Black Forest Cake

I had a wonderful weekend. We had a big party at our house. It was a potluck party though so my friends got great food. We had 3 of our friends celebrating their bday’s and so I decided to make a cake. And this time I chose to make a Black Forest cake. I loved eating this in India – but I don’t come across too many of these here.

This is a relatively easy and quick cake to prepare. I took the shortcut and use the box cake mix for the base cakes. It make it much more easier. I wanted to do a 4 layer cake and hence prepared 2 cakes. The box cake I chose was Betty’s Crocker’s Extra moist triple chocolate fudge cake. That just made all the difference. The final cake turned out to be really moist and soft.

Here are the cakes done. Cut both the cakes into 2 halves. On one of the top halves, level it so you can get a flat layer out of it. Keep the second top half just as is. Use it as the top most layer on the cake.






Here are the things required before you get started.

A couple of mixing bowls
Sugar – ½ cup
Water – 1 cup
Almond extract – 1 tsp
Heavy whipping cream
Another ½ cup of sugar for the whipping cream
Vanilla Extract
Cherry Pie filling – canned – 1-2 cans
Chocolate bar – for chocolate curls – I could not find the whole bar – so just used a couple of Hershey’s bars – works wonderful!
Maraschino Cherries – about 6-10

Add ½ cup of sugar to 1 cup of water. Add 1tsp of almond extract to this. We will be using this to moisten the cake. The traditional recipe uses Kirsch or Rum to do this. I had a lot of kids in the party and hence skipped the rum part. Use a brush and brush this syrup on to the cake layers while assembling each of them.

For the whipped cream, pour all of the heavy whipping cream in a big mixing bowl and using a hand blender or Kitchen aid if you have it, whip up the cream. When the cream is half done, add ½ cup – 1 cup of sugar and a tbsp of vanilla extract. Whip till the cream is firm – you should be able to create spikes on it and the spikes would stay and not fall off – that means the cream is ready.

Now comes the fun assembly part. Take a flat layer for the bottom of the cake. First, sprinkle the sugar water or rum on top of this to moisten the cake. Then apply a spatula full of whipped cream on top and spread it out evenly. Now, add the cherry pie filling on top of this and spread it out. Press down the cherries so they sit well in the whipped cream. Now, add the next layer on top and repeat this. Then, add the third layer and repeat. Then, add the fourth layer. Now, just add the whipped cream and spread it all around the cake. Chill the cake for a couple of hours.

Here's my daughter helping with applying the cherries - she ate half the can while doing this - but that's besides the point!

Pick up your vegetable peeler and peel little curls out of the Hershey’s bars. You can freeze the chocolate for about 15 mins before you do this. As you are grating the chocolate, you will find that the last pieces will be nice and long because by then the chocolate is in room temperature. You can use any kind of chocolates here. I looked at 3 of my grocery stores for a big bar of chocolate but could not find any. So, just decided to use Hershey’s – and this worked great. Come on, who doesn’t love Hershey’s? Pick up these curls in your hand and just press them to the side of the cake onto the whipped cream. Complete the top with the grated chocolate pieces or curls. Save some of the nice long pieces for the top.

She has to do the finishing touches...

Pipe on some whipped cream in a circle on top and stick a maraschino cherry on top of it!

Chill the cake. But do take it out at least 30mins before serving – that way the cake will be moist and not hard.

Enjoy!

We were all in such a hurry to cut the cake and devour it - you can almost see it!

Here's a slice for you...