made the NY Times cake and not mine ;) In the NY Times cake, the batter is way thicker. It still swallows the plums, but they end up somewhere in the middle. I don't push them in. I just lay them on top of the batter. I am guessing that the size of the pan and the size of plums might make a difference. I am hoping someone else will chime in with ideas.
Interesting, well, I definitely followed the NYT recipe with your suggestions (I made sure butter and eggs are right temp and creamed the butter properly). The only thing I can think of was either my pan was too big (when I was spooning the batter in it, the layer did seem quite thin), or me using European butter made a difference somehow? Anyhow, the cake is incredible anyway, so I am not complaining, haha, just thought I would point it out.
The pan size could definitely make a difference. The thinner the layer of batter, the more the plums sink. In some recipes European vs American butter makes a huge difference, but I am not sure if this is one of those cases.
There are tons of people with recipes on the internet, trying to make them accessible, and they have no problems including weights and full instructions. I think the NYT is living off the prestige of their name and the backlog of recipes they have, more than anything else. (Check out their chocolate chip cookie recipe: they call for using 50% bread flour and 50% cake flour.) I have complete faith in the recipe Helen's kid came up with though. It sounds fun, and I want to make it! (I may even try it with apples.)
You have to remember that the original recipe was posted way back when it was considered scary / too tedious for home bakers to have recipes in grams. Dorie Greenspan had to wait until 2014 before she could get weights into a cookbook. NYT just hasn't updated the original which is understandable given how big their overall recipe library is. It's not a matter of just trying to skate by on reputation.
Can’t talk - gotta go buy some plums
I have wanted to make the NYT plum cake for years, but never felt confident in my baking skills. This video has given me the confidence to make it, both the NYT way and your way Helen. Thank you! Now, I'm off to buy some plums!🙂
I having been making the NYI plum cake for 40+ years, I always mix the sugar with the zest of a lemon. It gives the cake an extra ump! I also use crystal sugar on top it adds to the crunch. I can’t wait to try your recipe it looks great.
Love how your kids happened on your version, and how the plums found their way to the bottom so nicely! I'm trying it first. My mom grew up on a farm and had to help bake for the farm hands. There was no KitchenAid. Or time to consider temperature of ingredients or creaming techniques. Even when she moved to the city and became a working mom, she barely had time to grab ingredients from the fridge and start hand mixing! Her simple fruit and batter cakes were the best.
I don't cook at all but I love listening to Helen's precise diction and directions. 😅
This is timely because I have almost-ripe purple plums on my backyard tree! I LOVE plum cake. Your recipe is similar to mine. Can't wait to bake soon! Thank you Helen!
Wow! I didn't know that creaming properly was so technical and took so long. Thanks for that information! I didn't see your previous video on creaming. It's good to see a post from you. It has been a few weeks. Welcome back!❤️
I baked NY plum cake many times, I decided to try yours yesterday- and what a success it was !!! Turned out absolutely amazing!
The cake is so soft, fluffy, it is not too sweet, and plums just taste great in this cake! It is a great addition to my recipe book. Thank you greatly for good video and great recipe!
Thank you so much for giving my cake a shot :)
Alright. I will compare this to my plum cake! Always a winner..Thank you!
You are really a detailed and excellent Teacher, right to precision.
Thank you. From Singapore 🇸🇬
WOW! Both cakes look absolutely wonderful!! I would have to flip a coin to see which one I would make first. Thank you so much for teaching me how to cream butter and sugar! Loved that video!!!
helen you made recipe easy to understand and very versatile and very quick , because sometimes life can be very stressful , and there are times where you end up with little ingredients and little time , and sometimes cooking can be another exhausting chores , so i thank you to bring out the joy of cooking
I made this cake this morning. I had neither labneh nor sour cream but instead used some home made yogurt. It came out delicious and light with a "velvety" texture. EXCELLENT!
