Fat Free Cherry Cake Recipe

Cherry harvest at www.frenchvillagediaries.com

Here is my most baked cake recipe; I like to indulge in a slice of cake every day, and making it without fat means I can do so without worrying about the consequences. I generally make it with cherries as in our orchard we have five huge old cherry trees as well as about the same again in younger trees. There are at least three different varieties with red and yellow fruits, all with a slightly different harvest time. In a good year we could pick, over a six-week period, hundreds of kilos of cherries. We can’t pick them all and we can’t use all that we do pick, but the birds and the neighbours help us out there. Our freezer comes into it’s own as a lot of the cherries are stoned using my fantastic Leifheit Preserving Cherrymat Cherry Pitter Machine, Plastic, White, frozen on trays and bagged up to be turned into Fat Free Cherry Cakes all year round. You could of course use any fruit of your choice, if we have them I also use halved plums or peaches and sliced apples, pears or quince, all are delicious.

Cherry stoning at www.frenchvillagediaries.com

Ingredients:

Enough cherries (or fruit) to fill the bottom of a lined flan tin

3 eggs at room temperature

65g sugar

110g plain flour

1 tbsp cornflour

1 tsp baking powder

2 tbsp natural yoghurt

50g ground almonds

a few drops of almond essence

Fat Free Cherry Cake www.frenchvillagediaries.com

Beat the eggs and sugar for at least five minutes until very frothy and pale. Gently fold in the yoghurt and almond essence, and then half the dry ingredients sieved, then the remainder. Try and lose as little of the air as possible. Pour the batter over the cherries and bake in a preheated oven (gas 4) for about 20 mins, or until the top is golden and springs back to the touch. Leave to cool and then turn out upside down onto a plate. This cake will dry our very quickly as there is no butter, however it never lasts too long in our house and we always serve it with a healthy dollop of natural yoghurt which helps to keep it moist and adds a touch of luxury.