Cherry cake with Meringue topping

Finally back online! The moving-house went really well but things are still a bit chaotic at home. Therefore I do not think I will be able to post regularly for a little while still. Nevertheless I have material for a couple of posts. One which I can write now while Baby N. is taking a nap, the others will come later.

February, March, April... so many birthdays to celebrate! And finally a kitchen and some time... So on Friday I prepared a cake for my mother-in-law with a recipe sent to me by a friend who lives in the Netherlands (that's so cool to have acquaintances pretty much all around the world!). The german name of the cake is:

Kirschekuchen mit Eischneedecke

And here is the recipe:

 (for a standard round baking form)

Dough

*3 egg yolks
*1 sachet of vanilla sugar
*200 gr of flour
*100 gr of sugar
*100 gr of butter
*1/2 a sachet of baking powder
*A pinch of salt

Mix everything and then roll out the dough in the baking form. Bake at around 180°C for 15 - 20 min (until golden brown).

Cherry filling (to be prepared while dough is baking, that is, if you don't have a child that needs looking after!)
*1 large glass of cherries without stone
*1 and 1/2 sachet of vanilla pudding powder for cooking
*sugar (at will)

Strain the cherries above a sauce pan and set them aside. Keep a small quantity of juice in a small bowl. Use the cherry juice and fill up with water to get  1/2L. Bring the juice to the boil and in the meantime mix the remaining (cold) juice with the vanilla pudding powder, then add the mix to the boiling juice, heat and stirr until the juice becomes clear and dark (in the beginning it will be milky). Add sugar to taste, then the cherries and leave to cool down until the dough is baked. Pour onto the dough and bake for about 15 - 20 min.

Meringue
*3 egg whites (the ones from the dough's yolks which you will have store some time in the fridge before using them)

*150 gr of sugar

Add a pinch of salt and whip the eggs until they are very stiff. Then little by little whip in the sugar. Then add on top of the cherries and bake again at 150°C/180°C until it looks golden brown.

I don't know if that is perfectly normal but the meringue went down a bit when cooling down. The top part remained nicely crispy though.

 Make sure that the cake is really cooled down before you remove it from the baking form otherwise the cherry filling will still be liquid. Bon appétit!

 

And pretty much like every time I attempt a new recipe, I misread something... this time it was the quantity of vanilla pudding powder!! I used half a sachet instead of one AND a half! No wonder it was not getting solid. It all ran out of the form... I was pretty disappointed but apparently it still tasted great. The other thing I learnt was that I should not put so much sugar with the juice, just a bit (or not at all) is enough. That is what is called "learning by doing" and WHAT A SHAME! it does mean that I HAVE TO try it again!

Incidentally: to make sure I would be able to bring something edible to my in-laws, I made those:

Palmiers

Puff-pastry (not home-made) onto which I rolled some sugar, then folded twice on the length, sprinkling some more sugar, cutting, shaping, baking for 6-8min, then out again to turn them over, sprinkling again some sugar, re-baking, leaving to cool on a rack. Et voilà!