Plum Cake With Streusel Is Summer’s Best Coffee Cake

This plum cake with streusel is my very favorite type of summer cake. Take ripe fruit, place it on top of a simple mix and go cake batter, top it with streusel and enjoy. This one is a little sweet, a little tart, and oh so tender and with a hint of Apple Pie Spice. It’s the perfect kind of cake for enjoying with coffee and a friend’s company. Add a little Raspberry Swirl Ice Cream, and you’ve got a perfect easy summer dessert.

Taste	Texture
Tart plums, almond, sweet streusel	Crunchy, tender

Active time	Total time	Yield	Difficulty
20 minutes	1 hour 15 minutes	12 slices	Easy

this …

Plum Cake with Streusel Vs. Pflaumenkuchen/Zwetschgenkuchen

This cake is not to be confused with more traditional German Plum cakes (Pflaumenkuchen or Zwetschgenkuchen or Zwetschgendatschi depending on what region of Germany you’re from) which use a yeasted dough base.

This plum cake is more of a coffee cake made with a simple sour cream butter batter then topped with streusel and plum slices and streusel. This cake is leavened with baking powder instead of yeast.

If you want to make a more traditional German Plum Cake (my family would have called it Zwetschgenkuchen), follow my German Crumb Cake recipe and top it with plums. According to Horst Scharfenberg in Cuisines of Germany, you should NOT put streusel on top, though it is completely traditional to do so. His argument is that the streusel takes away from the simple beauty of the plums. I both agree and disagree with him. He kind of argues with himself in the book as well.

Why You’ll Want to Make This Cake

1. Sweet Tart!: Not every dessert needs to be tooth-achingly sweet, and this cake is a great example. Here, the slight tartness of the plums acts as a balance to the lightly sweet cake for a lighter kind of dessert. Next to a scoop of ice cream, you’ll get to enjoy cake without feeling weighed down.
2. Luscious Batter: I love this batter so much. The sour cream makes for a creamy rich batter that comes together quickly and easily and then bakes up into a tender cake.
3. It’s a Looker: The plums up top make for one of the prettiest cakes around. If you’re lucky enough to have a plum tree or you can get good farmer’s market or CSA plums, they will really shine here.
4. Literally Everything is Better with Streusel: I’m German enough to convince you that a batch of streusel in your freezer is a gift to your future self. There’s almost no baked sweet that it doesn’t improve. Search for streusel on this sight, and you’ll scratch the surface of the depths of my obsession (Thanks Mom).
5. Amaretto: Almonds and plums go together with the same affinity of peanut butter and jelly. I add it here in the way of amaretto and a little almond flour. You could use almond extract

   (Affiliate)

   if you don’t have amaretto on hand, of course.

How to Make a Plum Cake

1. Make the Streusel: Mix the flour, brown sugar, salt, and apple pie spice together in a small bowl. Add in the melted butter and stir to form crumbs. Scrape the bottom of the bowl so that the crumbs don’t freeze to the bowl too hard. Place the bowl in the freezer.
2. Prep: Preheat the oven to 350 F (180 C). Butter the sides and bottom of a springform

   (Affiliate)

   pan and then line the bottom with a piece of parchment

   (Affiliate)

   . Wash the plums. Cut each one into thin slices–about 8-12 per plum. On most plums it is easier to pop out the pit after cutting around it as you cut them into slices. A paring knife is your best tool here. Add the plums to a bowl as you cut. Taste the plums, adding a little bit of sugar if they seem tart to you.
3. Make the Batter: Beat the butter and sugar until smooth. Add in the egg, sour cream, and amaretto and beat until just combined.
4. Mix the Dry Ingredients: Mix the flour, almond flour, baking powder, salt, and apple pie spice together in a small bowl. Add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture, stirring just until the flour disappears.
5. Assemble the Cake: Scrape the batter into the springform

   (Affiliate)

   . Take the streusel out of the freezer and scatter a little more than half of the streusel on top the batter. Place the plums in neat concentric rings on top of the cake. Scatter the rest of the streusel on top the plums.
6. Bake: Bake for 50-55 minutes until the streusel is golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean. You can serve the cake warm or at room temperature with some powdered sugar, a dollop of whipped cream, or a scoop of ice cream.

Tips for Making the Best Plum Cake

1. Freeze Your Streusel: Cold streusel holds its shape in the oven. By the time the butter has melted, the flour and sugar will have hardened a bit. If you skip this step, your layer of streusel will look more powdery because the butter will have melted down into the plums (it will still taste fine btw if this happens). Make the streusel first, and by the time you’ve made up the batter and sliced the plums, the streusel will be plenty cold.
2. Taste Your Plums: Plums vary in their sweetness and we all have different levels of sweetness we prefer. As you are slicing plums for the top, taste a couple slices and see what you think. Too sour? Add a tablespoon or two of sugar to the sliced plums.
3. Arrange the Plums: Tile your plums on top, placing them in concentric rings or another geometric design. By dividing the streusel into 2 parts–one that bakes under the plums and one on top, the plums will bake but not be entirely covered by the streusel.
4. Use a Little Spice: Plums really pair well with a little bit of cinnamon or other sweet spices. I’m a fan of my Apple Pie Spice with this cake, which has cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla sugar, and mace. This spice blend has some old world flavor that really makes the plums sing. You can use plain cinnamon. Chai Spice Blend is also delicious with plums.
5. Top It with Powdered Sugar: I watched a food competition show where one of the snooty judges deemed it too pedestrian to top a cake with powdered sugar. I think I turned the show off right then and there; the judge was clearly not my people. There’s a simplicity to a little powdered sugar dust that absolutely belongs on a cake like that. These are homestyle cakes, not patisserie, and that is nothing to be ashamed of.

Print