Loaf Cake Part 2 ~ Cherry Bakewell Loaf

So here it is... Part 2!

 

 

Today I am sharing with you the second fro my two-part loaf cake blog posts from the two loaf cakes I made for my choir's silent auction at the end of March.  I have had SUCH a hard time deciding which my favourite of the two are.  I mean, the lemon loaf that I wrote up last week is LEMON...  My absolute favourite!  But this Cherry Bakewell inspired almond loaf cake is way up there on my favourites list as well.  Hmm...

 

 

Well, I guess the lucky thing is I have this blog, and I usually post once per week, and seeing as it has been a crazy busy week at work, at home, at everywhere that it is actually nice to be able to finish up this short 2-part loaf cake series and I am able to share both with you all... maybe you can help me decide which you think the best one is!!  Keep reading for today's post, but click here to see last week's lemon loaf :-)

 

 

In addition to the lemon cake, I also wanted to make a loaf cake that was just a little bit different.  I toyed with the idea of a golden syrup cake, and then that inspired me to go with something British... but a little different.  The idea that sprung to mind then was one of my favourites, a Cherry Bakewell.  I mean you have seen me make these a good few times before, in traybake form.  But this time I switched it up a bit and went with an almond loaf cake, with the same white icing, cherry and sliced almond topping to decorate.  Without the shortcrust pastry you would find in the cherry bakewell tart or the jam layer between, it is a simple take on the classic English treat - in loaf form!  Nice and easy to make, with a delicious looking thick white icing spread on top with, quite literally a cherry (or a few!) on top!!

 

This recipe will make a standard loaf pan full, as well as 4 cupcakes.  I made extra cupcakes as I was giving the loaf acke away and wanted to be able to try it myself, and actually ended up doing some Easter decorating and created my Eggs in a Nest Cupcakes :-)  Check them out here!

 

So here goes...

 

Ingredients:

 

9oz unsalted butter, softened

9oz sugar

9oz self raising flour ~ minus 4 1/2 tbsp ~ you will replace this with the ground almonds

4 eggs

4 1/2 tbsp ground almonds

2 1/4 tsp almond extract

Method:

 

1.  Pre-heat your oven to 375°F and grease and line your loaf pan, and cupcake liners 

 

2.  Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

3.  Add the eggs, one at a time - beating well between each addition.

4.  Add the almond extract and mix well.

5.  Sift in the flour and ground almonds and mix until combined.

6.  Pour most of the batter into the loaf pan, and then just a small amount (filling just to half-way) in each cupcake case.

7.  Bake the cupcakes for 15-20 minutes, but the loaf cake for 35-45 minutes, until browned on top, and cooked through ~ you can test with a cake tester/ potato skewer.

8.  Leave to cool and then you can decorate!

 

 For the "icing on top"... I use powdered icing sugar, poured into a cup and then just a few drops of water as I didn't want it to be too runny.  I love the idea of a thick spread of the icing, and thing this is a pretty crucial part to the classic cherry bakewells, a crucial part I wanted to keep!  So keep it thick and spread it on generously! 

For added decoration and staying true to bakewell tarts, and cherry bakewells I added sliced almonds (toasted in the oven for just a couple of minutes to brown them slightly) and added them while they were still not completely cooled as this way they would set into the icing...

And then the cherries!  What would a cherry bakewell be without cherries!?  I lined them down the centre so that every slice, you would get a cherry!  ... Or maybe two if you cut yourself a BIG piece :-D

Funnily enough, it was my husband's Aunt who placed the winning bid on this silent auction loaf cake... and she told me the next morning that after the concert she was already digging into the cake on the way home!  She did share it for breakfast the next morning as well! 

 

SO many of Jonathan's family are almond fans, so I'm sure this cake will be making an appearance again!

 

 

Which would you have picked?  My lemon loaf from last week, or the almond cake this week?!  It is so hard to pick my favourite!

DIY Heart Doughnuts ♥

 

... or should that be Donuts?!  That's probably what lots of you all reading this thought!  It is the 5th year I have been living in Canada, but there are some things I haven't changed in my spelling, or how I say things.  So my apologies to you if you were expecting donuts!  But please believe me, doughnuts and donuts ARE the same great tasting treats we all love!

