A few months ago, I made two Simply Delicious almond cakes for work: this one, 16-26: Elegant Almond Cake and 16-33: Crispy Almond Cake. I think this one came out prettier, but they were both delicious.
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Simply Delicious doesn’t mention this in their blurb, but it’s also great for accompanying coffee or tea on a Wednesday morning at the office. They also refer to this dish as a cake, but it’s very clearly a tart. To confirm, here’s a recipe from King Arthur Flour that is essentially this exact same dish (referred to a tart) but with raspberries instead of Maraschino cherries.
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If you don’t have or don’t want to use Maraschino cherries, you could use real ones (canned, frozen, or probably even fresh) instead. Cherry liqueur might be difficult to locate, but I found my bottle at a BevMo.
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Ingredients. Don’t buy Maraschino cherries from Costco unless you plan on making a lot of Shirley Temples. That tall bottle in the middle is the cherry liqueur–I went with Luxardo, which is Maraschino cherry liqueur.
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Tossing dough ingredients into the food processor.
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Getting crumbly. Notice I used the smaller, duller dough blade since that’s what I’m making with it.
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It’s a ball of dough!
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And now it’s a ball of dough covered in foil. This will sit in my fridge while I work on the filling.
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Chopping the almond paste up into 8 pieces helps me figure out 5 oz without the scale. The package is 8 oz, so 5 pieces = approximately 5 oz. The rest becomes snacks–it’s essentially marzipan.
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I decided to make each recipe into 3 smaller tart-sized cakes–it’ll make much better bite-sized pieces once I cut them up to share.
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I pressed the chilled dough into the springform tart pans after mixing up the filling in the food processor.
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Filling looks pretty liquidy, but it will firm up as it cooks.
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Filled each as evenly as I could (since I’m splitting it up).
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After baking. Each got nicely browned on top, and they’ll sink back down a bit from their currently rounded state as they cool.
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After these and 16-33: Crispy Almond Cakes cooled and I popped them out of their tart pans. So far, everything looks good.
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The crispy ones are pretty much done, but these still need to be glazed and garnished.
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Mixed up the glaze in a bowl–you don’t really need much.
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It pooled strangely, but it’ll dry clear. I’m sorry for the NSFW appearance of this picture.
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I cut 4 cherries in half and placed 8 halves equally around on each cake. Once they’re cooled and transported, I’ll cut them up so each slice has a cherry on top.
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Since I did 3 small cakes, that gives me 24 pieces for each cake–the perfect amount to share with my team at work.
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After cooling. It’s tough to see the glaze at this angle–I wonder how their pictured ones looked so white on top.
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Chipped that one there a bit–oh well, nothing’s perfect. These will be wrapped tightly in plastic wrap and transported to work. I’ll cut them up there to keep them as fresh as possible.
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How I presented them at work next to the coffee maker. They were all gone by lunchtime–I’d say both were a big hit, but these definitely sold out first.
Grade: A