Black Forest Cake

Black Forest Cake (BFC) was a new name to me when I was schooling. We had tasted cakes and pastries, but with Monginis' chain of stores setting into Mumbai, we got to hear about new pastries with names! Atleast my mind refused to visualise what Black Forest would be?
When we were treated to it, it turned out to be the most delicious pastry, which till date is my top favourite in pastry or cake, with a crispy crust to die for!! ( We all girls in my ex-office, used to wait for the cake to get over, so that we could share and eat the base too!)

I was inspired by Shilpa to bake, I was mighty impressed with Archana's work of art with baking and icing, and the design for the BFC is basically from her blog.(poorest version of her BFC). Thanks Shilpa of AR and ARchana of Spicyana!

This is my first attempt to whip out an Icing Cake. The photos notably highlights the noviciate nature of BFC. Luckily the taste was fresh and yummy!


To assemble this cake, I needed a crispy crust, nice moist chocolate cake, for filling - Cherry pie syrup and fresh cherries + good icing (to arrive at which icing I needed, I racked my brains and finally settled for fresh cream which originally goes well with a BFC).

Here is the recipe in Four parts :

PART I -
Ingredients For Moist Chocolate Cake :
Betty Crocker's 517 gm Moist Chocolate Cake Mix
3 eggs
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 1/4 cup water

Method For Moist Chocolate Cake :
Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees F. Take two 8" round baking pans, grease and flour it lightly. Beat the cake mix, eggs, oil and water in a large bowl on low speed for two minutes. Pour into pans till 3/4 full and bake for 35-40mins or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Cool on wire rack. Slice off the top portion of both cakes with the aid of a serrated knife.. thinnest slice so the cake shapes up neatly with the extra browned or burnt top gone. Sides need not be touched as they would be covered with icing.

PART II -
Ingredients For Crispy Crust : original recipe here.
15 Graham Crackers (Honey flavour)
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup melted butter

Method For Crust : Break the crackers and combine with sugar, blend till finely powdered. Add the melted butter,blend well. Press to the bottom of an ungreased 8" pie plate. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.
In a pre-heated oven, at 375 deg F, bake for 8-10 minutes or until browned lightly.
(Prepare and refrigerate this when cake mix is ready. So once cakes are out of oven, crust can be baked.) Cool it.


PART III -
Ingredients for Icing :
500 gms whipping cream
4 tbsp powdered sugar
1 tray ice cubes

Method for Icing:
Prepare icing in the end, when you are ready to assemble the cake, for stability of icing.
Firstly the mixing bowl and beaters have to be refrigerated for one hour prior to preparation of icing(if you do not belong to cool temperature places).
Place the cooled bowl into a tray of ice cubes, beat the whipped cream and sugar on low speed until the volume is doubled and soft peaks form. DO NOT over beat. Refrigerate the icing till you are ready to assemble the cake.

PART FOUR -
Ingredients for filling and garnishing :
Fresh pitted cherries 25-30 approx
6-8 tbspns of cherry syrup
Chocolate Shavings (Cadbury's Dairy Milk Bar) Refrigerated

Method :
Keeping aside 10 cherries for garnishing, cut the remaining cherries into halves. Open the tin ready made of cherry syrup, keep handy while assembling.

Now comes the assembling part.

How to Assemble the Cake :

1. On a serving plate, place the crispy crust.
2. Spread the cherry syrup evenly on the crust. This acts as glue to the cake layer.
3. Place the first cake on top of this. Apply a layer of cherry syrup on the top of this cake.
4. Bring out the refrigerated whipped cream icing, fill in two or three tbspn in the piping bag.
5. Spread the icing upto 1 " layer, on the top of cherry syrup layer. Embed the chopped cherries as below. (Archana has used a flan ring which is best for assembling cakes)











6. Place the second layer of cake, spread the icing and level it. (as below)









7. Garnish first with chocolate shavings which is done by holding the cold chocolate bar on top of this cake and scraping it with a serrated knife to evenly cover the top.

8. Pipe some icing on the cake in circular pattern as below...place one cherry in each circle.










9. Decorate further if you want to with the piping bag and correct nossle. Refrigerate for the icing to set for 2-3 hours.


10. Voila!! BFC ready to be relished!!!!!

















I had no proper equipments hence I assembled this cake in a casserole!
But it was fun baking and assembling it! It is more enjoyable as I am narrating this!
It took me hours (in bits and pieces) to put this cake together, so as to present it to you too!
Hope you all like it!!

TO ALL MY LOVELY VISITORS...HERE'S A PIECE!!! SIT BACK N NJOI!