Kitchen Project #176: Cherry & Almond Gâteau

For all your summer needs

Hello,

Welcome to today’s edition of Kitchen Projects. Thank you so much for being here.

Today I am finally giving one of the best summer fruits the spotlight it deserves…. Welcome in… cherries! We’ll dive into the world together and, at the end, be rewarded with a cherry and almond gateau, a spiritual sister to the pavlova.

For KP+, my tests this week lead me to the most delightful melt-in-mouth buckwheat meringue cookie. It has just a little chew, and extraordinary softness that is so delicious to eat. Paired with a coffee custard buttercream and cherry jam, these are an ode to beige and my new go-to tea time treat. Click here for the recipe.

What’s KP+? Well, it’s the level-up version of this newsletter. By joining KP+, you will support the writing and research that goes into the newsletter (including the commissioning - and fair payment - of all the writers), join a growing community, access extra content (inc. the entire archive) and more. Subscribing is easy and only costs £6 per month or £50 for the whole year. Why not give it a go? Come and join the gang!

Love,
Nicola

The Cherry On Top

Besides disliking doughnuts, one of my other very unpopular food opinions is that I don't really vibe with cherries. It's not that I've ever disliked them, I've just never prioritised them. Maybe years in kitchens, pitting cherries for hours without gloves, scarred (and briefly stained) me. Even in this newsletter, I've been cherry shy. In five years, I've written just one recipe featuring fresh sweet cherries, instead relying on preserved or dried cherries.

There's something in the water this year, though. The warm weather has brought extraordinarily good English cherries to my local greengrocers - these dark, shiny baubles are packed with dark fruit flavour, with thin skins that pop as you bite them. I've been completely obsessed.

Cherries have been grown in the UK for almost 2,000 years, first introduced by the Romans in the year 53. These sweet varieties lost popularity in the years to come and were all but lost during the Anglo-Saxon period (presumably, they were too busy eating rye porridge and indestructible bread to enjoy cherries), and were reintroduced in the 16th century. Along with disappearing wives and reforming the church, King Henry VIII had a passionate interest in cherries, inspiring his "fruiterer," Richard Harrys, to establish a large orchard in Kent. This garnered the county the nickname 'The Garden of England' and Teynham, where the cherry orchard was planted, the 'home of cherries'

As Pastry Chef (and Kitchen Projects contributor) Louis Thompson revealed in his Introduction to Tropical Fruit, most of the fruit we eat - plums, peaches, apricots, cherries, apples, pears, strawberries and raspberries, to name just a few - come from a single family: The rose (Rosaceae). I love all of those fruits, so it's about time I got on board with cherries.

However, it isn't as easy as throwing them into my favourite cake batter – like mango, sweet cherries begin to lose their character once cooked. The premium way to enjoy cherries is straight from the fridge, or even served on ice (see Sarah Johnson's excellent Fruitful). Once cooked, the pleasing bite of the taut skin is lost, and the complexity of the flavour is compromised. With sweet cherries, it's a real balancing act - by enthusiastically putting them into any old bake, you risk being punished in the form of lacklustre flavour and texture. Your once poppingly bright and sweet cherries transform into indistinct (though not unpleasant) mush.

What about sour cherries?

For some cruel reason, sour cherries are not commonly cultivated and sold in the UK. Like a Bramley apple to a Pink Lady, a sour cherry is brimming with intense acidity and, once tempered with sugar, provides you with natural flavours that, ironically, taste like artificial cherry sweets. Varieties include morello and montmorency - both are rich in malic acid, which is subtler and smoother than the punchy citric acid found in lemons and limes.

This wasn't always the way. There used to be over 50 varieties in the UK before World War II, but their dwindling commercial prospects and popularity mean there's just one regularly grown here, and even that's nearly impossible to find. I've managed to pick them once in an orchard in Kent, and seen them just once at my greengrocer's. You can get them frozen, but usually only in smaller Whole Foods/speciality shops.

