Cherries and Almonds: Cherry Almond Cake

My Thermomix has been helping me a lot lately with catering. Last weekend it was an 8-course wine tasting dinner for 70 people for Tongham Village Hall, and this weekend it’s a more casual 6-course wine tasting for the Twinning Association of Rushmoor. My Thermomix – or rather my Thermomix brigade of two extra pairs of hands in the kitchen – helped me at every step along the way, with every course, cutting my prep time down to about 1% of what it would have been had I been working by hand! Cooking for large numbers really is very fast and easy with Thermomix!

Tonight I needed to make mini Cherry Almond cakes to go along with some Polish cherry vodka (yum!) so I got out my trusty and earmarked copy of Fast and Easy Cooking, the 300-recipe cookery book included free with every Thermomix TM31 purchased from UK Thermomix, and immediately found a recipe. It calls for glace cherries but I wanted to use sweet, fresh cherries instead, so I did, and the result is scrumptious!

Thermomix Cherry Almond Cake
Recipe from Fast and Easy Cooking. Originally calls for glacé cherries but I substituted an equal amount of frozen and thawed pitted sweet cherries for a stunning effect. Janie Turner says. “For those who love glacé cherries, this is the ultimate cake.” Serves 12 or more in one large tin, 12 muffins or 48 mini cakes.

Ingredients
230 g granulated sugar
120 g blanched almonds (I used unblanched to a good effect)
230 g unsalted butter, cut in pieces
4 large eggs
230 g plain flour
½ tsp baking powder
2 good pinches of salt
½ tsp vanilla extract
1 Tbsp milk
250 g natural colour glacé cherries (or 480-500 g frozen pitted sweet cherries, divided)

80 g flaked almonds to decorate
2 Tbsp Demerara sugar

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180° C/350° F. Weigh the sugar and almonds into the TM bowl and grind 20 seconds/Speed 9.
2. Add the butter and mix a few seconds/Speed 3 until crumbly. (Madame Thermomix’s Tip: Don’t over mix or it will start to form a ball and be very hard to mix.)
3. Add the eggs, flour, baking powder, vanilla and milk. Mix 20 seconds/Speed 5 until you have a smooth cake batter.
4. Scrape down the sides of the TM bowl with the spatula. Mix for a few seconds/Speed 5. Pour the batter into the greased and lined cake tin (Janie Turner uses a large roasting tin and Madame Thermomix used two silicone mini muffin moulds.)

Madame Thermomix’s Tips:

If using glacé cherries, arrange them on the batter and sprinkle with the flaked almonds and Demerara sugar.

If using frozen pitted cherries, add 250 g of them to the batter and mix a few seconds/Speed 5 to chop them in. Place one pitted cherry into the bottom of each mini muffin cup (or a few into the bottom of a regular-sized muffin cup) and fill two-thirds full with batter. Sprinkle with flaked almonds if desired.

Bake a large cake for 35 to 50 minutes (timing differs for different sized cake tins and muffins); bake mini muffins 15 minutes. Cool 5 minutes in the tin, then turn out to finish cooling. Sprinkle with flaked almonds and Demerara sugar or with icing sugar before serving.

Bon appétit !

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