Recipe | Cherry cake | Art and Soul

Light vanilla sponge studded with ruby red glacé cherries. Delicious!

I got this recipe from my trusty book: Sweet and Savoury bites by Jane Price.

Ingredients (serves 8 – 10)

210 g / 7.5 oz glacé cherries (confession: I only had 150 g in the cupboard to use and it all turned out just fine)
85 g / 3 oz sifted plain flour
90 g / 3.25 oz butter
145 g / 5.5 oz caster sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
125 g / 4.5 oz sifted self-raising flour
80 ml / 2.5 fl oz milk

Equipment and preparation:

Once again, I used my mum’s 18-cm diameter angel cake tin. I used this recently to make my giant doughnut cake. If you want to see more pictures, check out that post. However, the quantities above are for a 20 cm tin. This meant I had enough mixture to fill the angel cake tin and make 4 small cupcakes:

I’m not complaining! However, I do recommend you use any 20-cm round tin (with a hole in the middle or not!)

Method

Prepare your baking tin. Grease the inside of the tin with butter / margarine. Don’t be skimpy but try to get an even coating of grease. I also put two strips of greaseproof paper in the bottom of the tin to increase my chances of getting my cake out in one piece! If you’re using a normal circular tin I recommend you line the whole tin with baking paper.

Pre-heat your oven to 180 degrees C / Gas Mark 4 / 350 degrees F.

Chop up your glacé cherries. I cut them in quarters… it’s all a matter of preference. Dust them in a little flour to get rid of some of the stickiness.

Use a large bowl. Cream together the butter and sugar (use electric beaters/mixer if you have one) until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, beating your mixture after adding each egg. Add the vanilla extract and stir in. Using a large metal spoon, fold in the sifted flours alternatively with the milk until all the ingredients are combined. Add the chopped cherries and stir through.

Spoon your mixture into the tin. Make sure the mixture is at least 1 cm (0.5 inch) below the top of the tin so there’s space for it to rise. If at this point you realise you have too much mixture, you can use it to make cupcakes/buns (you can pop them in the oven at the same time as your sponge cakes as they will have the same baking time).

Bake your cherry cake for about 35 minutes until it’s a golden brown and a knife inserted into it comes out clean.

Leave your cake to cool in the tin for about 5 minutes. Run a knife around the inside and outside edge, turn over onto a board and give the top of the tin a pat to encourage the cake out of the tin. If you’re lucky, the tin will come away from the cake easily. If you used strips of greaseproof paper in the bottom of your tin, peel these off the top of your cherry cake. Transfer your cake to a wire rack to cool.

At this point I realised that the “top” of my cherry cake (the smooth side which was at the bottom of the tin during cooking) looked far less interesting than the “bottom”. Look at the photos below to see what I mean. So I decided to keep the “bottom” as the top. I realise that was a poor explanation and I’m sorry if I’ve lost you!

See what I mean? Even though it’s split, I think this side is far more attractive:

You could leave the cake like this, but I decided to decorate my cherry cake with a drizzle of thick white icing (just icing sugar and a few tsp of water).

And if you’re looking for other sponge cake recipes:

Sponge cake with white icing and multi-coloured sprinkles (hundreds and thousands) inspired by the cake they used to make in the canteen at my high school.