Ingredients
- 400g fresh cherries, pitted and cut in half
- 50g cherry jam
- 180g pouch Merchant Gourmet Whole Chestnuts
- 120g plain flour
- 85ml olive oil
- Zest of 1 lemon
- 170g caster sugar
- 4 eggs, separated
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 170C. Line the base of a 20cm round cake tin with parchment. Spoon the cherry jam onto the parchment and spread evenly then arrange the cherries on top, cut side down, so that they are tightly packed.
- Blitz the whole chestnuts in a food processor until they resemble crumbs. Don’t go too fine as it’s nice to have some texture in the sponge.
- Add the chestnuts to a bowl with the flour, olive oil and lemon zest and stir to combine.
- Whisk the sugar and egg yolks together until it reaches ribbon consistency, this should take around 10 minutes.
- In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites to stiff peaks with an extra teaspoon of sugar.
- Stir together the nut mixture with the egg yolks until well combined, then very gently fold in the egg whites a third at a time, being careful not to overmix.
- Once just combined, spoon into the prepared cake tin on top of the cherries and smooth over.
- Pop in the oven for 30-35 minutes or until a skewer comes clean when inserted. Once ready, remove from the oven and leave to cool for 10 minutes in the tin.
- Then, carefully turn it out onto a wire rack to cool completely before serving with a scoop of ice cream, a glug of custard, a drizzle of cream or all three - I won’t judge.
