This week as I mentioned on my Monday post, we’ve got an extra special Making Blyton’s food because this cherry cake recipe comes from the woman herself!
The cherry cake recipe, which I found in the Enid Blyton Society Journal was actually first published in a book called ‘As We Like it’ Cookery Recipes by Famous People which was published in 1950.
How could I resist baking the actual cake that Blyton used to bake or had baked for tea and supper? Well, I couldn’t quite frankly but there was a problem. Due to my lateness in finding the recipe, I seem to inadvertently missed cherry season. There is not a supermarket down here in the south east that seems to have cherries in anymore. So I had to go to my fall back option: glacé cherries. In fact it was Fiona’s suggestion because I was panicking that I wouldn’t be able to make the cake.
So, let’s start with the ingredients Blyton provides us with:
- 1/2lb of margarine (or 226g. Also I used butter)
- 6oz of Castor sugar (or 170g)
- 6 oz of Flour (or 170g)
- 3 Eggs
- 6 oz of Cherries (170g)
- Few drops of Vanilla essence.
As you can see, its a fairly simple ingredients list and at first I wondered about not having any visible rising agent in the mix, but as the baking progressed it turned out not to be a problem.
So, worry not as I discovered. Now here’s your method:
- Beat the margarine and sugar til soft and creamy.
- Drop in eggs one by one and beat well in between each.
- Add flour gradually
- And lastly cherries and flavouring.
- If too stiff, add a little milk
- Bake in a moderate oven (I used gas mark 6) to start (about 30 minutes) and then drop to Regulo 3. (I took this to mean gas mark 3. Seemed to work well!)
- It takes about 1 and a half to 2 hours to bake. (In my oven it took an hour before the skewer came out clean- but see how you go!)
And that is literally all to the cherry cake! Such a simple thing! However there is no note of how big the tin ought to be, or how you should go about greasing the tin. I chose a smallish tin, with a removable bottom which helped with getting the cake out after baking and greased the tin with a little bit of the butter I used for the mixture.
Anyway the cake rose nicely and looks like a lovely vanilla-y sponge with some cherries inside. I’m just sorry that I didn’t get to make it with fresh cherries. However, next time!
Let me know what you think of the cake, and give it a try! We as Blytonites should have a proper go at this cake as it was written by our favourite author!
- The ingredients
- The recipe
- Step1
- Step 1 part 2
- Step 2
- Step 2 part 2
- Step 3
- Step 4 and 5
- Challenge, get cake mix into baking tin!
- Cake out of oven
- Cake out of tin
- Side view
Well done Stef! Great photos and the cake looks lovely. I bet it tastes as good.
Impressed.
Francis
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I have never known anyone make a cherry cake with fresh cherries – always glacé cherries! Just as well you couldn’t get fresh ones!
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