Today’s Recipe

With my newfound love and respect for sweet cherries, I decided to create a summer dessert that celebrates them at their best. Enter the cherry & almond cream gateau, featuring layers of nutty almond meringue, softened into a chew, tangy yoghurt whipped cream, cherry compote (barely cooked to maintain as much cherry flavour as possible), and adorned with fresh cherries. You get the best of both worlds - snappy cherries and creamy, melded middles. This dessert is at its best made ahead and served direct from the fridge, making it perfect for summer.

Over on KP+, during this week's tests, I discovered my new favourite cookie/biscuit: A buckwheat meringue cookie. It is crisp yet soft and melts in your mouth. Sandwiched with coffee custard buttercream (and chocolate whipped ganache if you fancy) and cherry jam or compote, it is a perfect mingle of flavour and texture. It is definitely macaron adjacent, except 100x easier and, in my view, more delicious:

The dessert

I love pavlova as the peak go-to summer dessert as much as the next person (you can read my Pavlova recipe and FAQ here!), but I really can't stand waiting a day and a night for meringue. Though pavlova is lovely to eat in the hot weather, it isn't great to make. To be at its best, it needs to be filled at the last minute, and it doesn't last well in the fridge at all. Juggling baking, cream whipping, and decoration is too hectic. So, I wanted to develop a recipe that does all the things pavlova does, but with the benefit of being make-ahead friendly. Could I, shock horror, even develop a recipe that IMPROVES as it rests?!?!?!? And, contrary to most of the recipes I write, be at its absolute best straight from the fridge?

The family of cookies or cakes softened by cream is fairly extensive. Tiramisu, banana pudding, Australian ripple cake, and "ice box" cakes all rely on the softening power of mousse, syrup or cream to turn a toothsome biscuit or cookie into a texture that you barely need teeth to eat.

I will admit that I had NO idea that ice box cakes, a popular US category of 'no bake' desserts, were not the same as ice cream cakes. As Bronwen Wyatt, ever wise, pointed out to me, 'icebox' refers to the non-mechanical refrigerators and does not mean a freezer. (Please never invite me to be part of your pub quiz team—we will lose.) Like the chocolate chip cookie, which became popular as part of a Toll House marketing push, the ice box cake, classically chocolate Nabisco wafers with whipped cream, was popularised in the US to promote fridge units.

In the UK, the closest thing we have - I suppose - is summer pudding (the dessert which is basically fruit soaked bread. I actually made a tray bake version for The Guardian a few weeks ago, which you can find here! and i have my layer cake version here) We also have fridge cake, but it isn't soft at all - bashed-up digestive biscuits are mixed with chocolate and golden syrup and set into a firm fudge-like texture.

In any case, most of these recipes rely on commercially made biscuits or wafers and are considered pretty quick, easy, 'no-bake' dessert solutions. Simple as they seem, they have a lot in common with fancy French patisserie - Gâteau opéra comes to mind, with its intermingled layers of light sponge, buttercreams and ganache, as well as dacquoise.

Patisserie Relics or Role models?

Throughout my over a decade-long career in pastry, there are a few terms that still don't stick well in my mind to this day. The two main culprits share at least one section of a pastry Venn diagram: Joconde and Dacquoise. Flip through any old-school pastry or French Patisserie book, and these two building blocks of entremet (layered desserts) are sure to appear.

But modern pastry books? It's rare to see them used or even mentioned. Are these cakes destined to become artefacts of fancy baking yesteryear?

I understand - as baking evolves and modernises, there are always winners and losers. Chiffon is the current big winner in the baking world, while dacquoise and joconde have fallen by the wayside. Are they too fussy or old school? Or, like 90s low-rise jeans, are we just waiting for the tide to turn favourably toward them again?

As I've already admitted, I find it hard to keep even the names of these bases on top of mind, let alone the definitions. So here's a reminder (for us all): Both are almond cakes used in classic French patisserie - the joconde is a moist, flexible sponge that is sometimes piped or decorated and often uses a combination of flour and almonds. The dacquoise is lighter and crisper - it is essentially a meringue with nuts folded into it - depending on how you make it, it can have a light crisp texture, or a soft cakey one. Confusingly, 'dacquoise' describes both the component and the name of the composed dessert. A popular variation of the dacquoise is the japonais, which uses hazelnut instead of almonds.

