Cream cheese cake with plums

A delicious, moist plum cake that stays fresh for days. Not quite your ordinary plum cake — this one is made with cream cheese (such as Philadelphia), which gives it an incredibly soft and moist texture. It uses a generous amount of fruit, inserted vertically into the batter, making every bite packed with juicy plums!

Ingredients for the cream cheese cake with plums:

• 170 g butter
• 200 g caster sugar
• 240 g cream cheese (e.g. Philadelphia)
• 1½ teaspoons vanilla extract
• 4 large eggs
• 2 cups plain cake flour
• 1½ teaspoons baking powder
• 800–900 g plums

All ingredients should be at room temperature. Halve and stone the plums.

In a mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the cream cheese in two batches, mixing continuously. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Stir in the vanilla extract. Sift the flour and baking powder directly into the mixture and gently fold in with a spatula until just combined. Grease and line a 20 × 30 cm tin with baking parchment. Transfer the batter to the tin and level the surface. Insert the plums vertically into the batter, close together, so that they sit slightly above the surface.

Bake at 170°C for about 45–50 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Remove from the oven, leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack.

Ingredients for the icing:

• ¾ cup icing sugar
• 2 tablespoons hot water

Mix together until smooth and glossy, adjusting the consistency with more water or icing sugar if needed. Drizzle the icing over the cooled cake.

Enjoy!