Plum Skillet Cake

Sometimes it's fun to conquer baking challenges -- braided bread, lattice-top pies, croissants -- but sometimes it's nice just to mix together a few ingredients and throw them in the oven. Here a cake batter is easily stirred up, poured into a skillet, and topped with fruit. No fuss, and a stunning and delicious dessert.

The cake is simple but tasty, and the cast iron gives the edges a nice crust. The plums, which I can find bitter in their fresh form, mellow out as they bake to become lightly sweet and tart, even the peel. A dollop of whipped cream makes a slice even better.

Some important tips to share: Wait until the cake is halfway done baking before adding the plums.  The top row is the first cake I made, and you can see that the beautiful plums sank into the batter as the cake baked.  Also, the plums were only in the center of the cake, so the outer edges didn't have any of the delicious fruit.  In the bottom row, I added the plums after 15 minutes of baking, and you can see that they barely sank in.  I also increased the number of plums to four, so every slice of cake has plenty of fruit.

Update: This post made the Foodbuzz Top 9!  Thanks for all the buzz!

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Cast Iron Skillet Pizza

Have you ever heard of making pizza in a cast iron skillet?  We've owned a pizza stone for years, but when I saw this recipe I wanted to try it anyway.  I wanted to see how a skillet held up to a stone, and how storebought pizza dough compares to homemade.  Initially I waved away the idea of following the recipe by using storebought dough, but then I wondered what the quality of premade dough is like and if the convenience is worth it.

You can buy premade pizza dough in the refrigerated section of your supermarket's bakery.  When I saw whole wheat dough along with plain, I decided to add another level to my experiment.  Both pizzas are made the same way, with a quick sauce from scratch, fresh mozzarella, and crumbled Italian sausage.  When they were done, I topped them with parsley and shavings of Parmesan.

My verdicts:

1) Storebought dough is not as good as homemade dough, but it's not far off, and convenience counts for a lot.  Dough from scratch has to be made the night before, and there are resting periods in the refrigerator and at room temperature -- the storebought dough is ready to use when you bring it home.  The flavor of storebought is close to homemade, and the texture is a little doughier than homemade but not a deal-breaker.  If you want to go the from-scratch route anyway, I have only praise for Peter Reinhart's dough recipe.

2) I can't say the same for the whole wheat dough.  It rolled out nice and thin and didn't have the annoying elasticity of the plain dough, but I missed that elasticity and chew when eating the whole wheat crust.  It also had all the flavor of cardboard.

3) The cast iron skillet works great, producing a crust with a nicely crisped bottom.  If you have only a 10-inch skillet like me, a half-pound of pizza dough will work for this recipe or one pound will make two pizzas; scale down the other ingredients slightly as well.  If you're fighting kitchen clutter, you may opt for just your skillet instead of buying a pizza stone.

4) The pizza recipe is delicious as well.  I like the from-scratch sauce, and the small amount guarantees you won't have a soggy crust.  I like the use of fresh mozzarella, and even though it releases water after cooking the taste is superior.  I left out the arugula because I'm not a fan, but the parsley and Parmesan are nice.

If you've wanted to try making your own pizza, this is the easiest I've seen yet.

Skillet Chocolate Chip Cookie

"Oooh, big cookie," Joe said as he walked past the cooling skillet.  This just looks like a fun recipe.  It's also easy to throw together, and you save a little time from the usual scooping of smaller cookies onto a baking sheet.

The drawback?  It's a bit dry.  The original recipe didn't have any such complaint in its reviews, so I hope it wasn't because I replaced a quarter of the flour with white whole wheat flour.  Or maybe other people used skillets that weren't cast iron -- which conducts more heat -- like I did?  Some people even commented that they used pie pans.  Maybe because I decided to forgo the ice cream and caramel sauce.  If you have a skillet variation you recommend, leave me a comment.  I'd like to give this another go!

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