Name: Grandma's Plum Cake
Prep time: 5 min
Cook time: 60 min
Total time: 65 min
Ingredients: 1 cup sugar; 1/2 cup butter (softened); 2 eggs; 1 tsp baking powder; 1/2 tsp salt; 1 cup flour; 12 ounces plums, pitted and cut into one inch pieces (about 4 large plums); 2 tsp sugar; 1 tsp cinnamon

Recipe right at the top! Scroll down for tips and budget breakdown.

Grandma’s Plum Cake Recipe:

Cheap and easy dessert for a party or potluck that looks expensive and difficult! Plum Cake recipe serves 12 for less than $3! Frugal recipes on All Day Mom

Grandma's Plum Cake

Budget Recipe - Dessert serves 12 for $2

Course Dessert

Cuisine American, French

Keyword budget dessert, budget recipe, cake, cheap dessert, easy dessert, frugal dessert, plum cake, plums, summer dessert

Prep Time 5 minutes

Cook Time 1 hour

Total Time 1 hour 5 minutes

Servings 12

A recipe from Carissa Houston - All Day Mom

Ingredients

1 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter softened
2 eggs
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup flour
12 ounces plums, pitted and cut into one inch pieces about 4 large plums

Topping

2 tsp sugar
1 tsp cinnamon

Instructions

Grease and flour 9" or 10" springform pan. (Or, 9" or 10" cake pan)
Stir together sugar, butter, eggs, vanilla, baking powder, salt.
Stir in flour.
Add batter to pan. Batter will be thick.
Slice plums in half, remove pits, and cut into one inch pieces. Arrange plums evenly over batter in pan, skin side up.
Sprinkle cinnamon sugar topping over the top and bake for 1 hour at 350°.
Let cool completely before cutting for clean slices.

Serving notes

Recipe Notes

For cost breakdown please visit AllDayMom.com/plum-cake-recipe.

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Grandma’s Plum Cake Recipe Frugal Entertaining Tips and Tricks:

Do you use organic ingredients for party recipes?

I try to cook with organic or at least non-GMO ingredients at home, within reason. But, for entertaining, church potlucks, food to take to someone else’s party, etc., I do use cheaper ingredients.

For instance, I never cook with canola oil at home, but I have a big jug of it to use when we make boxed brownies. If I take boxed brownies to a potluck, I’m pretty sure that people who eat brownies at potlucks don’t care that the brownies were made with cheap canola oil instead of expensive avocado oil.

Sometimes that feels jerky, like I should give my very best, but the reality is that most party foods are already junk food. I don’t like spending extra money on organic ingredients in situations where nobody cares if the food is organic. (Some day I’ll tell the story about my $92 pastured Thanksgiving turkey. That’s pretty much the whole story. And it tasted like…supermarket turkey.)

If you do want to use your fancy organic baking ingredients when you entertain, go for it. It is still much cheaper to make a cake with organic ingredients than to buy a cake. Even if I used ALL organic ingredients for Grandma’s Plum Cake, it would only cost $5. You can’t buy a crappy soy, corn syrup, and GMO-filled cake at any grocery store bakery that serves 12 for just $5.

Grandma’s Plum Cake is an easy summer dessert that looks expensive but is not.

My mom makes this plum cake with fresh plums from her tree for the grandkids and it’s one of my kids’ favorite desserts.

I used 4 plums in the plum cake in the photo, but you can use as many as a dozen plums in one cake. My kids like more plums-to-batter, and I like more batter-to-plums.

Grandma’s Plum Cake slices well once cooled with 12 oz of plums (about 4 large plums); with more plums, you can scoop the cake while it’s hot and serve with ice cream, like a cobbler. If you’re going to use more plums than the 12 oz the recipe calls for, it might be easier to bake it in an 8×8 or 9×11 casserole dish instead of a springform pan for easier scooping.

Check Amazon price on Pyrex 8×8 casserole and 9×11 casserole.

In July and August, plums are in season, therefore cheap, $1 per pound or less (about 5 large plums per pound). Cut plums in half, pit, cube, and freeze them so you can make Grandma’s Plum Cake any time of year.

If you don’t have a springform pan, here’s what you can do:

Grandma’s Plum Cake looks prettiest and cuts neatly when it’s baked in a springform pan (this is the springform pan I use, works great and it’s cheap) but you can bake it in a cake pan or glass casserole dish too. If you’re not using a springform pan, make sure to line the dish with parchment all the way up the sides. After the cake has cooled, pull the parchment up to lift the cake out of the pan and onto the counter, and then cut it.

I buy organic ceylon cinnamon from Amazon for around $10 a pound, and it lasts me about 2 years. To compare, a 1.5 oz jar of organic cinnamon from Walmart is “only” $3.97 but that actually costs $42 per pound! Always buy your spices in bulk. I freeze bulk spices in quart size freezer bags, and keep a small amount in the pantry.

Here is the budget breakdown of Grandma’s Plum Cake recipe:

Prices updated July, 2024
$0.44 Sugar $3.94 per 4 lbs (C&H cane sugar, Winco & Walmart)
$0.50 Butter $2 per lb (Fry’s, sale)
$0.17 Eggs at $1 per dozen (eggs are crazy expensive now but Dollar General still sells them for $1 a dozen)
$0.07 Baking powder $3.12 per can (Rumford aluminum free; Walmart)
$0.15 Flour at $2.38 per 5 lbs (Winco, Walmart)
$0.75 Plums 12 oz at $1 per lb (on sale everywhere in July and August)
$0.02 Sugar 2 tsp at $3.94 per 4 lbs (C&H cane sugar, Winco & Walmart)
$0.06 Cinnamon 1 tsp $0.24 at $15 per lb (organic, Amazon)
$0.04 Butter, 2 tsp to grease pan at $2 per lb.
$0.01 Flour, 1 tsp to flour pan at $2.38 per 5 lbs = $0.003, and Salt 1/2 tsp at .67 per 26 oz = $0.003
$2.21 Total for the entire cake.
$0.18 per serving; serves 12 with generous slices. You could cut the cake into 16 pieces to make it go even farther, for $0.14 per serving.