Plum cake with streusel

This is the best and the easiest plum cake with streusel topping. German sounding 'streusel' is nothing other than our crumble topping and plums can be swapped for any other soft fruit. I must have made it about a gazillion times and it's brilliant every time.

Mix and bake

Don’t you just love recipes which say ‘throw all the ingredients into a bowl and mix well’? This is just that kind of recipe.

Easy and versatile

I must have made this cake about a thousand times, varying the fruit. I usually start making it in early June, when the blueberries are getting cheap enough to throw loads of into a cake (it’s amazing with blueberries).

Then on to strawberries, cherries when good and ripe (you have to stone the blighters… kitchen looks like it belongs to a serial killer), apricots are not too bad, raspberries are a dream, and finally plums and apples and we know autumn is just around the corner.

I do bake other types of cakes in summer too, absolutely, but more often than not during the Cake Planning Conferences in my house in summer we look at each other, nod and say ‘streusel cake’ in unison.

What is streusel?

Streusel is of course just an ordinary old crumble but doesn’t it sound so much nicer? There are many variations, using Demerara or icing sugar, cold butter, soft butter or melted butter but this one here – is easy, so easy.

You can skip the streusel if you really do not feel kindly towards it. With the plum variant a good replacement would be a little melted apricot/plum jam brushed over the baked cake for a glaze. But trust me – streusel maketh the cake!