I've written about dacquoise before - seen here with a chocolate mousse with pear (better save this recipe for Autumn) - but perhaps this was my solution to cherries. Enough in common with pavlova for it to be a spiritual summer dessert sister, but with a bit of a twist.

Chewy vs. Crunchy

A few rough and ready tests

I've said this before, but one of the things that confuses me about most dacquoise recipes is that you are instructed to spend HOURS on baking the dacquoise 'til super dry, just to then soak it with cream for it to go soft again. You also have a few options for the texture - ground nuts will give you a fine, more cake-like texture, while chunky or chopped nuts will retain more of a crunch. There's also the issue of formulation - some dacquoise recipes have a chewy, cake-like texture once soaked, while others possess an almost fizzy quality, though this style of base needs to be paired with a very stiff cream to stabilise the structure. I mixed up a few tests, comparing the ‘hard’ baked meringue as well as the slow baked meringue.

Tasted head to head, my favourite was the ground almond with a darker, crisp bake so the meringue caramelises. It retained some of its character, while the other formulation was closer to a soft-amaretto like cake - the little bit of cornflour really helped stabilise it which, if you’re in a heatwave, is probably sensible. I’ll include the cornflour as an optional add-in for those wanting to take out an insurance policy.

The flavour

Cherry and almond are a winning combination (bakewell tart has taught us this well), but I wanted to try a few flavour variations on the base to show just how versatile it can be. I mixed up a few variations, along with a version with buckwheat flour as well as one with a little melted butter:

The desiccated coconut was probably the least winning combination - a bit eggy and chewy - but would probably work in a different ratio. The hazelnut, pistachio and almond were all gorgeous, but the surprise winner for me was the buckwheat. Toasty, malty and earthy, it was glorious. Not right for my fridge gateau, but PERFECT to make little sandwich cookies with.

I decided to dress these up with a coffee custard buttercream and cherry jam, or you could use the compote from below. These also work beautifully with chocolate whipped ganache, or just simply sandwiched with chocolate. You can find the recipe on KP+ here.

The Cherries

Though the star of this recipe is the cold, fresh, sweet cherries on top, a light cherry compote, thickened with cornstarch, runs through the centre of this dessert. You could also use a cherry preserve. Cooking the cherries gently with a bit of water, sugar and lemon juice gives them enough goop to be spreadable and mingle well with the cream.

The Cream

The cream is the cement holding your cake together. It’s essential to whip it sufficiently so that it's sturdy, as well as placing it on the cake so that the meringue and fillings are fully enclosed. You've got two main options with the cream. The first version of this cake I made with a mascarpone vanilla whipped cream - it was very stable and delicious. The second was whipped cream with a hint of almond extract to really bring out the cherry-almond combination. I had two failed attempts with fig leaf (sad, but not a loss in the end) and cherry pits - one was overwhelming and the other lacked flavour entirely.

an early test with pretty overwhipped cream and an abandoned flaked almond decor.

I finally landed on a whipped yoghurt cream, which is tasty, but not as stable as the original vanilla mascarpone cream. The yoghurt cream also resulted in a softer overall cake. If you are making this in a heatwave, I'd suggest going for the very stable mascarpone cream - you have to be more gentle as you whip it to get a smooth finish, but it will hold up well no matter what the forecast throws at it (and you!). This also might be advisable if you are making this recipe in a country where your cream isn’t super high in fat content.

Ultimately, this cake can be adjusted to suit whatever YOU like. It has simple components that are endlessly tweakable - let your flavour instincts guide you, and I'll see you on the other side.

The deal with temperature

It has been really hot in London this week and I developed, tested and photographed this recipe in 30c / 85F heat! Which is to say - it is possible to make this cake successfully, but temperature is key. Warm cream will slide and syrup can leak from the cake it if gets too warm. If you are making this in the heat, just take your time with each step and remember that the freezer is your friend!

