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Sunday 29 June 2014

Cheeky cherry

After a week away in sunny London with friends, and a few days at home as well )oh, and a few days at a sunny conference before all that), I decided I wanted to do a bit of cake baking - I was missing it.

I wanted to make quite a hefty cake, as my dad was coming up to help in the garden for a few days, and a friend was popping around to help him - so they needed to keep their strength up.  I also wanted to take some cake in for some new work colleagues that I'd been nattering to at said conference, as they were really interested in the blog and my cake baking (probably more the cake baking), but after all the talk I thought I should walk the walk (or something like that?) and bake them a cake!

So, something a bit different, and a recipe from a friend's mum (I'd already had her cake, so had something to live up to), but went for a toffee-cherry upside down cake.  Basically lots of almonds, ground almonds and cherries. Lovely lovely!

I've made upside down cake with a friend before, but never ventured into doing it myself. So I merrily lined the cake tin, which was a bit big. How do I have so many tins, and none ever the right size? Am sure it's the same in most kitchens. I'm not very good at the lining bit, and I do always try and rush it, but I figured this was going to be pretty crucial to getting the upside down cake out, so I did measure and cut out neatly and properly.

I mixed together all the ingredients, pretty standard sponge mix, but with ground almonds as well, and then chopped up all the cherries to place the at bottom on the tin.  I just scattered the whole almonds around the tin, but on reflection I think I could have done with toasting them lightly first, and also cutting them in half.  I was only following the instructions, but certainly something I'll try differently next time - and as it was cherry and yummy - there will definitely be a next time!

Then I heated up some butter and sugar (there may have been something else in there, I can't remember now), and poured this over the cherries and almonds.  I didn't seem to have enough of this mix to spread and cover all the ingredients at the bottom, so again, something I might make more of, or...use a smaller tin and have a deeper cake?

Then I added the main cake mix and popped in the oven.  It was a slow bake on a lower heat, but seemed to cook quite happily within the time needed, I don't think I'd have given it any longer to be honest (I don't have the recipe in front of me, otherwise I would try and be a bit more specific, sorry).

So the end result, well, the cake didn't last long and I had happy people wanting more - so a good result.  It was very yummy and light, and a bit sticky. Only concern, the almonds just didn't feel at all cooked, bit odd really.  Here's some pics of finished piece.  Again, trying out the photography skills here:





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