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Chocolate Dipped Cherry Cake

Bake your chocolate dipped cherry cake and eat it

By bbcgoodfood · From Open Recipes · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and chocolate are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and 9,121 recipes mention both. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

The recipe

10 generous slices
Prep30 min
Cook30 min

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Method written by CompKitchen from the ingredient list. Not the original author's method, not kitchen-tested.

  1. Heat the oven to 180°C (350°F). Grease and line a 20 cm (8 inch) round cake tin with baking parchment.

  2. Pit the cherries. Halve 200g of them for the batter and keep the remaining 200g whole for dipping.

  3. Beat the soft butter and golden caster sugar together until pale and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time.

  4. Fold in the self-raising flour and baking powder, then the milk and mashed banana, until smooth. Stir in the halved cherries and spread the batter into the tin.

  5. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes until golden and a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. Cool in the tin for 10 minutes, then turn onto a rack to cool fully.

  6. Stir the kirsch, if using, into the crème fraîche. Spread it evenly over the cooled cake.

  7. Melt the milk chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a pan of barely simmering water. Dip the whole cherries halfway into the chocolate and set them on parchment.

  8. Melt the white chocolate the same way and drizzle it over the cake. Arrange the chocolate-dipped cherries on top and chill for 20 minutes until set. Slice to serve.

By bbcgoodfood. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Milk + chocolatetop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together9,121 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  2. Milk + buttertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together81,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + bananatop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,464 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Chocolate + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together15,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Flour + buttertop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together122,858 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter share little aroma chemistry, yet 122,858 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Flavor stand-ins for the banana

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, chocolate, flour, sugar, butter, egg):

  1. Vanillabetter flavor fit
  2. Coconutbetter flavor fit
  3. Figbetter flavor fit
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, chocolate, flour, sugar, butter, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).