CHERRY AND ALMOND YOGHURT CAKE

I stumbled upon the idea for this cake in a roundabout way.  When I was actually looking for an easy yoghurt cake recipe I couldn’t find one quite this simple.  When I wasn’t looking for anything in particular along comes a recipe that is so easy and adaptable that it’s a real find.  I think so anyway.

The idea is that you use a pot of yoghurt as one of the ingredients and use the empty pot to measure out all the other ingredients, well most of them anyway.

The idea is that it’s so simple you should never need to resort to a packet cake mix ever again.  I’m not quite so sure it’s absolutely that simple, especially when you decide to make an adaptation using glacé cherries like I did.  All that chopping, rinsing and drying of the cherries takes a fair amount of time.  I also followed a tip in one of Delia Smith’s cherry cake recipes – to keep some back and push them into the mixture before you put the cake in the oven, thereby making it less likely that all your cherries will sink to the bottom.

I used a paper line for my loaf tin, something which I now do regularly.  I’m not entirely sure I like the ridges you end up with on the side of the cake – which make it look rather like a shop bought cake – but it saves time and fiddling with baking paper.

You can use any flavour of yoghurt you like.  Plain yoghurt would be good for a lemon cake version and I used strawberry for my cherry cake – I would have used cherry but when I opened the fridge the cherry one had already gone from the pack !!

There was a lot of mixture so I only filled the loaf tin by two thirds and used the remaining mixture to make some little buns.

The cake had a lovely texture, was nice and moist, cut well and kept well for several days.  Definitely a good recipe to have up your sleeve and great with a cup of tea or coffee. 

You can see the original version here.

Ingredients

1 small 125ml pot of cherry or strawberry yoghurt

1 pot of light olive oil (or sunflower oil)

½tsp almond essence

2 pots golden caster sugar

2 pots plain flour

1 pot ground almonds

1tsp baking powder

150g glacé cherries

4 eggs

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C / 160° fan.  Grease, oil or butter a loaf tin and line the bottom, or use a paper liner.  Have a lined muffin tin or greased bun tin ready.

Chop the cherries into quarters, rinse and dry thoroughly – removing the syrup from them is what helps to prevent them sinking to the bottom of the cake, allegedly.

Put the yoghurt, oil, essence and sugar into a large bowl and mix together.  Add the eggs and mix again.  Add the flour, almonds and baking powder and mix thoroughly.

Stir in about three quarters of the cherries and transfer to your prepared tin.  Don’t overfill it – use excess mixture for your muffins or buns.

Dot the rest of the cherries over the cake and push each one into the mixture, just below the surface.

Bake the cake for 45-55 minutes, the buns will be ready in 25-30 minutes.  Cool in the tin for ten minutes then remove to a wire rack to finish cooling.

Cuts into 10-12 slices.