sour cherry chocolate cake

sour cherry chocolate cake

22 Jul 2013

I've had some dried sour cherries lingering in the cupboard for about a year. I also have a half used bottle of morello cherries in my fridge. I don't like to waste food so I was looking for a recipe which contained both sour cherries and chocolate. Apart from Black Forest Cherry Cake there are surprisingly few sour cherry chocolate cake recipes on the internet so I decided to come up with my own. I used my old faithful Margaret Fulton chocolate sandwich cake recipe as the starting point, but apart from using jam dissolved in boiling water, everything else is different from the original.



I just love cherries and even though it's not cherry season in Sydney the Washington cherries we get in the supermarket are so nice I can't resist them. I know the food miles involved are horrendous but fresh cherries aren't an integral part of the recipe - I only bought a few for decoration.



I've made the cake twice now, once using dried sour cherries reconstituted in hot water and on the second occasion I used bottled sour cherries drained and halved. I actually prefer the bottled cherries as they're not as sweet as the dried cherries.



The cake is a simple chocolate butter cake that uses dutch process cocoa and berry jam for it's colour and flavour. It could be cherry jam but otherwise any berry jam like raspberry jam will do just fine.



I tweaked the recipe a bit between the first and second version mainly by increasing the cocoa content to make the cake more chocolatey to match the wickedly dark chocolate ganache topping.



I mean, can anything be too chocolatey? Here's the recipe for you. This quantity makes one small bundt cake. For a 21 cm bundt cake, double the ingredients, but keep the cooking time the same.

Ingredients
125 g unsalted butter, softened
⅓ cup caster sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
¾ cup self raising flour
¼ cup plain flour
3 (20 ml) tablespoons dutch process cocoa
1 tablespoon cherry or raspberry jam blended with sufficient boiling water to make ½ cup, then set aside to cool.
⅓ cup sour cherries, drained and halved or 30 gm coarsely chopped dried sour cherries soaked in hot water for 1 hour then drained.

Topping
75 gm chocolate (I used a combination of milk chocolate and 70% dark chocolate)
75 mls cream
Optional - fresh cherries

Preheat the oven to 190°C. Grease and flour a small bundt tin. I use a 1 tablespoon each of flour and cocoa, sifted if there are any lumps, to avoid getting white flour marks on the sides of the cake.

Sift the flours and cocoa together into a small bowl and set to one side. In a medium size bowl, combine the softened butter, caster sugar and vanilla and beat until light and creamy. Mix in the egg and a spoon of the flour if the mixture starts to look curdled. Mix in the flour alternately with the jam mixture to make a smooth, soft batter. Gently fold in the sour cherries before spooning the batter into the prepared tin.

Bake on the centre rack in the oven for 35 – 40 minutes until the cake tests cooked when a skewer is inserted. Remove the tin from the oven and allow the cake to cool for abut 15 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack. Allow the cake to completely cool before decorating.

Chocolate Ganache
Chop the chocolates into small pieces and place in a small bowl. Heat the cream in a small saucepan or in the microwave until just below boiling point. Pour the cream over the chocolate and allow the mixture to sit for about 10 minutes until the chocolate melts. Stir until the mixture until smooth then set to one side for about 20 minutes until the ganache has thickened.

Drizzle the ganache over the cooled cake, then decorate with the fresh cherries, if desired. Serve the cake at room temperature.



I hope you enjoy the recipe. 

Bye for now,

Jillian

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old fashioned orange cake

old fashioned orange cake

10 Apr 2013

When visiting Farmer Andrew in Dungog a few weeks ago, I decided to make an old fashioned orange cake. The recipe originally comes from the Margaret Fulton Creative Cookery Course and I used to make it all the time. It was my Uncle Philip's favourite cake and after he passed away, I stopped making it.



It's one of those cakes where you use the same weight of butter, eggs, sugar and flour so you don't really need a recipe. The original recipe used 4 eggs but my loaf tin is a skinny one, so I made the cake using 3 eggs. I weighed the eggs, fresh from the chicken ladies. They weighed 180 grams so I weighed out the same quantity of caster sugar, unsalted butter and self raising flour, added the zest and juice of half an orange and there you have it, one orange cake.



I think this cake tastes even better when it's iced and again, the recipe is very simple - just icing sugar, butter, orange juice and a little more grated rind. Sometimes simple is best.



The cake has a fine texture and it's packed with orange flavour. I think it tastes better if you make the cake the day before you plan to serve it. It just seems to allow the orange flavour to intensify.

Here's the recipe for you.
Old Fashioned Orange Cake
180 gm unsalted butter
180 gm caster sugar
the grated rind of one orange (reserve 1 teaspoon for the icing)
Three, 60 gm eggs
180 gm self raising flour, sifted
45 mls orange juice

Line a 8 x 22 cm (3¼ x 8¾ inch) loaf tin with baking paper. Preheat the oven to 170°C/325°F. 

In a medium size bowl, cream the butter, sugar and grated orange rind until light and fluffy. In a small bowl, lightly beat the 3 eggs. Gradually add the beaten eggs to the creamed butter and sugar. If the mixture starts to curdle you may need to add a spoon or two of the sifted flour. Once the eggs have been added, start adding in the flour.

In thirds, add the flour alternately with the orange juice until well combined. The cake batter should be a soft one. Spoon the batter into the prepared tin and level the top. 

Bake on the middle shelf of the oven for 45 - 60 minutes until the cake tests cooked when a skewer is inserted. The cake tends to brown quickly so you may need to cover it with a piece of greaseproof paper mid way through the baking time. When the cake is cooked, let it cool completely on a cooling rack.

Orange Icing
15 gm (½ oz) unsalted butter
1 teaspoon grated orange rind
1 cup sifted icing sugar (confectioner's sugar)

a squeeze of orange juice

In a small bowl, cream the butter with the orange rind. Mix in the icing sugar and add enough orange juice to make a thick icing.

Using a flat bladed knife or spatula, coat the top of the cake with a good layer of icing. Set the cake to one side to allow the icing to set.



Got to go to the gym so bye for now. See you all again next week,

Jillian

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Austrian Coffee Cake

Austrian Coffee Cake

12 Oct 2011

I was home in Brisbane recently, visiting my parents and of course, the cat.



I hunted through the cupboard under the oven looking for some old baking tins. The first thing that fell out was this kugelhopf tin. Dad used to make butter cakes when I was growing up, and this was the tin he used. We figured it's probably older than I am, which would make it vintage!



I rifled through an old cookbook, Margaret Fulton's Creative Cookery Course and found this recipe for Austrian Coffee Cake, which I've been dying to make for ever. The first time I saw the cake pictured in a magazine, it had been baked in a kugelhopf tin so that's what I used. 



Now the thing is, I don't like the taste of coffee at all but my Mum does and as  today is her birthday, I thought I'd make something that she likes. Dad also has a whiz bang coffee machine so I knew he'd like to use his barista skills.



The tin might be vintage but the cake came out perfectly.The cake is a simple butter cake which is soaked in a coffee syrup (I skipped the rum) then covered in whipped cream. Mum can't eat cream so I left the cake unadorned and when cut, the cake was very moist and had a 2 toned appearance.



When I left for Sydney, the cake looked like this -



I'm not sure if there's any cake left but a big Happy Birthday to my Mum in Brisbane. 

Happy Birthday Mama,

love,

Jillian

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