Cake # 21 Cherry Almond Bars

I am such a slacker! Two weeks from this blog and now when I finally write my own, I am a day late. I made our twenty-first cake Saturday morning, but it was such a beautiful day, finally after all this rain, that I had to take Evie to the park. Then we went grocery shopping, then we played tea party, bubbles, and "how many times can I chase the dog around the kitchen before he poops out?" By the time that was over, we had to feed Evie dinner and get her ready for our babysitter, because Ted and I were going out. The funny this is, we didn't even try the finished product of this cake and it is already gone. Don't get me wrong, we tried the batter (a good sign whether a cake will be good or not) and the cake we made last week was like this cake's doppelganger if you substitute marshmallows for cherries. So we had a pretty good idea how the cake would taste, and were okay with giving the whole cake away without even cutting in to it. See, our babysitter was an old student of mine, and she has just gotten married and lives with her parents (been there, done that). So when she saw the cake and her eyes lit up and we said, "Help yourself to a piece, or even more, take some home to your husband," and Ted joked, "Take the whole thing if you want! We eat a cake a week!" She was more than happy to take the cake off of our hands. In addition, Ted and I were happy to get rid of it- we both don't like cherries, we had this cake's twin last week, and let's just say that our waistlines approve.

Making the cake was easy enough, minus one little snafu. One of the ingredients was candied cherries, which is a seasonal item, so I decided to make my own. Now I realize that maraschino cherries are pretty much the same thing as candied cherries, but I like to try new baking experiments, and this would be a first for me.  The first thing I had to do was chop cherries in half. Next, combine 1 cup of sugar, 1 1/2 cups of water, and 1 cup of honey in a saucepan and boil. Once the liquid was boiling I added the cherries and cooked for about twenty-five minutes. You just had to let them cool when you were finished. These cherries were good, I am still not a fan of cherries, but they tasted like an even sweeter maraschino cherry, so I thought I did good. The rest of the cake was simple, flour, eggs, butter, sugar, almond extract, grated rind of a lemon, ground almonds, and slivered almonds.

Here is what our cake looked like:

Here is what the book's looked like:

Today, besides getting loads of laundry done at his mom's (still broken), we plan on taking Evie to a park again, that was so much, and she has so much energy that we need to get rid of! We also might have a picnic! Next week we are on the "Special" section of the cake book, which is just a really nice way of saying "more challenging." Sweet.