Black Forest Cake

Wishing you all a Happy New Year!!! 

New Year started with baking and today finally thought of sharing this cake here. This is the first cake in my site. It’s been one year I started posting recipes here, but ended up with very few. This year I will try to post many more recipes. For this New Year I baked black forest cake, the reason I choose this is I find myself no time to decorate with butter cream icing. As New Year fell on Friday the cake should be ready by Thursday so I thought to bake on Wednesday and want to decorate on Thursday. But suddenly H booked for Avatar movie on Thursday. So changed my plan and started to bake and whip the cream on Wednesday itself. Unfortunately we were caught in the traffic jam and thought I may miss the new year bells. But finally we reached home around 11 pm with tiring faces and started to fill the cake with whipping cream and getting chocolate shavings ready. H helped me a lot to set up the new Microwave which we bought for this New Year and clean up my messy kitchen platform. At last I ended my cake by 11:40 pm.  Refresh myself to welcome the New Year. Happy to share this recipe here I used the basic sponge cake with chocolate flavor and topped with whipping cream.  Here goes the recipe………

Ingredients: 

For Cake

¾ cup Plain flour (maida)

¼ cup cocoa powder

1 cup powdered sugar

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp vanilla

6 eggs

½ cup water

1/3 cup sugar

2 cups heavy cream

6 tbsp powdered sugar

½ tsp vanilla

Few Cherries

3-4 tbsp chocolate rice

Chocolate bar

Procedure: 

·         Sift flour, baking powder and cocoa powder into a bowl and mix.

·         Separate egg yolks and whites into separate bowls.

·         Beat yolks with vanilla and sugar till it forms thick batter.

·         Beat egg whites on medium-high speed till it forms soft peaks.

·         Add yolks mixture into whites and mix gently with the spatula. (Don’t beat).

·         Now sprinkle flour all over the egg mixture and gently mix.

·         Pour this batter into 2 greased baking pans (divide the batter into equal amounts).

·         Bake for 18-20 minutes in a preheated (preheat for 15 minutes) oven at 180 C.

·         Time varies oven to oven, so make sure to test with a tooth pick or skewer inserted into the cake should come out clean.

·         Remove the cake from the oven and let it sit for 10-15 minutes to cool and then invert the cake on to a wire rack to cool completely for about 1 hr.

·         Place the mixing bowl and whisk or blades in the freezer for about 20-30 minutes.

·         Boil water and sugar to make syrup and let it.

·         Peel the chocolate bar to get enough shavings; I peeled on the sides of the bar to get curls. You can use grater to get fine chocolate crumbs.

·         Pour the heavy (whipping) cream into chilled mixing bowl and beat on low speed for a while till the top surface is filled with bubbles.

·         Add sugar and beat on medium-high speed till it forms soft peaks (can be stored in refrigerator until used).

·         Place one cake on the cake board or on a plate and feed (sprinkle evenly) with sugar syrup and spread 1/3 of cream and sprinkle chopped cherries.

·         Place the second cake over the cream and cherries and feed with syrup first and cover the cake with 2/3 of the remaining cream on the top and sides.

·         Fill the piping bag with left over cream and pipe design and arrange the cherries (cut the cherries into half) as you wish. Sprinkle chocolate rice/shavings on the sides and top of the cake.

·         Keep refrigerated for 3-4 hours and serve chilled.