Hungarian Sour Cherry Cake { Meggyes Lepeny }

When you freeze lots of sour cherries during the summer season, you get to make this simple yet delicious cake through out the year! Okay, the frozen sour cherries that I used to make this cake was given by my MIL though :D  As appreciation I made her this cake when she visited last weekend.

In my archive I already have a similar cake, but I find this version more to my liking as I prefer crumbly texture as opposed to the tighter crumb version. Therefore, this will be my go-to sour cherry cake recipe from this day forward.

Hungarian sour cherry cake {Meggyes Lepeny}
via About.com

Ingredients

450gm pitted sour cherries (left whole), fresh or frozen

170gm unsalted butter, room temperature

3/4 cup granulated sugar

3 large eggs, separated

1 cup all-purpose flour

Pinch salt

1/4 cup bread crumbs

Vanilla sugar

Preparation :-

1. Heat oven to 190°c / Gas 4. Butter a 10x6-inch rectangular tart pan, or a 9-inch square or a 9-inch round cake pan and dust with bread crumbs.
2. In a large bowl, cream butter and half the granulated sugar until light and fluffy. Add egg yolks and continue creaming until well incorporated. Add the flour and salt, mixing well.
3. With clean, grease-free beaters, whip egg whites with remaining granulated sugar until stiff. Gently fold whites into cake batter.
4. Transfer batter to prepared pan. Top with cherries, stem side down. Bake 30 minutes. The batter will partially bubble up and cover the fruit. Cool in pan. Sprinkle with vanilla sugar. Cut into squares or wedges and serve.

Sour Cherry Pie {Meggyes Pite}

This is my take on the traditional Sour cherry Pie, a favourite during the early summer months in Hungary. Also, one of my MIL's favourite fruit in desserts. Since the weather dropped 10°c overnight, I thought I'd bake one pie for my MIL when she was visiting this weekend.

There are simply too many variations of this pie found online ; however, I'm too lazy to follow any new recipe at the moment, I've actually just used my tried and tested pastry recipe combined with a simple sour cherry compote.

Sour Cherry Pie {Meggyes Pite}

For pastry { source : nami-nami }
100gm butter, room temperature
50 gm sugar
1 sachet vanilla sugar
1 large egg, room temperature
175gm flour
1 tsp baking powder
a pinch of salt

For the compote
1x450gm jar of preserved sour cherries, stoned and drained
3 - 4 Tbsp of sour cherry juice from preserve
1 sachet vanilla sugar
3 Tbsp sugar, or to taste
1/2 lemon zest
few drop of lemon juice
2 Tsp flour or corn starch, mix with a little water to use as thickener
Bread crumbs

Steps
1) For the filling the filling:
In a saucepan, pour-in  the sour cherries , add 3-4 Tbsp of the preserve liquid, vanilla sugar, 3 Tbsp sugar or to your taste. Cook cherries until boiling, reduce heat and pour in the a little by little flour/corn starch to thicken the liquid. Continue to cook until re-boil and liquid thickens, squeeze in the lemon juice. Let it simmer a little and switch off the heat. Let it cool completely before using it as filling. You can make this ahead of time and keep it in fridge until you need it.


2) For pastry dough :-
With an electric mixer mix butter, sugar and egg until light and creamy. Mix the dry ingredients, then pour into the batter (wet) mixture. Do not over mixed, just until the dough comes together. Put into the fridge to rest for 30 minutes.

3) Start pre-heat oven after dough has rested for 15 mins. Set oven at 180°c / Gas mark 3.

Grease baking dish* well.
*Baking dish
I like using my rectagular 18x24cm dish as I am baking a close pie with top and bottom layer but you may use a 26 cm springform tin to bake a open pie.

After 30 mins. of resting. Take out dough from fridge.

Assembly :-
If you're making a close pie, divide dough into 2 and press down the bottom layer by using your hand.
Pour filling over bottom layer and sprinkle with some bread crumbs to absorb some of the excess liquid
Roll out the second half of the dough and cover the top.

Bake for 20 mins. or until pastry is golden brown.

Hungarian sour cherries cake

My favourite cakes are still simple yellow cake such as this :)

Hungarian Sour Cherries cake

No salty

Makes – 12-16 pcs

Ingredients

4 eggs, separated

140gm sugar

2 x 8 gm sachet vanilla sugar

100ml water

100ml vegetable oil

250gm flour

1 tsp baking powder

300-400 gm sour cherries , deseeded

Method

Pre-heat oven at 180°c. Grease and lightly flour baking tray (35x25cm)

Beat egg white with a pinch of salt until stiff peak. Set aside.

Mix together flour and baking powder.

Beat egg yolks with both sugars until creamy. Pour in oil , water and combine well. Next, add-in flour+baking powder and mix until you get smooth consistency. Fold-in egg white gently until well incorporated. Dot sour cherries onto cake batter.*

Pour cake batter into the baking tray and bake for 15 mins or until skewer comes out clean.

