Cherry Almond Loaf

 
This cherry loaf is rather simple, fairly dense but enriched with ground almonds. Turns out nice and moist and keeps well too. One good tip that I picked up from  Nigella Lawson is to rinse the cut glace cherries with water, pat dry and toss in some flour to minimise the cherries from sinking.  What I would normally do is just to cut up the glace cherries and dust them with flour.  It never crossed my mind to rinse them.  As I prefer to have a not too sweet cake, I reduced the sugar and halved the amount of cherries called for in the recipe.

Recipe for Cherry Almond Loaf  (adapted from Nigella Lawson's recipe with slight modification)

Ingredients

• 225 gm butter
• 100 gm glace cherries (reduced from 200 gm)
• 250 gm self-raising flour
• 100 gm ground almonds/almond meal
• 3 eggs
• 140 gm caster sugar (reduced from 175 gm)
• 1  tsp vanilla
• 8 Tbsp milk (originally 6 Tbsp)
Method

1. Cut up the glace cherries, rinse with water, pat dry, toss in some flour from the recipe. Set aside
2. Sift the self-raising flour.
3. Cream butter and sugar till light and fluffy, thick.  
4. Add in eggs one @ a time, mix well.
5. Fold in sifted flour, mix well.
6. Fold in almond meal alternatively with the milk.  Add in vanilla.
7. Mix in the flour dusted glace cherries.
8. Pour batter into a greased and floured oval pan.  (I made 2 Oval shape loaves).
9. Bake in a preheated oven @ 180 deg.C for 40 mins. till golden brown.  Test with a skewer till it comes out clean.
10. Cool in pan for 15 mins. before unmoulding onto a wire rack to cool completely.
Note:  You can bake this in a 9 x 5 x 3 inch loaf pan.







This post is linked to  Cook like a Star, organised by Zoe of Bake for Happy Kids,
 Joyce from Kitchen Flavours and Anuja from Simple Baking.









I'm also linking this post to the Little Thumbs Up 'Eggs' event, organised by Zoe of Bake for Happy Kids,
my little favourite DIY and hosted by  Baby Sumo of Eat your Heart Out.