So glad it turned out well :)
What amazing timing, my granddaughter gave me alot of plums yesterday. They are a mix of sweet and not so sweet.... I guess I am making the Helen version.
I've only ever made the Marion Burros NYT 1983 cake with Italian plums (from the farmer's market -- they only place I see them), which have a very short season (essentially, September in the US). I'm not a technical baker, don't have a stand mixer -- just a hand mixer -- and an antique and rather iffy oven from the 1950's, and it always comes out spectacularly. Interesting note from the Times comments says this is basically an Obstkuchen, apparently a classic of German baking. In any case, it is spectacular with Italian plums. I may try to adapt Helen's version, sans stand mixer, with Italian plums and see how it goes (and labneh is easy to get here).
A hand mixer might actually be better at creaming butter and sugar since you can move it around and get all the way to the bottom of your bowl. Unfortunately, I don't have one. I know some amazing bakers without stand mixers, so don't sell yourself short :)
This is genius, Helen!! I love how you broke everything down. I especially loved you getting down to the nitty gritty in the Times recipe--shows how precision in recipes can really make a huge difference. And as you said, most people will be happy with homemade anything as long as it is sweet and tastes good.
Idk what I'm doing right but every time I make nyt plum cake I kinda slapdash it and it turns out great. Use any berry instead of plums if you want too!
My German host mother made a big plum cake in a rimmed cookie sheet. I feel like the base was a sponge cake, the plums stayed on top, and then it was coated with a plum jelly glaze. It was so lovely.
Thank you for this wonderful lesson. Can't wait to make this with local plums!
Helen, I learn a lot from you, you have so many good tips and insights. Your channel changed my approach to cooking - I've become more rigorous with testing, weighing and note-taking. With your details, I feel confident to tackle big projects, to the point of baking this NYT plum torte and finding it really easy! It was absolutely delicious and I think it is a nice recipe to keep alongside the tarte tatin and your pear/ginger tarte. I want to thank you immensely for all your videos and attention to detail. Hugs from Brazil.
thank you for another great recipe. a couple weeks ago, I was baking a plum pie, the recipe for which called for farmer's cheese as one of the batter ingredients. I substituted it with plain feta cheese and kind of hoped for the best--and to my surprise, the pie came out insanely tender and moist (in a good way). the plums did require more prep though--the recipe called for cooking them in a pot with the juice and the zest of one orange and a bit of corn starch. my plums were definitely in the "not amazing" category, but perhaps because of these additional ingredients, they also turned very tasty.
Спасибо Леночка!
👍🏻 The NYT version looks interesting, thanks for covering it. But yours looks far more achievable - definitely going to try it!
Thanks Helen
PS - can't get labneh in my part of the world. I'll try double cream yoghurt instead
@@tridsonline If you can get Greek yogurt, you could strain it until it becomes spreadable. There are also lots of from-scratch recipes for it online.
I haven't had plums in so long. What a great excuse to buy some!
Oh man, this timing! I literally made the NYT plum torte last night. I reduce the quantity of batter when I make it to maximize the fruit-to-batter ratio. I love the italian/prune plums that are in season very briefly this time of year so I might just have to squeeze in a second plum dessert while I can.
I love how unfussy the NYT recipe is, and I love seeing Helen amusingly frustrated by it's unfussy vagueness
Welcome back! i love Apple cake with sour cream
Labne is delicious. In Israel I had hotel breakfast of bread with labne and veggies, it was fantastic
This my favorite torte from NYT, I put the cinnamon in the cake batter instead. I also sprinkle sugar on the top before baking for a crunchy top. You can use other stone fruit as it does not have to be plums, but the plums offset the sweetness of the cake. The NYT cake does have soft spots from the fruits juice, but most I have served this to prefer this texture. But I live in Cali with lots of trilece cake eaters. If you are looking for a totally dry cake, this is not the torte for you.
