Romanian cuisine uses simple, cheap ingredients. One of those is cornmeal, which we also find in the Mexican or Italian cuisine. If you know a little bit about the Romanian cuisine, you already know that polenta is not only an Italian staple, it is also very Romanian. In the villages, corn was a staple and still is for many people.
There are multiple recipes that use cornmeal and this sour cherries sweet cornbread recipe is one of them. The recipe is coming from a blog that belongs to one of the most famous chefs of Romania who made this bread following one of his mother’s recipes.
I loved the recipe because it has many ingredients that are close to my heart when it comes to the Romanian Cuisine: cornmeal, semolina, sour cherries. It is a rustic sweet bread that is also very easy to put together.
You can make this bread on a lazy Sunday, but it is also great for a party where you serve rustic foods. The best part of this recipe is that you get two loaves out of it, which is awesome. You can keep one and give the other one away.
This is not a gluten free bread because there is also regular flour and semolina in it. The bread is not very sweet, but there are a lot of flavors and textures involved. I personally love it with butter.
Note: The sour cherries can be replaced with regular cherries fresh or even frozen. You can also use other dried fruits, like cranberries for example. If you prefer, instead of dusting the breads with powder sugar, you can try to drizzle some honey diluted with lemon juice over the breads or simply some maple syrup.
However, no matter how you finish it, this is a great recipe to try at least once.
Last word: You can find sour cherries in syrup on Amazon or any other European store. Enjoy!
- 1½ cup corn meal
- 1 cup semolina
- 1½ cup all-purpose flour
- 4 eggs separated
- 1 cup yogurt
- 1½ cup milk
- ½ cup sugar
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 Tablespoon vanilla
- 1 cup sour cherries from syrup
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 lemon zest
- 1 orange zest
- powder sugar for dusting the breads
- Optional: instead of sour cherries you can use regular cherries or dried fruit like cranberries, sour cherries or raisins.
- Instead of powder sugar for dusting, drizzle honey diluted with lemon juice or just maple syrup.
- Preheat oven to 350F/180C.
- In a big bowl mix together corn meal, semolina, flour, ½ teaspoon salt, baking powder, lemon and orange zest.
- Separate, cream together egg yolks, sugar and vanilla.
- Add milk and yogurt to the egg yolks, mix well, then add it to the dry ingredients.
- Combine everything well.
- Beat the egg whites and ½ teaspoon of salt until the mixture is firm: if you turn the bowl upside down, the egg whites won't fall.
- Fold in gently the egg whites to the mixture, making sure you do not lose the air from the mixture. Do not overmix.
- Butter lightly two 9x5 loaf of bread pans.
- Split the mixture between the two pans.
- Sprinkle the sour cherries on top of the breads. You can push the fruits gently inside the batter.
- Bake for 50 minutes or until golden brown on top and a toothpick comes out clean.
- Remove the breads from the pans and let cool on a rack.
- Dust the breads with powder sugar, slice and serve.
- Optional: Instead of powder sugar, drizzle on the breads some honey diluted with lemon juice. Or drizzle maple syrup.
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