Talk

They do tend to sink.

Did you rinse and dry them properly?

That's all I do now. I don't find that tossing them in flour helps. Sue LAwrence says she puts in half the cake mixture, then places the cherries on before adding the rest of the mixture. I actually found this worse.

My cherries end up in the lower half, admittedly, but they're not all on the bottom.

I do always add ground almonds so maybe that does help.

Thanks for replying.

I didn't wash or dry them at all , I just chopped them up straight out of the tub...

I did also consider using fresh cherries as I had bought a bag this morning, but wasn't (am still not actually...) sure that that's even something you can do.

I might try the almonds next time

Second the washing/drying approach. If you rinse the syrup off, dry the cherries thoroughly, and then quarter them, they should stay fairly well suspended, although quartered cherries don't look as pretty in the sponge as halved ones. Ground almonds also help the buoyancy factor.

(Can you tell I've been torturing myself entering the cherry cake section of the village show for years?)

Look on the bright side. So your cherries sank. At least you didn't end up with one cherry cake stuck to the roof of the oven and the other, semi-baked, so still runny, dropped and spilled all over the back of the oven, like I did today

oh yes, you must rinse all teh heavy syrup off and pat them all dry.

I leave my cherries whole, don't even halve 'em. Am a smug cherry-cake-baker