ottawa foodies

To cut to the chase, I'm trying to make a cherry cake. I'm using a good yellow cake recipe I know and I'm trying to adapt it. This is where I need your help.

I made the recipe as cupcakes last night (for my coworkers). While it was really tasty and had a good crumb, the cherry flavour wasn't evident.

This was the base recipe:

smittenkitchen.com

It calls for 2 cups buttermilk. I subbed in 1/2 cup maraschino cherry syrup a 1/2 cup of the buttermilk and added 1 cup chopped maraschino cherries.

Anyone with experience making fruit flavoured cakes? Should I purree some fresh cherries? Try real cherry juice?

Help!

Maybe using Kirsch? It gives Black Forest cake a potent cherry kick.
There's a recipe for almond cake on David Lebovitz's site and it has a link to quick candied cherries within it. Maraschino cherries are just too weirdly red.
www.davidlebovitz.com

almond extract will boost the flavour. cherries themselves won't lend that much extra. you can buy cherry juice, so you could try that instead of marachino syrup.

i've made cherry cupcakes many times. i make a white cake, add cherrys to it (fresh or frozen) and then make the frosting really cherry (using marachino cherry syrup & almond extract). the cake is always very subtle, so the frosting makes up for it.

kirsch, brush it onto the cake after you cut the layers or right when the cake comes out of the oven

if you sub cherry juice or syrup for the buttermilk you might lose some of the leavening action of the buttermilk (it's acidic so will react with baking soda)and make a denser cake

yup to almond extract

and please do not use maraschino cherries, part of the flavouring is almond extract but they just don't digest

fresh cherries will alter your liquid to dry balance
puree some frozen, thawed, and well drained cherries to the frosting
add pureed dry cherries to the cake itself

hope that helps

Marachino cherries don't really have that big cherry flavor. I find that for baking sour cherries are the only ones that can give the big flavor. I have made a really flavorful cherry cake where I subed all of the liquid with the sour cherry juice, but I think the liquid was origianlly milk not buttermilk. Fresh sour cherries are not out yet but in a pinch I have used the jars availalbe in the supermarkets.

chef obi is right on maraschino cherries. i strongly oppose these as well as a lot of candies and poison garnishes in the cake and candy aisle which contain alot of preservatives and dyes (i believe it is scarlet red) that the body does not recognize, does not digest and these products accumulate the insides of intestines for months, years contributing to havoc on the metabolism, gets you fat and may lead to colon cancer. consider increase the fiber in one's diet, metamucil or a colonic enema to flush out the toxins built up in the intestines. and oh, use natural foods!

but if you must get a strong cherry flavor suggest to use cherry brandy (natural kind), juice of sour cherries reduced over a stove to 50%, or the juice of amarena cherries (natural) + pureed cherries or even cherry jam.

Try Amarena Fabbri cookingtimejournal.com ones instead of Luxardo. I like them better, more depth.

you could try adding some black cherry juice if you can find it, or else maybe use some cherry soda or drink as part of the flavoring.

-using some cherry jam or frozen cherries would probably add a lot of taste and be the easiest thing to find.

Why are people responding to a question that was asked in 2010? The cake has presumably been long completed and eaten.

Maybe they stopped halfway and froze the ... nah, i got nothing.

Methinks this cake is baked!

I heard it got left out in the rain.