Recently I met up with a very artistic, talented lady who was passing on to me a piece of craft equipment and didn’t want any money for it (I didn’t realise at the time how expensive it was, or I might have insisted!) so I wanted to at least bake her something as a thank you.
It had to be something that would transport easily in a box as I was going to see her straight after work and knew I wouldn’t be able to carry a big cake box (as I would also have the craft equipment to take home) so decided to make some simple muffins or unfrosted cupcakes that wouldn’t get damaged in transit. I also wasn’t sure how she would be feeling about cake as she had been ill recently, and I didn’t want to make anything too sickly-sweet. I had some glace cherries in the cupboard and wondered about a recipe for a simple cherry cake, and came across this recipe for cherry and almond cake on the Macmillan website.
170g margarine
170g caster sugar
3 eggs
115g self-raising flour
115g ground almonds
85g glace cherries, halved
Preheat the oven to 180C. Cream the margarine and sugar together and then beat in the eggs.
Fold in the flour and then the almonds and cherries.
Spoon into the muffin moulds – as mine was silicon I didn’t use cake cases but sprayed the mould with Cake Release. Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes.
I think these are technically cupcakes but look more like muffins as they don’t have any frosting, so I’m not quite sure what to call them!
These were really quick to make; I did taste one when it came out of the oven and it was light and fluffy – and particularly good served hot, you might want to try these with custard!
I'm entering these in Alphabakes, the blog challenge I co-host with Ros of The More Than Occasional Baker, as the letter she has chosen this month is C.
