Cherry bomb

For someone who hasn't baked many cakes at all, I've been thinking of nothing else lately.  I'm loving it.  But not the type that need lots of work with icings and piping. Easy cakes all the way for me!

It was another wild winters weekend, so the oven was kept on to both warm the house and for me to make some things to warm us up.  I made my no knead bread with huge success again, such a great recipe that one. I gave the fridge a big clean out too and threw alot of things out that had been lurking in the back dark reaches but found some morello cherries that needed using up.  I used some of them quite a few months back to make a black forrest cake.  So instead of piffing them I thought I'd try them out in a different way with things I had on hand; a Morello cherry & walnut cake. Truth be told, it was meant to have hazelnuts and white sugar but I didn't have either, so I paired them with my favourite nut, walnuts, and brown sugar instead.  The result was fabulous, a nutty texture and moist from the cherries, it has the tick of approval.

Morello cherry cake
4 eggs
200g butter at room temperature, or if like me you bake on a whim and don't have it out, cut into small cubes and microwave on low power for a few minutes should do the trick
1 cup s.r.flour
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup ground walnuts
1 tspn cinnamon
1 x 670g jar morello cherries, strained of juice
topping - reserve an extra 1/2 cup of ground walnuts and 2-3 tspns of white sugar to sprinkle on top

I have a little helper who loves cracking
the eggs and licking the beaters

Preheat oven to 180c. Grease and line a cake tin, I used my trusty round spring form tin.
Beat the butter and sugar with electric beaters until fluffy. Gradually add the eggs, one at a time so they don't curdle.  
Once all well incorporated, add the flour & cinnamon in 3 batches, not all at once.
Fold in the nuts with a spatula and pour batter into tin, smoothing it out.  Drop the cherries on top, spreading evenly over and sprinkle the extra nuts and sugar on top.

Cook for 40 minutes or until there is no wobble.
Serve with cream or custard, and definately great as a pudding, we had it warm and it hit the spot just nicely!!

Ciao, Jan