Tart Cherry Rum Cake (Višňové Rezy)

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Hope all of you had a great year and wonderful holidays. Our Christmas was quite non-traditional, but at least I ended up baking a cake. Here it is. The motivation for this recipe came from this site. I made few adaptions along the way, such as using a bag of frozen cherries instead of something called “Frutafil”, and by adding rum. The cake turned out quite well. The cherries and the rum give it a refreshing, juicy feel, and the cream is light and not heavy as in American cheesecakes.

Cake: 3lb bag of frozen variety cherries, 6 medium eggs, 2/3 cups sugar, 1 cup all purpose flour, 2 tbsp baking soda, about quarter cup cocoa, quarter stick of butter, rum
Cream: 16oz cottage cheese, 12 oz sour cream, 16oz heavy cream, cherry juice, four small gelatin packs (one box), one cherry-flavored gelatin pack, powdered sugar to taste, cocoa, chocolate topping
Prep Time: About two hours
Baking: 10 minutes at 355F, followed by 30 minutes at 300F

Fruit Filling

I used this 3lbs of frozen “mixed variety” cherries. I used a potato masher to squeeze out more juice. I then transferred the fruit to a pot, and started cooking it along with some sugar and rum (maybe a quarter cup)

Cake Layer

Next beat the egg whites with half of the sugar into a foam. Then do the same with the yolks and the other half of the sugar. Add flour into the yolks.
Also add the butter, baking soda, and cocoa. Lightly stir in the egg whites.
Transfer the dough onto a baking pan greased with butter and dusted with flour. Bake as shown above. In the mean time, I continued simmering the cherries and transferring juice into a separate container. Once they were soft, I added one pack of gelatin and set aside to cool off.

Cherry Cream

To make the cream, mix the cottage cheese (tried to find an unsalted, small curd variety) with sour cream and the juice from the cherries. Mix together, trying to work out as many curds as possible.
Also whip the cream with a bit of granulated sugar. Mix in, and add powdered sugar to taste.
I also used one packet of this artificially cherry flavored gelatin. I mainly used this because I couldn’t find food coloring in the grocery store, and this had some Red 40 in it. Also add in the remaining 3 packets of gelatin. Once the cake was ready, I flipped it onto a cutting board, and used a knife to cut off the top crispy layer.
I then poured rum quite generously over the cake. I then topped it with the cherry filling before scooping on the cream. Let chill in the fridge over night.
tart cherry rum cake
The next morning I made yet more whipped cream, but this time I mixed in a bit of cocoa for color and flavor. I also topped the cake with a piece of dark chocolate.