* To prevent cherries from sinking, you can dust sour cherries with a little flour prior to dotting into cake batter.

Chocolate mousse & cream triffle cake

I intended to bake this Hungarian chocolate butter cream sponge cake (aka Ludlab) again for my FIL since I received favourable reviews the last time I made it. As the butter cream in that recipe was a bit heavy for my liking, I searched for a chocolate mousse recipe to replace the butter based one. I know the portion of chocolate mousse would not be enough to satisfy my FIL preference of more creamy filling less cake and so I added chocolate flavoured whipped cream to it. Finally, when I was deciding on presentation of the cake, I have to take into account on the convenience of travelling with a layered cake ; presenting it in a triffle cake form would be much easier to carry around - done!

Everyone loved the cake. It was chocolaty and light at the same time. There's plan to bake it again next week for another celebration.

Chocolate mousse & cream triffle cake

Ingredients

For Sponge cake ( source : flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/elfrieda/sets/72157601094692691/ )
3 eggs,
3 tbsp caster or superfine sugar
1 tbsp cocoa
3 tbsp cake flour {substitute with 3 tbsp plain flour + 1 tsp baking powder}

For the filling :-for Chocolate mousse (source http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/330616/really-easy-chocolate-mousse )

75g dark chocolate , chopped and melted (use a standard dark chocolate for this rather than a high cocoa one as it combines better)
2 eggs, separated
25g butter , melted
2 tbsp golden caster sugar
1 tbsp coffee liquor (optional)- I used rum

for chocolate flavour whipped cream
125g dark chocolate
250ml whipping cream
1 sachet cream stabiliser
powdered sugar, to taste

For the syrup
200g sour cherry preserve, with juice (roughly divide into 3 portions)
a pinch of cinnamon
sugar, to taste
2 tsp rum

For chocolate ganache
45g chocolate
a little cream or milk just to loosen chocolate

Processes
For sponge cake (I baked this few days earlier before and kept in freezer)
Grease 18cm cake tin with a small amount of butter and sprinkle a bit of cocoa in the pan to prevent sticking.
Separate eggs, cream yolks with sugar until pale.
Mix flour, baking powder and cocoa in a separate bowl.
Beat egg whites separately until stiff.
Gently combine wet and dry ingredients.
Bake in 180°c/350°F oven in round cake tin for 25 minutes or until cooked.
Set aside to cool. Once cool, cut across horizontally to create 2 cake layers.

For syrup (this can be prepare earlier as well and kept in the fridge)
Place sauce pan over low heat, pour the juice from cherry preserve into sauce pan, and sprinkle 1 portion of the sour cherry preserve, sugar and cinnamon. Cook it down until a thick consistency. Not too thick as this will use to moist the cake

For chocolate mousse
Melt chocolate and butter in microwave for 30 seconds until melted. Mix together melted chocolate and butter until well combine. Then quickly mix in the egg yolks.
In another bowl, whisk the egg whites and whisk in the sugar gradually until mixture is shinny and stiffFold in the two mixture and along add in coffee liquor if using (I used rum).

Start assembling cake

In a glass bowl, put one of the the layered cakes in the bottom of glass bowl. Brush some sour cherry syrup on the cakes and sprinkle with pieces of sour cherry (cooked together with juice)

Pour in the chocolate mousse, sprinkle with 2nd portion of sour cherries. Let it set in the fridge for 2 hours.

Meanwhile, prepare the chocolate ganache simply by microwaving the chocolate and a little bit of cream or milk til loosen and melted. Melting chocolate in microwave needs to be done by heating gradually, if chocolate is stiff add cream/milk to loosen.

For second piece of sponge cake, again brush the sour cherry syrup to moisten , let it soak up of the syrup before spreading the chocolate ganache prepared above, finally dot it with the 3rd portion of sour cherry. Set this cake layer aside while waiting for chocolate mousse to set.

For chocolate flavour whipped cream
Once chocolate mousse is set,
Melt chocolate set aside.
Start whipping the cream with sugar and cream stabiliser.
Half way through the whipping process, pour in the melted chocolate and whipped until it holds. Don not over whipped.

Pour this whipper cream over the set chocolate mousse, finally topped with the 2nd layer (the one with chocolate ganache)of sponge cake prepare earlier and it is ready.

Serve cold.

Cottage Cheese & Sour Cherry strudel

Receipe originated from Not quite Nigella

Alterations made :-

1) switched ricotta with local cottage cheese
2) switched jarred cherries with fresh ones, sprinkled with sugar

verdict :-
- my filling was a bit liquidy ; hence , it leaked out when baking
- it was delicious nonetheless ! definitely a keeper.

Upside-down sour cherries black forest cake

My new favourite cake recipe. So easy and delicious! I've halved the recipe and turned all just fine!