For some reason, this year has been a boom for cherries. The last month or so, I've seen the prices for cherries drop to a dollar a pound. ONE dollar. Naturally, the prudent financial person I am, I immediately bought 6 pounds of cherries, ate a bunch, and then decided I needed to do something else with them before they wasted away in the fridge. I found this cake recipe in my Swiss cookbook, and because it called for two pounds of pitted cherries, I thought that'd be a good way to use some of the excess I'd purchased. And this time, I actually ended up using them all before the mold demons killed them.
Just a note: When I was making this cake, some of the things it asked me to do seemed really strange. I wasn't quite sure why it asked me to do them, but I decided, what the heck, and voilà! it ended up pretty dang tasty.
Fresh Cherry Cake
from Culinary Art and Traditions of Switzerland
500 grams white bread rolls (I used Wal-mart brand hamburger buns, and 11 1/2 buns was exactly enough)
200 ml milk (my pyrex measuring cup has milliliters, but if you don't have one (which you should!) use a little more than 3/4 cup milk
120 g butter, softened -- 1 full stick. Remember, margarine is nasty. Use real butter for cooking.
200 g sugar (1 cup sugar)
7 egg yolks (keep the egg whites, you'll need them later)
100 g almonds and hazelnuts (whole) -- this equates to about 2/3 cup of nuts. I used a full cup of nuts because, well, I like nuts.
pinch of cinnamon
7 egg whites stiffly whipped
10 g baking powder (2 1/2 tsp)
900 g black cherries, stoned --- I used 2 lb 8 oz of unstoned fruit, and ended up with about 100 grams too many (which I used anyway). I'd say about 2 1/4 lbs of cherries should give you about 2 lbs of stoned cherries.
20 g flour (about 3 Tbsp)
100 g sponge crumbs (I used those little sponge cakes they sell for individual strawberry shortcake servings---I used 4 of them.)
First you soak the bread rolls in the milk for at least 2 hours. I tore up the bread into big chunks, and kinda stirred it around every half hour or so. (This is one of the bizarre things I wondered about, but trust me, it all works out.)
Next I stoned the cherries. I learned the hard way that you should not use a shirt you particularly care for while stoning them unless you really enjoy red flecks all over your best clothes. Also, do not keep works of art in the general vicinity--- the cherry juice splatters. Look under my Cherry Clafouti recipe for directions on stoning cherries --- it's really rather easy once you get the hang of it.
At this time I also crumbled up the sponge cake and decided to toast it so it wouldn't be soggy, it'd be more crumbly. I popped it in the oven at 250 for about 10 minutes. Make sure you watch them, you don't want burned crumbs in your cake, I'm sure it wouldn't enhance the flavor. You'll want to make sure to change the temperature of the oven to 350, in preparation for the baking.
Next, I creamed the butter and sugar, and added the egg yolks, one at a time. When I was separating the whites from the yolks, I just set aside the whites for a little bit, and let the whites warm up to room temperature. Apparently when you whip the whites at room temperature they stiffen better. After creaming the yolks with the sugar and butter, I dumped in the nuts and mixed those in (with the beater). I then mixed the dry ingredients together, and beat those into the batter.
Now came the weird part. I put the big pile of soggy bread into the mixing bowl. I sat there and wondered, how do I mix this in? Just put the mixer right in the middle, and start on slow, but mix it all together until the dough is this kind of thickish pasty stuff. The soggy bread will mix in completely and you won't have weird chunks. After that, the recipe splits. If you are making an actual cake, save about half of the sponge crumbs, if you're just making muffins, dump all the sponge crumbs in and mix them all together. Next, *stir* the pitted cherries into the mix (don't use the beaters anymore, you want to keep these whole).
The dough is going to be pretty thick, but that's what the egg whites are for -- to lighten them up. Whip the room temperature egg whites until they are stiff, and fold them into the dough. I couldn't get them to fold very well, it ended up being a mix between folding and stirring, but the egg whites made the batter a lot more fluid once I got it all stirred/folded in. Now you're ready to bake.
If you're doing muffins (it'll make around 24-28), just put the batter until it's slightly over the top of the muffin pan. The batter really doesn't rise a whole lot, so if you only fill it halfway full, you'll get these tiny muffins. Bake that at 350 for about 30 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean. You could use the paper, but I got this really nice muffin tray that is silicon, and I love it, because they just pop out. Let them cool, and enjoy!
If you're making the cake, I'd use an 8-10 inch springform pan, make sure the bottom and sides are fairly well greased. I used butter. Then put the sponge crumbs you saved in the bottom of the pan as a sort of base crust for the cake. pour the batter in to a depth of about 1 1/2 - 2 inches (not super thick or it'll take 3 days to cook), and pop it in the 350 degree oven. The book said it would take 30 minutes to cook, but mine took over an hour--- I just kept checking it with a toothpick until the batter was cooked. Let the cake cool, and then run a knife or what not around the edges, so it doesn't stick (it can stick sometimes). When I made the cake version, I ended up using a little more than half of the batter for the cake; that's when I discovered that the muffins ended up being a bit easier to make and handle. So in theory, you could do both.
These ended up being pretty dang good. The cherries tasted super good, against the delicious baked almonds and hazelnuts--- all in all it tastes like a good European type cake. I think they make really good muffins, and I'd make this recipe again.
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