 

I hope you all had a LOVEly Valentine's Day celebrating ♥ My husband treated me to a delicious dinner he cooked all afternoon ... an incredible lamb roast (my favourite), with mushroom risotto (my favourite favourite!) and then I did dessert... And well, I think you already know what it is!

 

Last year he also did dessert and thought it would be fun to make our own truffles!  Check out last year's Valentine's post to see more on that... He prepared the chocolate truffle, but we scooped and chose the toppings to roll them in - they were so delicious!

 

So this year, I wanted something we both liked, but that also would be fun to do together after dinner... Cue the DIY doughnuts!  During the day I did the prep work for them.  Making the dough, letting it rise, cutting it out into the heart shapes and then letting it rise once again before baking them.

 

That's right - BAKED doughnuts!   SO healthy right?!  I think in comparison to fried yes... still they're doughnuts but whatever - it was Valentine's Day!  Still, they were pretty good!!

 

I'll start with the recipe and pictures... but keep reading to see the fun part of decorating them which is the bit we did together! 

 

I originally found the recipe here on Spark People Recipes, and although I halved the recipe (which made plenty for the 2 of us!) there are a couple of things I would change next time I make the recipe which I will mention here just in case you want to try it too.

 

Ingredients (to make 12-16 heart doughnuts, depending on the size you make!)

 

2 - 2.5 cups all purpose flour

1 tablespoon yeast

1/2 cup milk (we drink 1% so that's what went into these!)

3 tablespoons unsalted butter

1/8 cup granulated sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 egg

 

Method

 

1.  Mix 1 cup of flour with the yeast.

 

 

2.  Heat the milk, butter and sugar until it reaches 140°F (I found this to be when the milk was simmering but not boiling yet).

 

 



 

3.  Add the milk mixture to the flour, along with the eggs, and mix until smooth.  (Here's where I would change something next time... I wasn't convinced that all of my yeast was completely dissolved in the milk.  I might do that separately from the flour next time and then add it afterwards).

 

4.  Add more flour, a little at a time until the dough is smooth.

 

 

5.  Cover and let the dough rise in a warm, draft-free area for 1 hour, until it doubles in size.  

 

6.  Split the dough in half and roll each half into a rectangle.  Using a heart shaped cookie cutter (or 2 as I did for different sizes!) cut out hearts from each half.  Use as much of the dough as possible!

 

 



 



7.  Grease two baking sheets and place the hearts on them.  Let them rise for another 30 minutes and preheat your oven to 375°F. 

 

8.  Bake the doughnuts for 12-15 minutes, until golden brown.

 

... Now for the fun DIY part of the evening.  Decorating the doughnuts (once they were cool!) :)

 

We each had 4 of the best looking ones as our "real" doughnuts to decorate.  But we also had a few small ones each (which I think didn't hold their heart shape as well) and a couple of extra large sized that well, just didn't look as pretty as these!

 

 

Dinner cleaned up and our decorating workstation ready!!  For most of the doughnuts I made a little water icing - powdered sugar and a little water stirred up and ready to use!

 



 

This is one of my favourites that Jonathan made!  Icing on top with cookies and cream crumble all over the top.  I can totally see this one at Tim Horton's!!

 

Here are my four you've already seen up at the top...

 

 

Icing and chocolate sprinkles...

White icing and edible pearls for the classy look...

 

The colourful fun guy dipped in sprinkles!

 



And the pink writing icing stripes on this one... I wouldn't usually choose pink, but well it was Valentine's Day after all ♥

These are Jonathan's featured four!  He has the cookies and cream... a good old fashioned plain doughnut dipped in sugar... the bottom left one might look the same as this but actually it's filled with Strawberry Rhubarb JAM!!  (His favourite!)... and then the final one is a glazed doughnut!

The original recipe said if we shook the hot doughnuts in sugar it would stick... Hmm well we tried this and it didn't work for us!  So we melted some butter and lightly greased them up before dipping them in sugar.  This did stick so it worked for us :)

 

Anddd, with icing and creativity still leftover we also decorated some of the small hearts as well!  

 

We were pretty impressed with the taste of the baked doughnuts and it was a lot of fun to create and decorate these together as part of our Valentine's Day dinner ♥

 

Have a great week & thanks for reading!!

 

*** My blog is 1 year old ***

 

Look back at what I wrote 1 year ago today!

 

Sunday Tea Cakes ~ Click here to read about these pretty mini sponge cakes!