Kirsebærkage - Danish Cherry Cake

This kirsebærkage aka Danish cherry cake is baked with fresh cherries. It is easy to make and even easier to eat, with a tender crumb and golden top.

Last month we spent a week in France reveling in the fabulous fresh produce, shopping and cooking and eating extremely well in our little cottage with a sea view.

The very first day, before we even checked in to the Airbnb, we stopped at a supermarket to pick up dinner supplies and came across a great sale on cherries. Only 4 euros a kilo! So about $2 a pound. Now, I know that’s not super cheap in the States where during the summer, cherries can get as low at $1 a pound but on the island of Jersey, we aren’t so lucky.

Anyhoo, all to say, we bought cherries and then before we headed home, we bought even more to take back. 

We’ve got builders in right now, working on an extension to the house so I baked this cake to share with them. Went down a treat!  

Kirsebærkage - Danish Cherry Cake

This recipe is adapted from one on BenedictesMad. She says it’s so easy, even her six-year-old can make it if she preps the ingredients.

Ingredients

8 oz or 225g fresh cherries

3 eggs 

1 1/2 cup or 150g sugar (I used golden caster)

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

½ cup or 113g butter, softened, plus extra for the pan

1 ¼ cups or 156g flour, plus extra for the pan

½ teaspoon baking powder

2 pinches fine sea salt

For topping:

1 tablespoon sugar

Method

First, the hard job. Pit the cherries. Even if you have a cherry pitter, this is a messy job so protect your clothes and work surfaces. We are still in a relative construction zone, cooking in a makeshift kitchen and I couldn’t find mine so I just cut the cherries in half around the pit and removed the pits by prying them out. 

If you pitted yours whole, cut the cherries into halves.

Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C. Butter and flour a round baking pan about 9 inches or 23cm in diameter. 

With electric beaters or in the bowl of your stand mixer, beat the eggs, sugar and vanilla until light and aerated. 

Add the softened butter and beat again. The batter will look a bit curd-ly but don’t worry. It will turn into a lovely, creamy batter once the flour is added.

Sift in the flour, baking powder and salt.

 Beat again briefly.

Spoon the batter into your prepared pan. Distribute the cherry pieces over the batter. I put them round side up because I thought that would be prettier. If you can’t be bothered, don’t. Taste will be the same! 

Sprinkle with the extra sugar for topping

Bake in your preheated oven for approximately 35-40 minutes or until a wooden skewer comes out clean. The aroma while it bakes it ah-mazing! It brought my husband through to ask how the cake was going. 

Turning it out onto a wire rack and leave to cool before cutting into wedges to serve. 

This cake is often served with whipped cream or a scoop of ice cream. We enjoyed it just as it was. 

Enjoy! 

It’s Sunday FunDay and today we are sharing cakes from around the world in celebration of International Cake Day tomorrow. Many thanks to our host Camilla of Culinary Cam. Check out the links below. 

• Carlota de Limon from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Kirsebærkage - Danish Cherry Cake from Food Lust People Love
• Kyiv Cake from A Messy Kitchen
• Madeira Cake from Sneha's Recipe
• Persian Love Cake from Mayuri's Jikoni
• Taiwanese Castella Cake from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Topfen-Obers-Torte from Culinary Cam

 

We are a group of food bloggers who believe that Sunday should be a family fun day, so every Sunday we share recipes that will help you to enjoy your day. If you're a blogger interested in joining us, just visit our Facebook group and request to join. 

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Gingerbread Cookie Bars

These gingerbread cookie bars are an easy way to enjoy delicious gingerbread cookies without all the faff of rolling and cutting. Decorate with royal icing to finish. 

When my girls were younger, seasonal Christmas baking always included sugar cookies of various colors and designs and gingerbread men with royal icing features and M&M baking bit buttons. 

We loved baking and decorating them almost as much as eating our creations. Also, fancy cookies make great gifts for friends and neighbors. Who doesn’t like to get a small plate of festive Christmas cookies?

I must confess that I’ve gotten lazy now though. I rarely make any cookies that require rolling out and cutting, then re-rolling the scraps and cutting again. Even when I make sugar cookies, I make a sausage out of the dough so I can just slice and bake. 