First video I see the day it's uploaded. I feel like I won the lottery 😂
Mmmm love me some apple, almond, cherry torte's.
Just baked your plum cake recipe. Had to substitute evaporated milk in place of heavy cream, which I didn’t have. No other changes were made; I even used a glass baking dish.
The cake portion was very tough, and chewy. I’m certain I did not over-mix. I’m wondering if my substitution was the cause, as my batter was runnier than yours. It may have also been over-baked, as it was golden-brown at closer to 40 minutes, and pulling it out of the oven at 50 minutes yielded a completely clean chopstick. I’m wondering if it is more desirable to have just a few crumbs sticking to the cake tester.
Flavor was absolutely superb, though.
Helen! we missed you!
I replaced the sour cream and heavy cream with Greek yogurt and half and half because it’s what I had in the fridge!
Oh I'm going to have to make this!! Thank you!
The lion and the unicorn
Were fighting for the crown
The lion beat the unicorn
All around the town.
Some gave them white bread,
And some gave them brown;
Some gave them plum cake
and drummed them out of town!
-- Lewis Carroll (and many before him)
YAYYYY you're back!
You don’t need all that creaming for the NYT torte-it’s a simple cake that doesn’t that much precision.
Looks like I’m buying plums this week!
Both recipes look delicious. But both also call out for some almond extract in the batter. It's a natural pairing.
#realcomment I've made this recipe and variations several times; It is always a hit! I now add 6 g of freshly ground mahleb* seeds to the batter and find it complements the flavor well. This recipe scales easily; I often make a one-third batch in a 7x7" pyroceram dish, which bakes in 35-40 minutes.
I especially like that it works with imperfect fruit. Top quality plums are great on their own but less good fruit is better this way. Thanks again for the reliable recipes!
*Acquired from the same middle-eastern grocer as pomegranate molasses.
yum
How about use " INVERTED SUGAR SYRUP," it's said more sweeter than table sugar ( table sugar = 100 point, inverted Sugar Syrup = 130 point).
It's said have small sugar crystal than table sugar so u can put the cake in refigerator without worry about
???
Oh these cakes look delightful! Thank you for sharing.
I do have a question. I was watching a video some time ago, I'm sorry to say I don't remember who, but she is a former pastry chef and the recipe was for a cake. She said not to worry about over mixing after adding in the flour because gluten takes a long time to develop. This is why we knead bread for several minutes, to develop good gluten structure, but for cakes and cookies it doesn't develop gluten that quickly. Her logic makes sense to me. Even Chef John has mentioned not worrying about over mixing things, you just do it till everything is mixed in, why mix more if you don't need to, is his theory. I wish I had the knowledge and ability to actually test this one out.
"Cake" is a very broad category. For some cakes it probably doesn't matter. But testing this for some things is very easy. Here is a New York Times recipe developer that shows you what happens if you overbeat pancake batter: czcams.com/video/MECzpMfmt4w/video.htmlsi=QoM7IGOe8lpadpU-&t=387
For some butter cakes, you have to be careful not to beat too much after each egg goes in or you'll get tunnels through your cake. The answer as with everything in cooking is "it depends" :)
Someone I once knew said she only ever mixed her cakes with a wooden spoon 😂
How about showing us how to make a Santa Rosa Plumb pie.
Have you considered hosting cooking school retreats? I would jump at the opportunity
So is it same baking temperature whether using the glass or metal pan?
Can I half your recipe? Thank you!🙏🏻❤️
The timing might be different for different pan types, but you go by the knife or toothpick test. The time is only a suggestion. Yes, you can half the recipe, but it might be easier to make a third of it (since there are 3 eggs) and bake it in a 5x9 loaf pan. My kids have tested that and it worked just fine.
Helen, I'd prefer to make yours in a 10-inch springform. I assume that would work as the volume is close...?
