Cherry Tea Cake

Jumping on the Cherry wagon again - with prices coming down as the cherry season peaks, they are hard to resist. Wendy, you will be envious to learn that these are now going at S$11/kg! Geez, I am sounding like an auntie now and I probably look the part of one as I continued to circle the crates of American cherries while clutching onto my kilo punnet of cherries. On the other side of the 'cherry island' at Carrefour, I overheard a Chinese Auntie telling the assistant that she wanted to buy 5kg of cherries.... judging from the way every shopper seems to be clutching onto a bag of cherries, I would say we are all going gaga over cherries.

It is easy to be swept by the craze and over buy. Why, I was even contemplating to go back for more later this week...but then, it struck me that apart from eating them neat, I really don't know very much what else to do with them. I had tried making a cherry pie some time back and was pleased with the result . However,as  I flipped through my cookbook collection and searched online, it seems like the most common cherry recipes are essentially pies and tarts. Having been away from my kitchen for a week, I just wanted to work on something simple that could serve as fodder for this blog and be presentable enough to bring to the office. (so that I don't have to eat everything by myself !) 



This recipe is taken from Martha Stewart's Cupcakes. Essentially a Financier recipe that calls for the use of browned butter, this provides an interesting alternative to the standard yellow cupcake, vanilla cupcake or chocolate cupcake that form the basis of almost all cupcake recipe cookbook. The texture is deliciously springy and I only wish I had used more cherries to impart more tartness to the cupcake.


Recipe
Unsalted butter                141g
All purpose flour              114g
Ground Almond               1 cup
Sugar                               160g
Salt                                  1tsp
Egg White                        5
1 tbsp                              Kirsch

Method :
1. Preheat oven to 200C.
2. Sift flour into a mixing bowl. Add ground almond, sugar and salt. Wisk to mix well.
3. Heat and brown butter in a heavy saucepan. In the mean time, whisk egg white into (2).
4. When butter has turned brown, (be careful not to burn butter) whisk butter  into egg white and flour mixture. Add butter in a slow trickle to ensure homogenous mixing.Let batter stand for 1/2 hour.
5. Add 2 tbsp of batter into cup cake liners. Insert a cherry (with stem intact) in the middle of cup cake.
6. Bake at 200C for 12 mins - 15 mins.
7. Cool down.