Shane Smith

And I do know Nevin as well.

Cherries in the Madeira is, if the cherries are too big, they'll sink.

So I always cut the cherries in half, sometimes even in quarter.

They have this kind of a syrup that's on them, the glasshead cherries.

So I always wash them in lukewarm water and dry them off.

And then you just toss them in a little bit of flour and that helps to stop them from sinking.

But if your butter is a little bit soft for the initial part of the mix and your Madeira cake is a little bit looser in consistency, your cherries naturally will tend to sink.

So what I do is you can add a little bit more ground almonds in there or what you can do is put three quarters of the cherries into the mix, mix it around, keep some back and sprinkle those over the top just before you bake it.

So if they do decide to kind of drop a little bit, they should be submerged in the middle.

OK, that's very clever.

It's a bit complicated, though, isn't it?

Those ones are.

There's certain recipes that like there's a jam coconut sponge and it's literally all the ingredients into the bowl, mix it and bake it.

But when you're kind of making additions, so if you're adding in the glass head cherries, for example, that is one that you just have to be a little bit careful about.

And really, I always say it's a-okay to make mistakes.

It's all part of the fun.

Like it's not open heart surgery, you know, where you're just baking at home.

So if the cherries do sink to the middle or to the bottom, excuse me, then it's just, I suppose, what I'd like for people to do is have the knowledge of understanding why that happened and maybe changing something.

To the bottom, yeah.

It is very.