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Baking| Black Forest Cake … you must have a BFC in your repertoire Recipe
by deeba rajpal

“One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

It’s been ages since I made a Black Forest Cake. Cherries have flooded the market of late and this quintessential cherry dessert cake called my name! I made this before flying down to Goa. Typically, the day I decided to bake the cake everything had to go wrong, leaving me in a race against time, and I had to turn to my jar of canned cherries! The Black Forest Cake is a cake lovers delight, one that I shall hopefully make again this summer with balsamic cherries!The ‘not quite so terrible anymore‘ teen did well in her exams and is on a chocolate high. She wants chocolate ALL THE TIME. The BFC seemed a good choice. It reminds me of the LBD, a wardrobe essential one that one must have. The BFC is somewhat similar in culinary context. IMHO, A BFC recipe is one every baker worth their crumb must be able to turn out fuss free! Harini aka The Sunshine Mom was here a while ago. I dashed into town to meet her on her way back from a trek in the Himalayas, and took her a box of cherries. She got back the next day and made a Gluten free BFC! It was soon my turn to have a go too! I’ve been through a few BFCs in my baking life. Even before it came to blogging, I used to happily whip out Black Forest Cakes, a cake popular in India in many local avatars, often far away from the German version. It’s still one of the most popular birthday cakes here, and one of the most searched things on PAB!My last one was a BFC from The Cake Bible that I posted here. It used far more chocolate than I could afford at the time. This version is simpler, much simpler and gets made faster. To get a nice mature flavour, it’s worth making this a day in advance. I used a cocoa version on my to-go-sponge recipe for the base. ’twas a cake in a hurry!!It’s the peak of summer here 45C, HOT enough to fry eggs on the sidewalk, hot enough to lend colours to chilies. The Indian summer is sizzling at it’s bbq best so I was worried about the cream not whipping up. Something strange happened! My 18% fat cream began whipping up to hold medium soft peaks as you can see! It’s the second time this happened.It worked the first time on this experimental Quark Cherry Cheesecake Pie. I intended to retry the recipe but the terrible teen pleaded chocolate. I chilled the low fat cream overnight and whipped it non stop at high speed, and whipped it some more, and some more. Soon, strangely enough it began to thicken … Yippee! For all you fellow bakers in India, do let me know if this works for you too?

Recipe: Black Forest Cake

Summary: A quintessential party cake. Chocolate, cherries and cream come together to make this version of the traditional German favourite.

Prep Time: 45 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour 30 minutes {plus cooling/chilling time}

Ingredients:

Method:

Chocolate Sponge

Preheat the oven to 180C.

Line the bottom and sides of a 6″ round tin with parchment paper.

Sift the flour, cocoa, cornflour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

Beat the egg yolks with 25g sugar over a bowl of simmering water till thick and mousse like. remove from water and continue to beat for another 2-3 minutes.

Wash and dry the beaters, and with clean beaters whip the egg whites with the remaining sugar to stiff peaks. Fold into the yolk mixture.

Fold in the sifted flour mix gently, then fold in the oil.

Pour batter into prepared tin and bake at 180C for 25-30 minutes / until the cake springs back when touched lightly or the tester comes out clean.{Don’t overbake it or the sponge will be dry}

Cool in tin on rack for 5 minutes, then turn out gently and completely cool before cutting into 3 even layers.

Filling:

Mix 1 tsp of cornflour in a little cherry juice. Reserve.

Bring 200ml of the cherry juice to a simmering boil. Reduce until thick and syrupy, stirring constantly. {Syrup should be quite thick and not runny; will thicken more as it cools}. Take off heat. Stir in juice of 1/2 lime. Cool completely, add pitted cherries and Kirsch. Chill until required.

Beat the cream with sugar until medium stiff peaks.

Assemble:

Place a layer of cake on serving platter and brush with some of the liquid from the reduced cherry filling mixture. Top with 1/3 whipped cream and half cherry mixture {reserve 1-2tbsp for top}. Repeat with next 2 layers. Top with fresh cherries, reserved cherry mixture and chocolate gratings.

Chill for 3-4 hours {better overnight} for the flavours to mature.

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Also find me on The Rabid Baker, The Times of India