Some time ago I often wondered, why do people even bother with growing sour cherries, they are just so… sour. If you want cherry flavour, get yourself bing cherries. If you want sour, um… a lemon? Boy, was I wrong.
Sour cherries are actually the cherries used in confectionary and dessert making. As surprising as it is, bing cherries taste and smell rather bland when cooked, and it’s the sour cherries that give all that cherry flavor to candy, cakes, pie fillings and what not.
This sour cherry cake is a perfect example of how well sour cherries perform in a dessert. They add a nice touch of fruity flavor and bright coloring and they go extra well with the vanilla yellow cake base.
The making of this cake is as simple as, well, a piece of cake. This recipe uses a from scratch approach, but I’ll be honest with you, I’ve made it with off the shelf yellow cake mix and it was still very good.
You can use fresh cherries or canned variety, depending on how much you feel like pitting the cherries. I usually don’t feel much like doing it, so canned it is.
Not a fan of cherry? This cake can be done with any other berries or fruit. I’ve tried baking it with blueberries (very fine) wild growing blackberries I picked with my daughter (exceptional!), summer peaches (delicious) and sour plums (amazing). So, this cake is open for experiments.
I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I do and if you come up with any other berry variety for it, let me know!
