It’s never happened to me before, but it did this time – all my cherries sank…
Lesson learnt – always do as Mary tells you!
Late afternoon baking session as there has been no cake in the house for simply ages and I really must get on and finish this challenge! I have two traybake recipes left to make, the other recipe would take a little longer, so as I was short of time I decided upon this one.
The oven was put on to preheat at Fan 160°C and a 30cm x 23cm traybake tin was lightly greased and the bottom lined with parchment.
The first task was to cut 225g red (or natural) cherries into quarters. Mary clearly states to cut the cherries into quarters and then put them in a sieve and rinse under running water. But no, for some reason this time I rinsed the cherries, dried them off and they cut them into quarters. All the syrup had been rinsed off the cherries, but when they were cut they were obviously moist inside! I paid the consequences!
This was yet another all in one method for the cake, so it didn’t take me long to mix everything up. Into a large bowl went 275g self-raising flour, 2 level tsp baking powder, 225g softened butter, 225g caster sugar, 75g ground almonds, the finely grated rind of 2 lemons and 5 eggs (yes FIVE eggs – I had to read the page quite a few times to make sure I had read it correctly). The mixture was beaten together for around a minute and then the cherries were folded in.
After turning the mixture into the tin and levelling the top, 25g flaked almonds had to be sprinkled over the top. As my son doesn’t particularly like flaked almonds I used half the amount and only sprinkled the almonds over half of the traybake. Into the oven it went for 40 minutes. It was after it had been in the oven for around 10 minutes that I actually found my ‘new’ traybake tin which was slightly deeper than the one I had used. I must admit I was slightly concerned when I turned the mixture into the tin as it virtually filled it right up. I did have a quick peek in to the oven to see how the traybake was doing after 20 minutes and it had indeed started to go over the top of the tin. Let’s just say it had a sort of ‘mushroom’ effect around the edge where it had spilled over slightly!
After 40 minutes that cake was beginning to shrink back from the sides so it was time to take it out. After it had cooled in the tin it was turned out and cut up. It was then I realised that most of the cherries had sunk to the bottom! However, it didn’t affect the taste which was very nice and the sponge was so light. It was a hit with all members of the family
I managed to take a photo where there is clearly a cherry half way up the cake!! My apologies for the photo, it is very blurred, but I had to take one in a hurry as the cake was disappearing very quickly!
Self Raising Flower 