Celtic Cakes

I came across this recipe while I was trying to find something nice to make for Imbolc. :) But when I started making it, everything went downhill so I had to make quite a few changes. So what you see here is the modified recipe which turned out great in the end for me! :D It's a combination of sour cherries and nice integral dough. I hope you will like it because I did. :D yum yum!

You will need:

For the dough:

• 250g plain flour
• about 120g margarine
• 1-2 eggs (it's best judge according to how compact the dough is)
• a bit of sunflower oil
• a muffin pan

For the filling:

• 60g plain sugar (in the original recipe it says 170g but I hate putting too much sugar in my cakes)
• sour cherry/strawberry marmalade (I used sour cherry because I added sour cherries into the mix which aren't in the original recipe)
• 60g margarine
• 2 eggs
• 2-3 spoons of cornstarch
• 60-70g plain flour
• sour cherries (seedless, you can buy them frozen in supermarkets; I used these)
• 1 spoon sugar
• a few spoons of water

How to prepare:

The dough:

1. Use your electric mixer to mix together flour, margarine and one egg.
2. If needed, add another egg (although I believe you won't need it) and a few spoons of sunflower oil (also if needed). The dough has to be oily enough to not stick to your hands and it should look more like pastry dough.
3. Take bits of the dough (about half a handful) and flatten (and roll out) until you get the desired thickness. Don't worry, the dough doesn't rise during baking.
4. Get you muffin pan and cover each muffin "hole" with a piece of dough (I recommend pressing the dough in with your thumb so it adapts to the shape of the muffin mold. Cut of the excess (I used a circular cookie cutter but you can use either your hands or a knife to do this). 
5. Put a teaspoon of marmalade in each "dough cup" (that's what I'm going to be calling them).  

The filling:

1. Use your electric mixer to mix together sugar, margarine and then add one by one egg.
2. Add cornstarch and flour (the original recipe says to add 170g ground rice, though I believe that rice flour could work just as well but since I didn't have either of these two ingredients and thus didn't try them out, I recommend that you stick to plain flour and cornstarch).
3. Put a small pot on the fire and put in the sour cherries (half a cup) along with a few spoons water and one spoon sugar. Mix until it's compact.
4. When the previous sour-cherry mixture has cooled down, you can get rid of a bit of water if it seems like it's too much (although I believe it won't be too much, but you'll have to be the judge of that depending on the consistency of the margarine mixture). Now add the sour-cherry mixture to the margarine mixture and (you guessed it) mix them together.
5. Mix it once more with your electric mixture just to make sure that there aren't any too big pieces of sour cherry.
6. Add a spoon or two of the filling into the dough cups (on top of the marmalade). The filling should fill about a third or half of the dough cups.
7. Flatten the remaining dough and cut it into think strips and put them on top of the dough cups (which are now filled with marmalade and the filling). Make sure to fix/stick the strips onto the cups so they don't separate in the oven.

Note: the filling should be a bit less thick than mashed potatoes. It will look very foamy, but don't let that worry you because it will get thicker and rise during the baking process because of the flour and cornstarch.

Bake cakes for 25 minutes at 175°C (just in case, check every now by sticking a toothpick in the dough every now and then). 

And there you have it. I hope you will enjoy this nice recipe because I definitely did. :D It may not be the simplest cake to make but it really is worth it! I would gladly hear your opinions in the comments section or via e-mail. :) 

Bon appetit! )O(