I have dried sour cherries and sour cherry concentrate.  I would like to make a loaf style cake that is lightly sweetened, that really brings out the tartness.  I don’t want to add a lot of spice like a traditional fruitcake.  Has anyone ever done this sort of cake?

Hi, colbaltcanarycherry!

Welcome!  That’s a very interesting way of naming yourself after the primary colors!

I don’t know if I can help you much with your predicament except to say that Rose has a fruitcake recipe in RHC (Rose’s Heavenly Cakes) and, although I haven’t made that particular cake, her cakes don’t tend to be overly sweet.

I would think, if you don’t want to make a proper fruitcake, per se, you could use a “regular” cake recipe, dice up the dried sour cherries, toss them in flour and lightly blend them into the batter before baking.  Another thought—something that Rose does sometims—is sprinkle the diced dried cherries onto the batter after it’s in the pan—they sink, but they can’t all get to the bottom before the cake sets, so they are pretty evenly distributed.

As to the sour cherry concentrate—is this like cherry butter (like apple butter) or like a concentrated juice?  If it’s a cherry butter, I would think you could incorporate it into a powdered sugar glaze—make the glaze and then swirl it in, maybe not blending entirely to maintain the swirl appearance.  If it’s a liquid, you could use it as the liquid in the glaze or maybe even syrup the cake with it—I know that even unsweetened sour cherries still have a lot of sugar.  You’d want to calculate the amount of sugar in the concentrate to figure out how much liquid would go with it for a sugar syrup.  Syrups are not my area of expertise, but if you give the specifics on the concentrate, I might be able to help.

If you like a tart cherry butter, you might want to try this sometime (http://www.edenfoods.com/store/product_info.php?cPath=25_47&products_id=103315)—it’s awesome!!!!!!

—ak

Thank you for the suggestion.  I have unsweetened, not oiled ( why do some packers do that? ) organic Monmorency cherries and the unsweetened, concentrated Montmorency cherry juice.  Doubtless I could hydrate the cherries in the juice and made a spread of sorts, but I was sort of hoping for chopping them coarsely and getting them to suspend in a dense cake made pink with the concentrate, like an old-school home made strawberry cake, and serve it with lashings of fresh whipped cream in a lake of sweetened cherry sauce.

I love Eden foods and will seek out the cherry butter.

Sour cherries are incredibly tart without sugar, and it sounds like both your cherries and your concentrate are unsweetened.  You can try adding these to cakes unsweetened, but it may be necessary to sweeten both of these before adding them to cake formulas.

My first thought was actually of an angel food cake, it is white so you’ll get the pink color you’re after, and it may be sweet enough to counteract the cherries and juice.  However, when someone takes a bite of the dried cherry, it may come across as too tart/jarring, not sure how that would be.  It would also have a nice spongy texture that would be nice with the pool of cherry sauce that you’re planning on serving it with.  And angel food can be baked in a loaf pan.

My next thought was Rose’s white velvet cake, subbing a small portion (1-2 Tbs) of the cherry concentrate for some of the milk.  Normally, you would think of pound cake in a loaf pan, but you need the higher sugar level of a layer cake formula.  You might try soaking the cherries in Lyle’s syrup or corn syrup in order to both hydrate and sweeten them.  Syruping the cake with simple syrup may help correct the sweetness level.

My last idea was a bit different, that is to use the cherry concentrate in Rose’s red velvet cake in place of the red food dye.  That would add a whisper of cocoa and brown sugar to the cherries.  It won’t be bright red like the food dye version, probably more brownish-pink.

Whatever direction you try, please post back with your results!

And angel food can be baked in a loaf pan.

No kidding????  Do you have to invert it after cooking?  [I’m guessing yes.] Can you use a nonstick pan? [I’m guessing no.]

If you only had a nonstick pan, I wonder if you could line it with ungreased parchment or waxed paper?  (Grease the pan, stick the parchment to it, don’t grease the parchment.)

All the same baking conditions apply for the loaf as for the tube pan (except length of baking time).  So, yes, a non-stick pan would not be recommended and it would be cooled upside down (I would try the RHC method of placing a cake cooling rack on coffee mugs to raise it, and invert the pan on the rack to cool).

As for lining the pan with parchment or wax paper, I haven’t tried it but would be interested to hear from anyone who has.

Thanks, J!