Seth's Perfect Plummy Coffee Cake

This actually started life in a Medium article where I was exploring various short projects I might work on in between larger articles. That story is here. In any case, it had been some time since I had channeled a recipe from Spirit, so on 7/14/2026, here is Seth's Perfect Plummy Coffee Cake. Seth's contributions are set apart in a bold, italic font.

This is an excerpt from the article: Oh, I just thought of something. Oh, this would be fun. It’s not such a short thing to do, but it could genuinely be fun. I’m talking about recipes from Spirit. Channeled recipes. I have a couple of them at my TalkingtoSpirit.com website: Cowboy Coffee Cake and Seth’s No Fall — No Fail Lemon Mango Cake. Seth? What do you think?

Yes, I think that would be fine for a culinary detour from what you normally do.

Do you want to suggest something?

I’d say we look at what you have available in your refrigerator. What about all the plums your neighbor gave you?

There aren’t that many left.

Do you have a dozen of them?

Yes. But they are small.

You are not feeding an army, are you?

No.

A plum, cottage cheese, sour cream coffee cake.

Oh, excellent. Yes, I like it. Should we do it here?

Yes, we can proceed.

Perfect Plummy Cake

12 plums — chopped (1 ½ cups)
Two cups of flour
1 ½ tsp of baking powder
⅓ cup sugar
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp cinnamon
2 eggs
¼ cup vegetable oil (could use melted butter)
½ cup cottage cheese
½ cup milk
¼ cup of sour cream
1 tsp vanilla

Mix the dry ingredients together. Mix the liquid ingredients together. Mix the liquid into the dry ingredients. Add fruit. Pour into a greased and floured 8x8-inch baking pan. Bake at 350° for 35 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Ice with powdered sugar and a scant amount of milk, or leave plain and dust with a little bit of powdered sugar. (Note from Pauline: I scattered raw sugar over the top of the unbaked cake. It was perfect. Also, 350°F is 176°C.)

Should I try it out first? I’m not sure about the cottage cheese part. Should I blend that? Dennis likes nuts. Can I put some in?

Try the recipe as written, then try it again with the addition of nuts. The cottage cheese will add a note of interest.

Okay, that sounds like fun.

Also, it didn’t take very long for you to transcribe, so yes, this might be considered a short bit break.

What do you want to call it?

Perfect Plummy Cake

As a later note, this cake came out perfectly. I’m having a piece of it now as I finish this article. I will also set this into my collection of Recipes from Spirit at Talking to Spirit. Also, I added ¼ cup of oil to the recipe as I went along. Seth hadn’t mentioned adding oil or butter and did tell me it would be fine without it, but I put it in anyway. So, now it is part of the recipe. In the future, I’m sure you could substitute any other fruit for the plums. These were really tiny plums. If you pop one in your mouth, it is pretty much done in three tiny bites. I’d imagine if you had peaches or apricots, those would be fine to use. I have to admit I was a little leery about the cottage cheese. I beat the business out of that and, perhaps in the future, might use my immersion blender to chop it up even smaller, but as it is, with the chunks of cheese? It’s all right.

As far as a nice break? Yes, it was perfect. Plus, I have another channeled recipe.

You’re welcome.