Chi Ching Cherries!

Okay firstly sorry for the silence, I have been busy as a bee, lots of cooking and baking of course, but very little time to sit down here and get it all blogged!

So I will, over the next few days, tell you what I've been doing, but for now, here is a recipe for a Cherry Brandy Cake I made for my mothers birthday on Tuesday.  There is a famous story that we tell where my mother decided to make chocolate cherries for Christmas presents, on a whim, and began immediately.  It turned out, as the chocolate was hardening on its alcoholic little fruits, that the bottle of brandy that my mother had used, was a bottle of aged XO, which brandy lovers and barmen will recognise as one of the most expensive drinks one can order! My father had been given it as a present and was, of course, saving it for a special occasion.  My mother went through various possibilities, such as adding tea to the bottle, or dropping the bottle on the stone floor, before fessing up and taking it on the chin! So it was with a nod to that, that I set about creating a cake version of the expensive sweets and here is the recipe!

Chocolate Cherry Brandy Cake

You'll need

120gms darkest chocolate

60gms butter

300gms cherry jam

150gms self raising flour

2 eggs

150gms caster sugar

70mls brandy

Method

Melt the butter and chocolate in a pan, take off the heat and stir in the sugar, jam, brandy and eggs with a pinch of salt.  Add the flour and stir through.

Pour into a cake tin and bake for about a half and hour on a medium heat until a cake skewer comes out clean.

Decorate with a chocolate frosting and glace cherries.