The dough for these gingerbread cookie bars isn’t stiff enough to do that though, so I just bake them and cut them apart. Still so easy! 

Gingerbread Cookie Bars

For the molasses, use unsulphured, as in the ingredient list, NOT black strap which is very strongly flavored and will overwhelm the spices. I use Grandma’s brand. This recipe was adapted from one on Sally’s Baking Addiction. The royal icing ingredients make way more than you need to decorate these cookie bars but the balance can be kept indefinitely in the freezer.

Ingredients for 24 cookie bars

For the cookie bars:

2 1/4 cups or 281g flour

2 teaspoons ground ginger

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground allspice

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup or 170g unsalted butter, melted and cooled

1/2 cup, packed, or 100g dark brown sugar

1/2 cup or 100g sugar

1/3 cup or 80ml (113g) unsulphured molasses

1 large egg, at room temperature

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the royal icing:

1 1/4 cups or 156g powdered sugar 

1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar

pinch fine sea salt

1 large egg white (about 40g)

Important: Uncooked egg whites should not be served to anyone with a compromised immune system, unless those whites are from pasteurized eggs. Substitute an equivalent combination of powdered egg whites and water, according to the package instructions.

Method

Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and prepare a 9x13 in or 23x33cm pan by lining it with baking parchment. I dab a little butter or oil in each corner and in the middle to help anchor the paper to the pan. This keeps it from sliding around as much. 

In a large mixing bowl, whisk to combine the flour, ginger, baking soda, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, nutmeg and salt. 

In a medium bowl, whisk the melted butter, brown sugar, sugar, egg, molasses and vanilla together until no lumps remain. 

Sift the flour mixture into the butter mixture folding as you go. 

Spoon the dough to the prepared baking pan. 

Use a spatula to spread and press it into a smooth, even layer. 

Bake for 23–26 minutes or until the top is set but still looks quite soft. There shouldn’t be any jiggle but do err on the side of under-baking. The bars puff up in the oven, but will deflate and firm up as they cool. 

Leave to cool on a wire rack in the pan for about 10 minutes then using side of the baking parchment, slide the baking parchment with bars on top from the baking pan to the wire rack.

Leave to cool for another 10-15 minutes, then slide the baking parchment with bars to a cutting board and cut into squares.

Gently separate the squares and leave to cool. 

Meanwhile, make the royal icing. Sift the powdered sugar, cream of tartar and pinch of salt into a mixing bowl. Add in the egg white.

 Whisk it in a little at a time from the middle, until all is incorporated.

When the cookie bars are completely cool, spoon some of the icing into your piping bag fitted with a #3 tip. 

Decorate as desired, letting some drip off the sides of the gingerbread bars. I like to do diagonal lines across the top. If you don’t have a piping bag and tip, use a Ziploc bag with a tiny corner cut off. 

Leave to set. 

The royal icing will harden up then the bars can be stored in an airtight container or packaged up to share with friends and family. 

Enjoy! 

It’s Sunday FunDay and today we are sharing recipes on our holiday cookie platters in celebration of National Cookie Exchange Day which falls next Monday, 22 December. Many thanks to our host, Camilla of Culinary Cam. Check out the links below. 

• A Panoply of Pistachio Cookies by Culinary Cam
• Bakery-Style Holiday Sprinkle Cookies by Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Citrusy Ginger Shortbread Cookies by A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Egg Free Peanut Butter M&M Cookies by Mayuri's Jikoni
• Eggless Piped Chocolate Cookie by Sneha's Recipe
• Fruitcake Cookies by Amy's Cooking Adventures
• Gingerbread Cookie Bars by Food Lust People Love
• Vegan Ginger Cookies by Sid's Sea Palm Cooking

 

We are a group of food bloggers who believe that Sunday should be a family fun day, so every Sunday we share recipes that will help you to enjoy your day. If you're a blogger interested in joining us, just visit our Facebook group and request to join.

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Vanilla Bean No Churn Ice Cream with Fresh Strawberry Sauce

Creamy and sweet, this vanilla bean no churn ice cream is so easy and delicious! Since it’s strawberry season, add some fresh strawberry sauce. So good! 

