BLACK FOREST CAKE

Our local cherry season is over. At its height, I had promised my grandson a Black Forest cake. But  one thing led to another and the promise just never got kept. Not to worry! Cherry season in the Northwest is still going strong, so I bought the cherries from the grocery store. Now, authentic recipes for Black Forest cake call for canned or preserved cherries, but to my mind fresh is always better.  If you use fresh, just be sure to pit them. Authentic recipes also describe the chocolate cake as a “chocolate génoise”, but that is beyond my baking skills and requires more time than I had allotted to the project. Instead, I used my mother’s favorite recipe for chocolate cake.

There could not be an easier cake to bake nor a tastier one. You dump all of the ingredients in a bowl and mix them up with an electric beater, You can sift the dry ingredients to prevent tiny lumps of unbaked flour, but that added step still falls within my bounds for easy. I’m not certain where my mother got the recipe. Perhaps it was from a cookbook of the Great Depression, a newspaper clipping, or even a conference for school cafeteria workers. My mother was a “lunch lady” complete with hair net. Every week she turned out schoolhouse spaghetti, mac and cheese made from giant blocks of USDA surplus commodity cheese, and other hot lunches that the kids loved. On Fridays she always baked a batch of her wonderful pan rolls that the kids fought over and the teachers begged for. My mother also specialized in desserts  – especially chocolate cake. I suspect she used this recipe.

Finally, I used whipped cream for the filling and canned whipped topping for the decorations on the top.  Some recipes call for a more elaborate sauce based on crème anglaise. And canned whipped topping would be unheard of. In short, this was not an honest-to-goodness Black Forest cake and it was definitely not suitable for a cover shot for Bon Appetit, but it was close enough  and good enough for both me and my grandson. He deemed it “delicious” and asked for a second slice.

Basting the cake layers with Kirsch syrup

Whipped cream to stiff peaks

Layer on the whipped cream

Next the pitted cherries

Building the cake

Decoration

RECIPES

Great Grandma’s Chocolate Cake

Ingredients

• 2 cups flour
• 2 cups sugar
• ½ cup cocoa
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1¾ teaspoons baking soda
• 1 cup buttermilk
• ¾ cup neutral vegetable oil
• 1 cup hot water
• 2 eggs

Method

1. Sift the dry ingredients, flour, sugar, cocoa, salt and baking soda, into a large mixing bowl.
2. Add the buttermilk, oil. hot water, and eggs. With an electric beater, either a stand mixer or hand-held, beat the mixture until well combined and smooth. Do not overbeat.
3. Distribute the batter equally among three 8-inch cake pans that have been greased and floured. Bake for 20 minutes in the middle of an oven preheated to 375°F. Test for doneness with a toothpick, and when done , remove to a cooling rack. After 10 minutes, remove the cakes from the pans and cool completely on the cooling rack.

Black Forest Cake

Ingredients

• ¼ cup sugar
• ¼ cup water
• ¼ cup Kirsch
• chocolate cake baked in three layers (see above)
• 2 pounds (about) fresh Bing cherries, pitted
• 2 cups heavy cream
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 2 pounds (about) fresh Bing cherries, pitted
• canned whipped topping

Method

1. In a small saucepan, combine the sugar and water. Bring to the boil until the sugar is dissolved. Remove from the heat and stir in the Kirsch. Cool.
2. With a pastry brush, brush the Kirsch syrup generously on the tops of the three cake layers.
3. Whip the cream and sugar  until the mixture forms stiff peaks.
4. Arrange one of the cake layers on a serving plate. Spread generously with half of the whipped cream. Arrange pitted cherries on the whipped cream. Top with one of the remaining cake layers and repeat the whipped cream and cherries.
5. Top with the remaining layer. Decorate with whipped cream rosettes using the canned whipped topping. Decorate with cherries. Chill until ready to serve.

Cook’s Note: The cake recipe can also be used for two 9-inch layers,  cupcakes or sheet cake. Use a 9 x 13 x 2 inch pan for the sheet cake and increase the baking time to 30 minutes.