A Taste of Britain: Cherry Bakewell Tray Bake

I love the chance to bake something new so last Sunday it was a post-church coffee and lunch afternoon so I made sure to dig out some recipes I had been wanting to try for a while.  I knew I wanted to do a tray bake as this would make enough to be a significant contribution to the sweet table and would be easiest to do.  Initially seeing as I work on Saturday I was looking for an easy recipe that wouldn't take too long, but oh well - that didn't happen but I LOVE how it all turned out and although the recipe had many stages it didn't take too long!  I was between two different recipes but that day the Cherry Bakewell won!  (Orange and Marzipan Tray Bake to come another day, another blog post...)

Cherries and Almonds.  Pastry and icing.  Strawberry jam and Cake.  This tray bake has some pretty awesome combinations!

I found the recipe here but instead of buying ready made sweet shortcrust pastry I made it!  Busy time is best time remember!!  Just a simple pastry recipe before going ahead with the rest of the recipe.

Here's how it looked post-oven but pre-slice!  

I kept it like this overnight to keep it fresh and sliced it into small squares (it made 35 in total) Sunday morning before taking most of it to church!  We may have had a square or two for breakfast as well!

What I love about Cherry Bakewell are the combination of the outer pastry edge, the bottom jam layer with spongey almond cake topped off with icing, cherries and almonds.  So yes, I love all of it!  This will be made many MANY more times!  I highly recommend you to try it :-)

And here is the first of my 'A Taste of Britain' blogging series - for all my British baking - keep an eye out for more British inspired bakes and makes coming soon!