Chocolate Chip Cherry Cakes

I was looking for a small cake to bake for teatime over the holidays. I wanted a cake that would be very similar to a fruit cake in texture and somewhat dense, like the cakes in Great Britain are. Sturdy cakes, not little puffs of air. Cakes that are very much at home on the tea table and enjoyed with hot cups of tea.
I had seen a recipe for these lovely looking little cakes on a blog called Rock Recipes. The author of the blog is a Newfoundlander and I find a great many of his recipes are very similar to the recipes that I grew up with. Not surprisingly many of us Maritimers have roots in the British Isles and some of our traditional recipes are also very similar to British recipes and do not vary much from one Maritime province to another.

Chocolate Chip Cherry Cakes

These little cakes looked perfect for what I was wanting them for. I went and bought the glace (candied) cherries yesterday. I already had everything else in my house.
I baked them this morning and was very pleased with the results. I could not resist enjoying one with a hot cup of chocolate. The rest have been stored in a tin for a bit later on. Stored properly these will cake for several days. They will also freeze well.

WHAT YOU NEED TO MAKE CHOCOLATE CHIP CHERRY CAKES
Very simple baking cupboard ingredients. The only thing you might have to pop out and buy are the cherries.

3/4 cup (172g) butter, room temperature
1 cup (200g) sugar
2 large free range eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp lemon extract
1 1/2 cups (210g) plain all purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup (120ml) warm, undiluted, evaporated milk
3/4 cup (113g) glace cherries, chopped
2/3 cup (118g) chocolate chips (I used a mix of semi-sweet and milk chocolate)

I just used regular salted butter. I never keep unsalted butter in the house. I prefer to keep a butter that I can use for many purposes. If salt offends you you can always reduce the amount of salt in a recipe to compensate.
Glace Cherries are candied cherries. They come in a variety of colors. I had red and green ones. Some of the red ones were starting to change color a bit by being in the same tin with the green. Just wash and dry them before chopping. I chopped each one into quarters.
Chocolate Chip Cherry Cakes

If you can't get glace cherries, feel free to use some dried sour cherries, or maraschino cherries, rinsed and dried. Both work well.
Evaporated milk is milk from a tin that has been treated to remove some of the liquid. Do not confuse it with the sweetened condensed milk. No sugar has been added, and they are not the same thing at all.
Barry uses 3 tsp of lemon extract in his recipe. I felt that was too overpowering and risked the cakes tasting like perfume. I used only 1 tsp and that was plenty. In fact I might even cut that back to 1/2 tsp. Lemon extract has a very strong flavor and perfume that can take over if not used carefully.

HOW TO MAKE CHOCOLATE CHIP CHERRY CAKES
These are fairly simple to make. I found that mine did take a bit longer than the recipe to bake. You will be able to tell when the time is up if you need to keep them in longer or not. The tops should be set and spring back when lightly touched. Mine took an additional five minutes.

Preheat the oven to 325*F/160*C/ gas mark 3. Butter a medium muffin tin really well and dust with flour, shaking out any excess. Set aside.Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time. Beat in the extracts.

Sift the flour and baking powder together in a bowl. Add alternately to the creamed mixture along with the milk, folding it in and making three dry and two wet additions. Fold in the cherries and chocolate chips.

Divide the batter equally amongst the muffin tins.Bake in the preheated oven for 20 minutes, until risen, golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. The top should spring back when lightly touched. (It may take longer. Use your judgement, but don't overbake.)Leave in the tin for a few minutes before removing to a wire rack to finish cooling completely.

At first I thought perhaps these had not turned out and I was a bit disappointed. They came out of the oven well risen, but then they dropped a bit. All of my fear was for naught however.
These are a lovely dense cake with a beautiful buttery flavor, lovely crumb and lots of cherries and chocolate chips. I did dust them with some icing sugar to pretty them up for serving.

Some other small cakes baked here in The English Kitchen that you might enjoy are:

ORANGE BLOSSOM CAKES - Delightful little dense cakes, flavored with orange flower water. Buttery and sweet and iced with a lush buttercream frosting. Orange blossom water is a culinary flavouring which is distilled from the fragrant blossoms of the orange tree. It has a distinctive citrusy floral aroma and adds an unmistakable orange flavor to recipes.

SCOTTISH DUNDEE CAKES - You can either bake this as a large cake or as smaller individual cakes. This is a buttery dense fruited cake, filled with loads of dried currants. Topped with blanched almonds prior to baking, they have a lovely citrus flavor and beautiful texture.

Yield: makes one dozen medium cakesAuthor: Marie Rayner