weekend baking \\ black forest cake

black forest cake is one of Jim's favourite cake. i made one for him for his last birthday and i wish i could find the photo i took of it. i remember i sandwiched the cake with some morello cherries and whipped cream and i also iced the entire cake with cream and shaved dark chocolate. i was asked to make one for a family dinner last weekend. after days of flipping through my recipes collection and internet searches to various recipes sites i frequent, i realised i didn't follow a recipe to make the cake last year. i actually cheated and made the chocolate cake out of a Betty Crocker's devil's food cake mix and i just winged it with the morello cherries and the cream. to be fair, Jim only gave me two days notice and it wasn't an easy to bake a chocolate cake from scratch when you have an 11 month old toddler that requires your attention at all times. 

Jim found a recipe from sbs' food safari series. the cake looked pretty authentic and delicious on tv but the recipe looked quite complicated. there was only one review for the recipe and it wasn't a good one. after some research, i decided "design" my own recipe based on the black forest cake i know. i decided to use the chocolate mud cake recipe from the Planet Cake book. my plan was to sliced the cake into three layers, sandwich the cake with morello cherries and cream in between the layers and ice the cake with whipped cream and shaved dark chocolate. i had to change my plan because Jim prefers chocolate ganache to cream so i made some chocolate ganache to drizzle over the top of cake. to make the cake look more "black foresty" like, i also piped some fresh cream on top and placed a glace cherry on top of the cream. 

everyone enjoyed the cake very much, mainly because i doused the cake heavily with brandy (we didn't have any kirsch at home). after the cake was all iced and decorated, i realised i should have sliced the cake in three layers instead of two. oh well, maybe next time. 

for the chocolate mud cake, i used this recipe. 

for the cherry compote \\
680g jar of morello cherries
2 tablespoon of caster sugar
1 tablespoon of corn flour
1 tablespoon of water

drain the cherries and reserve the juice. pour the juice in a saucepan with the sugar and cook on medium heat until the sugar is dissolved. add the cherries into the saucepan. to thicken the sauce, mix the corn flour with the water in a bowl and mix well before adding the mixture to the cherry compote. remove from heat once the mixture is thicken. 

for the cream \\
300ml fresh cream
2 tablespoon of icing sugar

whip the cream until it thickens and add the icing sugar. whip until soft peak form and set aside. 

for the chocolate ganache \\ 
300ml fresh cream
600g of dark chocolate, chopped

place the dark chocolate pieces in a large bowl. put the cream in a saucepan and bring to boiling point. pour the cream over the chopped chocolate and mix with a hand whisk until the ganache is smooth.

to assemble the cake \\
slice the cake into two even layers (or three)  

place one layer on the cake board, drizzle the cake liberally with some brandy. cover the cake with a layer of the cherry compote and the syrup and top this layer with a layer of the whipped cream. 

place the second layer of cake on top and drizzle the cake liberally with some brandy. pour enough chocolate ganache over the top of the cake to cover the top and a little bit more to trickle down the side of the cake. 

fill a piping bag fitted with a star nozzle with the cream. pipe 8 rosettes of cream and place a glace cherry on top of each of the rosettes. 

the last step is optional. 

shave some dark chocolate and spread it evenly onto the top of the cake.