July 4th Cookin: Sour Cherry Upside-Down Cake
Charlotte L. Blackmer
the July 4 cookin. I was, however, at a bit of a loss on how to deal with
fresh sour cherries - they are not at all common produce here in
California.
A few moments with Deja.com did, however, give me some ideas. The most
promising were a cherry cobbler from Gourmet and two copies of the
identical recipe for an old-fashioned upside-down cake with fresh sour
cherries. So I bought a cherry pitter at Sur La Table and got busy. I
decided to make the cake since it called for fewer cherries.
Since the recipe did not have a lot of detail beyond the ingredients, I
decided to consult Fannie Farmer to see if it was something other than
the standard "Shirley shouldn't eat fresh mushrooms" (sugar, shortening,
eggs, flour, milk). The pineapple upside-down cake recipe was very similar
but had some crucial differences. So here's what I did. It turns out to
be a nice white cake with a brown-sugar and fruit topping. I think it
would work well with other summer fruit (peaches??).
Since I have more cherries (Kay was unable to come by and clean my tree
out), I will try redoing it in metric next time.
SOUR CHERRY UPSIDE-DOWN CAKE
Topping:
4 Tablespoons butter
1/2 cup light brown sugar, packed (FF said 1 cup brown, net said 1/2
granulated - you decide if you want to play with this)
2-4 cups sour cherries, pitted
Cake:
8 Tablespoons (1 stick) butter
1/2 cup milk
1 egg
1 1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
Preheat oven to 400 F. Melt 4 TB. butter in 8 or 9" cake pan or in
ovenproof skillet. When butter is melted, dissolve brown sugar in it.
Arrange cherries on bottom of pan.
Melt the remaining 8 TBS butter in a small bowl or saucepan. Remove
from heat and mix in milk and egg.
Combine dry ingredients in a larger bowl. (I sifted them together.) Add
liquid mixture and beat until smooth.
Pour over the fruit and "even out" with a spatula. Bake about 35 minutes,
or till a toothpick comes out clean.
Let cool in pan for 10 minutes, then invert on serving plate.
(NB. I used non-stick cake pans. Worked a treat.)
CLB
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Charlotte L. Blackmer http://www.rahul.net/clb
Berkeley Farm and Pleasure Palace (under construction)
Junk (esp. commercial) email review rates: $250 US ea
Jack and Kay Hartman
wrote:
>Since I have more cherries (Kay was unable to come by and clean my tree
>out),
Much to my chagrin or I'd be eating sour cherry pie right now or
possibly even serving it for lunch on Saturday when some women from
work come over. We're going to make do with an assortment of homemade
ice creams from my freezer.
Anyway, thanks for the cake Charlotte. It was very good. And thanks
for offering the cherries. I wish I had been able to bring some home.
Kay