Wake and Bake: Cherry Butter Cake

[Photograph: Carrie Vasios]

It's such a short period of time that I can have fresh cherries hanging around my kitchen that it's hard to do anything but eat them plain, sucked off the stem, the pits spittooned into the sink. If I do bake with them, I choose something simple, and typically that means cherry pie or maybe an easy cherry compote to serve over vanilla ice cream.

This year, I thought about making cherry muffins, but muffins always leave me wanting more—more butter, sugar, and eggs., i.e: cake. I also considered making a crumble or crisp, but I worried the streusel topping would compete with the fruit. I found my solution in the humble butter cake, which is a cross between a pound cake and a yellow cake, or, more simply, like a buckle without the topping.

The cake is golden at the edges and moist in the middle. I like to leave my cherries halved instead of chopped more finely. That way, when you get a bite with fruit, you can really enjoy the taste of warm, cooked cherries. They're what this cake is about, after all.

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About the author: Carrie Vasios is the editor of Serious Eats: Sweets. She likes to peruse her large collection of cookbooks while eating jam from the jar. You can follow her on Twitter @carrievasios