Cherry crumble cake – Annie Bell’s Gorgeous Cakes
This week’s bake comes courtesy of the book I was given at Christmas by my parents – it’s full of great looking cakes (well gorgeous as the name implies) that I was keen to try as soon as possible. I landed upon the cherry crumble cake as a long time fan of cake, cherry and crumble, I thought this would be a great one to try.
Making the cake was relatively easy, once again my arms getting a bit of a workout from the beating involved of the butter, but other than that nothing too strenuous. It’s been a while since I’ve made a crumble of any description and I forgot how oddly relaxing it can be to create the necessary crumbs, than again, maybe I’m just a bit odd.
I can honestly say that this is the first time I’ve ever cooked a cake and got it out of the oven to find that it looked exactly like the photo accompanying the recipe. I amazed myself as the golden crumbs sat in the exact same place as on the photo – and I hadn’t even been trying to achieve that.
The cake itself was lovely, and the crumble topping was pretty good too – at a push I’d say this could do with being a touch crisper for my liking. I think the one thing that possibly let this down was the cherries, as to my mind they weren’t quite as flavour intense as they should have been – these were tinned and while it saved me the job of having to pit them, I get the feeling that I would possibly use fresh red cherries next time for a punchier flavour.
One of the best things about the cake was that it was delicious hot or cold, and lasted well too. 3 days later and I was still enjoying the last remnants of the cake – always a bonus in my book. [continues]
Photo setup:
For some reason I find it a bit more difficult to make whole cakes look attractive than cupcakes, muffins or biscuits. It could have something to do with layering and patterns making for more attractive cakes, or I could just be imagining it.
Anyway, this was once again taken in my ironing board home studio set-up. I’ve gone for a few different backgrounds here, I really like the birds paper but I am concerned it is a little fussy for a food shot.
These were taken either with my 50mm or the 35mm lens I currently have on loan, but if you’d like to know more details about the data for each specific photo, please check my Flickr stream.
Back to the usual:
Taste: 3.5/5 I liked it a lot, don’t get me wrong, but I knock some off for not quite crisp enough crumble and less than punchy flavoured cherries – both things that could easily be improved on.
Difficulty: 1/5 Extremely easy, and a pleasure to make
Chance of remake: I’d like to experiment not only with better cherries, but with other fruits at some point.
You can find the cherry crumble cake recipe in Gorgeous Cakes by Annie Bell, available on Amazon. BBC Good Food also do a blackberry and apple crumble cake which you could try your hand at.
I’ve been using the Good Food recipe to make individual muffin size cakes with Pear and Berries – works really well, just a bit more time intensive in having to arrange each cake. Trying the recipe with blueberries this week. These are the ones everyone wants at the moment, I also put them in the microwave for 20 seconds and serve with creme fraiche as a pudding.
Tip – I use frozen berries, it defrosts when cooking, and keeps its shape and flavour. Buy bags of mixed fruit and just use what you need. Sainsburys Black Forest is very good!
Hi trudy,
Thanks for your comment – sounds good with creme fraiche!
I love the idea of frozen fruits too, I’ve read lots of recipes that use them – sadly my freezer is the size of a shoe box so there’s not much spare room in there… when I’m a real grown up and have a chest freezer, I should imagine it will be stuffed with them, along with home-made casseroles that I will make in giant vats =)
Amy