Cherry almond sponge cake

I do love a good sponge; it has always been a weakness of mine.  This week I decided to keep it really simple – a lovely sponge with thick white icing.  Given it’s turned out to be the hottest weekend of the year so far, it was a good choice – definitely not the time to be making delicate buttercreams!

I toyed with calling this a bakewell sponge, but it is more bakewell influenced in that it borrows the idea of almond, cherry and icing.  There is something about adding almond to a sponge that elevates it to a higher level of delight – particularly the day after baking when all the nutty richness has been released.

I have finally realised – embarrassingly late, perhaps – how much better hot water is than cold when making a white icing/glaze.  Not sure why, but my thought would be that the hot water (I used boiled, straight from the kettle) melts the sugar on impact giving a smoother finish, and then sets quicker.  Am I imagining it, or do you agree?

This recipe is similar (but not identical) to a previous bakewell sandwich cake that I made.  In that recipe I made the cake in two sandwich tins and used jam and icing.

Ingredients

For the cake:

265g unsalted butter, at room temperature
265g caster sugar
4 eggs
265 self raising flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
35g ground almonds
1 teaspoon almond extract
5 tablespoons soured cream

For the icing:

200g icing sugar
2-3 tablespoons hot water, or enough to make a thick, but pourable, icing

To decorate: glace cherries

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C/fan oven 160°C/350°F/gas mark 4.

Line a 20cm square pan with baking paper.  If you prefer, you could use a 30cm x 20cm traybake tin but you will get a ‘flatter’ sponge.

Beat together the butter and sugar until pale, light and whippy.  It should look almost like whipped cream.

Beat in the eggs one at a time.  If the mixture looks like it might curdle beat in some of the flour.

Stir in the flour, baking powder, ground almonds, soured cream and almond extract.

Spoon into the prepared tin and level the surface.

Bake for approximately 45 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out cleanly.  Start checking the cake for ‘done-ness’ after 40 minutes.  NB, if you are using the shallower traybake tin only bake for approximately 30 minutes before checking.

Leave to cool for 10 minutes in the tin; the cake will settle a little.

Remove from the tin and leave to cool completely on a wire rack.

Now make the icing: beat together the icing sugar and water until you have a thick but pourable glaze.  Always add the water gradually – it’s easy to add more, but harder to correct a too runny consistency.

Pour the glaze over the cake and leave to set.

Before fully set decorate the top of the cake with glace cherries.  I chose to leave them whole so they stood proud from the icing.

Bask in the glory of the wonderful thing you have created.

Eat.