Liqueur Cherry Cake

Liqueur Cherry Cake is a variation on the Walnut Oil Cake I wrote about here. It uses my home made liqueur cherries (you could substitute liqueur morello cherries) and is gluten free (so long as you are careful and use baking powder that explicitly states on the packet that it is gluten free, or sans gluten in French). It keeps well for several days and serves 8 - 12.

I made the mistake of sprinkling the top of the cake with cherry liqueur rather than the cut surface. It dissolved the icing sugar dusting, making the cake look like it was covered in lichen or fungus...

Ingredients
For cake
3 eggs
150 g soft dark brown sugar
150 ml neutral tasting oil (canola, sunflower...)
30 ml cold water
1/3 cup liqueur cherries, stoned and chopped
100 g almond meal
100 g buckwheat flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp powdered ginger
1 tsp cinnamon

For filling
150 g cream cheese
2 tbsp icing sugar
1 tbsp cherry liqueur
2 tbsp liqueur cherries, stoned and chopped

Method

1. Line a deep sided 20 cm round cake tin.
2. Turn the oven on to 180°C.
3. Mix the almond meal, buckwheat flour, baking powder and spices in a bowl, making sure there aren't any lumps. Optional: You can reduce the almond meal and buckwheat flour to 75 g each and add 50 g of dessicated coconut.
4. Beat the eggs and sugar in another bowl for 2 minutes, until thick and pale.
5. Add oil and water and beat it in.
6. Mix in the cherries.
7. Fold in the dry ingredients. 
8. Pour into the tin and cook for 50 minutes (test if it's done with a skewer).
9. Cool in the tin on a rack.
10. Make the filling by beating together the ingredients (sift in the icing sugar so it is lump free).
11. When the cake is cold take it out of the tin and paper lining and cut it in half horizontally.
12. Optional: sprinkle a tablespoon of cherry liqueur on each of the cut halves.
13. Spread the cream cheese filling on one cut half and put the other on top.
14. Dust the cake with icing sugar.

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