Blue Cayenne

If you read this blog, you’ve met our CQO-OT (Chief Quality Officer and Official Taster), Juliet, many times before. Juliet is a 7-pound rescue Yorkie who brightens everything about our world here at Blue Cayenne.

Last week, King Arthur Baking’s Facebook page featured a post that asked readers to post photographs of their beloved pets and then proceeded to match the photo of the pet with a KAB recipe. Couldn’t resist that one, so up it went–a glamour shot of Sweet Juliet.

As it turned out, one of the first replies I got to the post was from one of those Internet creeps who asks you to reply to them privately on Messenger. Didn’t happen, of course, (Blue Cayenne’s editor wasn’t born yesterday, after all)  and, bless them, KAB promptly removed the post. Geesh! The weirdos are everywhere—even on a recipe site.

But back to the post-your-beloved-pet photo KAB promotion…

The people at King Arthur Baking matched Juliet  with King Arthur Baking’s Honey Cake–a really good match for her, I thought, because (of course) I think the sun rises and sets with this little honey of a dog and the cake is a beauty, too.

Here is the King Arthur Baking recipe link: King Arthur Baking Honey Cake.

Here is the recipe as I prepared it in my kitchen.

This  Zoe Francois plum cake is absolutely wonderful. In the introduction to the recipe, she writes that this plum cake is her favorite cake in her cookbook, Zoe Bakes Cakes. (There are some outstanding cakes in that cookbook, by the way! So, that’s high praise for this cake.)

Don’t get me wrong. Marion Burros’ famous plum cake is still the GOAT. (You can find that recipe here.)

Burros’ legendary cake was featured here back in 2015. Burros, a food columnist for the NY Times, originally published her recipe in the food section of that paper in 1982. The recipe was so well-received by Times readers that its publication became a food section tradition every plum season for many years. People still talk about Burros’ plum cake in reverential terms.

Here is a photo of the beautiful Burros cake we baked  back  in  2015  (and  many  many  times  since).

Francois’ recipe, however, rivals the Burros’ cake in my opinion. The crumb of her cake is tender and oh-so-flavorful with its mixture of all-purpose white flour, wheat flour and almond flour. Burros’ plum cake doesn’t incorporate a mixture of flours and I think those inclusions distinguish Francois’ cake from Burros’. Don’t get me wrong. One cake is not better than the other; they are just wonderfully different. 

 There is, of course, that old saying about not messing with perfection (the Burros’ plum cake, in this case). So, what I suggest is that you stay open to the fact that there can be two really really wonderful plum cakes. Heck, why not do a baking test to check this out. Make both cakes! Invite your friends and family. Do a taste-off. It will be a win-win and both cakes will disappear as you and your guests taste-compare over and over and over…just to be sure, of course. 

You can find this recipe in Francois’ cookbook Zoe Bakes Cakes. You can find the book through your local bookstore or at Amazon here.

Here is the recipe as I prepared it in my kitchen. 

Every month Blue Cayenne features recipes from our archive of more than four hundred recipes. These recipes are our “Oldies But Goodies.” Today’s Oldie But Goodie recipe is forTurkish White Beans. You’ll find the recipe here.

Want to dive deeper into our recipe archive? Just click one of the categories at the top of this page or use the category search drop down menu on the right side of this page.

And…here is a link to Blue Cayenne’s main page: Blue Cayenne..If you are in the mood to cook (or eat!), we hope you will take a moment to look at the many excellent recipes we have featured.