Dark Cherry Chocolate Cake
A deep chocolate sponge studded with dark cherries, halved fresh cherries on top and a glossy red cherry sauce poured over each slice.
- Total
- 1 hr 10 min
- Prep
- 25 min
- Bake
- 45 min
- Serves
- 10
- Level
- Medium
- Tin
- 20 cm springform
Chocolate and cherry is one of those pairings that has been ruined by association: glacé cherries, tinned filling, cakes named after German forests.
Made with real dark cherries it is a completely different thing: slightly sour, faintly almond, and dark enough to stand up to a cocoa-heavy crumb. Buttermilk and bicarbonate of soda take the sponge deeper still, both in colour and in flavour.
Stone the cherries. It is the only tedious part and it is worth it.
Ingredients
For the cake
For the cherry sauce
To finish
You will need
- 20 cm springform tin
- Cherry stoner or small knife
- Small saucepan
Method
Oven 175°C · fan 155°C · 345°F
Stone the cherries
Stone all 550 g of cherries. A cherry stoner takes five minutes; a small knife and a stubborn attitude take fifteen. Halve the 250 g for the cake and leave the sauce cherries whole.
Tip Frozen stoned dark cherries are a completely respectable shortcut here and are often better than fresh out of season.
Heat the oven and line the tin
Heat the oven to 175°C / 155°C fan. Butter a 20 cm springform tin and line the base.
Cream and add the eggs
Beat the butter and sugar for 4 minutes, then beat in the eggs one at a time with a spoonful of flour each.
Fold in the dry ingredients
Fold in the flour, cocoa, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt, then the buttermilk and vanilla. The batter is thick and very dark.
Fold in the cherries
Toss the halved cherries in the extra tablespoon of flour and fold them through in a few strokes. Pat them dry first if they are frozen and wet.
Bake for 45 minutes
Bake for 45–50 minutes. Cocoa hides doneness, so test with a skewer rather than looking at the colour, and test away from a cherry.
Make the cherry sauce
Simmer the whole cherries with the sugar and lemon juice for 8 minutes until the juices run dark. Stir in the slaked cornflour, cook one minute until glossy, then stir in the kirsch off the heat.
Release and top
Cool 20 minutes in the tin, release the ring, and scatter halved fresh cherries over the top with their stems on, which looks better.
Slice and pour
Cut wedges and spoon the warm cherry sauce over each, letting it run down the cut face.
Baker's notes
- Kirsch is traditional and optional. A tablespoon of brandy does a similar job; so does nothing at all.
- Buttermilk plus bicarbonate of soda is what gives this its rise and its dark colour, so do not swap in plain milk without also swapping the raising agents.
Keeping it 3 days in a tin, 5 in the fridge. The sauce keeps a week refrigerated and freezes well.
Questions, answered
Can I use tinned cherries?
Drain them very well and pat dry, and cut the sauce sugar to 40 g since they are packed in syrup. The crumb will be slightly wetter.
Why did my cherries all sink?
Wet fruit and a loose batter. Dry the cherries, toss them in flour, and do not thin the batter: it should be thick enough to hold its shape on the spoon.
If it goes wrong
Three things account for most of what happens to a cake in a domestic oven. Each has its own guide.
- It sank in the middleSeven causes, told apart by the shape of the crater.
- It came out raw in the centreBrown outside, wet inside, and how to rescue the one you are holding.
- The caramel seizedIt is almost always fixable. The lump re-melts.
