Cherry-Mascarpone Cake

Happy Valentine's Day to you all! This cake combines two of my Valentine's Day favorites:  chocolate and cherries. It's not difficult to make, but still looks very special. It also comes in a small size, which makes for a perfect Valentine's Dessert for you and your sweetheart.

Amarena Cupcakes

The cupcakes I have made for you today, are a real treat. Amarena cherries are very popular in Germany, especially the amarena ice-cream sundae is a favorite flavor in gelaterias. Here I combined the cherries with almonds, as those two really complement each other, since Amarena cherries are soaked in Amaretto, an almond liquor. The topping is made with heavy cream instead of buttercream, which makes it a little bit lighter. These cherries can be bought either in the supermarket, or you can make them yourselves, when cherries are in season.

Cherry Cake with Florentine Topping

I love florentines. These caramel based almond biscuits are dipped in dark chocolate, sometimes with dried fruits. This makes them crunchy yet chewy. This cake uses the plain florentine as topping, supported by a fruit layer made of cherry, and a vanilla cake base.

This recipe was for a big cake, but I only made half the portion. However, the cherry layer was still a little moist when I took it out of the oven. Maybe the oven was too hot, or I misjudged the baking time with the reduced portions. But it was still good, so next time a big one is in order.

Black Forest Saint Honoré and some Chocolate Éclairs

For a long time I wanted to make a Saint Honoré cake. I never ate it before, but it always looked tempting, every time I saw it in cookbooks. On my recent trip to Tokyo I finally had my very first Saint Honoré, and from none other than Pierre Herme. It was the rose-raspberry version, which is also known as the Ispahan. After that I was determined to make one myself.

I was first thinking about making a raspberry or strawberry Saint Honoré, but I wanted to make something different. So I got this idea while I was picking sour cherries in our garden. Why not make a Black Forest St. Honoré.

It's everybody's favorite, and sour cherries are one of the most important ingredients. Of course, as with any normal black forest cake, you will also need chocolate, Kirsch and whipping cream.

This cake is quite a project, what you can see by the length of the recipe. A few components, like the cherry compote, pastry cream and chocolate glaze can be made in advance, and stored in the fridge for up to two days.

The recipe is enough to also make some extra chocolate eclairs, which share the same base recipes. They were equally good, and maybe a good starting point, if you don't want to tackle the whole recipe.

After finishing, I thought I will never make them again, since it's so much work. But taking the first bite, I immediately changed my mind, they were just so tasty.

Sour Cherry-Pistachio Mousse Cakes

Sour cherries are very precious, because their season is rather short and they spoil quickly if not picked in time. But the good thing is that they are perfect for canning and that way can be used as cake filling or fruit compote all year round. I prefer sour cherries for cakes and canning since I think sweet cherries taste a little bland if cooked.

These little cakes I made for you today combine the tartness of sour cherries with a creamy and delicious pistachio mousse, all on top of a light sponge cake. The pistachio mousse is so good that it could be served on its own.

I also wanna take this opportunity to congratulate my mother-in-law on her birthday today. Unfortunately she is too far away to try the cakes herself. Happy birthday, 生日快樂 Ann.

Chilled Sour-Cherry Soup with Lemon-Quark Mousse

Chilled soups are a great refreshment in summer, either as a dessert or as replacement for lunch. This sour-cherry soup was especially refreshing because of its tartness. We had it on a very hot day, and it was the perfect lunch. I topped the soup with a creamy mousse, made with quark and lemon. If you can't find quark you can make it yourself using buttermilk. Meeta from "What's For Lunch Honey?" has a great recipe for it, which I used all the time while I was living in North America.

We are really lucky with all the fruits in our garden this summer, and sour cherries were of no exception. But it seemed that all the fruits seemed to be ripe at around the same time this year. The season started with rhubarb, then the raspberries, strawberries, followed by sweet and sour cherries, and gooseberries. Now the blackberries are getting ripe and soon we can pick plums.

Cherry Clafoutis

A Clafoutis is a french dessert, which is made with a pancake like batter poured over cherries and then baked in the oven. Cherries are the traditional choice of fruit, but it can be made with a wide variety of fruits like for example plums, apricots, peaches, apples or raspberries. This batter is made with ground almonds, which pairs very well with the cherries. Some recipes use cherries with their pits, or leave a few pits in, since the pits will also release an almond flavor.

We have beautiful cherries in our garden right now, both sweet and sour ones. Usually I use sour cherries for baking and jam making and sweet ones are just eaten off the tree. But this year there are so many, that I also tried a few dishes with them. I have to say they are equally good for baking, you just need to use less sugar.

I am also happy to announce that I have won first place at this month' DMBLGIT contest with my picture of the burger-style macarons. Thanks to Charline from Charline cuisine for hosting this month event and congratulations to my fellow winners. Check out the beautiful entries on Charlines blog.