Iced Cherry Cake (as seen on Great British Bake Off)

If you live in the UK I am sure you are watching the new series of the BBC's Great British Bake Off. Each week they have a technical challenge and so I have decided to make these myself and video it and give you the recipe used on the show.

The first challenge was to make a cherry cake with lemon icing.  This is fairly straightforward cake but using a savarin mould and then adding lemon icing and decorating with cherries and almonds makes it looks great.

To watch a  video of me making the cherry cake, please click on the video below:




Equipment required:
Large mixing bowl
23cm/9inch savarin mould tin
Sieve
Electric mixer

The recipe :
Cherry Cake
200g (7oz) glace cherries
225g (8oz) self-raising flour
175g (6oz) softened butter
175g (6oz) caster sugar
1 lemon - zest only
50g (1 3/4 oz) ground almonds
3 eggs

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees centigrade (350 fahrenheit or gas mark 4). Brush melted butter over the savarin mould.

Cut the cherries into halves or quarters and then put in a sieve and rinse under running water.  Drain well and then dry using kitchen roll and then toss in two tablespoons of flour.

Put all other ingredients in a bowl and mix well with an electric mixer (or by hand). Fold in the cherries.  Spoon into the tin and spread evenly.

Bake for around 35 minutes until golden-brown and a cake tester comes out clean.  Leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes and the turn out onto a wire rack. Do not ice until completely cool.

Icing
175g (6oz) icing sugar
juice of one lemon
15g flaked almonds
5 glace cherries

Lightly toast the almonds in a pan until lightly brown (be careful they don't burn) and set aside. Cut the cherries in half.  To make the icing mix the icing sugar with some of the lemon juice - adding a bit at a time until the icing gets to a nice thick consistency.  Drizzle thickly over the cake and decorate with the almonds and cherries.