I love California, beautiful weather, amazing nature and abundant produce. Spring time is just awesome here. Wild flowers everywhere, air is crisp and there is a feeling of newness in the air. Farmer’s market starts getting more produce and as the month of May rolls around, you start seeing cherries in the market. A few types of cherries like Brooke, Rainer and more.

We love going cherry picking, so much fun to pick the beautiful ruby red fruits right off the tree. It’s very close to where we live, we go there to pick not just cherries but even peaches & corn. We go early, pick the fruit and have a picnic whenever we go. I will be doing a quick video soon to show you all how awesome it is.

May is very special because its my daughters birthday.

She is sophisticated, beautiful, smart, confident, loving, content, full of love and empathy, I must have done something right in my previous life to have such a wonderful daughter.

In fact I thank my stars everyday and count my blessing that I am a mom to two most wonderful children. Very understanding, no attitude, pure love.

Since I make an effort to cook with whats in season, I thought why not make a cake with these gorgeous cherries for my baby’s birthday. She loves chocolate, she loves fancy desserts and love cherries.

I decided to make a Cherry Upside down cake. I wanted to make something a little more decadent, sophisticated so decided to roast my cherries with the Bourbon before baking with the batter. The bourbon adds a very distinct & complex flavor to the cherries and the roasting intensifies the flavors.

I know its a pain to pit cherries one at a time so I decided to buy this from Amazon, and I love it. You can pit 6 cherries at a time, the juices don’t go all over the place and the pits also stay in place.

The cake batter is the same as my chocolate cake, I made only 1/3 of the batter since we did not want a huge cake. Cherry and chocolate is such an incredible combination, and with the addition of the whipped cream, it comes very close to the ‘Black Forest Cake’.

We loved how it turned out and it looks gorgeous too, a little less than my daughter though 🙂

Cherry upside down cake
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Bourbon Cherry Upside Down cake

Decadent chocolate cake with boozy caramelized cherries

Course cake, Dessert
Keyword cake, chocolate, dark chocolate
Author Anagha

Ingredients

Ingredients

For the Cake: This batter makes three 8inch round cakes

  • 340 g Unsalted butter about 3 sticks; 340g
  • 1 1/2 cup brewed black coffee alternatively take 4 tbsp of instant coffee with hot water
  • 90 g Unsweetened cocoa powder
  • 175 g Dark chocolate roughly 72%
  • 450 g light brown sugar
  • 1 Tbsp vanilla extract
  • 1 Tsp salt
  • 6 large eggs cold from the fridge
  • 3 large egg yolks cold from the fridge
  • 250 g All-purpose flour
  • 1 tablespoon Baking soda

Cherry topping

  • 1 Cup Sugar
  • 6 Tbsp Water
  • 6 Tbsp Butter
  • 25 Pitted Cherries

Instructions

Method

  1. Heat the oven to 375 F

  2. Line , three 8 inch round cake pan line with parchment paper

Cherry Topping

  1. Mix the cherries , sugar and butter together

  2. Pour in the bottom of the cake pan

  3. Cook for 10 min till the sugar is little caramelized

  4. Take out the pan and add the bourbon & salt

Cake

  1. Pre-heat the oven to 350 F
  2. Combine butter and coffee steel pot over low heat. Once melted, remove from heat, then mix in cocoa and chocolate, followed by brown sugar, vanilla, and salt. Mix in eggs and yolks, then sift in flour and baking soda.
  3. Mix well till you see no dry flour spots

  4. Pour the batter in the prepared pans

  5. Bake until cakes are firm for about 30 minutes (a toothpick inserted into the center should come away with a few crumbs still attached)
  6. Cool cakes directly in their pans for 1 hour, then invert onto a wire rack, peel off parchment, and return cakes right side up.