Wonderfully moist fresh plum cake

Ingredients

150g/5½oz butter
150g/5½oz unrefined golden caster sugar
3 large eggs
75g/3oz plain flour
1½ tsp baking powder
100g/3½oz ground almonds
50g/2oz shelled walnuts, chopped
16 plums, stoned and quartered

Method

Set the oven at 180C/355F/Gas 4. Line the base of a square 20cm cake tin, about 6cm deep, with a piece of baking parchment.
Beat the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. A food mixer will
do this far more efficiently than you ever could by hand. I stop only when the mixture is light, soft and the colour of vanilla ice-cream. Whilst this is happening, halve the plums, remove the stones and cut each half in two.
Break the eggs, beat them lightly with a fork, then add them bit by bit to the butter and sugar. Sift the flour and baking powder together and fold them gently into the mixture. I do this with a large metal spoon rather than the food mixer. Fold in the ground almonds. Chop the walnuts so they are the size of small gravel and fold them in too.
Scrape the mixture into the lined cake tin. Place the quartered plums on the cake mixture. There is no point in doing this with any real precision as they will sink into the cake as they cook. Bake for forty to forty-five minutes, then test for doneness with a skewer. If it comes out clean, without any wet cake mixture sticking to it, then the cake is ready. Remove the cake from the oven and leave to cool in the tin for fifteen minutes before turning out.