Technical Bake Part i:- The Cherry Cake/An Array of Excuses

Oh god, it's been a year. To the two of you who used to read this: I am sorry. 

In the past year I:

- Applied (and got!) the job of my dreams 

- Moved from Manchester to the middle of ruddy nowhere in Cumbria

- (for the new jobs, obvs)

- Learned to drive and got a little car

- Fell 4 inches off a step (TWICE) and broke my foot (TWICE!)

Those are my excuses and I am sticking to them. 

Now I am working in a job where I don't come home and want to crawl under a rock and am also pretty housebound (see broken foot, above). 

AND THE BAKE OFF IS BACK!!!! So I, too, am back with a vengeance.

Some of you may know that I had a go at applying for this year's Bake Off. I got nowhere. 

It's fine. It's fine. I have my new, crazy Cumbrian life to throw myself into. I'm not bitter. 

HOWEVER. To prove those miserable so-and-so's at the BBC wrong, I have given myself the challenge of having a go at the technical bake each week. And blogging it. It'll be like I'm living the Bake Off. The only difference is that I'll have a proper recipe. And no time limit. Or pressure. 

IT'S BASICALLY THE SAME THING OKAY. 

Okay. 

Right to it. 

The ingredients:

- 200g glacé cherries (actually - a few extras for decoration)

- 225g self-raising flour

- 175g softened butter

- 175g caster sugar

- 1 lemon, 

- 50g ground almonds

- 3 large eggs

- 175g icing sugar

- 15g flaked almonds, toasted

The recipe:

- Preheat your oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. Grease a 23cm bundt tin or savarin mould with butter. (I don't own one if these things. I used a loaf tin. But then, I'm a bit of a wild card.)

- Chop your cherries into quarters, rinse them, drain them, then coat them in two tablespoons of the flour. Just...trust me. 

- Put your dry, flour-y cherries to one side

- In a big bowl, mix the flour, sugar, butter, lemon zest, eggs and ground almonds together until they're well combined. 

- Fold in the cherries carefully

- Tip it all into your greased tin. The recipe recommends 30-40 mins in the oven. Mine took more like 60. You know the drill. Bake it till it looks nice and golden and a knife comes out clean.

- Leave it to cool in its tin and then on a wire rack.

- When it's cool, mix together the icing sugar and juice from the lemon to a thick paste. Drizzle over the cake and top with the toasted flaked almonds and your extra cherries. 

Voila!

Eat your heart out, Berry. One cherry cake made by: reading the full instructions, obeying no time limit, and using the wrong kind of pan. You can stick your savarin. Roll on biscuit week.