Sour Cherries and Sunflowers - Anastasia Zolotarev

I bought this cookbook when I was in Edinburgh back in May, it looks beautiful and it passed the flick test (where the first few recipes you see are instantly appealing). Despite that I haven't cooked from it much yet - I haven't really been cooking very much at all this summer, husband has taken much of that side of our domestic lives over, and whilst he's away sailing, it's been too hot to view anything beyond chips and dips with much enthusiasm. 

Sour Cherries and Sunflowers has turned out to be mildly life changing in an unexpected way though, in an attempt to source some sour cherries for a Chocolate Buckwheat cake with sour cherry sauce, I asked my workmate with Polish family if they had any ideas where I could find some. She suggested an excellent Polish deli/supermarket conveniently close to work. They don't sell sour cherries fresh or frozen, though they did have heads of sunflowers full of seeds ready to eat when I popped in there on Saturday.

This shop (excellent air conditioning) has become something of an obsession in the last few weeks. Amazing filled rolls, excellent bread and pastries, beetroot in every iteration you could imagine, plus a few that I hadn't, and a ton of other tempting things. I keep trying to get the ladies to tell me what all the poppyseed cookies are called in Polish; they keep telling me poppyseed cookie, but I will learn. 

Despite the lack of sour cherries to make a sauce I made the chocolate part of the cake - the buckwheat makes it a very useful gluten free option to have. I tried using a jam instead which lead me to the conclusion that the cake works better without a topping.Certainly without a mix of sour cherry jam and sour cream, or yoghurt and sour cherry jam. Whipped cream with tart fresh fruit would be my preference for a topping if I wanted to make this something really special. 

Anastasia suggests this cake serves 6 to 8 - those would be extremely generous portions (I like her style), it will definitely go further, has the rich, damp loveliness of a good brownie whilst definitely being lighter, gluten free is a bonus, and there's all sorts of ways to dress it up so an all round winner in my opinion. 

You need 200g  of unslated butter, 200g of dark chocolate chopped into small chunks, 2 tbsp of espresso, 1 tsp of vanilla extract, and 1/4 of a teaspoon of salt. Melt these together in a heavy based saucepan or in a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water. Stir occasionally.

Meanwhile take 5 eggs and 250g of brown sugar and whisk together (ideally in a stand mixer on a medium speed) for around 7 minutes until light and fluffy. Line and grease a 23 cm spring form tin. preheat a fan oven to 180 degrees. 

Now sieve 100g of buckwheat flour into the melted chocolate mixture, whisk in until thoroughly combined, and then stir in 125ml of soured cream. Blitz a 100g of walnuts in a food processor (or finely chop them).

Now fold the chocolate mixture into the egg mixture trying to keep as much air as possible into it, and finally add the walnuts and fold those through too. Then into the oven for 30-40 minutes or until cooked all the way through. Leave in the tin for 10 minutes before turning out to cool. This cake keeps well for several days.