Cherry Cake

I've always been a huge fan of St. Julian Winery's sparkling Cherry juice. We always buy an assortment of flavors for holiday gatherings so the kids can enjoy something a little special and a little closer to what the adults are drinking. My personal favorites are raspberry and cherry. The cherry flavor tastes like liquid cherry pie, and I always sneak a taste whenever the bottles are opened for the younger set.

I've been thinking of ways to harness this flavor in some sort of dessert, and I've been thinking of a cake that would use this flavor. I saw some on sale last week, and decided the time was right to try my hand at creating a new recipe.

I'm notorious for coming up with recipes for things and never writing them down, so I'm going to record my results here, so there's something I can come back too.

I tried modifying a favorite cake recipe on Tuesday, which was my first attempt at this new recipe. To concentrate the flavor of the cherry juice, I reduced two cups down to about three ounces by boiling. I added this to a cup of the regular cherry juice to obtain a very intense cherry flavor. For leavening, I used baking soda and baking powder, like the recipe I was emulating. It had a less than desirable effect, however, since some sort of chemical reaction took place, causing the batter to turn brown. Not very cherry like. I had to add quite a bit of food coloring to bring it back to a palatable color.

I baked it off, and it was kind of a dud. The flavor was alright, but I made the mistake of adding dried cherries, which I had soaked in the sparkling cherry juice. They were far too tart, and didn't complement the cake at all. I also forgot to add any oil, and so it was far too dry and it was quite tough as well.

I decided to do some research. I realized I needed more tenderizing agents in the batter, so did some snooping. In any recipe, you need to have a good balance of structure providing ingredients, liquid ingredients, fat ingredients and tenderizing ingredients. Balancing them all takes some experimentation, and a little knowledge. I'm still a bit short in the knowledge area, but I really want to understand these things.

I decided that I needed to avoid baking soda, since it seemed to be the culprit with the brown batter. I also learned that if you have quite a bit of baking soda, it lowers the carmelization temperature, so that your product will brown much faster. I found this to be the case in my first test cake. I also realized I needed some more tenderizing agents, and more fat, so I added two egg yolks to the three eggs called for in the recipe. I decided to increase the baking powder from 1 1/2 tsp. to 2 tsp., to accommodate the lack of baking soda.

It turned out pretty well, after all this, and I was pleased. I'm still tweaking it a bit, however.

For now, I want to enter the recipe, so I can remember what I have already done.

3 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder

3 cups sparkling cherry juice
3 eggs
2 egg yolks
2 cups sugar
2 tsp almond extract
3/4 cup vegetable oil

Sift together flour, salt and baking powder and set aside.

Pour two cups of cherry juice into saucepan and reduce until it reaches the consistency of a syrup, about 15 minutes. It should be about 3 or 4 oz. of liquid. Allow to cool slightly, and mix in remaining cup of cherry juice and set aside.

Whisk eggs and egg yolks together until thoroughly mixed. Add 2 cups sugar in batches, and mix until incorporated. Add almond extract. Slowly whisk in oil in a stream until emulsified. Pour and mix in cherry juice mixture. Create well in flour mixture and pour in egg and cherry juice mixture. Mix until just incorporated.

Poor batter into prepared cake pan (bundt is best) and bake in a 325º oven for 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted comes out with crumbs attached.

Tomorrow, or on Saturday, I'm going to try this with the raspberry juice. I'm not going to reduce the two cups down, but instead will add a couple tablespoons of raspberry port to a cup of the juice. I'm going to look for some dried raspberries too, and grind some up in a spice grinder and add them to the cake as if it was a spice. If the cake tastes good, I'll take a cup of the sparkling juice, and some port, add it to some cream, and then make a white chocolate/raspberry ganache topping for the cake.

I'll let you know how it turns out.