Hi /r/baking - hopefully you can help =).

I made Mary Berry's Cherry Cake this afternoon, following the recipe on the BBC site. Everything was properly weighed out, used King Arthur self-rising, some damned good local butter, and fresh eggs.

As far as I could tell, I did everything to spec. Cherries didn't sink! Problem was, when it did finally turn out, half of it disintegrated in the 2" it had to drop to get out of the tin.

Here's a picture of the half that turned out fine (don't mind the icing - need to use less lemon juice next time).

The rest literally just broke into a ton of chunks as soon as it hit the cooling rack. Here's a picture of the remains (topped with all the fixings post-disintegration of course, not going to let good cake go to waste).

It absolutely delicious cake and I have no complaints whatsoever other than that it fell completely to bits. So my question is... what do I do differently next time?

Is it normally this unstable?

Should I use a different flour? More 'conventional' butter?

Should I flour the tin after greasing? More greasing?

Should I beat the mixture longer? (I mixed it by hand first for about a minute to get all the flour incorporated, then beat for another minute or so with my hand mixer).

Something else?

Many thanks!