Black Forest Cake

Remember my tricolor cupcakes with cream frosting, the same day I also made this black forest cake for DH birthday.  Last year I baked chocolate cake with chocolate frosting which was so delicious I got wonderful review for it from DH and others but couldn’t post it as I didn’t took pictures. 


This year after a lot of thinking I decided to make black forest cake as it was in my wish list for long and took all my effect to take pictures too.  The step vise pictures looks a bit messy, but having newspaper over the counter really helps a lot with aftermath of baking as the one part I hate about baking is cleaning after all the work done, always end up having so many things to wash, clean, wipe and store back all the spoons, cups, tins and what not! It’s just me or any of you have same feeling too?  Anyways here the cake just before cutting :)


Coming back to our cake, yes I agree I didn’t pipe well and it doesn’t cook all pretty too as I am still learning and hope to do better in future.  It was a humid day (as always) the icing was melting which you can see in the pictures and I was running out of my patience.   If you are patience enough and practice you can decorate the cake nicely it comes with practice so don’t be dishearten if 1st time you don’t get it right, you will eventually get it it’s just matter of time. 

Anyways the cake tasted deliciousssss, seriously it was too delicious everyone liked it and I shared this with my friend and she loved it too.   I adapted the recipe from joyofbaking and from Prema’s black forest cake recipe and came up with my own recipe, and thanks to Prema for always motivating to try icing, no matter how I do she still praise it with kinds words (though I know the truth ;)).  So not dragging any more let’s look at the recipe.   Posting this cake today as it's dear friend Dharini birthday, so here you go gal Wish you Happy Birthday.

Ingredients:
[Adapted from Joyofbaking & Prema’s Culinary]

For Chocolate Sponge Cake
Plain Flour – 250gms ( 2 cups)
Baking Powder – 1 1/2 tsp
Baking Soda – 1 tsp
Salt – 1/4 tsp
Eggs – 4
Granulated White Sugar - 200gms
Vanilla Extract – 1 tsp
Vegetable Oil – 60 ml [4 tbsp]
Cocoa Powder – 30 gms [ 1/3 cup]

For Whipping Cream Frosting & Assembly
Whipping Cream – 400ml
Icing Sugar – 20gms
Pitted Cherries – 1 tin [halved, keep the syrup]
Corn Flour – 1 tbsp
Granulated White Sugar – 2 tbsp
Maraschino Cherries – 10-12
Chocolate Rise – 100gms
Colorful Sprinkles – 1 tbsp [optional]



Method

For Chocolate Sponge Cake
1. Shift plain four, baking powder, soda, salt and keep aside. Line and grease a 9" round baking tin. Preheat oven at 180C [ I used 8” round baking tin].

2. In a large bowl break eggs, add sugar and beat in high speed for 5-6 minutes or until egg mixture gets light & fluffy  add oil, vanilla extract and beat for a minute to combine everything well.

• For eggless version, replace eggs and sugar with 1/2 cup of condense milk and rest of procedure is same

3. Add cocoa powder, Keep adding flour in small quantities and blend well.

4. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.  You will also notice cake will start to leave sides of pan.  Cool on a metal rack for 5 minutes before removing cake from pan and then cool the cake completely before frosting.

• [You can bake this as a single cake like I did or divide the batter in two same size tin and bake twice, you need to check the cake after 25 minutes if it’s baked fully.
• You can make the sponge cake in advance and store in fridge (wrapped well in cling) up to to 2 days before doing frosting]

For Frosting
5. Remove wax paper from cake and slice the cake in 2 or 3 layers horizontally.

• [If you baked the cake in 2 pans then slice in 2 layers so in total there will be 4 layers of cake]

6. Drain out juice from cherries in a bowl, halves cherries & keep aside.  In a small bowl take 2-3 tbsp of drained cherries juice, add corn flour and mix well, make sure not to form any lumps.

7. Heat drained juice along with 2 tbsp sugar until it starts to boil, slow flame, now add corn flour mixture and whisk briskly.  In a minute juice will start to thicken off flame and keep aside to cool.

8. In a large bowl add whipping cream, icing sugar and beat till stiff peaks.

Now that we have all prep work done we can work on our assembly.
For Assembly
9. Place a cake layer on the cake board and brush with prepared syrup evenly over, idea here is to soak cake to make it soft but do not add too much of syrup it will make the cake soggy and it will break.

10. Add a dollop of cream on top and spread over, decorate with cherries.

11. Repeat for 2nd cake layer with syrup, cream and cherries. Keep the third layer on second,spread the cream on top evenly.

12. Frost sides of the cake.  Fill cream in a piping bag and decorate top sides.  In the center you have include chocolate  shaves.   I thicken up remaining syrup and spread it in center.

13. Coat sides of cake with chocolate rice and also on top of cake and pipe lower edges of cake.

• [I did a mistake of piping top and bottom of cake and then coat chocolate rice]

14. Place the Maraschino cherries at the top and add sprinkles in center. 

Want a bite?



Have a nice day ~~