Miss Nelly`s Cherry Cake

Let`s skip the part with oh-this-is-so-easy and get straight to it: the tantalizing flavor of the cherry is paired so well with the er...cheesecake-like topping? I`m not good at describing food. I`m better at eating it.

Beware, because this post contains again a lot of pictures!

You might think that March is not an appropriate month for cherry recipes, but hey, that`s why the freezer has been invented, right? Last summer, when my mom attempted to make cherry jam, but didn`t, we had about 8 lbs (that`s about 4 to 5 kg) of fresh cherries resting in our fridge. Damn, what kind of cake would use so many cherries at once? I had no experience in making pies at that time, so a cherry pie would have been a bad,bad (VERY!), bad idea. So we ate 1 pound but still had 7. Mommy bought freezer bags and we shoveled all those cherries in our freezer. 

They stayed a while there until I decided to start baking with them. Muffins, cakes, sauces, syrups. Still had some more. And I don`t know about you but I`m not a great fan of eating fruit that had been frozen. Like on it`s own. I bake with it. And it comes in handy when you have a Cherry Cheesecake, Cherry Fudgy Brownies or Cherry Almond Torte crave. 

Bla,bla,bla I don`t like the pictures but I took a lot bla,bla,bla. I`ll skip this part where I complain about how bad my photography skills are. What can I do with a Nikon D3100 18-55 1:3.5 lens? Not much, I tell you.

I`m worn out. I`m fed up and tired. The "too-much-school" period of time led to my "want-a-huge-holiday" syndrome. Not good. Especially that my baking could be affected because of the tiredness and moroseness. This is not a proper time to bake Macarons or anything fancy. So I made this luscious but easy peasy cake. 

Oh, and I haven`t edited these images because I`m a lazy girl. I needed something to carry to a tea party. Of course, I originally planned to make Nutella Cream Tartlets but I didn`t feel like rolling out pastry and dirtying my mom`s kitchen. 

What`s worse than a bad period of time? Eating food that makes you sad. Like salad. I had salad! Even the word itself said "sad" : SAlaD. See?

Whatever. Whenever you are feeling down, bake some cake. Indulge. Why? Because you deserve it.

Life sucks.

Although I need to bang my head on the keyboard a few times and to stare unconscious at the screen before I decide to write something, I wish you have a great weekend and life is offering you what`s best. 

Ingredients:

1 and 3/4 cup white all purpose flour (you can use whole wheat)

6 Tablespoons vegetable oil (NOT olive!)

8 Tablespoons milk

3 eggs

1 teaspoon baking powder

200 gr brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 teaspoon almond extract

Topping:

2 cups and 1/2 pitted cherries (fresh, frozen, tinned)

2 eggs

4 Tablespoons brown sugar

200 ml. sour cream

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 180 d C/375 d F. Line the bottom of your baking pan (9X13 or similar) with parchment paper or grease and flour it well. Set aside.

2. In a medium bowl, toss the ingredients in this order: flour, sugar, baking powder, oil, milk, eggs and vanilla+almond extract. Using a whisk or your mixer, beat everything together until well incorporated. After there are no lumps or specks of flour to be seen, you can go ahead and pour it in your pan. Batter will be quite thick. 

Arrange the pitted cherries in an even layer over the batter. Set aside.

3. In another bowl, beat together the eggs, add the sugar and sour cream. Combine everything. Mixture will resemble a thicker glaze. Pour this over the top of the unbaked cake, making sure to cover the whole surface with it.

4. Bake in the preheated oven for 35 to 40 minutes or until the top looks golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, with no wet batter clinging on it.

Slice and serve. This is a great dessert to finish a meal, because it is not overly sweet, it has the right amount of tartness thanks to the cherries and don`t worry-you will not taste the sour cream at all! I promise.

Brown Butter Cinnamon Sugar Baked Donuts

Ok, I have to admit that the name of this recipe contains a lot of words. And this is my first time making something with brown butter. Guess what? I just found my favorite ingredient of all times.

They might not look very delicious in these pictures but trust me...they are. Besides, they are baked not fried. So this makes them somewhat healthy. 

Because it wasn`t that much fun rolling them in cinnamon-sugar, I dunked them in brown butter too. So, what was I saying about these being healthy? Hahaha, no.

My dad didn`t have any dessert after lunch, so he decided to make some Crepes (french pancakes) but he ended up sitting at the computers, trying to forget his dessert. Cool, right?

So I quickly whipped up a batch of these Donuts. Ah, besides, there is no yeast involved, no huge amount of flour, no extra hours of waiting until the dough rises. It`s just mix and bake. 

