An Excellent Cake For Snacking

celebrate stone-fruit season with cake!

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Jammy fruit sunk in pools of batter; the smooth scent of butter and sugar browning in the oven; parchment paper crinkling importantly as you pull it away from the pan and its contents…these are the minute things I look forward to when I, ever so rarely, make a snack cake.

Understand, I am no outsize fan of the buttercream-slathered birthday cake (having a slice once a year is fine for me), but you have my interest if we are discussing the other kinds of cake that we, as Americans, just don’t get around to making. From years of watching The Great British Bakeoff I’ve come to assume that the British are a more cakey people than we. America is cookie territory, ice cream country. (And God knows I’m an ice cream devotee.) But I have to admit: I like all the other kinds of poor, neglected cakes you never see outside of a church potluck. I like the ceremony of cutting a slice of something - not to mention baking a thing in one fell swoop that can feed sixteen. I like that we still swap recipes for all the cakes we never make, promising ourselves that someday we will be in a cake-like frame of mind. The list of promised cake is fairly extensive:

Coffee cake.

Gingerbread cake.

Rum cake.

Lemon drizzle cake.

Swiss roll cake.

Carrot cake.

Apple cinnamon cake.

Cassata cake.

Almond cake.

Clementine cake.

Flourless chocolate cake.

Fig & olive oil cake.

Pumpkin loaf cake.

The nameless cake my choir teacher served occasionally, thin and sharp with cream cheese, and a shellac of chocolate fudge across the top.

Pound cake, for heaven’s sake.

We have recipes for these cakes, we are full-grown adults - able to make a cake at will - and yet we really never stop to bake them. What a shame. I don’t know anybody who would refuse a slice of some moreish cake that has lately been pulled from an oven. (At least not anybody to whom I’d offer cake in the first place.) And it leaves you to think, why did we collectively stop making these everyday, ordinary, non-celebration cakes? Why did cakes become a wedding-and-birthday only event?

Look, I’m not the only person to bemoan the lack in our non-birthday lives - Yossi Arefi came out with a gorgeous book literally titled Snacking Cakes, presumably in a bid to mend the gap. Bakers like Bronwen Wyatt (@bayousaintcake) and Olivia Wilson (@olivemajor) belong to an Instagram cake-renaissance that is totally changing what a layer cake can taste (and look) like. And although I think Molly Baz stepped way past the boundaries held by all rational stomachs with her sugared Castelvetrano olive cake recipe (blink twice if you need help, Molly!), it must be acknowledged that cake is, indeed, a re-emerging - or perhaps never quite abandoned - favorite.

Naturally, I couldn’t be left out of the fun. Not only are cake recipes briefly “in,” but so is stone-fruit, and this is the part of the year where I can only be persuaded to turn on my oven for a hybrid of these two short-lived phenomena: a stone-fruit snack cake. Today’s recipe was given to me by a Romanian friend’s mother, and this is a cake that is imminently snackish. My primary experience with this cake was unwrapping hefty wedges of it from foil packets at a scenic overlook on a long drive across Romania. If you’ve never eaten sour cherry cake in an alpine setting, I can attest to the delight of such an experience. It’ll go straight to your head.

The original iteration of this cake is made with sour cherries, which grow everyplace in Romanian cities and villages; I still think that sour cherries are the ideal fruit for this cake, as their spicy sourness does something when sunk in golden batter. If you have access, I implore you to go through the trouble of pitting cherries and to make this recipe with them. However, I do not live in a place that sells sour cherries - even in grocery stores - so I reach for other seasonal fruit to make mine. Perhaps apricots, becoming sunshine gold and refreshingly tart as they bake; or a few early summer peaches, not yet in their full flavor but made better by baking. Whatever you choose, this cake will accept (though I prefer you leave strawberries out of the running; they turn so ugly when baked). An unfussy recipe, this cake is stirred up by hand, baked in a springform pan or even a 9x13” tray, and easily parceled for backpacks or coolers or bike baskets. It is a not-very sweet cake, and tart cherries will make it even less so; if you want to draw the finished cake more toward dessert, I recommend a dusting of powdered sugar and a dollop of creme fraiche on top. But I think the cake by itself is just right, especially with a cup of strong coffee.

My hope is that this recipe might persuade you to turn on your oven one more time, and that if you make it, you will bring slices along in little foil pouches of your own to whatever adventures your summer has planned for you. Because yes, I’m basically a hobbit and I believe that being hungry on adventures is an avoidable evil. Happy snack-cake season! Share with all your summer friends.

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Stone-Fruit Snack Cake

75 g. butter, melted
300 g. all purpose flour
200 g. sugar
10 g. baking powder
a pinch of salt
4 eggs
200 g. Greek yogurt
1 lemon, for zest
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
300 g. sour cherries or other stone fruit, pitted

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Mix all dry ingredients together in a large bowl with a whisk. In another, smaller bowl mix together wet ingredients.

2. Fold wet ingredients into dry ingredients. Mix quickly. Some small lumps are inconsequential.

3. Pour the batter into a 10” cake pan (I recommend a springform pan), greased and lined with parchment paper. Spread the batter evenly with an offset spatula.

4. Toss cherries or other stone fruit with 1 tablespoon of flour and stir to coat. (There is no need for this step if you are using halved or sliced fruit such as peaches.) Place cherries in a single layer on top of the cake batter. Finish with a sprinkling of coarse sugar, such as demerara.

5. Bake for 50 minutes or until golden and a cake tester inserted in center comes out clean. Allow to cool, remove cake and parchment paper from pan, and slice into squares. Store uneaten portions in airtight container or in foil.