Cherry almond & polenta crumble cake

July is when I love to both cook with and eat all the delicious fruits that are readily available and at their best. I struggled to choose between two of my favourites, plums and cherries, both British and growing very happily in many of my neighbours allotments!

I opted for cherries with this delicious cherry, almond and polenta crumble cake, after looking through one of my very well thumbed cake books. I discovered a cake that I have not made before, so that settled the matter.

The book in question is called ” Gorgeous Cakes” by Annie Bell. She is one of my favourite cookery writers and I also use her “Vegetable Book” whenever  I need vegetable recipe  inspiration. The recipe which I have adapted from her book is the “cherry crumble cake”.

For me, the partnership of cherries and almonds works well and this is what I wanted to focus my recipe interpretation on. So, I added flaked almonds to the crumble topping and used half polenta, half self raising flour for the cake batter. I think that the lemon zest works well with the almost crunchy granular texture of the polenta grains.

I nearly didn’t get going with this because I realised I did not own a cherry stoner. Little did I know that a small veg knife works brilliantly for scooping out the little pips, and it a very satisfying job too. So, that saved me a visit to Lakeland for this week at least!

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Cherry polenta crumble cake

A ripe and fruity cherry sponge topped with a light and nutty crumble topping

Course Cakes, Tea Time

Cuisine British

Keyword polenta crumble cake

Prep Time 10 minutes

Cook Time 1 hour

Total Time 1 hour 10 minutes

Servings 10

Author Laura Scott

Ingredients

For the crumble topping 🙂

• 90 g plain flour
• 50 g light brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 90 g cold unsalted butter diced
• 25 g flaked almonds

For the cake:)

• 100 g unsalted butter softened
• 100 g light brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 90 ml milk
• 65 g self raising flour
• 60 g polenta
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 lemon zest only
• 250 g cherries pitted

Instructions

1. For the crumble topping:)

Put the flour, sugar, cinnamon and butter into a bowl and break down the butter with you fingers until the mixture  looks like breadcrumbs. You could use a food processor.

1. Stir in the oats and flaked almonds

2. For the cake 🙂

3. Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees
4. Butter and line a 20cm cake tin with baking parchment
5. Cream the butter and sugar together 
6. Add the egg, milk, flour, polenta, baking powder and lemon zest. Stir to combine
7. Pour into the prepared tin
8. Place the pitted cherries over the cake mix
9. Drop the mix over the cake and do not pat down. This keeps the crumble lovely and light in texture
10. Bake for between 50/60 minutes until a knife inserted into it comes out clean