This Is the Cake You Should Make This Weekend

Fact: Weekends are meant for baking cakes. Carving out the time to whip up a cake from scratch during the week just doesn’t seem feasible. Plus, weekends are when all the fun stuff happens: birthday parties, showers, girls’ nights. Even if you don’t have a “proper” reason for baking a cake, you should just bake one anyway. There’s nothing quite like spending a few hours in the kitchen, listening to your favorite tunes while you mix and whisk and frost. And then — the best part — you get to cut yourself a slice and enjoy it with a cup of coffee or tea. How luxurious.

I’ll say it right off the bat: This cake is really special. It has ground hazelnuts in the batter, and plums in the frosting! The batter is a mixture of unsalted butter, caster sugar, eggs, hazelnut meal, self-rising flour, sour cream, and vanilla.

Read more: How To Make Self-Rising Flour

After you’ve completely mixed your batter, you divide it into two (lined) eight-inch cake pans and bake them for around 40 minutes. Once the cakes are baked, allow them to cool before frosting.

And speaking of frosting, this unique plum version serves as both the topping and the filling for the cake. All you have to do is simmer the plums with caster sugar in a saucepan over low heat for about 20 minutes. You then purée half the plum mixture — this will be combined with butter and sugar to make the frosting. The other (non-puréed) cooked plums are used as the filling between the cake layers. Smart, right?

You can decorate the cake any way you’d like, but I think the author did a great job with hers. It’s simple yet beautiful!

→ Get the Recipe: Hazelnut Layer Cake with Plum Frosting from Erin Made This