Do you love the smell of warm fragrant spices wafting through the house? Do you love a juicy plum? Team these two ingredients up and you have an unusual flavour which just happens to work!

Ingredients:

• 8 medium, firm & ripe plums

Halve and stone the plums. Cut each half into 3 wedges and set to one side.

• 3 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon Chinese five-spice

Combine these 3 ingredients in a small bowl and set  to one side.

• 180g butter
• 1 cup caster sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract/paste
• 3 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 3/4 cups flour
• 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon baking powder

1. Beat the butter sugar and vanilla until light and creamy. Add in the beaten eggs and continue to beat/stir.
2. Combine the flour, baking powder and salt gently mixing into the mixture.
3. Spread half of the  cake mix into the bottom of a loaf tin, top with half of the plums and then sprinkle half of the sugar mix over the plums.
4. Repeat this step ending with the sugar mix.
5. Bake for about 1 hour 10/15 minutes or until the cake skewer comes out clean. Cool before removing from the tin.

Serving – I made a thick but pourable icing with icing sugar and a little lemon juice. You could dust this with icing sugar if time is not on your side. We had it with a spoonful of marscarpone which was quite decadent 🙂 but totally yummy – healthy option would be a dollop of Greek yoghurt.

This is a lovely dense, moist loaf which is worthy of a testing out – perhaps when the mother-in-law is coming over for afternoon tea!

Happy baking xx