Wednesday, July 13, 2011

When life gives you a bowl of cherries, bake a cake!

For the past month or so, the pazar stalls have been full of truly bright, pretty-as-a-picture kiraz (cherries). Every week, I buy a half kilo just so I can eat the kiraz plain or once in awhile, pitted and mixed into my yogurt. Oh, I guess I did make a classic French claufoutis one weekend and a cherry compote as well.
This weekend, while I baked the dulce de leche cupcakes, I set aside the remaining cake batter. I had nearly 4 dozen mini cupcakes already so I figured that was plenty. I dug out one of my round 9-inch cake pans, pitted a handful of cherries, placed them in bottom of the parchment paper-lined pan and poured the remaining cake batter on top.

The end result is a dense, brown sugar-vanilla cake studded with fresh cherries. The cake probably could use a few more cherries and a bit of tweaking, but it still is a good summer-time treat. It would be even better with some homemade ice cream if I had the time!

Today, I’m bringing the cake to a luncheon I’m going to with some of the other American expat ladies. I hope they enjoy it too!

Afiyet Olsun!
The cherry cake takes the stage on my newly, gifted cake plate designed
by Turkish cartoonist Behiç Ak, available at Paşabahçe Mağazaları in Istanbul.

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1 comments:

Julia said...

Looks lovely. We've been loving this season's batch of cherries. Cheaper than usual down here because of the late spring - I think they've got a glut they have to get rid of as they've ripened all at once. The fridge is full of them. :)