Cherry and Almond Cake Recipe

Today I'm doing Christmas a couple of months early. I have been lagging way behind with my own Christmas recipe preparations (partly because my wife isn't here with me yet.. but that's another story). So I dusted off my recipe collection (actually it's a database of notes and recipes on my laptop) and I happened to come across this one and decided to prepare it over the weekend.

This was originally intended as a recipe for an Easter cake — a quick version of a Simnel cake, if you will. But the combination of marzipan (almond paste) and cherries works as well for Christmas as for Easter that I decided to prepare it with Christmas in mind.

The result was a citrusy and rather spectacular looking cake. It keeps for quite a while and will be great to use to welcome my wife when she finally does get here. For me, that will be Christmas!

Cherry and Almond Cake Recipe

Serves: 12

Ingredients:

250g (9 oz) butter, softened
175g (6 oz) golden caster sugar
5 eggs, beaten
250g (9 oz) self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
finely-grated zest of 1 orange
2 tbsp orange juice
250g (9 oz) marzipan, chilled and coarsely grated
1/2 tsp almond essence
To Decorate:
100g (4 oz) icing sugar, sifted
50g (2 oz) flaked almonds, toasted
12 natural glacé cherries
finely-grated zest of 1 orange

Method:

Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy then stir in the eggs, flour, baking powder and the orange zest and juice. Toss the cherries in 2 tbsp flour (this will help prevent them from sinking) then stir into the cake batter along with the grated marzipan and almond essence.

Spoon the resultant batter into a greased and lined 20cm round-bottomed cake tin. Transfer to an oven pre-heated to 160ºC (325ºF, Gas Mark 3) and bake for about 90 minutes or until well risen (a skewer inserted into the centre should emerge cleanly).

Allow to cool in the tin for 10 minutes then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely before decorating.

For the icing, mix the icing sugar with 1 tbsp water to form a loose paste. Scatter the almonds over the top of the cake and arrange 12 glacé cherries around the edge, using a little icing to fix each one in place.

Drizzle over the remaining icing and finish with a scattering of orange zest.