I only decided to start attempting each week's challenge on The Great British Bake Off in the second week - with Mary's Florentines - so I missed making the first one to face the bakers.
As I've been in London today and unable to make the three part epic multi-tasking challenge from last night's final, I'm instead posting the recipe for Mary Berry's Cherry Cake from Week 1. Next week I'll post my attempt at the final Technical Thursday challenge and reveal details of I have planned next...
The original recipe can be found in the GBBO book here, on the BBC Food website here, and below with my notes.
Ingredients:
200g glacé cherries
225g self-raising flour
175g softened butter, plus extra for greasing
175g caster sugar
1 lemon, finely grated zest only
50g ground almonds
3 large free-range eggs
For the decoration:
175g icing sugar
1 lemon, juice only
15g flaked almonds, toasted
5 glacé cherries, quartered
Method:
Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. Grease a 23cm/9in bundt tin or savarin mould with butter. I bought mine from Lakeland a month ago but only just got round to using it, and absolutely love it!
Cut the cherries into quarters. Set aside five of the quartered cherries for the decoration later. Put the rest of the quartered cherries in a sieve and rinse under running water. Drain well then dry thoroughly on kitchen paper and toss in two tablespoons of the flour.
Measure all the remaining ingredients into a large bowl and beat well for two minutes to mix thoroughly.
Lightly fold in the cherries and turn into the prepared tin.
Bake in the preheated oven for 35-40 minutes until well risen, golden-brown and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. For some reason mine rose ridiculously and cracked in the middle all the way round… This was fine while it was in the tin, but when turned out onto a wire rack the cake cracked in a couple of places which was a bit of a structural nightmare!
Leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes then turn out and cool on a wire rack.
For the icing, mix the icing sugar together with the lemon juice to a thick paste.
Drizzle over the cooled cake using the back of a spoon, allowing it to drip down the sides, and sprinkle over the toasted almonds and reserved cherries.
The big test during this episode was assessing the position of the cherries when the cake was sliced. Mary Berry was looking for an even distribution of cherries - they're not supposed to sink to the bottom during baking (ending up at the top of the finished cake) but instead be evenly dispersed throughout.
Boom.
This is such an easy cake and looks so beautiful. There's something about cakes made in a savarin mould or bundt tin that look so much fancier than in a normal cake tin - obviously I'm going to be making every cake this shape now!
The ground almonds add a gritty texture to the basic sponge, which can be a little disconcerting at first but actually works really well.
It's not a bad first challenge at all, and it's one of the only ones I've done that I'm keen to make again in the future!
Have you made Mary Berry's Cherry Cake before? What did you think of the first Technical Challenge? It really shows how good the finalists were given how difficult the tasks became over the series!
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