Chocolate And Cherry Cake

This is a super moist cake that combines the classics of chocolate and cherry without any gluten or dairy!

I realise that adding cooked quinoa might seem very odd but it really does help here to keep the shape and certainly adds its own nuttiness.

I tend to cook a bigger quantity of quinoa, using some for a salad and reserving some for this cake.

I didn’t ice this cake as it’s for the school lunch boxes, just a little icing sugar over the top.

Ingredients

100g quinoa

250mls water

4 eggs, seperated

150g caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

3 tablespoons cocoa powder

100g ground almonds

2x 415g tins cherries, drained and patted dry

Method

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees Centigrade. Grease and line a 24cm ring cake tin.

Pour the quinoa into a pan, add the water, cover with a lid and bring up to the boil and simmer, covered for 13-15 minutes. Leaving the lid on, allow to sit, covered, for 5 minutes and then allow to cool.

Beat the egg yolks and sugar until pale and fluffy.

Fold in the vanilla and cocoa followed by the cooked quinoa and ground almonds.

With clean beaters, beat the egg whites until forming stiff peaks.

Gently fold a couple of tablespoons of egg white into the yolk mix, then gradually fold in the remaining egg white in three or four stages.

Sprinkle one third of the cherries over the base of the prepared tin.

Spoon over half of the cake batter, spreading it out gently.

Top with a third of the cherries again and the remaining cake batter. Sprinkle over the last cherries and pop into the oven.

Bake for 45 minutes until the edges of the cake are coming away from the pan.

Allow to cool for 5 minutes in the tin and then tip onto a baking rack to cool completely.