As easy as they are to put together, they have a scrumptious taste! It`s like...I don`t know how to describe them. They have a slight caramel-y aroma from the brown butter (which, in my opinion, kind of tastes a bit like caramel) and the lovely cinnamon. Oh my!

And I like the pictures this time. Yaaay, I`m not disappointed in how horrible they usually come out. 

Really now, this post contains (again?!) a lot of pictures. Just because I love to show you how beautiful food can be. 

Daddy showed me his appreciation by eating almost the entire batch. I had two of them. Well, it was enough to please me. 

Ok, so now about the Brown Butter, or in french beurre noisette, beurre=butter and noisette=hazelnut(s). Which is totally deserves its name "noisette". It makes your house smell like roasted hazelnuts and has quite a similar taste, but in my opinion, it tasted a bit like caramel too (have I already said that? Probably).

The bad part about brown butter? It`s not the easiest thing to make.

Do it right and you`ll have both great smell&flavor, do it wrong and your house will smell like you`ve burned coal. Really.

There are many sites and tutorials on the web which will show you the right way to do it, just google "How to make brown butter". 

So how is brown butter different from regular melted butter? Scroll down, buddy.

B.B (brown butter) is a fancy ingredient (how should I call it? A dish or an ingredient?) made with only one thing :butter. A good quality, full fat butter. 

You`ll need a saucepan and a spatula or a whisk(heath-safe). At first, you just melt the butter like you would normally do for other dishes. Keep it on the stove and you`ll start to see it will bubble and foam up. Stir or swirl the pan around (like I did). Soon, the color of the butter will start to darken a bit and the foam will disappear, leaving a translucent fat mass (meaning the melted butter, of course). As soon as the shades start to get brownish, immediately(!) turn the heat off and quickly pour your brown butter into a bowl. The picture beneath is how my turned out...not completely brown, but the taste was AMAZING! "Butter perfect!"

This being said, I really don`t know why you wouldn`t want to make these Donuts. There are a lot of people who have never experienced the beauty of brown butter. And you don`t know what you are losing! Really!

You know what? Because I love experimenting and now that B.B became one of my favourite things to bake with, I`m thinking about some other goodies: Brown Butter Dark Chocolate Chip Cookies or Almond Cherry Tart with Brown Butter Crust or White Chocolate Brown Butter Brownies. I don`t know how that sounds to you, but I can see future recipes loaded with B.B. Ok, I`m officially obsessed. Give me a Paracetamol.

I know I mentioned the work "baked donuts" somewhere. Well, yes, they don`t call for yeast and stuff like cookie or donut cutters. Just one special pan and a few ingredients which you might have in your fridge. 

This is how a donut pan looks like:

It`s really cheap and also very useful when you have guests coming over and no time for traditional donuts. Mix, bake and serve however you like. Yum! Yum! Yum!

Oh, and because everything is better with the addition of cinnamon, coat these beauties in some powdered sugar+nutmeg+cinnamon. Now my life is complete.

Ingredients: makes 12 donuts

1 egg

50 gr. granulated white sugar

4 Tablespoons of plain yogurt or sour cream

2 Tablespoons of vegetable oil (NOT olive oil)

1 lvl. teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

130 gr. white, all purpose flour

For the Brown Butter Cinnamon Sugar Coating:

65 gr. unsalted butter(NOT margarine, no substitutions!)

2 lvl. teaspoons of cinnamon

a pinch of nutmeg

125 gr powdered sugar

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 180 d C/375 d F. Grease and flour a 12-donuts donut pan and set aside.

2. In a medium bowl, using a whisk, beat the egg and the sugar until paler in color. Add in the yogurt, oil, vanilla extract. Sift in the flour and baking powder. Mix everything until incorporated. Not more, or you`ll end up with tough donuts. 

Fill a pastry bag and pipe the batter in the prepared pan.

Bake 15-18 minutes or until lightly golden brown. 

While the donuts are baking, prepare the brown butter by melting the butter in a saucepan. Swirl it around until it starts to bubble and foam up. Do this over medium-low heat so it won`t burn quickly. After a while, you`ll notice it will become translucent and the foam will disappear. Swirl the pan around until the color begins to turn golden brown. Immediately take off the heat and transfer to a shallow bowl.

Separately, toss together the powdered sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg until thoroughly combined. 

After the donuts finishes baking, let them sit in the pan for 2 minutes, take each one out, dunk it very well in butter and roll it in cinnamon sugar mixture until it`s coated. If you like, you can double-coat them.

Serve slightly warm. goes well with tea.