We celebrated my husband’s birthday this week, and one of his favorite cakes is the Black Forest Cake, alas I never made one, and with a toddler wrapped around my leg, it’s pretty obvious that I’m looking at easy solutions these days 🙂
So I had a recipe for an egg free cake that is super soft and moist on it’s own, the nice thing about it is that you only need one bowl, so you can see how that worked perfectly for me. minimum ingredients, minimum effort, maximum results – sold!
After I made the cake, I had to make the topping which is whipped cream and of course the cherries. I only had frozen ones so I had to find a way to use what I have 🙂 I made a cherry mix, added a bit of cherry liquor into it and I was done.
Building the cake was…well, a piece of cake.
I usually decorate and build my cakes on a simple cutting board or plate but this time I finally got to use my Cake Turntable, (clickable link) and let me tell you, it my my work so much easier and the process was way faster and convenient. So yeah, I think I’ll be using this turntable from now on, I can’t really think of a reason why I haven’t used it so far, I love it!
For the decor I used semi-sweet chocolate chips I had at home. I once tried making chocolate shavings but they ended up melting in my hand 🙂 so this time I took the chocolate chips and processed them in my old pal the Chopper.(clickable link) I love my chopper, it’s been with me for 7 years now and never fails 🙂 so I just chopped and ground chocolate chips in it and it made the perfect decoration for the sides of the cake.
Anyways, the cake turned out super good! it was moist on the inside and you could really feel the cherries mix with the cream, SO GOOD!
Needles to say that we didn’t even get the opportunity to share it, we finished it within 48 hours. I guess now’s a good time to start that diet…
- 1½ Cups All Purpose Flour
- 3 Tbsp. Cocoa Powder
- ¾ Cup White Sugar
- 1 tsp. Baking Soda
- 1 tsp. White Wine Vinegar
- 1 tsp. Vanilla Extract
- 5 Tbsp. Vegetable Oil (not olive)
- 1 Cup Warm Water
- 3 Cups Frozen Cherries (pitted of course)
- ⅓ Cup Powdered Sugar
- 1 Tbsp. Cornstarch
- 2 Tbsp. Cherry Liquor (Optional but adds flavour)
- 2¼ Cups Whipping Cream (Heavy Cream)
- 7 Tbsp. Powdered Sugar
- ½ Cup Semi Sweet Chocolate Chips - Chopped or Ground
- Prepare an 8.5" round spring form baking pan and layer with parchment paper. (I usually brush with oil and then the parchment paper sticks better to the base and the sides)
- Preheat oven to 180C (350F).
- In a large bowl mix all the cake ingredients well until you get a smooth batter.
- Pour batter onto your prepared baking pan and bake for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the middle of the cake, comes out clean/dry.
- In a medium pot, place the cherries, cornstarch and powdered sugar and start stirring over medium heat.Stir constantly for about 15 minutes or until cherries have thawed and the mix begins to thicken. You don't want it to be too liquid.
- Once cherry mix thickened, add in the cherry liquor and mix in and remove from heat.
- Set aside and let cool.
- Place the cream and sugar in a stand mixer bowl and using the whisking attachment, whisk on medium-high speed until stiff peaks form. Do not over whisk it.
- Carefully remove the ring from around the baking pan and slice the cake in the middle just like you would to make a sandwich :). You now have 2 layers of cake.
- Turn the cake onto your serving dish (My Turntable in my case) and using a plate or the base of the baking pan (which is flat and round) remove the top half of the cake by inserting the plate in the middle and lifting up to detach the top part you sliced before.
- Now you have the bottom part exposed. Take ⅔ of the cherry mix and evenly spread it on top of the bottom layer.
- Cover the cherry mix with whipped cream until it's fully covered.
- Place the top part of the cake back on (on the whipped cream at this point) and cover the cake with the remaining whipped cream you have left (this is a good time to play around with some decor 🙂 )
- once the cake is fully covered, place the remaining ⅓ mix of cherries in the middle nicely. You can leave some cream aside to decorate around the edges of the cherry mix.
- Decorate the sides of the cake with some ground/ shaved/ chopped chocolate.
- Let the cake stand in the fridge for at least 1 hour before serving to absorb flavors.
