Black Forest Cake

Happy Valentine's Day!

I don't usually celebrate Valentine's day as me and my husband are always busy.

This year he is busy as usual but I thought I make him his favourite Black Forest cake as a gift.

It's always difficult to think what presents to buy him, but as a cake maker I can't think of anything but simply a lovely cream cake.

 

I have found this chocolate sponge recipe from a Taiwanese cookery show on you tube,

unfortunately this video have been taken off but the link still has the recipe in Chinese, so click here for the recipe and method in Chinese.

I am surprised how light this sponge is it actually springs back when you squeeze it!

As I have made two tiers for this cake. I used an 8 inch sponge recipe and split it into two baking tins,

a 7 inch and a 4 1/2 inch spring form tin.

You need an 8 inch spring form tin with the bottom lined.

Preheat the oven at 180c.

Here's the recipe for a light chiffon chocolate sponge:

5 whole eggs

2  egg yolks

135g caster sugar

21g glucose syrup

1g salt

32g corn oil

21g cocoa powder

106g plain flour

1g baking soda (bicarbonate of soda)

21ml milk

Method:

Heat up the oil with a saucepan and add cocoa powder to it, stir and dissolve set aside.

Sift the flour, salt and baking soda together, set aside.

Place all the eggs and yolks with the sugar and whisk with an electric hand held whisk until foamy then add glucose syrup.

Continue to whisk until light and fluffy where it reaches the ribbon stage, then place the flour, salt, & baking soda all into the egg batter and quickly loosen up with 2-3 big stirs with the electric whisk off.

Then start the electric whisk and whisk for about 10 seconds going round the bowl making sure the flour is all mixed evenly.

Take 1/3 of the batter in a separate bowl add in the cocoa powder infused in hot oil, fold to combine the add this straight back into the rest of the white batter mixture.

Add the milk, and fold everything together until cocoa batter is completely combined with no streaks.

Pour into the prepared baking tin and tap on the work top several times to release the trapped bubbles to the surface,

Bake for 35 minutes and test with a skewer.

Remove from the oven and wait 5 minutes to release from the baking tin and cool on a wire rack.

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Now you have your chocolate sponge made, cut into 3 layers and build your cake.

Below are a quick step by step how I made my two tiered Black Forest cake.

 

 

This is the cherry filling I use for my Black Forest cakes, you can add 2. Tbsp of Kirsch to the filling but I leave this out.

You can follow how I cream and layer the cakes here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

My son hiding behind my cake haha....
 

 

This is the smaller cake that is 2 layers, I made this first so I can stack it in the middle of the larger cake.
 

 

 

 



This it the chocolate cage I made by measuring the height and the circumference of both cakes.

This is the hardest part of all as the chocolate border have to be exact measurements and I have to wait for the chocolate to half set before I can cover it around the cake.

Too soon the chocolate will run downwards, too late the chocolate is too hard to curve around the cake.

 

 

Once the chocolate have set hard, it's then where I peel off the baking paper.

 

 

Pipe shells around the cake.

And there it's done!

 

 

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When the cake was ready to cut!!

 

The moment where I had to cut the cake, where do I start??

When one cake becomes two.

I was looking at this cake and trying to figure out the best way to cut it. Took the top one out and couldn't resist to fill up the larger cake with the extra black cherries I had left over in the centre.