Cherry bun recipe

I have been doing some more baking for Christmas, today cherry buns. I think that they're actually quite Christmassy because of the cherries and almonds that go into them. They have the slight taste of marzipan, which is something I only ever really eat at Christmas. I am going to make a large traditional Scottish cherry cake for Christmas instead of a Christmas cake. I shan't make that unitl Christmas Eve though.

The cherry bun recipe is dead simple:

Standard sponge cake ingredients:
220g self raising flour, caster sugar, and marge
4 beaten eggs
100g of glace cherries (plus a few more for decoration)
100g ground almonds

I followed advice to make the cherries less likely to sink when baking, the advice was to wash and dry the cherries then toss in some flour. It seemed to work!
Make the sponge mixture as usual, by beating the butter/marge with the sugar, then gradually beat in the egg and finally sift in the flour.
Then stir in the cherries and ground almond
Dollop into cake cases in bun tins bake for 15 - 20 mins at about 180 C (I think that's gas mark 4)
I made 24 small buns but you could make 12 muffins with the mix easily I reckon.

I also used the M&S glace cherries which are dark not the traditional bright red and are soaked in cherry juice, they are delicious!

I had a lovely walk yesterday along the Wandle river. It was one of those sparkly, cold winter-sun day's. The song thrushes and robins were singing their hearts out all along the path to Mordern Hall Park. At the National Trust cafe and shop I had a lovely mince pie, quite unusal pastry, more like a traditional Bakewell tart (not the Mr Kipling sort) but with mincemeat in the middle instead of jam. From the shop I got some lemon curd and quince jam and made jam tarts. I over rolled the pastry so some of them shrank slightly. They tasted good, though not as nice as my cherry cakes :-)