Plum Coffee Cake

Late summer in a Czech home often means a slice of plum cake with a cup of coffee. Soft, buttery, and topped with ripe plums and a cinnamon streusel, this everyday cake is a beloved way to enjoy the short plum season.

What is this plum coffee cake? It is a simple Czech sheet cake made with a quick batter of whole eggs beaten with sugar, then mixed with flour and heavy cream. The batter is poured into a pan, topped with fresh plums and a cinnamon streusel, and baked until golden. Unlike its Austrian cousin, Zwetschgenkuchen, which starts with creamed butter and separated eggs, everything here comes together in one bowl, with no creaming and no rising time. We Czechs call it švestkový koláč.

This is one of the easiest Czech cakes you can bake. Count on about 20 minutes of hands-on work, then let the oven do the rest in about 50 minutes. The recipe comes from my grandma Milada, and her batter has been my go-to cake base for years, topped with whatever fruit is in season. Plums just happen to be one of my favorites, and my tips below will help you get them just right.

Jump to

• ➜ Two tips for plum coffee cake
• ➜ A cake from grandma Milada's kitchen
• Czech pronunciation
• ➜ Ingredients
• Equipment
• ➜ How to make plum coffee cake
• ➜ Variations
• ➜ Serving suggestions
• ➜ How to store plum coffee cake
• ➜ FAQ
• 📖 Recipe
• 💬 Comments

➜ Two tips for plum coffee cake

• Arrange the plums cut side up. The juice rises and steams off in the oven instead of soaking down into the batter. That is the difference between a wet, gummy bottom and a clean, baked-through crumb.
• Dry the plums well and sprinkle a little flour over them. Plums hold water on their skin, and the flour soaks it up before it reaches the batter.

Is your kitchen buried in plums? Their season is short, and Czech baking makes the most of it: the yeast cake with fruit and streusel is the classic Sunday sheet cake, and when apricots ripen first, the same batter shines as an apricot streusel coffee cake.

➜ A cake from grandma Milada's kitchen

This cake has always been my family's answer to plum season. At the end of every summer vacation, when the plums started to ripen, we children picked the ones we could reach while the older grandchildren climbed ladders for the rest. Grandma Milada pitted and sliced the plums, then baked them into her cake.

But this was not the only plum recipe she made. When plums ripened in late August, she also prepared švestkové knedlíky (plum dumplings), povidla filling (thick plum butter), compote for the pantry, and other cakes like this one. To this day, just a bowl of fresh plums takes me right back to those last carefree days of summer.

➜ Ingredients

✅ See the recipe below with step-by-step photos and many helpful tips. Scroll down for the full printable recipe in both US cups and metric measurements.

• Plums, ideally Italian plums (prune plums), the closest match to Czech švestky: small, oval, blue-purple, and firm enough to hold their shape in the oven. Look for ripe but firm fruit; overripe plums turn mushy and wet the batter. In the US they appear in stores from late August through September. British and Irish readers: damsons work beautifully too.
• Unsalted butter, for the streusel.
• All-purpose flour, part of the streusel, the base of the batter, and a spoonful for dusting the plums. Czech hladká mouka; regular American all-purpose flour works exactly the same way here.
• Granulated sugar, in both the streusel and the batter.
• Ground cinnamon, a spice that pairs beautifully with plums.
• Eggs, whole, beaten with the sugar into a pale foam.
• Lemon zest, freshly grated, only the thin yellow layer, from about half a lemon (not pictured in the ingredients photo).
• Baking powder, backing up the lift from the beaten eggs.
• Salt, to lift all the flavors.
• Heavy cream, replacing butter as the fat and keeping the crumb soft. Use real heavy cream with 36 to 40 % fat.
• Milk, to loosen the batter so it spreads easily into the corners.
• Powdered sugar (optional), for dusting the finished cake.

➜ How to make plum coffee cake

STEP 1: Warm up the cold ingredients. Take the eggs, butter, heavy cream, and milk out of the refrigerator at least 30 minutes ahead. Room-temperature eggs whip into a much better foam.

STEP 2: Get the pan and oven ready. Preheat the oven to 340°F (170°C). Line a baking pan with parchment paper.

STEP 3: Prepare the plums. Wash the plums. Cut each plum in half and lift out the pit, then cut each half in two. Spread the quarters on a clean kitchen towel and pat them dry.

STEP 4: Make the streusel. Cut the butter into small pieces and add it to the flour, sugar, and cinnamon. Rub everything together with your fingertips or a fork until it looks like moist crumbs. Put the bowl in the refrigerator so the butter firms up and the crumbs hold their shape; if you need to chill them quickly, a few minutes in the freezer works too. If streusel is new to you, my homemade streusel topping recipe covers it in detail.

A note from my kitchen: I tested this cake in the August heat, and the butter softened within minutes. That is fine. Soft butter still rubs into perfectly good crumbs, and the chilling firms them right back up.

STEP 5: Beat the eggs and sugar. In a large bowl, beat the eggs with the sugar on high speed until the mixture turns pale, thick, and fluffy; it takes about 5 minutes. Then beat in the lemon zest.

STEP 6: Sift the dry ingredients. Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt together into a bowl.

STEP 7: Finish the batter. Set the mixer to low speed. Add about a third of the flour mixture to the beaten eggs and mix briefly. Pour in part of the cream and milk and mix again. Keep switching between flour and liquid until everything is just combined. Overmixing would knock the air out of the foam.

STEP 8: Fill the pan. Pour the batter into the pan and spread it into the corners.

STEP 9: Add the plums and streusel. Sift the flour over the plum quarters and toss them gently. Arrange them, ideally cut side up, close together over the whole surface; it is fine if some overlap a little here and there. This amount of plums is what makes the cake so fruity. Then sprinkle the streusel evenly on top.

STEP 10: Bake. Bake for about 50 minutes, until the streusel is golden. Test with a skewer pushed between the plums, never through a piece of fruit; if batter clings to it, give the cake a few more minutes.

STEP 11: Cool and serve. Let the cake cool in the pan, dust it with powdered sugar if you like, and cut it into squares.

➜ Variations

• A thinner layer of batter. Baked in a 9x13 inch pan, this cake rises into a fluffy batter layer about 2 inches (5 cm) tall under a generous cover of juicy plums. If you would rather have a thin layer of batter and more fruit in every bite, you have two options: make three-quarters of the batter (scale to 3 eggs instead of 4) and keep the full amount of plums, since the pan surface stays the same. Or, bake the full batter in a slightly larger pan and increase the plums to about 2 pounds (900 g). In a larger pan, shorten the baking time by about 10 minutes and check doneness with a toothpick.
• Other fruit. The same batter works under berries and other soft fruit. Juicy fruit gets the same treatment as the plums: dry well, dust with flour.
• Vanilla. Stir ½ teaspoon of vanilla extract into the batter with the lemon zest for extra flavor.

➜ Serving suggestions

This cake belongs to the afternoon: let it cool, cut it into squares (from the 9x13 inch pan I cut 3 rows by 5, which gives 15 pieces), and serve them plain on a dessert plate. It needs no glaze and no cream; a light dusting of powdered sugar dresses it up for guests. Dobrou chuť!

➜ How to store plum coffee cake

Cover the cooled cake and keep it at room temperature for up to 2 days, or in the refrigerator for up to 4 days; the fruit layer keeps it moist.

For longer storage, freeze the squares in two steps: spread them on a tray and pre-freeze them for about an hour, then pack them into an airtight container or a freezer bag and freeze fully. Let them thaw at room temperature.

➜ FAQ

📖 Recipe