Mirabelle cake recipe

As promised, here's the recipe for mirabelle cake. While the mirabelle claffoutie is richer in eggs and less fluffy, this recipe is aiming for something more similar to Austrian "Marillenkuchen" (apricot cake). You can probably use this dough for many other fruit cakes (plums, cherries, ...) - in fact, I adapted it from a recipe for rhubarb cake.

Wash, half and pit the mirabelles. Determine the amount you'll need beforehand by putting the whole fruits close to each other on the baking dish you're going to use. The mirabelles should cover about 60% of the surface in a single layer. The dough is going to rise a bit, so a deeper dish is preferred. I use a 13x9x2 inch pyrex glass dish for this recipe.

Add the following ingredients to a mixing bowl, mixing thoroughly when indicated:

7 Tbsp. of melted unsalted butter
1 cup of sugar

     - mix -
4 eggs

     - mix -
1 tsp. of lemon zest (preferably from untreated lemons)

1 tsp. of vanilla sugar or extract

seeds from 3 cardamom pods, finely ground in a mortar

    - mix -
1 cup of flour

1 tsp baking powder

pinch of salt

     - mix -
2/3 cup more flour

     - mix -

Grease your baking dish with butter, and pour the dough into it. Preheat your oven to 375 F. Put your halved mirabelles on top of the dough, skin-side down, as close to each other as possible. No need to push them down. Bake in the oven for 30-40 minutes. The cake is ready when the top is turning golden, and a clean toothpick inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean, without dough sticking to it. If this recipe turns out not sweet enough for your taste, you can cover the cake with some powdered sugar. If you like it more tart, use a bigger dish or less dough to adjust the cake/fruit ratio.

Enjoy, Christian