Music and Cats

Sunday afternoon, I stopped by the Alberg Farm cherry truck to pick up a few pounds of their wonderful cherries. Next to the overflowing boxes of deep red bings and blushing golden Rainiers was a smaller box of bright, almost translucent, red cherries. The handlettered sign read: Pie Cherries, $6 a pound.

I had never before seen fresh pie cherries, and was keen to try them, but six dollars a pound?!? The woman tending the truck told me that she’d picked the pie cherries early that very morning, and that the price was so high because they’re very tender, and therefore take longer to pick. She suggested that I sample one. I picked up one of the luminous cherries, and popped it in my mouth. While the flavor was decidedly tart, it had plenty of sweetness, too, much the same way that good red grapefruit is a combination of sweet and tart. I love sweet cherries, but I could happily eat these “sour” cherries out of hand as well. I bought a pound.

Now, a pound of cherries will not make a cherry pie. And, truthfully, pies are not my strong suit. So what would I bake with these luscious little gems? I knew exactly what to do: I consulted the oracle lovely and talented Bakerina.

Of course, her first suggestion was pie; that was her plan for the sour cherries she’d bought in an upwelling of irrational exuberance in the market (how well I understand!) the previous day. Not enough cherries for a pie, I told her. How many do you have, she asked. A couple of cups, pitted, I replied. Here’s what you do, she typed, and continued:

Cream 1 stick of butter with 1 cup of sugar. Add 3 eggs. Add 1 cup of flour with a teaspoon of baking powder and a 1/2 teaspoon of salt, or more salt if you think it needs it. Add a little vanilla, or other extract of your choice. Put it in an ungreased 8″x 2″ round pan, and then take your cherries and embed them in the surface of the cake. Bake it at 350. Check it after 40 minutes, but be prepared to keep it in longer.

Jen told me that this is Jill Cornfield’s plum cake recipe, from the food zine Cooking on the Edge. Jen bakes it every summer; that’s good enough for me.

I baked the cake, now known around here as Cherry Cake a la Bakerina, this morning. I used a teaspoon of almond extract, as I believe that the pairing of cherry and almond is one of the great flavor combinations for baking. As Paul can’t have much sodium, I used sodium-free baking powder, which is single acting, and requires double to triple the amount of the usual stuff. I used two teaspoons, but might try three next time. At 40 minutes, my cake was still rather liquid in the center; 50 minutes seemed to be just about right.

This evening, our friends Janeen (with her kidlet) and Phil came over for the 4th of July ritual backyard charring of flesh and quaffing of strong beverages. We ate hamburgers (slathered with the delicious onion jam that I found through Lindy’s wonderful blog), salmon, corn on the cob, and spinach salad with cherries and almonds. We drank caipirinhas, made with the sugar cane liquor called cachaça that I brought back from Brazil several years ago. When we felt a few raindrops, and then a few more, we were good Seattleites, and defied (or is that denied?) the weather. After some thunder and a light shower, we were rewarded with clearing skies and a rainbow.

When it was time for dessert, the kidlet helped whip some cream using the same technique that I use to make butter. He enjoyed shaking the jar of cream, and thought the process by which it thickened was cool, but he was surprised and unimpressed by the finished product. It’s so plain, he commented, on tasting a bit from the top of the jar. We explained that, unlike the whipped cream you can buy at the store, this was unsweetened, but would be good that way on top of the cake.

Cake! Now there’s a word to make a seven-year-old’s - and several forty-somethings’ - eyes light up. Even better than the word was the taste of this cake: sweet and almond-scented, with a moist, dense crumb akin to that of pound cake, studded with soft, slightly tart cherries. The kidlet chattered away as he devoured his cake. The grown-ups were too busy eating to say much at all — and, for this group of highly verbal people, silence speaks volumes.

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