Cherry Chocolate Loaf Cake

Hello guys! Another delicious and easy loaf cake recipe for you today. These loaf cakes are such a beautiful and easy bake †hats is a perfect celebration bake or if your just looking for a treat. Slices up into portions straight away and looks incredible.

A rich and fudgy chocolate cake soaked in cherry syrup. Covered with a silky vanilla buttercream and topped with a cherry jam compote, chocolate curls and fresh cherries.

This Cherry and chocolate loaf cake was inspired from a black forest gateau. I wanted this to be alcohol free and I wanted it to have a longer shelf like using a vanilla buttercream. It worked amazing and is probably one of my favourite cakes I’ve ever made. Its just absolutely delicious!

For the cherry compote I used a tin of dark cherries in syrup and cherry jam. I added in a drop of almond essence to emphasise the cherry flavour. I kept the syrup from the cherries and drizzled that over my warm cake when it came out of the oven. This made such a moist cake.

You can play around with your decoration. Pipe your buttercream on how you like or even spread it on with a knife.

Happy Baking!

Cherry Chocolate Loaf Cake

Prep time: 30 minutes

Cook time: 45-50 minutes

Servings: 10

Ingredients

Cake

• 115g Dark chocolate
• 115g Unsalted butter
• 100g Plain flour
• 15g Cocoa powder
• One and a half teaspoons of baking powder
• 1 teaspoon instant coffee dissolved in 50ml of boiling water
• 100g of caster sugar
• 100g of light brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 40ml of buttermilk
• Teaspoon Vanilla 
• 1/2 Teaspoon Salt

Buttercream

• 125g Unsalted butter ( Room Temp )
• 250g Icing sugar
• 2 Teaspoons Vanilla
• 2-3 Teaspoons milk

Cherry compote

• Half Jar of Cherry jam
• Half tin of dark cherries in syrup
• A few drops of Almond extract (Optional)

• Fresh Cherries for decoration
• Chocolate curls

Directions

Cake

1. Preheat oven to 180C/160C Fan. Grease and line your loaf tin.
2. Melt Dark chocolate and butter together in a double boiler. Stir in your dissolved coffee. Leave to cool for 5 minutes.
3. While chocolate mixture is cooling sieve all dry ingredients (Flour, cocoa, baking powder, salt) into a bowl.
4. Add in caster sugar and brown sugar to the dry ingredients and mix.
5. Add in the buttermilk, vanilla and eggs. 
6. Add in your chocolate mixture.
7. Now incorporate both of your wet ingredients with your dry ingredients (Be careful not to overmix as this will result in a dense cake). Fold gently.
8. Once combined, add mix into loaf tin evenly. Bake in the oven for 45-50 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
9. Remove from the oven. After about 10 minutes drizzle over about 6 tablespoons of syrup from your cherries (Optional)
10. Leave to cool completely.

Cherry Compote

1. Chop up half a tin of cherries into quarters.
2. Add them into a bowl with half a jar of cherry jam and almond extract.
3. Mix together and set aside.

Buttercream

1. Place soft butter into a mixing bowl. Using an electric hand whisk, whip up until very pale and fluffy. This will take about 5 minutes.
2. Add icing sugar in 3 separate batches until incorporated well.
3. Whisk in your vanilla.
4. Thin out there buttercream with the milk. Add in little by little until you get a smooth texture.

Decoration

1. Only start decorating when your cake is completely cool.
2. Add butter cream into a piping bag with a piping nozzle and pipe buttercream on top of your cake. – Or spoon on and smooth with the back of a spoon or knife.
3. Spoon on the cherry compote down the centre of the buttercream and decoration with fresh cherries and chocolate curls.
4. Enjoy!!

If you make this recipe I would love for you to tag me on Instagram!#gills_bakesandcakes @gills_bakesandcakes