I have been making this recipe for a long time, as it is one of the recipes I learned from my mother. She bakes this sour cherry pound cake almost every weekend, as it’s one of the family favorites.
I use fresh sour cherries when in season, but the rest of the year I have frozen ones. I always freeze pitted sour cherries in different containers for cakes or pound cakes. It’s a family habit: each summer we all gather in my mother’s back yard and pick the sour cherries and pit them and carefully freeze it to make sure we have enough during the winter season. It’ a great way to store them and they are lovely in cakes, pound cakes, sauces, smoothies and so on.
Ingredients:
(for 2 pound cakes)
8 fresh eggs
8 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons sugar for the sour cherries
3 vanilla sugar sachets
8 tablespoons white flour 000
1 sachet baking powder
10 table spoons olive oil
450 g pitted sour cherries (final weight after draining)
Method:
Preheat the oven at 180°C. Sift the flour in a bowl and mix it with the baking powder. Drain the sour cherries and sprinkle 2 table spoons of sugar on top of them. Prepare two medium pound cake molds and coat it with oil and flour. In a small saucepan boil the 8 table spoons of sugar with 8 table spoons of water to get a syrup.
Separate the eggs (they must be at room temperature) and beat the whites in a large bowls with a pinch of salt. Add the vanilla sugar and gently pour in the warm sugar syrup mixing at high speed until you get a fluffy, thick foam. Add the yolks and stir just a little, this time at low speed. Add the flour mixture, gently stirring with a spoon, and finally add the oil, making sure you keep the mixture fluffy and airy.
Pour the mixture in the baking molds and evenly spread the sour cherries (well drained), pushing gently to slide in. Bake it in the oven for 30-35 minutes (depends on the height of the molds), at 180°C. (To make sure that it is baked, make the tooth pick test: insert a tooth pick in the middle of the cake and if it comes out clean, the cake is baked).