Black Forest Cake

Its been a very long time that I updated my blog.  I am back to blogging after a very long gap of two years, almost.  I was always fascinated by food, photography and food related things.  I am glad to see so many new budding blogs on FB and foodie world, so much to learn and so much to explore with the young(am I that old?? c'mon) bloggers.  Couldn't sit on back burner for that long.  I know when the time is right I will be back to this lovely, aromatic and yummilicious foodie world.  Hoping to make new friends and trying to learn new things from great bloggers. One promise to myself is I will keep updating my space often, Though being MOM of two wonderful kids tops my priority list but will try to be regular with my postings.  

Before I jump into the recipe I have a small announcement to make Anshika got a promoted to 'Big Sister', we were blessed with a baby boy. Akshaj, was born November 15th 2011.  It's never late to share the news about your baby right!!

Black Forest Cake

This post is already overdue or a long time now.  I always like Black forest cake and was eagerly waiting to try one at home.  Ofcourse, found this yummy recipe on allrecipes.com, made some changes.  To go easy with preparations I used Devil's food cake mix for the base.  This way you can buy some time to decorate the cake 

Source: adapted from allrecipes.com
Prep time:over 1 hour mins and 
1 hour for assembling the cake 
Cooking time:45 mins
Serves: 6

Ingredients:

1 pack of Devil's cake mix 
and rest of the ingredients listed on the box

For Cherry Syrup:
2T Maraschino Cherry syrup 
1T Sugar 
1/2 C Water 

for Cherry Filling:
Maraschino Cherries without stem
Corn starch 2T or alternatively you can use 4T cherry pie filling 

For Icing:
2C Heavy Whipping cream 

5T Powdered sugar
1T Cherry syrup (or you can use vanilla essence)

For Decorating the cake:
8 Maraschino Cherries with stem (pat them dry)
1 bar (3.5oz)  of Giradelli Semi sweet chocolate shavings

Method:

• Bake the cake mix as per instructions given on the back side of the box. I used 8 inch round cake pan for it, greased with butter and dusted it with all purpose flour.  
• While the cake is baking we can gather the rest of the things for making syrup, icing etc. Place a mixing bowl in which you will beat the whipping cream in the freezer, also keep the beaters (used in hand blender) and keep some ice cubes handy.  The reason why we are cooling is that you will get a nice peaky icing which will be easy to smother on the cake later.
• For Filling: Drain the cherries and reserve the juice. Cut the cherries into half. Now heat the reserved juice in a pan to it add the halved cherries. Let it boil for a min. Mix cornstarch in 1/4 cup of water and add it to the cherries.  This will thicken the sauce and set aside to cool.  This will be used for filling.  Alternative to this is you can use cherry pie filling instead of this process and you can save time.  
• For Icing: Take out the mixing bowl which we kept in freezer and add 2 cups of heavy whipping cream and using the chilled beaters beat with a hand mixer slowly for a minute then add icing sugar, cherry syrup or vanilla essence, which ever works best for your palette.
• Beat it on high to form soft peaks, make sure you don't over beat it or else you will end up in buttery texture. Put back the icing in the freezer for an hour, this makes icing easy.
• For cherry syrup: Mix all the ingredients under the syrup, this is used to moisten the cake and give that unique cherry flavor.

• For decorating the cake: Once the cake is done, let it completely cool. later scrape off the outer part to make a leveled surface for icing. Now gently slice the cake into two rounds.  This is for layering, if you want more layers then you can bake two cakes which will give you four layers. 
• Add the cherry syrup on top of the two cake rounds and let it sit for 5 mins, this will moisten the cake.  
• Use piping bag to fill the icing, place the bottom part of the cake on the cake pedestal, pipe out the icing and make a round border of icing on the cake.  In the center spread out the prepared cherry filling and again cover it with icing.
• Place the top part of the cake round over it and spread the icing completely on the cake and smooth down on the sides too with the icing.
• Decorate the cake with stemmed cherries and shaved chocolate curls.  Its up to you how you want to decorate the cake.
• Place in the back side of your refrigerator till you are ready to use.

Helpful tips and links:

1. Basic recipe for chocolate cake from scratch
2. eggless chocolate cake
3. how to whip cream with hand mixer video 2
4. How to master layering cakes
5. how to make choclate curls video 2(shavings for decoration)
6. How to make shaved chocolate curls 

Hopefully this will inspire you to make this cake today!