Fresh Cherry Cake

It was the Australia Day long weekend last weekend, so I took advantage of the extra day off to go and visit my mother interstate.  The days are long and hot in Queensland at the moment, and summer fruit is in abundance.

Mum had bought me a lot of cherries (500g) for just three days, and I didn't want to waste them, so I decided to make a Fresh Cherry Cake (against my mother's wishes - she doesn't like me using her kitchen).

The recipe that I chose for my cake came from An Italian in My Kitchen.  You can find it here.  I chose this recipe for its simplicity - oil instead of butter (my mother only has margarine), not too many steps, and not too overdone.  There wasn't any Greek yoghurt at home so I used a little cream and upped the milk. The hardest part was pitting the cherries without a cherry pitter or even a skewer - I ended up chopping the cherries in half and removing the pit by hand.  It was a little messy, but pitting cherries is messy no matter how you do it - just make sure you do it over the sink and protect your clothes from any stray juice.

I think my cake came up quite handsomely and it tasted delicious.  I paired my slice with a little icecream:

When it is cherry season at your place, make this cake!  You will need (with my adaptations to suit what I had on hand):

2 cups pitted cherries
1 1/4 cups + 2 tablespoons plain flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda (bicarbonate of soda)
2 large eggs
1/2 cup + 2 1/2 tablespoons sugar (hey, I did what Rosemary said and it worked)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup canola oil or other flavourless vegetable oil
1/4 cup light cream
1/2 cup milk

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius, and grease and line (with baking paper) an 8" springform pan and put it on a baking tray (so that the butter or oil you greased your pan with doesn't leak into the bottom of your oven during baking).

Sift the flour, baking powder and baking soda together into a bowl and set aside.

Crack the eggs and place with the sugar into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment (though the paddle is fine!!) and beat together until creamy, fluffy and roughly doubled in volume.  Beat in the vanilla extract, then pour in the oil slowly in a steady stream, continuing to whisk.

Change the mixer attachment to the paddle.  Combine the milk and cream in a cup or jug, add to the cake mixture and combine well.  Eyeball the flour into thirds and add a third at a time to the cake batter, gently just combining each lot of flour with the cake batter before adding the next lot.  Don't overbeat unless you want a hockey puck.

Remove the bowl from the mixer.  Using a rubber spatula, gently fold half of the pitted cherries through the cake batter, then scrape the batter into the lined springform pan.  Top the batter evenly with the remaining cherries and press them down gently so they meld with the top of the cake.

Bake the cake in the preheated oven for approximately 45 minutes or until cooked through and lightly golden.  (Use a cake tester and see if it comes out clean when pushed into the middle of the cake, or press gently on the middle of the cake and it will spring back if cooked.)

Remove the cake from the oven and allow it to cool in the tin for around 20 minutes (fruity cakes tend to be more fragile than others and can fall apart if unmoulded too soon) before unmoulding onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Slice, serve and enjoy!!