Cherry Traybake

Since tidying out the fruit cage last week, it suddenly dawned on me that I still have a few bags of assorted fruit from last summer and that when this years crop gets into full swing, I won't have the room to store it! This bag of frozen cherries was the remainder of a tray of local fruit my parents bought me and I couldn't bear wasting them, so I hunted out a recipe to do them justice, even after months in the freezer they are still incredibly tasty! The other bonus of this recipe for me, was that I had been given a pot of homemade cherry jam from a lovely friend and it gave me the opportunity to crack it open.

I halved the amount of ingredients and used a smaller tray as there is only three of us, but my cake is thicker than the photo in the original recipe photo and took considerably longer to cook (about 50 minutes total)

You will need a 39x32cm tray bake tin Serves 24

400g butter

400g caster sugar

1tsp vanilla extract

2 lemons, zest grated

8 eggs

500g plain flour

6 1/2 tsp baking powder

4 tbsp cherry jam

800g cherries

icing sugar for dusting

Preheat the oven to 170degree C/150 C fan/ Gas 3. Grease and line your tin. Beat the butter, sugar, vanilla extract and a pinch of salt together until creamy. Beat in the lemon zest, then beat in the eggs one at a time. Mix the flour and baking powder together and stir in to creamed mixture.

Spoon half the mixture into the tin and smooth out. Drizzle over the jam. Spoon in the remaining mixture and smooth out. Sprinkle over half the cherries. Bake for 20 minutes.

Remove from the oven, sprinkle over the remaining cherries and bake for a further 15 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Allow to cool.

Cut into 24 squares and sprinkle with icing sugar.

#baking