cherry almond tea cakes

my grandma turned 94 earlier this month. 94! And she's doing well! She lives with my parents, but she always has, and she doesn't go on trips anymore but she still goes out to bingo every Friday! I need to take up bingo.

Anyway, she likes cherries, so I made these cherry almond tea cakes for her birthday dinner.


They call for fresh bing cherries with the stems, but the one store I was able to get to the day I had to make them did not have them. So I wouldn't be stuck with cherry-less almond tea cakes, I got a bag of frozen dark sweet cherries. Then stopped by the drug store for some cherry cordial candies, which I thought would be brilliant.

First, some notes from the recipe... (I've been adding notes to recipes I bookmark using delicious, it's really proved very useful!)

The 1-1/2 cup plus 2 Tbsp (1-1/4 sticks) butter confused me...it's 1 and 1/4 sticks, I consulted Martha's recipe she amended. Bad baker that I am, I've never heard of almond meal, nor was it at the A&P, surprise. I chopped up almond slivers, worked fine. Skipped the brandy as I had none and added vanilla extract instead. In the end I definitely needed more cherry flavor. The frozen cherries baked up fine but didn't so much taste very cherry-ful, and the cordials, those were a disaster.

Here's what it looks like when it works, and when it doesn't.

First, the frozen cherry variety. Again, not enough cherry flavor, would definitely be better with fresh cherries. But look at that cute little cherry in the middle! :oD


And here's the cherry cordial chocolate disaster.


Some of them actually did make it out of the pan, and while they were warm and gooey they tasted delicious. But the issue is the juice that surrounds the cordial is not supported by the cupcake. It melts away and bubbles out of the cups and on to the pan. Where as it cools is becomes hard candy.


Nightmare. But here's one more of the pretty ones to even it out. More on the flickr page as usual!