Ok, let's make it.

Recipe: Cherry & Almond Gateau

Serves 8

Light Cherry Compote (makes a little more than you need)

• 300g Cherries (approx 275g once pitted)

• 50g Caster sugar

• 1 tbsp Water

• 20g lemon juice

• 10g Cornflour

Almond meringue

• 110g Egg Whites (about 3-4)

• 170g Caster sugar

• 110g Ground Almonds

• Optional: 20g Cornflour (will give a cake-like more stable texture)

• ¼ tsp Fine sea salt

Yoghurt Cream 1*

• 350g Double Cream*

• 200g Thick Full Fat Greek Yoghurt - I used Kolios brand, but FAGE also works well.

• 80g Icing sugar

• Pinch of salt

Yoghurt Cream 2*

• 150g Double Cream*

• 50g Thick Full Fat Greek Yoghurt - I used Kolios brand, but FAGE also works well.

• 50g Icing sugar

Plus: About 24-30 Cherries to finish

*If you want a more stable dessert, swap the yoghurt for mascarpone. You’ll get a firmer cake overall that lasts and sets up well in the fridge. You can also add vanilla to this. Be a little more careful when you whip though - yoghurt cream stays in the ‘flexible and shiny and spreadable’ zone for quite a while, whereas mascarpone cream can more easily over-whip or stiffen too much. This might also be advisable for anyone who can’t get very high-fat content cream.

Method

• For the compote, halve and stone the cherries. Add to a pan with the water and sugar. Bring to a simmer, then cover and cook for 3 minutes on low. In a small bowl, mix together the lemon juice and cornflour. Pour this into the boiling cherry liquid, then cook until thick and shiny, about 1-2 minutes. Pour into a clean container, then leave to cool completely. You can make this in advance and store in the fridge.

• Preheat oven to 160 °C fan. Whisk the egg whites until foamy, then slowly add the caster sugar. Whisk on a medium speed until you get a stiff, bright white and dense meringue with stiff peaks.

• Fold in the ground almonds (first mix with sifted cornflour, if using) and salt into the meringue until well combined.

• Spread the meringue into three approximate 24cm x 10cm rectangles on a lined baking tray, approximately 120-130g of batter per rectangle.

• Bake for about 25 minutes until dry and golden. Leave to cool completely on a rack - you should be able to lift them off gently - they may be a little fragile in places.

• Trim the meringue rectangles to be the same size. You can either build on a tray and cake board situation and move later, but if possible, I think it’s better to build on the platter/plate you want to serve it on.

• Whip the first batch of cream, yoghurt and icing sugar together until very shiny and stiff peaks form (if using mascarpone, whip the mixture gently and take to medium peaks only - it will continue to whip as you spread). Start layering your gateau - spread 180g of cream on the base layer, then spread about 100g of cherry compote on top. Repeat. Cover with the rest of the cream, closing up any gaps, then chill for 20-30 minutes in the fridge, or 5-10 in the freezer. If it is very hot, don’t rush this step! let it chill!

• Whip the second lot of cream, yoghurt and sugar together until stiff peaks form (see note in step before re mascarpone). Smooth it over your cake - you want to make sure there’s no gaps at all, especially round the base, and the cream is like spackled cement. Leave to chill until very firm and cold before adding the cherries.

• At least an hour before serving, place the cherries snugly on top, then return them to the fridge until ready to serve. You really want to work with this cake when it’s cold, otherwise the cherries at the very edge will fall off - they are heavy! If you're worried the cream is getting too warm and things are sliding, you can always place the cherries on top just before serving - but make sure they're cold for that snappy texture. And don’t worry if the cake slackens slightly as it chills - it is absorbing the cream, and the cherries are heavy. It’ll still look gorgeous. You can make this cake 24 hours ahead, and it will last for 3 days in the fridge Once you’ve cut into it, it is susceptible to leaking a little, so keep leftovers in a tub. Always serve cold.