I would suggest you make 2/3 of the recipe (use 2 eggs and scale all the other ingredients down by multiplying them by 2/3) if you want to make it in a round 10" pan. You want to go by the area, not the volume to keep roughly the same thickness of the cake. I would put the spring form pan on another baking sheet since my batter is fairly thin (just in case it leaks).
@@helenrennie Thank you.
Labne is significantly less rich than sour cream (even labneh that contains cream does not approach the fat content of sour cream), so I’m not sure I’d prefer it. In my experience cakes made with yogurt in place of sour cream turn out worse every time. I’ve tried coffee cakes for example that had Greek yogurt replacing the sour cream and they were markedly worse than the classic.
No vanilla NYT? 😕
I find the NYTimes cuisine very wanting coming from people who are professionals... without the readers comments it is a gamble. Too much liquid, vague instructions, missed ingredients ... l have a problem beating butter for 3 minutes with a hand held beater so l'll go with your version without slicing the plums... thanks
my version is actually better with sliced plums. I tried it both ways :)
Would your version, Helen, work with the same amount of apples?
Yes, instead of plums you can use apples, pears, peaches, or apricots
@@helenrennie dziekuje!
In your version of plum cake, can a home cook use yogurt instead of sour cream? I always have yogurt at hand; not so sour cream
You need a high enough fat content. Yogurts vary. If you have a yogurt where the first ingredient is cream and not milk, it would be similar to sour cream. You also need yogurt that is very thick. If you have a full fat Fage Greek yogurt, that might work well.
Alright, so I've just made the NYT plum torte, followed your instructions to a T and while the cake is superb in flavour, in my version, the plums all sunk to the bottom creating sort of a jam-like layer at the bottom of the cake with a fluffy cake on top. In your version, as we can see at 5:08, there's a distinct bottom cake layer with plums sandwiched in the middle.
Any ideas what might have caused this?
Hey, I am not complaining, the cake is still amazing but I'd like to know what I could improve on in the future
That's funny. This always happens to me with my plum cake. My plums end up on the bottom and that's impossible to fix since the batter is very liquid. So I just want to make sure you made the NY Times cake and not mine ;) In the NY Times cake, the batter is way thicker. It still swallows the plums, but they end up somewhere in the middle. I don't push them in. I just lay them on top of the batter. I am guessing that the size of the pan and the size of plums might make a difference. I am hoping someone else will chime in with ideas.
Interesting, well, I definitely followed the NYT recipe with your suggestions (I made sure butter and eggs are right temp and creamed the butter properly). The only thing I can think of was either my pan was too big (when I was spooning the batter in it, the layer did seem quite thin), or me using European butter made a difference somehow? Anyhow, the cake is incredible anyway, so I am not complaining, haha, just thought I would point it out.
The pan size could definitely make a difference. The thinner the layer of batter, the more the plums sink. In some recipes European vs American butter makes a huge difference, but I am not sure if this is one of those cases.
Will plant based dairy work?
I haven't tried, but it's worth a shot. Just make sure that whatever you are using has a very high fat content.
teaspoon of DCK
DCK is Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt
@@helenrennie It made sense in the video, I just have the humor of a 13 year old 😔
There are tons of people with recipes on the internet, trying to make them accessible, and they have no problems including weights and full instructions. I think the NYT is living off the prestige of their name and the backlog of recipes they have, more than anything else. (Check out their chocolate chip cookie recipe: they call for using 50% bread flour and 50% cake flour.)
I have complete faith in the recipe Helen's kid came up with though. It sounds fun, and I want to make it! (I may even try it with apples.)
You have to remember that the original recipe was posted way back when it was considered scary / too tedious for home bakers to have recipes in grams. Dorie Greenspan had to wait until 2014 before she could get weights into a cookbook. NYT just hasn't updated the original which is understandable given how big their overall recipe library is. It's not a matter of just trying to skate by on reputation.
Salt is definitely optional, and I would leave it out. You put WAY too much salt in this, and I stopped watching.