Mum's chocolate & cherry "spitting"cake

Here's another trip down memory lane following yesterday's meme. Cherries have always been one of my favourite fruits, especially when consumed straight from the tree. At my grandparents' the cherry trees where laden with fruit and sported such thick foliage that it was almost impossible to spot us tiny people spreading out on the branches and stuffing ourselves with the juiciest, plumpest cherries I've ever seen.
Walking through the orchard was a great experience, too, as every cherry tree was a different variety - light red, dark red, yellow, white, speckled, sour... you name it, they had it. My favourites have always been the white ones, for some reason I was always suprised because for me, flavour went hand in hand with redness. The redder a fruit, the tastier. And that's true for most native Austrian fruit - apples, pears, plums, berries... But there they were, pale in complexion, you'd expect them to be watery, but they could easily compete with the darker varieties, but weren't as sweet and somewhat more complex in flavour.
So there we would sit, munching away on our cherries, disposing of the pits in varying formats: who could spit the furthest, how could hit a certain target, etc and of course, every once in a while we'd be very quiet and jointly aim at an unsuspecting passer-by...
If not straight off the tree, my favourite way of consuming cherries was my Mum's cake - unlike the traditional, biscuit-based version which I used to find too plain, too boring, too eggy, this is just the perfect fruit cake. Wonderfully moist, full of intense chocolate and a subtle hint of almonds, the dough is a perfect complement to the fruit. And one tray would never be enough!

Mum's chocolate & cherry "spitting"cake
(yields one 40 x 30 cm tray)

200 g butter (softened)
180 g caster sugar
4 yolks
2 eggs
120 g dark chocolate (melted)
60 g white breadcrumbs
200 g ground almonds
4 egg whites
400 g cherries

Preheat the oven to 175 C. Grease a (40 x 30 cm) baking tray and line with baking parchment.
Beat the butter and sugar until pale and creamy. Meanwhile, meld the chocolate in a bain marie or in the microwave and leave to cool slightly. Add the yolks and eggs, then combine with the chocolate.
Mix in the breadcrumbs and almonds, then beat the egg whites until stiff and fold into the chocolate dough.
Spread the dough evenly on the tray, then cover with the cherries, gently pushing them in about half-way.
Bake for ca. 40 minutes until a metal stick comes out clean when you insert it into the dough. Leave to cool and dust with ising sugar just before serving.

Comments

[Angelika]

What a wonderful childhood summer memory - I can imagine how much fun it was picking the cherries from the trees, and that's really the best way of savouring them ! And your Mum's cake recipe is definitely one I will try soon (with other fruit, though...) angelika

[Shelbt]

I have seen other Central European cake recipes that use breadcrumbs instead of flour and am very curious about the reults -- your cake looks exceptionally moist. I regularly bake with nut flours and meals but have never used breadcrumbs. How do the breadcrumbs affect the texture? I assume you mean dried breadcrumbs -- do you dry your own? Do you recommend (or discourage) a particular type of bread for the crumbs? Would panko be a good substitute? Thanks for the inspiration and for any help you can give a fellow baker.