Cherry Crumble Cake

As summer begins to draw to a close the harvest is being gathered in. My garden has been dripping with glorious jewels as first the strawberries, then the raspberries and redcurrants and now the cherries have reached the peak of their delicious sun warmed ripeness.

There has been much jam making and preserving and I am looking forward to the smell of sunshine in the winter, but these were crying out to be popped into a cake.

I wanted the same sort of texture that I get with my rhubarb crumble muffins but this time I wanted it to be in a slicing cake. I made a cakey bottom into which I pressed the fruit and then scattered a rough crumble over the top. Not too sweet, it allows the natural sweetness of the cherries to shine through and it was all gone in seconds!

Ingredients

For the cake

150g Self Raising Flour

¼ tsp cinnamon

50g caster sugar

1 egg

4 tbsp milk

85g butter, melted

300g fresh cherries, pitted

For the crumble

25g plain flour

25g Demerara sugar

25g butter, diced

Method

• Preheat the oven to 180°C, grease and base line a 20cm shallow cake tin
• Whizz all the cake ingredients (apart from the cherries) together in a food mixer until creamy and well combined
• Pour into the prepared tin, scatter the cherries on top and press gently into the mixture
• Rub the butter pieces into the flour until you have a rough breadcrumb texture, stir in the sugar
• Scatter over the cake mixture and press down lightly
• Bake in the preheated oven for 30 – 40 minutes until a skewer poked into the cake comes out clean
• Cool in the tin for 5 mins then turn out onto a wire rack to allow to cool completely (we couldn’t wait that long and ate our first piece when it was still slightly warm)

This recipe has only been tested in the kitchen once so, if you make it, I would love any feedback!