Dried Cherry, Chocolate and Almond Cake

I got this recipe from The Sunday Age liftout magazine, 'Sunday Life'. Since they have 'updated' the magazine (made the page bigger and did away with the glossy finish in favour of traditional newspaper), Karen Martini gets a 3 recipe spot each week. Not a bad gig for old Martini, I guess she is neither shaken nor stirred over her good fortune. Sorry, lame Dad joke...

Anyway, I have been pulling out several of her recipes and have been hankering to cook all them, especially this cake recipe. I thought I would try the cake out on my workmates, you can never score too many brownie points or brownies (sorry lame joke again) at work. Unfortunately, this cake was a little disappointing. For one, I think the cooking time was too long by about 10 mins, as the cake was quite dry around the edges. And secondly, the cake was too dense. Normally I am in favour of a nice dense cake, but this recipe took denseness to a whole new level. (Or maybe it was merely the cook who was dense...sorry that's the end of the puns I promise!)

It was also quite a fiddly procedure as I needed to use several bowls and saucepans to pull off the whole procedure. Also the 28cm tin wasn't nearly big enough for the amount of mixture I ended up with, so I baked the remainder in a loaf tin. (No complaints from my parents who scored this portion). However, after stating all these criticisms, I do think it's a recipe that could be tweaked and perfected. Maybe after a few lessons from Karen herself...

Dried Cherry*, Chocolate and Almond Cake

Rich and fudgy, this heavenly cake is a decadent finish to a fine dinner.

150g dried cherries

400g caster sugar, plus 2 tbsp extra

2 knife-tips of bitter almond essence

310g unsalted butter, melted

265g dark chocolate (70 percent cocoa), melted

10 eggs, separated

90g cocoa

150g almond meal

115g sour cream

150g ricotta

double cream, to serve

Preheat oven to fan-forced 140C (160C conventional). Combine cherries, 80ml water and 100g caster sugar in a small pan and simmer over medium heat for 3 minutes, until sugar is dissolved. Add almond essence, stir and remove from heat. Set aside.

Combine butter and chocolate in a medium bowl.

In a separate large bowl, whisk egg yolks with 200g sugar, then fold into chocolate mixture. Fold in cocoa, almond meal, sour cream and half the cherries.

Whisk egg whites until frothy, slowly add remaining 100g sugar and beat until soft, silky peaks form. Fold into chocolate mixture, then pour into a lined 28cm round spring-form cake tin.

Combine ricotta, 2 tbsp extra caster sugar and remaining cherries in a bowl. Dollop mixture over the top of cake.

Bake for about 1 and half hours (the centre will be a little fudgy). Remove from oven and cool to room temperature in the tin.

To serve, dust with cocoa and serve with double cream. Accompany with strong coffee.

*Oh yeah, forgot to mention that this cake originally calls for dried cherries. Now dried cherries are extremely hard to come by in Melbourne. I tried my local Coles and even Leo's Fine Foods in Kew, however neither stocked dried cherries. then I tried trusty old Google and thanks to another food blogger who had diligently walked this path before me, I found out that David Jones is the only place that stocks them. Now this blogger did warn that they were expensive but I thought, bah, they can't be that bad...but yes they were. David Jones retails imported dried cherries from USA for $8.50 per 80 grams. My recipe called for 150g of dried cherries. So I ended up substituting the cherries with cranberries, which ended up working well as the cranberries were sweetened with sugar.