I am typing this up as the bread (finally) bakes, and only the delicious smell of orange zest-cardamom-plum wafting through the apartment is keeping me from being cranky. From start to finish the entire process will have taken a little over 3 hours, although admittedly 1 1/2 hours of that is the bread baking.

I also admit that my OCD tendencies extended the active prep time considerably: compulsively checking the recipe to make sure I didn’t confuse “Tbsp” with “tsp” (my first time baking, I made that mistake with almond extract and the cake was ruined), re-reading the instructions (and of course missing the instruction that the eggs should be room temperature), and using a ruler to make sure that the plums were cut to 1/2 inch (where the heck is my cooking ruler?! I had to use my study ruler – another admission, I use a ruler to underline things in textbooks.)

This recipe is from In the Sweet Kitchen by Regan Daley, and it’s the first thing I’ve baked out of this book. I made it at Jens’ request, because he went crazy in the spice aisle and came back with cardamom and a hankering for some cardamom bread. According to Daley:

Cardamom is a wonderful spice, woefully underused in North America…it appears throughout the cuisine of much of Scandinavia as well, especially in many sweet breads and pastries.

I’m not going to write up the recipe because it’s a little involved, but since pretty much only my friends and family read the blog, just let me know if you want the recipe anUpdated I’ll send it over.

Update: finally took a picture of the actual bread.