Black Forest cake

Black forest is one of the easiest cakes to make and it's very tasty and impressive.

All you need is the sponge cake (recipe below) and then whipped cream about a litre and a half.

Dark chocolate for shaving and to make curls.

For the filling we mixed some leftover cherry filling from the pierogi (it is just fresh cherries pitted and boiled with sugar) with some cherry jam and the juice from a jar of sour cherries (you'll find it in a european store)

The cherries from the jar also went into the cake but we sliced them in half and reserved them.

Also we mixed some cherry kirsch into the jam and soaked each layer in this mixture then layered with a third of the chopped sour cherries (from the jar) and some whipped cream. We had 4 layers of cake and 3 layers of filling.

Then we covered the whole cake in whipped cream and coated the sides with shaved chocolate.

The large curls of chocolate were reserved for the top and we piped roses on the top and topped with stemmed maraschino cherries.


Black forest sponge cake:

6 oz Bittersweet chocolate; cut

6 tb Unsalted butter

1 ts Vanilla extract

1/3 c Water

6 lg Eggs; at room temperature

1 c Sugar

1 c Cake flour

1/2 ts Salt

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Butter 3 pans of 7" measurements and place a round parchment in the bottom of each.

Alternately use a 9 X 13 pan (as I did)

- In a double boiler melt the bittersweet chocolate with the butter & the 1/3 cups water

- In your mixer bowl whisk the eggs with the sugar for 10 mins until very fluffy, adding in the vanilla at the end.

- Meanwhile place a piece of parchment onto the counter and sift your flour and salt.

Now cool down the mixture in the double boiler and then add it into the eggs, and also gently fold in the flour.

Bake the round pans for 10-15 mins and the rectangular pan baked for about 20-25 (I kept an eye on it!)

I made this recipe twice yielding 2 rectangular pans and slicing each cake horizontally for 4 layers in total. It was a big cake but it goes fast!

** IF you do not have bittersweet chocolate substitute for a mixture of the following ingredients in your double boiler.

1/2 cup, plus 1 tbsp plus 1 1/2 tsp cocoa powder

1/2 cup, plus 1 tbsp plus 1 tsp sugar

3 tbsp and 2 tsp butter (in addition to the butter that is already in the recipe mentioned above)