This Cherry Tart, Ukrainian Style (vyshnevyi pliatsok – вишневий пляцок) is a popular summer dessert in Ukraine where the cherry season runs from June through July. The Ukrainian word pliatsok describes a flat pastry, sweet or savory. The English word tart is the closest translation since the finished product more closely resembles thin European tarts, made either with yeast or shortcrust dough covered with berries, slices or whole fruit or vegetables. Although Ukrainians bake all varieties of tarts depending on the season, my favorite is cherry.
Ukrainians inherited cultivation of cherries from ancient Greeks. Sweet cherries originated in Asia Minor in the fertile areas between the Black and Caspian seas. Ancient Greeks, who settled Ukraine’s southern Black Sea shore and Crimea as early as the 6th century BCE, were the first to cultivate cherries in the region and traded cherries with other ancient nations. Today’s Ukrainian cherry orchards continue in the areas settled by Greeks and still bear Greek names with populations of Greek-ancestry.
Thanks to unique climate conditions and fertile soils, Ukrainian cherries have unique taste, aroma and firmness making Ukraine one of the top ten world cherry producers, exporting over 73,000 metric tons to 14 countries in recent years. Huge luscious, sweet cherries (vyshni – вишні) are first to ripen mid-June, followed a month later by sour cherries (chereshni –черешні). Ukrainian agronomists hybridized around 500 new varieties of cherries over the past 30 years, an invaluable national heritage adaptable to various soil compositions, mitigating climatic challenges and adapting to changing global demand.
Ukrainian cherry orchard in springtime
Yet this year’s cherry harvest is interrupted by war as principal cherry orchards in Melitopol, Bakhmut, Mliyev, Kyiv and Yalta were occupied by Russian troops during the May blooming season and June-July harvesting. And the Kremlin’s systematic looting of Ukraine’s wheat, rye and corn crops extended to the country’s cherry harvest. Activists in the Russian-occupied southern city of Melitopol with its 2,000 hectares of cherry farms that produce several thousand tons of the fruit report that Russians are transporting the region’s famous cherry crop to Crimea and re-exporting it for profit. Although this year’s crop for the most part is lost, Ukrainian farmer-partisans retaliated by feeding poisoned cherries to Russian soldier-thieves, causing mass illness.
Ukrainian love of sweet and sour cherries is legendary. For centuries, cherry orchards were planted around houses throughout Ukraine and were celebrated in art, literature, traditional folksongs of love and courtship and a recent rock ode to the beauty and tastiness of cherries. In 1847, Taras Shevchenko, Ukraine’s poet laureate who was arrested, jailed and exiled to solitary confinement in Russia’s Ural Mountains by order of the tsar for advocating Ukraine’s independence and writing in Ukrainian. Far from home, he missed his native village and wrote a loving picture of tranquil family life in a poem, A Cherry Orchard by the House (Садок вишневий коло хати). Boris Dralyuk, a Ukraine-born writer and English-language translator of Shevchenko’s work, describes this poem as A tiny little lyric. It won’t strike you as brilliant poetry, but for Ukrainians, it’s the very image of home. It just lodges in your heart and you can’t shake it. * Today’s Ukrainians cling to this wistful image of a peaceful home.
Although Ukrainian grocery stores import and sell out-of-season fruits and vegetables, Ukrainians prefer to eat locally grown produce in season, relishing fruits and vegetables as they ripen which is always a special event. In better times, when cherries appeared at the local markets and fruit stands, Ukrainians couldn’t resist eating them fresh and Kyiv’s fruit kiosks would sell plastic cups of cherries to enjoy while walking down the street. But there are numerous other ways to enjoy them: wrapped in tender dough into varenyky (a Ukrainian boiled dumpling), cooked into fruit soup, preserved in a sugar syrup for dessert in cold months, incorporated into pastries, breads, cooked into jams or a compote or juiced into a flavorful non-alcoholic drink or infused in vodka or distilled into brandy.
But in summer, aside from eating cherries out of hand or cherry varenyky doused in sweetened sour cream, Ukrainian bakers incorporate fresh cherries, whether sweet or sour, into various desserts. Numerous yeast-dough and short-crust fruit pie or tart recipes circulate among Ukrainian bakers, some going back centuries. These old recipes unfortunately are often mere lists of ingredients without recognizable measurements, so for this Cherry Tart, Ukrainian Style I converted Olga Drozd’s yeast fruit pliatsok recipe,** by substituting cherries for plums, adjusting other ingredients and the preparation method as guided by the old recipes.
Regarding cherries, I used sweet and juicy Washington state cherries, large and similar in taste to Ukrainian cherries which I enhanced with a few drops of lemon juice to mimic more closely the sweet-sour taste of Ukrainian cherries. Since these cherries were quite juicy (which would soak into the pastry as they cooked), I avoided soggy pastry by coating the cherries in a few tablespoons of sugar and Instant ClearJel,*** a modified corn starch used by professional bakers for fruit pie fillings. The advantage of using Instant ClearJel (rather than another thickener such as tapioca, potato or corn starch) is its instant capture of the juice released by the cooking cherries, coating each cherry in a soft, clear pudding-like coating.
This Cherry Tart Ukrainian Style tastes like a tender cake studded with luscious cherries which taste like cherry pie. This unusual textural combination celebrates the cherry’s seasonal beauty and makes a memorable dessert which evokes the summer pastries I enjoyed throughout Ukraine. This tart is best on the day baked but, in the unlikely event of leftovers, keeps for a few days in the refrigerator when well-wrapped.
