My Culinary Trial Room

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Black Forest Cake | The Perfect One

For June's Cooking secretly challenge, I was paired with Sathya from Appetite treats, a gorgeous blog filled with awesome recipes and awesome picture. This time I was challenged with one my favorite ingredients ever ~ "Chocolate". I thought about brownies, pots de creme and even chocolate macaroons. Well, you know me and my laziness and finally ended up with merging the challenge and my huss's birthday cake. And it was chocolate all the way.

We are not big fans of buttercream and so I mostly stick to whipped cream frosting when I bake for friends and family. Also its been a long time since we had a blackforest cake, the last one being pappu's first birthday cake. After I moved to the US, I have been experimenting with other flavors and the all time classic remained untouched.

Ever since I made fondant toppers for pappu's second birthday themed cakes, the huss has been asking me to do a simple fondant topper for his forthcoming birthday cakes too. He is a big fan of race bikes, Valentino Rossi being his idol. I knew what had to go as the fondant topper, only that I had very little fondant at hand and I didn't want to make a big batch just for the sake of his cake. So instead of making a standing bike, I made this flat kinda topper. The huss totally loved it.

Prep time: 40 mins; Cooking time: 30 to 35 minus; Serves - 10-12

~*What U Need*~
For the cake:
All purpose flour - 1 3/4 cup
Sugar - 2 cups
Cocoa powder - 3/4 cup
Baking powder - 1 1/2 tsp
Baking soda - 1 1/2 tsp
Salt - 1 tso
Eggs - 2, room temperature
Whole milk - 1 cup, room temp
Vegetable oil - 1/2 cup
Freshly brewed coffee - 1 cup, boiling

Cherry pie filling - 1 can

For the whipped cream:
Heavy cream - 2 cups, chilled
Icing sugar - 1/2 cup
Vanilla extract - 2 tsp

How I Made it:
Preheat the oven 350F. Grease and flour two 9-inch round baking pans. Whisk together the sugar, flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt in the bowl of a standing mixer. Add eggs, milk, oil and vanilla; beat on medium speed of mixer for 2 minutes.

Meanwhile boil the coffee. Stir in boiling coffee. Divide batter between the two prepared pans. Bake 30 to 35 minutes or until thin knife inserted into center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes; remove from pans to wire racks. Cool completely.

Reserve 8 cherries from the can for decorating. Pour the filling onto a sieve and separate the cherries and juice. To make the whipped cream, combine the heavy cream, powdered sugar and vanilla extract and whip until stiff peaks form. Refrigerate whipped cream until ready to use. Once the cakes are cool, using a serrated knife, cut each cake into two. Place one layer on a serving platter. Using a pastry brush brush some cherry syrup on the cake. Top with about ½ to ¾ cup whipped cream, spread cherries on top of this. Repeat with remaining layers. After placing the final layer, use the remaining cream to decorate as desired. I made a chocolate lace border with some melted chocolate.