I love cake! Who doesn’t. A well baked, flavoursome cake can cheer you up and put a smile on your face. I’m not promoting stuffing your face constantly throughout the day, I’m more of an all-things-in-moderation kind of woman, so I say if you want a slice of cake – go ahead and eat it!
Now, I usually bake a cake at the weekend for my little folk and Mr. Be and I’ve been trying to be experimental in regards to ingredients used to flavour the cakes. I’ve been making a loaf cake every week for the past 3 weeks. So far the combinations I’ve made are: Raspberry and earl grey, Banana and Walnut and Orange, Pistachio and cardamom.
This week I tried cherry and almond!! I really simply took out 1/3rd of the flour and replaced it with ground almonds. Below is a really simple recipe that I use for all my loaf cakes with the cherry and almond modifications.
Ingredients
175g Unsalted butter
175g Light soft brown sugar
3 eggs
100 ml milk
½ tsp Baking powder
pinch of salt
120g Self Raising Flour
60g Ground almonds
12 pitted cherries (I used frozen ones) chopped in half
Decoration
Flaked almonds (to decorate)
100g Icing sugar
2 tblsps water
How to make it
- Preheat the oven to 180C/gas mark 5. Grease and line a loaf tin with greaseproof paper.
- Cream together the butter and sugar in a freestanding mixer (or in a large bowl using a wooden spoon) until light and fluffy.
- Add the eggs in one at a time, making sure to beat thoroughly between the addition of each egg. If the mixture starts to curdle add in a few tablespoons of flour.
- Pour in the milk and mix in well. Stir in the flour, ground almonds, salt and baking powder. Make sure all the ingredients are well combined.
- Put half of the mixture into the loaf tin and smooth over using a spatula or pallet knife. Scatter the chopped cherries onto the mixture.
- Finally, top the cherries with the remaining mixture and smooth the top over.
- Place in the oven for 55 mins until the top is golden brown and a knife/skewer comes out clean.
- Leave to cool for 5 mins, then take out of the tin and put onto a plate. Leave to cool until cake is cold.
- Decorate by mixing the icing sugar with water and decoratively splashing onto the cake. Finish by scattering flaked almonds on top.
This recipe can be adapted really easily and you can add any flavours of your own. Ground pistachios work really well instead f almonds or if you not a nutty person, changing the fruit might be the thing for you….I reckon passion fruit would work well! Happy Baking!
