It’s Sunday. And a holiday weekend. Time to bake. This cake started as a recipe in Gourmet magazine, June, 2009, as a raspberry cake. I found it on the excellent food blog Smitten Kitchen. (One quick word of warning, it you forget the name of this blog, and you Google it, and you absent-mindedly enter “smitten kitten” in the search field while your wife is half-watching, you will have some explaining to do if she looks over and sees the search results. I’m just saying.)

I decided to modify this recipe and use the fresh, fresh, fresh cherries that are in the local supermarkets. My experience with this cake (haven’t made it but once) makes me believe that you could substitute any round berry-like fruit.

Cherry-Berry Buttermilk Cake

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 stick unsalted butter, softened
1-1/3 cups plus 3 tablespoons sugar, divided
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest (optional)
2 large eggs
1 cup well-shaken buttermilk
2 cup fresh cherries

Preheat oven to 400°F with rack in middle. Butter and flour two 8-inch round cake pan.

Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt and set aside. In a larger bowl, beat butter and 1-1/3 cup sugar with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, about two minutes, then beat in vanilla and zest, if using. Add eggs and beat it up.

At low speed, mix in flour mixture in three batches, alternating with buttermilk, beginning and ending with flour, and mixing until just combined. Spoon batter into cake pan, smoothing top. Place cherries evenly over top and sprinkle with remaining 1-1/2 tablespoons sugar.

Bake until cake is golden and a wooden pick inserted into center comes out clean, 20 to 25 minutes. Cool in pan 10 minutes, then turn out onto a rack and cool to warm, 10 to 15 minutes more. Invert onto a plate.