A few days ago I decided I wanted to make a chocolate cherry cake without a recipe. I’ve made a chocolate cake without a recipe before and it turned out quite tasty. It’s a great way to use up bits and pieces in the fridge.

Here’s the result:

For those keen to have a go, here’s the ‘sort-of’ recipe (ie. don’t expect anything to be exact – you’ll need to play with it)

• Half a jar of morello cherries
• butter
• sugar
• self raising flour
• 3 eggs
• sour cream
• milk
• vanilla essence
• cocoa
• teaspoon of instant coffee, disolved in hot water

1. Pre-heat oven to roughly 170’C
2. Lay cherries out on the bottom of a lightly greased cake pan – do not under any circumstances use a spring form pan, unless you enjoy cherry juice leaking out and running down the cupboards, oven, floor. Yes, this happened to me.
3. Cream butter and sugar. I used around 3/4 cup of sugar and a few tablespoons of butter
4. Add sour cream – again a couple of tablespoons
5. Mix in some vanilla essence, 4 tablespoons of cocoa, the coffee and eggs
6. You should now have a runny-ish batter
7. Start sifting in flour – roughly a cup.
8. The batter will now be more like dough, add enough milk to make it runny again
9. Spoon the batter over the cherries, place in the oven and bake until a skewer comes out clean.
10. Turn out onto a rack to cool – the cake may fall apart at this stage, but it will taste just as good. Promise.

Yum!