Cherry Crumble Cake

Last week I tried a cherry cake recipe with streusel topping from Cooking.com. I wanted to use up the leftover cherries from New Year's. Of course I didn't completely follow the recipe. I used a different streusel topping and changed a couple things in the cake. The batter was more like cookie dough than cake batter and tasted much better the second day after it had settled.

Cherry Crumble Cake

streusel:

3/4 c whole wheat flour

1/2 c brown sugar

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

nutmeg

1/2 c cold butter

1. Mix all ingredients with pastry cutter until it forms small crumbs.

2. Put mixture into the refrigerator.

cake:

3/4 c + 1 Tbl. butter

1 c sugar

2 eggs

2 1/4 c sifted flour

2 tsp. baking powder

1 c bottled or canned red cherries, drained

nutmeg

vanilla

almond extract

1. Preheat oven to 350 F.

2. Grease and paper an 8 inch springform pan. (I used a 9 inch)

3. Cream butter and sugar until fluffy.

4. Add vanilla and almond extract. (I probably put about a teaspoon each)

5. Add eggs one at a time, beating well.

6. Add flour and baking powder and mix well.

7. Spread half the cake batter evenly into the bottom of the pan. --This is where things got difficult. The batter is thick and stiff, so I was basically pressing it with the back of a spoon to try and spread/smooth it out.

8. Spread cherries over the cake batter.

9. Sprinkle nutmeg over cherries.

10. Spread remaining batter over the cherries. --Again, not easy.

11. Sprinkle cold streusel over the cake.--I didn't end up using all of it. You can kind of see in the photo how it sort of formed a crust because I used it to fill in the gaps where the cake batter didn't reach the edge of the pan.

12. Cook for 45 minutes or until cake tester comes out clean.

I think the almond extract is what really made this good. Like I said, it was much better cold the second day than right out of the oven. I haven't decided what recipe I'm going to try this week. I should probably stay away from the sweets.