Not just your standard cherry cake

My mum, and indeed so am I, is a huge fan of anything that involves glace cherries, which leads to a great many things being made with them! Coupled with that is a love for anything involving almond, so it is extremely handy that the two things go so well together! A little while ago I did a post involving cherry and almond flapjack, and the list of things I have crated involving the two ingredients is rather long so I won;t put them all down here. This post is for what appears to be a simple cherry cake, but it packs an almighty punch of rich, nutty almond sponge with a zesty lemon kick, punctuated with beautiful sweet, artificially red cherries, and finished with a crunchy sugar top - it is a favourite in the Appleby household, and definitely deserves its own post on this blog.

The Ingredients

 Butter, caster sugar, glace cherries, ground almonds, plain flour, baking powder, eggs, zest and juice of 1 lemon, and sugar lumps for the top.

To start, cream together the butter and sugar in a large bowl until it is smooth and pale.

 Then put the creamed mixture to one side, take the glace cherries and cut them into quarters. You do not need to worry about washing them.

  In another large bowl, place the quartered cherries and add to them a spoonful of plain flour and the ground almonds. For this recipe I grind my own almonds because I feel it adds to the flavour and texture of the cake - this is obviously down to personal choice and if a smoother sponge is wanted then finely ground almonds should be used.

 Mix the cherries thoroughly with the flour and almonds so that they are well covered.

 Leaving the cherries on one side, into the creamed mixture add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.

Then add the remaining flour and the baking powder and mix well.

 Next, add in the cherries.

 Finally, mix in the lemon zest and juice.

 Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin - the tin used is a round springform tin, around 20cm/8 inches. I use cake release spray, which I absolutely love, but you can just butter and/or line the tin if you prefer.

 Level out the tip of the cake with the back of a spoon or a spatula and then sprinkle the crushed sugar cubes all over the top of the cake. The sugar cubes want to be in a variety of sized lumps, evenly spaced over the top of the cake.

 Cook in the oven for 1-1 and 1/4 hours, when cooked it will have nicely risen and browned, and started to crack on the top.

And there you have the finished product.

The sugar cubes are such a brilliant touch because they give the entire cake a crunchy topping without being overly sweet. The lemon in the cake tones the sweetness down also, which is definitely needed because of just how sweet the glace cherries are, and there are lots of them in this cake! It might seem like it is just a standard cherry cake but it is genuinely so much more - I haven't met anyone (yet!) that hasn't tried it and absolutely loved it!

Kate

xxx