I really like cherry cakes, made with glace cherries. I came across a recipe for Cherry Madeira cake that sounded nice and simple. A madeira cake doesn’t have anything to do with the islands of the same name. It’s actually named that because it was considered the perfect accompaniment for a glass of madeira wine, a fortified wine from the Madeira Islands particularly popular in the 18-19th Centuries, and it really hails from Britain. It is traditionally flavoured with lemon, but the addition of cherries is a popular alternative. It’s a very buttery sponge and a little goes quite a long way.
Well, I said it seemed like a simple recipe but I ended up making it three times before it seemed to work properly. The first two times, the centre of the cake ended up sinking dramatically, ending up with odd, u-shaped slices. It still tasted really good! I thought, after the first occasion, that my self-raising flour might have been getting a bit elderly (especially since I had a baking hiatus when my oven was out of action) but the second cake, with new flour, ended up even more dramatically sunken. In the end I decided that it might be a combination of over-beating the mixture and the baking pan I was using. On the third occasion I gently mixed in the flour, not beating as I had in the previous iterations, and I used my brand-new metal loaf tin-success!
A note on the cherries. My local store only has a mix of red and green cherries, oddly festive-looking, and I used these in the first instance. Later I did source red-only cherries from the Bulk Barn and these have been used in the last version (maybe the more traditional look). It’s always difficult to keep cherries from sinking to the base in cakes, so rinsing off the syrup, patting the fruit dry and then dusting with flour seems to help, as does leaving a few fruits to be pushed into the top of the batter once it is in the tin.
| 220 g/7.7 oz self-raising flour (plus 1 tbsp to dust the cherries) |
| 175 g/6 oz granulated or caster sugar* (plus a small amount to dust the top of the cake) |
| 175g/6 oz butter, softened |
| 3 large eggs |
| 2 tsp vanilla extract |
| 1 tsp baking powder |
| 150g/5.2 oz glacé cherries |
Preheat the oven to 350˚F/325˚F convection/180˚C/ 160˚C fan/Gas 4. On my last attempt, I used 325˚F convection.
Grease a 2 lb/900 g loaf tin. Line it also, if preferred.
Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.
Place the flour and baking powder in a separate bowl and whisk to combine.
Rinse the cherries under cold running water, pat dry then dust with the extra flour. Set aside
Add the eggs, one at a time, to the butter/sugar mixture, beating between each addition. Add 1 tbsp of the flour if the mixture starts to curdle. Beat in the vanilla extract.
Gently mix in the remainder of the flour/baking powder mixture. Do not beat this or the cake will sink.
Fold in about ¾ of the cherries. Transfer the batter to the greased loaf pan and level off the top. Press the remaining cherries into the top of the batter and sprinkle over a little caster sugar.
Bake, 45-60 minutes. The cake is done when a skewer comes out clean.
Leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes. Slide a plastic spatula around the edges of the cake then turn out onto a rack to cool completely.
It is a substantial cake, very rich and with lovely bites of sweet cherry. I’m pleased that I seem to have ironed out the issues. One thing this time was that the cake didn’t take as long to bake. the recipe said 1 hour, but mine was done in 50 minutes, and could perhaps have come out a couple of minutes earlier. It’s definitely worth keeping an eye on it from about 45 minutes onwards. Now all I need is a glass of madeira wine, although I’ll make do with a nice cup of tea.
The Pudding Queen 