Borough Market still has boxes of cherries going for £6 so I brought a box down to my mum’s. After buying a cherry pitting gadget from Kitchens we decided to do a Bakewell shortcake with the cherries and almonds.

It started with the basic school shortcake, with a few desert spoons of ground almonds mixed in. Then about half of the mixture going into a lined square tin.

Then we cooked down the pitted and chopped cherries with a couple of tablespoons of sugar.

Then some sieving to remove most of the juice, which we saved to pour over the final dessert.

This then got spooned onto the base and spread around. I didn’t think we’d done enough, but after cooking it turned out to be plenty; any more and we’d probably have had fruit oozing out all over the place.

The rest of the shortcake mix went on top, then some halved cherries and demerara sugar.

This went into a 160c fan oven for 30 minutes… after which it hadn’t gained any colour, so we put it in for another 10 minutes, and it came out much better.

We then sliced it up while still hot, and served with vanilla ice-cream and the cherry juice.