Cherry Tart, Ukrainian Style
For the dough:
½ cup (118.3 ml) whole milk, scalded
1 teaspoon (5 g) granulated sugar
1 tablespoon (9.3 g) instant yeast or active dry yeast
⅓ cup (75 g) granulated sugar
3 cups (384 g) unbleached all-purpose flour, divided (plus more as needed)
8 tablespoons (113.4 g) very cold unsalted butter, in tablespoon-sized pieces
Zest of 1 lemon, finely grated
2 teaspoons (8.4 g) vanilla extract or paste
2 large eggs, at room temperature
2 large egg yolks, at room temperature
½ teaspoon (2.8 g) salt
For the filling:
1½ pounds (680 g) fresh sweet or sour cherries
1 tablespoon (14.4 g) lemon juice, omit if using sour cherries
2 tablespoons (7.69 g) Instant ClearJel***
½ cup granulated sugar (100 g), more if cherries are very tart
For topping:
2 tablespoons (25 g) coarse sanding sugar (optional)
Confectioner’s sugar (optional)
Preparing the dough: Scald milk in a small saucepan over medium heat or in a heat-resistant glass container in the microwave on medium-high (70%) power, stirring every 15 seconds until steam begins to rise from the milk. Remove milk from heat and cool until it registers between 110 -120 ˚F (43-49˚C) on an instant-read thermometer. Stir in the yeast and 1 teaspoon sugar into the milk until dissolved and set aside until foamy, about 10 minutes.
Using a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, place 2 cups (254 g) of flour, butter, sugar, and lemon zest into the mixer bowl and mix at low speed for about 3 minutes, until the butter is cut into small pieces. Add yeast-milk mixture, eggs, and egg yolks and beat on medium speed for 3 minutes, scraping the bowl and beater halfway through. Switch to a dough hook. Add the remaining 1 cup (127 g) flour and knead on low speed just until incorporated, 1 to 2 minutes. (It is important to avoid kneading which would overactivate the gluten. The dough will be wet and sticky.) With a silicon spatula, scrape dough from bowl sides and beater forming a mound at the bottom of the bowl.
Sprinkle dough with 2 tablespoons of flour and cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap. Place in a warm spot for the dough to rise until doubled in size, 1 to 2 hours.
Preparing filling: Pit cherries into a large bowl.
Pitting cherries
Pitted Cherries
Combine sugar and Instant ClearJel in a separate bowl. Then sprinkle sugar mixture over the pitted cherries (some whole and large ones cut in half), stirring until thoroughly coated and set aside.
Sugar and Instant ClearJel coated cherries
Assembling and baking tart: When ready to assemble the tart, lightly flour a work surface. With a pastry scraper, empty dough onto the work surface and turn to coat all surfaces lightly with flour. Gently shape the dough into a ball. Cover loosely with a clean kitchen towel and let rest for 15 to 20 minutes.
Butter and line the bottom and sides of a large baking sheet (18 in. x 12 in. x 1 in.; 46 cm x 30 cm x 2.5 cm) with parchment, folding the overhanging parchment around the outsides of the pan. Butter the parchment.
On the floured surface, roll out dough to the size of the baking sheet. Fold dough in half, then into quarters, and place it in the pan. Unfold the dough and pat it gently to cover the bottom of the pan and extend about ¼ inch (0.6 cm) on each side. Prick dough bottom at 1-inch intervals with a fork and with the tines of the fork, form an edge around the dough. Arrange cherries evenly over the dough. Cover loosely with a kitchen towel and let rest for 20 minutes.
Adjust an oven rack to the center position and preheat the oven to 350˚F (180˚C).
Tart ready to bake
Just before baking, sprinkle sanding sugar evenly over the cherries if using. Bake for 30 minutes, or until the edges of the dough are golden brown. Lay a sheet of heavy-duty foil, shiny side up, loosely over the tart. Lower the temperature to 300˚F (150˚C) and bake for another 15 to 20 minutes until dough is completely baked, and fruit is tender.
Baked tart
Remove foil and place pan on a wire cooling rack to cool for 10 minutes. Using the overhanging edges of the parchment, slide the tart from the baking sheet to the cooling rack. Cool completely before cutting, dusting with confectioner’s sugar and serving.
Makes 1 large tart; 12-16 serving pieces
*https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20220322-the-stories-that-reveal-the-soul-of-ukraine
** http://www.ukrainianclassickitchen.ca/index.php?PHPSESSID=hvoqhphgfd0ctap8airkr0o742&topic=9298
*** Instant ClearJel is a modified cornstarch used by commercial bakers in fruit pie fillings. It is available online from Amazon and King Arthur Flour.
ClearJel is easy to use. It works well with acidic ingredients and can tolerate high temperatures. It makes a clear, not cloudy, fruit filling. It has no floury, pasty or starchy flavor. ClearJel comes in two versions. The regular (cook-type) version requires cooking to trigger the jelling. Instant ClearJel thickens upon contact with liquid, with additional thickening upon heating.
Photo credits: Ancient village house in spring, cherry orchard, Dmytro Bartosh, ID 69082347, Dreamstime.com; Ukrainian garden in cherry blossom in spring in Moryntsi, Masinto, ID 56504524, Dreamstime.com; Ukrainian garden at springtime, Skaisu, ID 247040523, Dreamstime.com. All other photos in this blog were taken by Slava Johnson.
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