Bake Off: Cherry Cake
Great British Bake Off is back for another series and I couldn’t be happier, I feel as if my life is complete once again (I wish this wasn’t true, haha!) It’s a great show for baking inspiration and seeing all the different flavour combinations the contestants keep up with. This year, I’m going to try and and bake something from each week of the show (setting a big goal there, I only managed one week last year..oops).
First off, we have cake week.. the best week in my opinion (any guesses why?), so I decided to try out the technical bake, Mary’s cherry cake..
It was a fairly simple cake to make, luckily, I had the entire recipe thanks to the BBC Food website, unlike the contestants. Most important rule – roll the cherries in flour to prevent them from sinking to the bottom of the cake! 
Unfortunately, my cherry cake was a bit on the dry side and not one of my better bakes. I did use the all-in-one method, following the recipe to a T and normally,I’d add liquids separately to the dry ingredients. I think the culprit is that the mixture did not get properly beaten, which means it might not have had enough time to get enough air into the mixture for it to rise properly and retain some fluffiness.
At least my cherries were evenly distributed and didn’t sink to the bottom though – better luck next time!
- 200g glace cherries
- 225g plain flour
- 1tbsp baking powder
- 175g softened unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing
- 175g caster sugar
- 1 lemon, finely grated zest only
- 50g ground almonds
- 3 eggs
- 175g icing sugar
- Juice of 1 lemon
- 7 glace cherries, quartered
- 15g toasted almonds
- Preheat the oven to 180 degrees and start greasing a 9in bundt tin (or standard cake tin)
- Cut the cherries into quarters, place into a bowl and toss them in 2tbsps of plain flour, then set aside
- Measure all the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, butter, sugar, zest and almonds) into a bowl and mix together
- Slowly add the eggs to the mixture and beat well
- Finally, fold in the cherries, making sure they are evenly distributed
- Bake for 35 - 40 minutes, until golden brown and an inserted skewer comes out clean. Leave to cool.
- Once the cake has cooled, mix together the icing sugar and a bit of the lemon juice. Add more lemon juice if the mixture is not runny enough - but not too much, as you want the icing to stay on the cake
- Top with flaked almonds and the remaining cherries and serve