Cherry Bundt Cake

Hubby loves Cherry Cake and where I hail from, it is a regular feature on many tables at dessert time or served with a cup of tea anytime.
And it seems everyone has a favourite recipe, all them a little different.  Some specify Carnation milk, cake flour or real butter or custard icing.
  I have several recipes and being me, I tend to use the ingredients I have on hand.  If I have bottled cherries I'll use those; if all I can find in the cupboard is glazed then I'll use them.  I don't usually have cake flour so I use the regular.  Lately I haven't been keeping regular milk in the house, only almond milk.  So for this recipe I used the almond milk half diluted with water.  I was afraid it would change the ultimate colour of the batter because almond milk has a kind of muddy colour.  But I needn't have worried; the batter still turned out the same white/golden colour as usual.

Here is the recipe I used, one that has been in my recipe file for a long, long time.  I haven't used it in awhile because it calls for 5 eggs which is a lot, but son-in-law just gave me another one of those flats of pee wee eggs so I had extras.

Cherry Bundt Cake

1 1/2 cups of butter (I used half real and half margarine)
2 2/3 cups sugar
5 eggs
1 tsp. almond flavouring
3 cups flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup milk
2 cups quartered cherries

Beat butter, sugar, eggs one at a time, and almond flavouring till fluffy and well blended.  You'll need a large bowl.  I always misjudge this and start out with a too small bowl, duh.

Whisk flour, baking powder and salt together.

Add dry ingredients to the butter mixture alternately with the milk, a little at a time and mixing well.

Fold in cherries.

Pour into prepared pan.  I actually used a tube pan, well greased.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 75 - 80 minutes.  I usually have to cover it with tin foil to prevent over browning.  I also begin checking for doneness after an hour or so.


Here's where I went wrong.  Leave it to me.

I thought this time I would not quarter the cherries. I had this image of lovely large cherries floating throughout the cake and showing so well in the final slices so I left the bottled cherries whole.  I did use a little of the flour to dust them, theoretically to keep them from sinking in the baking batter.  Well, mine sank anyway.  Gravity won out, I suppose. LOL

So instead, I have a row of lovely cherries marching across the bottom of each slice.  Don't get  bright ideas like me!  However, happily this doesn't affect the taste and the cake tasted very good anyway. 

I used my usual butter icing recipe which is just a basic butter frosting.  In this case, 1/2 cup real butter, 1 1/4 cups icing sugar, and 1 tsp. vanilla.

Hope there is something good marching across your plate this week.