A slice of Cherry and Almond Cake

One of my favourite cakes as a child was one we simply referred to as Cherry Cake, which I think was essentially a madeira cake with cherries in it. This is a take on my childhood cake which includes ground and flaked almonds.

This is a really light, tasty cake with a very subtle almond flavour and a nice hit of sweet cherries. The scattering of almonds on the top add a nutty note and crunchy texture. In an ideal world the cherries would be evenly distributed throughout the cake. Maybe I should have quartered rather than halved them…

Cherry and Almond Cake

Recipe

Ingredients

180g cherries

180g butter

180g sugar

4 eggs

juice of half a lemon

220g SR flour, sieved

40g ground almonds

25g flaked almonds

Method

Set the oven to 180ºC. Grease and line an 8″ deep cake tin with removable base.

Halve (or quarter!) your cherries, wash them to remove the sugar syrup, and pat them dry. This should help stop them sinking to the bottom.

Cream the butter and sugar until pale and creamy.

Add the eggs, one at a time and beat until incorporated.

Stir in the lemon juice.

Fold in the flour and ground almonds.

Spoon into the prepared tin and level gently.

Scatter over the ground almonds.

Bake for about an hour or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out dry. You may need to cover this cake with aluminium foil toward the end of the baking time to stop it browning too heavily.

Allow to cool in the tin for a while before transferring to a cooling rack.

Cake cooling

This cake is delicious still warm and the kids thought it would be wonderful with some custard as a dessert. I think it is a perfect mid-afternoon-cup-of-tea type of cake, until it starts to get a little dry, at which point custard would be the answer. Unfortunately ours didn’t hang around long enough to test the theory!

An Afternoon Tea type of Cake

Categories: Baking, Cakes, Desserts, Recipes

Tags: almonds, baking, cake, cherries, dessert, fruit, glace cherries, recipe