Black Forest Cake
My dad’s birthday is on the 27th of December. I think he was scarred by a childhood of everyone rolling his birthday into general christmas celebrations so my family and I always feel like we should make a big deal of his birthday, even if he is 60 and should really have recovered from the trauma by now.
Anyway, we were all heading down to the beach for a lunch and dinner on the day and I volunteered to bake a cake. Given that he likes black forest cake I decided to try and make one. I’ve never made one before and couldn’t find a recipe online that looked quite right. I ended up using a recipe that I found in a book I was given for christmas – the Country Women’s Association Classics. The recipe still wasn’t exactly what I was looking for (it uses a chocolate sponge cake but I was looking for something a bit denser), but I thought it was worth a shot and it worked out pretty well in the end. The cake looked and tasted good, the family enjoyed it.
Chocolate sponge cake
5 eggs, separated
110 g sugar
110 g self raising flour
200 g dark chocolate (melted)
3 tablespoons milk
Filling
500 g black cherries
6 tablespoons cornflour
4 teaspoons sugar
600 ml cream
Topping
Half the cream (from filling)
Half cup of cherry filling
Chocolate shavings
To make the cake:
- Beat the egg whites until stiff.
- Slowly add the sugar to the egg whites while continuing to beat.
- Slowly add the egg yolks while continuing to beat.
- Add sifted flour, melted chocolate and milk. Mix well. The recipe listed 2 tablespoons of cocoa rather than the chocolate but I prefer cakes made with chocolate so replaced it. And yes, I finally got a new sifter thanks to Gerard’s parents, no more sifting flour through a grater for me!
- Bake for approx 30 minutes (or until springy) at 180 degrees and then allow to cool completely.
To make the filling:
- Remove the pips from all cherries. You can use either fresh or canned cherries, I used half-half mainly to avoid having to remove the pips from so many cherries without a cherry pitter. I thought the fresh cherries tasted better in the end although the canned ones did have a good texture for the filling, if you use all fresh cherries I’d probably cook them for longer (when it comes to the step below) to soften them up a little.
- Mix either around 100 ml of cherry juice (or the just the juice from the can if you used canned cherries) with the cornflower and sugar in a saucepan.
- Bring the mix to the boil, mix in the cherries and then cook for about 2 minutes until thickened.
- Beat the cream until thick.
To assemble cake:
- Cut the cake in half to form two evenly sized cake layers.
- Cover the first layer of cake with cherry filling.
- Cover the cherry filling with cream.
- Place the second cake layer on top of the cream.
- Cover top layer with cream.
- Place remaining cherry filling on top.
- Sprinkle with chocolate shavings.
- Enjoy!