Years and years ago, we were living in a small oilfield town in Brazil, about three hours up the coast from Rio de Janeiro. Shopping was a challenge but I managed to find most things we loved or I figured out how to make them myself. (Looking at you, bagels, for one!) 

Ice cream was readily available but it was ridiculously expensive so I asked my sister to bring me an ice cream maker the next time she visited. This was before the days of fancy ice cream makers you just plugged in. The one she brought was a modern electric version of the old hand-cranked kind that needed rock salt. 

I was so excited when she and the machine arrived! My bubble was burst when I discovered that rock salt was hard to come by and the cost of cream was the reason ice cream was so expensive! It would cost me more to make my own than to buy the overpriced supermarket stuff. Deep sigh. 

It was the very early days of the internet so I didn’t know about no churn ice cream. Now I’m delighted by the plethora of no churn recipes and I live where cream is affordable. Good times! 

Vanilla Bean No Churn Ice Cream with Fresh Strawberry Sauce

Can you serve this ice cream plain or with another sauce? Absolutely! I include the fresh strawberry sauce recipe because it complements the sweet ice cream beautifully but it’s also lovely for strawberry shortcake. Maybe it should get its own post for that. 

Ingredients

For the vanilla bean ice cream:

I vanilla bean

1 can (14 oz or 397g) sweetened condensed milk

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 cups or 480ml heavy cream

For the strawberry sauce:

14oz or 397g fresh strawberries

⅓ cup or 66g sugar

1 tablespoon lemon juice

2 teaspoons cornstarch

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Method

Split and use a spoon to scrape the tiny bits from inside your vanilla bean.

Add them to the condensed milk in a mixing bowl allong with the vanilla extract and stir well.  

Whip the cream until stiff peaks form. 

Gently fold the condensed milk into the whipped cream. 

Line a loaf pan with cling film and spoon the mixture into it. Put a spoon or two in each corner first so you can straighten out the cling film.

Then pour the rest in and smooth the top. 

Cover loosely with more cling film then freeze your vanilla bean ice cream in the loaf pan for at least 6 hours.

To make the strawberry topping, hull the strawberries. 

Rinse the strawberries well with cool water and spin them dry. 

Cut the large ones in quarters, the medium ones in half and leave any smaller ones whole. Please don't skip this step. Strawberries have little hairs (called styles) that need to be cleaned off, not to mention the potential chemicals that might have been used.

Combine the strawberries and sugar in a medium pot. 

Cook over a medium heat until the sugar dissolves, stirring often. This takes just a few minutes.

In a small bowl, whisk together the lemon juice, vanilla extract and cornstarch.

Pour the mixture over the strawberries and stir well.

Bring to a boil once over medium-high heat, then reduce to medium heat and simmer sauce until berries are soft and juices have thickened slightly, about 5 minutes for a chunky topping. 

Decant to a bowl and refrigerate, covered with cling film, until ready to serve.

When the vanilla bean ice cream is sufficiently frozen, remove the pan from the freezer. 

Use the cling film lining to remove the ice cream from the pan to a cutting board. Warm your knife in hot water and cut slices of the ice cream to serve. 

Top each slice of ice cream with chilled fresh strawberry sauce. Rewrap any leftover ice cream and pop it back in the freezer. 

Enjoy! 

It’s Sunday FunDay. I’m hosting and today we are celebrating National Ice Cream Month! Check out all the ice cream recipes we are sharing below.

• Eggless Homemade Butterscotch Ice Cream from Sneha's Recipe
• Healthy Chocolate Shake from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Low Sugar Strawberry No Churn Ice Cream from Our Good Life
• Milk Chocolate Ice Cream from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• No Churn Oreo Ice Cream from Cook with Renu
• Orange Creamsicle No Churn Ice Cream from Amy's Cooking Adventures
• Vanilla Bean No Churn Ice Cream with Fresh Strawberry Sauce from Food Lust People Love

 

We are a group of food bloggers who believe that Sunday should be a family fun day, so every Sunday we share recipes that will help you to enjoy your day. If you're a blogger interested in joining us, just visit our Facebook group and request to join.

Pin this Vanilla Bean No Churn Ice Cream
with Fresh Strawberry Sauce

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