Black Cherry Cake

The first week of June, and the cookbook manuscript has reached one hundred and eighty pages. The 180 is the weight of a book that can be held in two hands and that contains twenty-two chapters and one hundred and forty-seven recipes and the life of a woman who is sitting in a chair ten feet from the desk where the book about her is being written. The proximity is both comfort and torment: comfort because Mama is here, torment because the writing about a woman who is here is also the writing about a woman who is leaving, and the leaving is slow and daily and measured not in chapters but in the fragments of hymns she hums and the bites of food she takes and the moments of recognition that arrive less frequently and last less long.

Carrie and I have been cooking together every evening — the last summer of daily cooking, the last three months of standing side by side at the stove. She makes miso-glazed everything. I make Lowcountry everything. The kitchen holds both, the way the kitchen has always held both, because the kitchen is the room that does not judge the food by its origin. It judges the food by its love. And the love is in the miso and the shrimp and the collision of two cuisines that should not work together and that work together beautifully.

James called on Sunday. He and Elise are talking about the future — not in the vague way that young couples talk about the future ("someday we'll") but in the specific way that a law student and a pre-med student talk about the future ("after you finish residency and I finish clerking, we'll"). The specificity is the love. The love is the plan. And the plan is the life they are building together, brick by brick, the way Robert built the shelves and the way I built the meals and the way every generation in this family has built the thing that holds the next generation up.

I made peach ice cream — the annual ritual, the hand-cranked summer sacrament. Carrie cranked. Robert supervised. Mama sat on the piazza and waited. The waiting was patient and faithful. The ice cream was sweet. The summer was one word: "Summer." Mama said it. The word holds.

That hand-cranked peach ice cream is a once-a-summer thing — sacred, irrepeatable — but the craving it leaves behind lasts longer than the batch does. This Black Cherry Cake has become its quiet companion in our kitchen: a fruit-forward dessert with the same unhurried sweetness, the kind you can set on the table while the afternoon holds still and the word “Summer” is still ringing in the air. Carrie and I made it the week after the ice cream was gone, because some summers ask for more than one ritual, and because the people sitting on the piazza deserve more than one reason to wait.

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 40 min | Total Time: 1 hr | Servings: 12

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
2 large eggs, room temperature
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3/4 cup sour cream
1/4 cup whole milk
2 cups fresh or jarred pitted black cherries, drained if jarred
1 tablespoon cornstarch (for tossing cherries)
Powdered sugar, for dusting (optional)

Instructions

Preheat and prep. Preheat your oven to 350°F. Grease and flour a 9x13-inch baking pan, or line it with parchment paper.
Toss the cherries. Pat the black cherries dry with a paper towel and toss them in the cornstarch until lightly coated. Set aside. This keeps them from sinking to the bottom of the cake.
Mix the dry ingredients. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
Cream butter and sugar. In a large bowl, beat the softened butter and granulated sugar together with an electric mixer on medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, about 3–4 minutes.
Add eggs and vanilla. Beat in the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Add the vanilla extract and mix to combine.
Combine wet and dry. Whisk together the sour cream and milk in a small bowl. Alternate adding the flour mixture and the sour cream mixture to the butter mixture, beginning and ending with the flour. Mix until just combined — do not overmix.
Fold in cherries. Gently fold the coated black cherries into the batter using a spatula, distributing them evenly.
Bake. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and spread it into an even layer. Bake for 38–42 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean and the top is golden.
Cool and serve. Allow the cake to cool in the pan for 15 minutes before slicing. Dust with powdered sugar if desired. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Nutrition (per serving)

Black Cherry Cake — The Sweetness We Carried Into Summer