Original Plum Torte Recipe (2025)

Hi - I'd like clarification on the flour --- 1 C flour, sifted - is that one cup of flour and sift and add, or sift the flour to equal one cup of flour - makes a difference. Thank you.

In 1988 my Toronto newspaper was about to post me to Beijing as a foreign correspondent. Alas, my house wasn't selling. I'd read that the fragrance of baking helps so I bought a frozen loaf of bread, and warmed it in the oven. No sale. Desperate, I baked this torte for an open house. Ta-dah! With the kitchen infused with the sweet perfume of Original Plum Torte, the house sold.

Sifted flour means sift then measure.
Flour, sifted means measure them sift.

Hello, i'm from Russion Federation. This is exellent. I'm cooced it every weekend. My children very liked this pie. I not very well know English. Sorry for mistake. From Russia with love ;)

Made this last night after tasting the one made by our daughter. Used raspberries and blackberries, one basket each, instead of plumbs, and 1/3 c. cornmeal and 2/3 c. flour. Fantastic!!! The cornmeal adds a very sophisticated "Italian" character to it, very slight crunch, and amazing flavor. Topped with coarse sugar before baking. Did this in a motorhome convection oven for 50 minutes. Perfect dessert with whipped cream, flavored with a few pureed berries and sugar/vanilla. So easy!

This was GREAT. Sliced the plums and arranged them in a fan pattern -- better than halves because prettier and more evenly distributed over cake. Added lemon zest and sliced slivered almonds. Next time I would toss the plums in the lemon juice, lemon zest, sugar, almonds, and cinnamon, because the cinnamon and the zest clumped up when sprinkled. Will also experiment with other fruits.

A nice recipe for Obstkuchen, the German-speaking bakers' classic! I grew up on this cake and have been making it for many, many years now. It can be made with any neutral vegetable oil too. Use any kind of nice fruit or berries, just make sure that they are firm, otherwise they can release too much juice during baking. Also, grease the the round or square pan, line the bottom with parchment and grease that one too. No springform required, but it's nice if you have one.

A 9" pan gives greater height and moisture to the tart than a 10" pan.

Note: My Mom makes this all the time and it's a family and guest favorite. It freezes PHENOMENALLY well--her usual tactic is to wait until it's cool, then into the fridge, THEN when it's really cool you wrap it first in plastic wrap and then in foil REALLY well, like you're launching it into space, and then into the freezer. Also works for leftover torte. If you have more than 1 springform pan make 2 and freeze one for Emergency Company Cake.

A delicious and indeed elegant torte. I have made it twice with these alterations: 50% almond meal; 50%brown sugar and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla. It also freezes well.

Torte, schmorte. It's a delicious, homey dessert you can bake in just about anything - though a springform pan does make for a somewhat ritzier presentation - and top with whatever fruit is in season. My Polish mother made it in a rectangular metal pan all summer long (mmm...placek!), though the household favorite WAS the Italian/prune plum iteration. She used grated lemon rind and 1 t. vanilla in the batter, tightly-spaced skin-side down fruit, and ground cloves instead of cinnamon atop.

Springform or not, shouldn't we grease (butter) the pan?

Dear god, this is good.

My favorite recipe from NYT - annual ritual for 20 years!
Baked with - apricots, apples and cranberries when off season.
Also used half whole wheat flour and was perfect. This year sliced the plums thinly and layerd tightly like rose petals - still the best.

My notes and tips: my butter wasn’t completely soft so after mixing with the sugar, I added the eggs one at a time, then the dry ingredients. Also added a tsp of vanilla extract. I tossed the plum halves with lemon juice, sugar, and cinnamon before arranging them on top. In a 9 inch cake pan, this only needed 45 min in the oven. Served with a dusting of powdered sugar and a dollop of homemade whipped cream. SO good the next day for breakfast with coffee!

Made it in a 10 inch springform. I had to travel for work during the week so made it on Monday, put it in the freezer and served it on Saturday (after defrosting and popping in the cooling oven for about 10 minutes). I was skeptical but it turned out great and with a bit of maple syrup infused whipped cream was the dessert highlight of our Canadian Thanksgiving dinner. Next time I will try it in a smaller springform to get a taller cake to plum ratio, but this is a keeper for a non-baker.

Used blueberries, almond flour 1/4 cp plus all-purpose flour 3/4 cp, 3/4 cp sugar, 1 tsp vanilla, some fresh lemon zest, in an 8” square non-stick pan with parchment paper. It is delicious, and more like a cobbler. If you need to bring a homemade dessert somewhere, this will impress everybody.

I made it in a 9” springform pan. I think next time I’ll make it in the 8” for a little more height. I used whole wheat flour since I ran out of white. It was great! Served for breakfast with a little Greek yogurt in place of whipped cream. I couldn’t get all the halves packed in, so I’m saving them to make a second torte to freeze.

Don't you need to grease the cake panfirst?

Delicious. I just made this for the first time. There’s such a high butter ratio it won’t stick to the pan. When the recipe said 24 plums I was shocked how 24 cut plums could even fit in a 9 inch pan. So I used 6 large plums with the pieces cut into smaller slices and covered the whole top of the cake. It came out great. It was a very easy cake to prepare

I found when using smaller pieces of plum or the prune plums that it makes it more difficult to cut - cake falls apart all over the place - no clean places to cut w/o plums then they go flopping off!

Served warm with extra salty salted caramel ice cream (from Molly Moon’s). Outstanding. Didn’t bother with a spring form since we made a small batch that was devoured within 20 minutes of leaving the oven.

I’m late to the party and only made this for the first time now. Didn’t sift the flour, mixed the non-prune larger plums with sugar/lemon/cinnamon and dumped the rest of that sugar solution on top before baking. Carmelizes a nice sweet top. Family LOVED it.

I've made this a thousand times; depending on the season, have used nectarines, golden delicious apples, Comice pears, and pungent Vietnamese cinnamon. I layer half the batter into the pan, arrange the fruit sliced and blitzed with cinnamon sugar mix, then layer the remaining batter over all and finish with fruit sliced decoratively on top, then more cinnamon sugar. It is out of this world and beloved by family and friends.

IMO, I really do think the pan needs to be greased, and I wouldn't make this cake in anything bigger than an 8" pan. The batter barely covers the bottom of an 8" springform; I don't see how a 10" could be made to work. In fact, I've considered increasing the recipe by half just to get a little more cake under the fruit. A teaspoon of vanilla makes this better, I think. And for my elevation (MI) and my oven, 40 mns was plenty. The variation in the comments is kind of amazing to me....

I feel this recipe is missing details such as how to prepare the pan and how much lemon juice to add. I looked up similar recipes for insight. Personally, I would change this if I were to make it again. The plums would be better sliced. Should it be placed on the bottom rack to cook the bottom faster? The bottom was brown, but soggy. Should I have removed it from the pan after some cooling, including the bottom of the spring lock pan? Another absent detail. Or, did I add too many plums? I used 10 1/2. While it tasted okay overall, the soggy bottom makes it unappealing. I’m thinking I’ll put what’s left in the skillet and cook it on the stovetop

Not sure why there's nothing mentioned about whether or not to grease the pan or spray it with cooking spray.

I think I did something wrong. This was “good” not the tremendous deliciousness these comments suggested.

This got raves from the house, even though my plums sank into the bottom of the cake (!?) I wanted to use up some flour that might be self-raising, so I may have doubled the baking powder and thus brought it up and over the plums. Plums were irritatingly rock hard even after sitting a week, so I was relieved to discover they softened nicely into a tart counterpoint to the dense cake.