I’ve had this recipe on my to-bake list for a while so I was very excited to finally make it! It’s not a difficult recipe, but it is a bit time consuming to keep that in mind.

You start off by making your own cherry pie filling. I thought it was a great idea to use the canned cherries here because that would have been a ton of pitting and they worked really well. Once you’ve mixed everything together and let it thicken then you pour it into a dish (or plate) and let it cool. I didn’t see anything in the recipe saying this, but I feel like you could probably make this part ahead of time if needed. When that’s done then you start pitting the fresh cherries and this is where most of your time goes. Also I found cherry juice from pitting all over the place days after so be mindful of that as well. The recipe says you can use frozen cherries, but I had fresh ones on hand so I figured I’d just use those.

While your oven is pre-heating you’ll make your vanilla cake and this was super easy. Once everything is mixed you’ll spoon this into the base of a springform pan. I had a little trouble spreading the batter out because it’s pretty thick but I made it work. Then you’ll spoon the cherry pie filling on top of the cake batter, put the fresh cherries on, then top with the streusel.

I made mine the day before but it looked really nice coming out of the oven and it smelled amazing too! This was incredibly delicious and did not disappoint! Other than it being time consuming, I will absolutely make this again and might even try using frozen cherries to see how that turns out.

Recipe Used: Red Currant Bakery