Sour Cherry Spoon Cake (Vegan, Gluten Free)
Sticky sweet sour cherry pie filling. Soft golden vanilla cake with shredded coconut and sunflower seeds. All made with natural sugars, coconut oil, and non-wheat ingredients. It's a game changing spoon cake. The kind you can feel good eating and also brag to your cat about. The kind you can loft overhead when you enter the party and yell "THE EVENT CAN BEGIN, I'VE BROUGHT THE SPOON CAKE!" Also, the kind you can't bring to the party because you've already eaten all of it. Good thing it's so damn easy you can whip another one up in a jiff!
The whole concept for this spoon cake started out with cobbler. I made pot after pot of cherry pie filling this year. My sour cherry tree has been good to me (and thank god it's a dwarf variety or I would just be crying cuz I'm short). Cobbler just seemed a reasonable quick dessert after a full day of picking, pitting, and cooking. But after experimenting with the recipe for a couple of days, I decided I like it much better as a spoon cake. Cobbler is awesome, but I stumbled on a bit of cake magic here and I'm not looking back.
I haven't honestly seen too many spoon cakes out there like this. Pie filling on the bottom and cake on top. I've seen cake over macerated fruit and sugar. And straight up spoon cakes with zero fruit involved. It's like a pie and a cake made a baby and this is what happened. The top gets just gently crisp. The cake is moist, nutty, and light. The filling is exactly like the stuff that comes in a jar/can that is usually so bad for you I try not to make eye contact with it in the grocery so that it doesn't send me evil, processed food vibes. But this filling, it's not bad for you. It's low glycemic when you make it with coconut sugar, and it's just as decadent and juicy (not to mention nostalgic) as you can get.
Trust me. Just make it. Thank me later.
Also, side note: I briefly thought about calling this Hobbit Cobbler (even though it's cake) because it's such a pleasure that I could eat it all day. And I have, in fact. It's been dessert, a snack, breakfast, and sort of half of dinner one night (oops). Bilbo would be proud.
- 4-5 cups pitted sour cherries
- 1.5-2 cups coconut sugar or turbinado sugar (depending on how sweet you like it)
- optional: 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- optional: 1 tablespoon lemon zest
- 3/4 cups arrowroot powder
- Add your cherries, sugar, vanilla, and lemon zest to a large sauce pot and simmer for 10-15 minutes on medium high heat.
- Pour the arrowroot powder into a medium bowl.
- Add 1 cup of the hot cherry juice from the sauce pot to the arrowroot and whisk to combine, making sure you've removed all lumps. The mix should be glossy and even.
- Add the arrowroot and juice mixture to the pot of cherries, whisking everything together as you pour it in.
- Give the pot another couple of stirs to make sure the arrowroot is totally incorporated.
- Cook 1 minute further, stirring occasionally, then cut off the heat.
- To store, pour the cherry pie filling into heat safe mason jars and cap, or pour into another heat-safe glass container with a lid and cover. Let cool to room temperature, then store in the fridge. Keeps up to 1 week in the fridge.
- *To can your pie filling, check out [url href="http://www.thekitchn.com/canning-basics-tutorials-recip-140097"]The Kitchn's resources on canning basics[/url].
- 60 grams / 1/2 cup brown rice flour
- 40 grams / 1/4 cup white rice flour
- 40 grams / 1/2 cup almond meal
- 20 grams / 1/4 cup tapioca flour (arrowroot flour also works)
- 20 grams / 1/8 cup sweet rice flour (also called mochiko rice flour)
- 2 tablespoons psyllium (ground and whole both work)
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 110 grams / 3/4 cup coconut sugar or turbinado sugar
- pinch salt
- 1/2 cup coconut oil, melted
- 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon vinegar (red/white wine vinegars or apple cider vinegar preferably)
- 3/4 cup non-dairy milk (almond, soy, oat, coconut, etc.)
- 3/4 cup unsweetened flake coconut
- 1/4 cup sunflower seeds
- 2 cups cherry pie filling (if using a deep pie dish you can use more filling)
- Grease a 9" tart pan with 1/2 teaspoon of coconut oil. Set aside. Preheat the oven to 350F.
- In a medium mixing bowl, combine the brown rice, white rice, almond, tapioca, and sweet rice flours with the psyllium, baking powder, baking soda, sugar, and salt. Mix evenly.
- Add the wet ingredients directly to the flour mix: melted coconut oil, vanilla, vinegar, and non-dairy milk. Stir together until your batter is smooth and there are no lumps.
- Stir in the flake coconut and sunflowers seeds.
- Set aside for 10 minutes (this allows the psyllium to saturate).
- Spoon your pie filling into your tart pan and spread it out to fill the bottom of the pan.
- Pour the cake batter over the filling, spreading it gently overtop without stirring the two together.
- Bake 25-30 minutes, until the cake is golden brown and a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.
- Let cool to room temperature before serving (with ice cream!)