Damson Tosca Cake

I just wrote a whole post about how English summers - even in the middle of London - mean bountiful summer fruits and summer puddings. How the kids forage for blackberries on Hampstead Heath. How even my marginally English self associates But! That whole post just got erased and, as we are leaving on a long-awaited Coronavirus-shirking holiday tomorrow, I have no time to wax lyrical about the blackberry fools of my youth.

Instead, I will cut right to the chase: it’s high summer so it’s possible you or someone you know has a tree that is overflowing with fruit. If you have a bunch of stone fruit — anything from cherries to apricots to plums to peaches — that need eating, I’ll take you from tree to show-stopping cake.

We’re lucky enough not to have to deal with a damson plum tree but also lucky enough to have a friend who has one that produces buckets upon buckets of tiny plums each summer.

The other day we went to collect a basket of blackberries and a bucket of damsons. The blackberries were a no-brainer: I immediately baked the whole lot into my favorite muffin recipe. The damsons, however, intimidated me. There were A LOT of them. And they all had tiny pits. We’d been warned about how annoying it is to cut the pits out and how easy it is to choke on that one pit you forgot.

We heeded our friends’ advice and just stuck them all in a pot with some water and a cup or so of sugar, brought it to a boil for a few minutes until the skins of the plums burst, drained and cooled them, then Eric spent over a hour sifting through them to remove each pit with his hands.

At the end, after all his picking through the sticky fruit, we had a serious amount of really tart damson plum compote. Some would be good on Eric’s oatmeal, some in his protein smoothies, some we could give away to unwitting victims, but what to do with the rest?

I nosed around and found a few recipes for Swedish Tosca Cake, a simple cake that tops summer fruit with a caramelised almond topping. I tinkered with a few different recipes, but in the end I just absolutely piled in the damson compote and completely winged the almond topping. Expectations were low.

I was convinced the huge amount of fruit I piled onto the cake would mean the sponge wouldn’t be able to cook all the way through and when sliced open it would spill its fruity doughy guts out everywhere and I’d be left to pick the almondy topping off with a spoon dripping in tears.

Though that alternative wouldn’t have been completely terrible, the cake turned out beautiful and perfectly set. The sweet sponge and even sweeter topping offset the tartness of the damson filling, making a balanced cake that looks absolutely stunning when sliced open.

DAMSON COMPOTE TOSCA CAKE

I seriously winged it with this recipe, and you can, too. I mostly followed a bunch of bloggers’ reprinting of Rachel Khoo’s Swedish Tosca Cake, but inevitably and seriously tweaked it to accommodate my laziness, as I do. I’ve given you instructions to take you from dirty bucket of damsons to glorious cake, so just skip the damson compote recipe if you’re using fresh fruit or a jar of compote you already have. Any stone fruit will do — cherries, apricots, plums, peaches — do your worst. My one regret is not having sliced almonds and being too lazy to chop up some for the topping — the almond flavor came through with the almond meal I used, but adding in some almond slivers or slices would have provided a wonderful crunch. Oh, well. Next time! 

DAMSON COMPOTE 

Method: take your damsons and give them a rinse. Stick them in a large pot and fill with some water and some sugar. I used just enough water to barely cover the fruit and probably used about ¾ cup for a massive amount of plums and they came out really tart. Bring to a boil, being careful not to let it boil over the sides of the pot. Within a few minutes the plums’ skin should split open, revealing the yellow flesh. Drain the plums and allow them to cool. Once they’re cool enough to handle, put on a podcast and use your hands to remove the pits. This took Eric over an hour of complaining. Once you’ve got every last pit, jar up your compote. It’ll last for a few weeks in the fridge and forever in the freezer. Don’t worry if your compote is - like ours - super sour. You can always add more sweetness when you eat, serve or cook with it. 

DAMSON TOSCA CAKE 

For the sponge and filling:

150 grams (¾ cups) sugar

100 grams (7 tablespoons) butter, softened

3 eggs

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 pinch salt

250 grams (2 cups) flour 

1 teaspoon vanilla extract (or a few drops of almond extract)

1 cup or more of damson (or any) compote or any stone fruit

For the almond topping: 

50 grams (4 tablespoons) butter

50 grams (¼ cup) sugar

⅔ cup (100 grams) almond meal (original recipe calls for flaked almonds)

2 tablespoons flour

¼ cup double or heavy cream 

1 teaspoon salt 

ideally some almond slivers or flakes for the top

Get your fruit ready: if you’re using fresh fruit, chop it up and make sure all the pits are removed. Don’t be afraid to use a lot of fruit here. Ideally, you’d make a quick compote by boiling your fruit with water and a bit of sugar then draining thoroughly. 

Preheat the oven to 350F/180C. Line a springform pan with butter then plop in a big piece of non-stick baking paper that goes at least a little way up the sides. This is important as it will keep your topping from sticking to the pan. 

Make the sponge: In a large bowl, whisk the soft butter and sugar together for a minute until creamy. Add in the eggs and the extract, and whisk. Add in the baking powder and salt and whisk, then add in the flour and stir it all up gently with a wooden spoon. 

Spoon this thick batter in the prepared pan. Spoon the fruit on top, leaving a bit of an edge (see my photo above). Don’t be afraid to really load it up with compote. Bake for 30 minutes in the preheated oven. While this bakes, prepare the topping.

Now make the topping: Melt the butter in a medium saucepan then add all the other topping ingredients and mix well. I completely eyeballed it here on measurements - I didn’t accurately measure one thing, so feel free to wing it. 

Once the cake has baked for 30 minutes, remove it from the oven and spread the topping evenly on top. Feel free to put some extra pieces of fruit or bits of compote on top. Put it back in the oven for 25 - 40 more minutes, until a toothpick inserted comes out without drippy cake on it. 

Remove in the pan and cool completely before slicing and serving. It would be phenomenal served with vanilla ice cream or slightly sweetened whipped cream. I think this cake was even better the next day.