Cherry and Almond Cake

This is a lovely cake - simple to make/bake and very good to eat. It has been adapted from the BBC recipe.  

It is a lovely sponge cake with added texture and flavour of the ground almond flour.  If you do not have almond flour, blanch almonds, remove the outer peel and grind to a fine powder.  *If you want the cherries evenly distributed, wash the glaced cherries, drain dry and coat with flour and gently incorporate them into the batter.  I liked the taste of the glacéd  cherries and did not want to wash them.  Though I did coat them with flour most of them did settle to the bottom.  But the taste is just fine !

Ingredients:

Butter ( softened) - 150 g

Caster Sugar - 200 g

Eggs - 4

Almond extract - 1/2 tsp

Self raising flour - 175 g

Baking powder - 1/2 tsp

Glacé cherries - 300 g ( I had just 100 g) - quarter them *

Ground Almonds - 85 g

Milk - 100 ml

Flaked almonds - 2 tbsp

Line a 8"/20 cms deep cake tin

Beat the eggs and sugar till light and fluffy

Add eggs one by one , continue to beat the  mixture

Now fold in the almond extract, almond flour, flour, baking powder

Followed by cherries and milk

Preheat the oven to 140C fan/160C

Pour mixture into the prepared tin.

Scatter the flaked almonds on top of cake

Put into oven. 

Bake for 1 hour/1 hour 15 mins still skewer comes out clean

Remove.  Cool in tin before serving

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