Exceedingly Good Cherries

Whilst I was away on holiday, Laura went along to The Strawberry Farm in Aspley Guise. Despite it's name, they sell cherries there to the public during the summer, harvested from their 1000 trees. She came home with several pounds of beautiful dark cherries and amazingly managed to resist scoffing the lot, instead making them into batches of Cherry Jam and Cherry & Almond Jam for Jammy Cow.

I have been making Cherry & Almond Jam from the cherries that grow in my garden for years now and when people ask me about it I always say that it tastes like cherry bakewell. Weirdly, however, I've had very little experience with cherry bakewells - beyond eating them! I have to confess that Mr Kiplin's individual ones are the ones filed as my mental image. I have never, ever had a go at making a cherry bakewell and didn't actually know what went into them until I did a recipe search on the internet. You know, the only cherry that goes into a cherry bakewell is the half a one on top! Even the jam used usually is strawberry or raspberry!

Well, with a fresh batch of Cherry & Almond Jam at my disposal I decided it was time to make my own version of a cherry bakewell - only this time with ingredients that have actual cherries in!

Individual Cherry Bakewells

1 sheet of Jus-Rol sweet all butter shortcrust pastry
1 x 110g Jammy Cow Cherry & Almond Jam

3 oz (85g) self-raising flour
2 oz (55g) butter at room temperature
2 oz (55g) caster sugar
1 large egg
2 drops of almond extract
4 oz (110g) icing sugar
6 glace cherries

Preheat oven to 190°C. Cut out 12-16 pastry circles and place them into aluminium cases in a suitable baking tin. Blind bake the cases for about 10 minutes. Allow to cool for a few minutes then put about half a teaspoon of jam into the bottom of each pastry case. Cream together the butter and sugar then mix in the egg and almond extract. Sift in the flour and mix to form a batter. Place a teaspoon of the mixture on top of the jam and bake for 10 to 12 minutes until risen and golden. Cool on a wire rack. Mix the icing sugar with a tiny amount of water until to forms a stiff, gloopy icing. Dollop icing on top of each cake and finish with half a glace cherry on each tart.