Tag Archives: Cherry

Week One Hundred & Sixteen – Mary Berry’s English Cherry Cake & Mississippi Mud Pie

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Week 116 and strangely enough I find myself blogging about this bake on the same day that I actually tackled it! Wonders will never cease! I delved into Mary Berry‘s Baking Bible and found these two recipes- her English cherry cake and Mississippi Mud pie.

I began with the Mississippi mud pie. It began with crushing digestive biscuits, combining with melted butter to create the base. I always find Mary is a bit stingy in this part so I doubled the amount of biscuits and butter and I felt it was just about enough. I pressed it into the tin and got on with the next step of the recipe.

Mary Berry's Mississippi Mud pie

Mary asks you to put the chocolate, butter and water into a pan and melt gently. In another bowl, whisk six eggs (!) with the single cream and dark sugar and add the chocolate mix when melted and cooled slightly. Whisk all together, pour onto the base and cook. One word of warning, if you fancy tackling this bake, if you are using a loose bottomed tin, then stand it on a baking tray as it may leak slightly. Once baked, Mary tells you to leave it in the tin until cool. It will recede from the edges and sink/settle slightly. Once cool, add some whipped cream to the top and serve.

Kims mississippi mud pi side view

The second recipe was Mary Berry’s English cherry cake. One of the first things Mary tells you is to quarter the cherries, wash and dry thoroughly. I did all of this and covered the cherries in a fine layer of flour.

Mary Berry's English Cherry Cake

Put all the other ingredients in a bowl andmix thoroughly, then fold in the cherries so hopefully they don’t all go to the bottom. Put the mix into a lined cake tin, I chose a square one rather than Mary’s recommendation of a circular one. Bake for the recommended time.

The cake came out well but I was disappointed to see that my cherries occupied the lower half of the cake rather than being distributed evenly- must try harder!

Kim's english cherry cake

The Easter weekend is coming up but I am going to be a little busy so the bake and the blog may be a little later than the usual weekend.

The countdown has now reached the heady heights of…

42

Week One Hundred & Five – Mary Berry’s Pineapple & Cherry Cake

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Week 105 and this blog is a little late- nothing new as this time of year brings other pressures! I delved with pleasure into Mary Berry’s Baking Bible and came up with this lovely tea loaf type bake. The recipe was one of Mary’s throw all the ingredients together and mix. The only tricky bit was washing the syrup off the cherries, cutting them into quarters and drying them. The pineapple came out of a tin. I  mixed it all together, lined a loaf tin with a liner from the 99p shop and put it in the oven and set the timer.

Mary Berry's Pineapple & Cherry Loaf

When the timer pinged, I checked the loaf and the skewer test came out clean. I left it to cool in the tin. I took my photo then cut it in half and sent half to the chief testers. Mary does tell you to keep it in the fridge as it will go moldy in a tin in a warm kitchen.

Kim's pineapple & cherry loaf

I can now reveal my finished Christmas cakes as those who are getting them should have received them by now so here are some photos of the mini victorian christmas cakes in the boxes I found in the £ shop and the tiny christmas cakes I made in the silicone moulds and then sandwiched together with marzipan and iced. I didn’t get these boxes from the £ shop but on ebay. I had such fun printing our labels too but my kitchen up until this weekend looked like an Elf factory!

Christmas cake gift Kim's victorian christmas cake

 

Kim's packaging Kim's mini christmas cakes

Well hubby and I will do a seasonal blog shortly but from kimsideas, I would like to wish you all season’s greetings for this time of year.

seasons greetings

I hope for all those of you who celebrate that you don’t end up spending pretty much all of one day wrapping as I did this year- I can’t help it- I love wrapping the presents and making them look pretty but is it exhausting!

stressy wrapping!

Week Forty Eight – Mary Berry’s Cherry Loaf Cake

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Here at last is week forty eight’s posting, we came back from holiday mid week and suddenly I had a pile of washing and ironing the size of Ben Nevis and all thoughts of updating my blog went out of the window! The apple and cinnamon cake from last week had just been polished off and we were feeling a bit “caked out” so I chose Mary Berry’s cherry loaf cake because I love cherries– hubby is not so keen, and I could freeze it to enjoy later.

Mary Berry's Cherry Loaf Cake

Mary’s recipe was straight forward, add all the ingredients in a bowl, except for the cherries and mix well. Fold in the cherries which I had to wash, dry and then quarter. Mary asks you to line a loaf tin, but on one of my shopping trips, the 99p store has loaf tin liners which I purchased and I used one of these. In to the oven it went for what seemed like forever- but was actually about an hour and a quarter. When taken out, it smelled lovely and was a golden brown colour. I let it cool and then popped it in the freezer for later enjoyment.

Kim's Cherry Laof Cake

I am loving Tuesday nights when The Great British Bake Off is on. As I said before, my skills are not up to the show’s expected levels but I love watching what they create or tackle the new challenges. I am particularly loving the artistic and creative talent of Frances, but it is early days yet!