10 June 2010

Cherry cake pix and recipe

I was convinced I had posted this cake recipe earlier, but I guess I never did. I can't find it anywhere on the blog. This has become my standard cake, with various additions — prunes, raisins, coconut, almonds — to make it different each time.

Cake with cherries — Gâteau aux cerises
Le Meilleur Cake

150 g de beurre
100 g de sucre
1 c. à café d’extrait de vanille
3 oeufs
2 c. à soupe de crème fraîche
125 g de farine
1 pincée de sel
1 c. à café de levure alsacienne

Vous pouvez ajouter :
125 g de pruneaux denoyautés

ou de raisins secs
ou d’un autre fruit frais ou sec
ou de noix de coco
ou 1 c. à café d’extrait d’amandes

Faire fondre le beurre. Le laisser refroidir.

Incorporer le sucre, l’extrait de vanille, et une pincée de sel. Ajouter les oeufs entiers puis la levure et la farine.

Finir par les fruits ou parfums. Mélanger bien.

Chemiser un moule à cake, verser y la préparation et enfourner dans un four à 180°C pour trois quarts d’heure.
The recipe in English is below. For the cherry cake, I ended up putting in a lot more than 4 oz. of fresh, pitted cherries. And instead of vanilla, I put in kirsch as a flavoring ingredient, to intensify the cherry taste. You could use rum or other extracts or alcohols, depending on what kind of cake you're making. I especially like this cake made with prunes (dried plums) and armagnac.

Cake on a base of cherries!

You'll notice that the cherries mostly sank to the bottom when I poured the batter into the loaf pan. Maybe it was because I put in nearly twice what the recipe calls for. It didn't matter to us. I've read that if you toss the fruit with a little bit of flour before adding it to the cake batter, the pieces won't tend to sink to the bottom as much. I didn't do that. Maybe next time.

How about a nice cherry compote — cherries stewed
in kirsch and sugar — to go with the cake?


The Best Cake

12 Tbsp. butter (1½ sticks, or a little less)
½ cup sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract (or other)
3 eggs
2 Tbsp. cream
1 cup flour
1 pinch salt
1 tsp. baking powder

Optional additions: 4 oz. of pitted prunes, raisins,
peaches, blueberries, coconut, almonds, etc.


Soften or even melt the butter and let it cool before using it.

Add the sugar, salt, and vanilla (or other flavoring) and mix well. Beat in the eggs one by one, and then blend in the flour and baking powder.

Finally, add the fruit or other optional ingredients and mix well.

Pour the batter into a buttered + floured loaf pan. Bake at 350º for 45 minutes or until done.

8 comments:

  1. Oh heaven! The merles ate all of our cherries, but hopefully I'll find some somewhere else.

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  2. Why not turn it into an upside
    down cake? Great with some of the
    compote poured over it.

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  3. I've never baked a cake, maybe I can try this for my inaugural.

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  4. Go for it, Starman! Even if it doesn't look perfect it's going to taste better than most cakes you can buy.

    I'm going to add this to the queue of recipies to try.

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  5. Tom, I agree.

    Starman, go for it. It's a very easy recipe to pull off. Put some exotic Florida fruit in it.

    Sheila, good idea. That cherry compote is also very good in yogurt.

    Dedene, you need a merle scarer, for sure.

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  6. A French blogging friend gave me the link to your blog. Your cake with cherries looks very good but today it is too warm to bake in the oven. It is 94 F in the shadow, or 34.5 C. But your cherry compote avec du kirsch sounds great. I’ll try that as I just bought some very nice firm dark cherries. I’ll look at your back posts to see si vous avez d’autres bons plats.

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  7. Bonjour !

    I've at last the time to go and read your blog again, no more lessons to give, now is the time for supervising the BAC(CALAUREAT) tests (first ground grades, correct ? Les épreuves du 1er groupe) and, then, mark/grade them...

    About having fruit not staying at the bottom of a cake, did you roll them in flour before adding them to the paste ? I'm pretty sure you already know that, boy ;-) ! Bises ;-) Mary/Marie from Normandy, France

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  8. Oh, I should have read your post until the end, you KNEW about the "truc" to have fruit "bien répartis" (hmm, how would you say this, please ?) throughout the cake... ;-) !!! Marie

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