This Chocolate Cake with Tart Cherries is a real treat for the holidays and not only. Valentine's Day, birthday parties, and Christmas are great opportunities to impress your family and friends with this delicious recipe. If you like to bake from scratch, you will enjoy making this cake.
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As the holidays are approaching, it is always a good reason to bake, no matter what. And why not a cake?
In my humble opinion, cakes make great gifts for family and friends. Everybody loves them, no matter the occasion!
What Makes This Recipe So Delightful
This cake is easy to make. It has a layer of cake, one of buttercream, and a chocolate glaze to give the cake an elegant finish.
The best part of this cake is the addition of tart/sour cherries in syrup.
It is well known that chocolate and cherries go very well together, but chocolate and sour cherries are made for each other!
You can find sour cherries in syrup in any grocery store in America, or you can always order online. They should look like this.
How to make
To make the cake, you start with the cake batter. While the cake is baking and then cooling off, you make the filling or the chocolate buttercream.
The filling is a combination of butter, sugar, pudding, which is made separately, chocolate, and cocoa. To this combination, sour cherries are added.
The easiest way to build this cake is in the same pan you baked the batter. I used a springform pan because, at the end of the process, I removed the walls of the pan and had a beautiful, straight cake that looked neat.
The first layer is the cake. The second layer is the chocolate cherry buttercream that is poured over the cake and then refrigerated. See how the buttercream sits on top of the cake?
After the cake sets in the refrigerator, a combination of melted chocolate and butter is poured over the cake to form a glaze.
To decorate this cake with cherries, I made some little rosettes with some leftover buttercream and added a sour cherry on top of each rosette.
Simple and beautiful!
Notes & Tips
NOTE: If you want to make individual little cakes, bake the cake into a 9x9 cake pan instead, then cut the shapes you want. Use individual molds to put the little cakes together.
More recipes to love
Delicious Savory Recipes With Fresh Cherries
Orange Vanilla French Buttercream Cake
Best Thanksgiving Pies And Tarts
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📖 Recipe
Chocolate Cake With Tart Cherries
Equipment
Ingredients
Cake Batter:
- 3 eggs
- ¾ cup granulated sugar
- ¾ cup all-purpose flour
- 4 teaspoons cacao powder
- 3 ½ tablespoons vegetable oil
- 3 ½ tablespoons luke warm water
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
Chocolate Buttercream with Sour Cherries filling:
- 14 tablespoons unsalted butter
- 5 ounces dark chocolate
- 7 ounces sour pitted cherries
- 1 ¼ cup milk or 10 ounces
- 4 tablespoons cornstarch
- 2 teaspoons cacao powder
- 1 cup powdered sugar
Chocolate Glaze:
- 7 ounces dark chocolate
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
Instructions
Cake:
- Preheat oven to 350F.
- Separate eggs.
- In a small bowl mix egg yolks, sugar, water, oil, and cacao powder. Set aside.
- In a different bowl, mix together flour, baking powder, and baking soda.
- In a standing mixer, beat the egg white until stiff.
- Add the egg yolks mixture and mix slowly with a spatula until incorporated.
- Add flour, mixing slowly to not lose the air from the egg whites.
- Prepare a 10" springform with parchment paper on the bottom and pour the cake batter into it.
- Bake at 350F for about 20 minutes or until the cake passes the toothpick test.
- Let it cool.
Chocolate sour cherries buttercream:
- In a small pot, place cacao powder and cornstarch, then add milk and mix well to incorporate.
- Place the pot on the stove and cook the mixture, mixing constantly, until it gets thicker like a pudding.
- Allow it to cool and set aside.
- Beat the sugar and the butter with a mixer until fluffy.
- Add the pudding mixing well.
- Melt the chocolate in a double boiler and pour it over the cream.
- Add the chopped sour cherries.
- Mix well, then remove 2-3 tablespoons of buttercream that we will use for the decorations.
How to put the cake together:
- Keep the cake inside the springform and pour over the chocolate sour cherry buttercream.
- Spread it even with a spatula.
- Refrigerate until the buttercream is set, for few hours.
- When ready to glaze, melt the chocolate in a double boiler, then add the butter and mix well.
- Remove the springform and place the cake on a platter. Pour over the melted chocolate.
- Refrigerate until chocolate glaze is set.
- Pipe a few buttercream rosettes on top of the cake and place a sour cherry on top of each rosette.
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