As you can imagine, there is a long story behind why I resorted to making my own Black Forest cakes (Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte, in German, really rolls off the tongue) but suffice it to say The Better Half and a party and a very sad supermarket bakery department Black Forest cake was involved. I don’t make a lot of cakes and I don’t even attempt pies anymore, but even I can pull this off. How? I cheat. My motto is, cheaters sometimes win.
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1 box dark chocolate cake mix, and whatever the box tells you to use (eggs, water)
1 can cherry pie filling, but you don’t need much
3 cups heavy whipping cream
1/3 cup confectioner’s sugar
1 tbs. vanilla extract
2 tbs. cherry liqueur (Kirschwasser), definitely optional
Maraschino cherries, 10, 12, 14, you’ll see
1 4 oz. (maybe a little more) bar of dark chocolate, like from Ghiradelli, refrigerated
Make the cake mix as directed, and pour it into 2 8″ or 9″ round cake pans. I use 8″ so the cakes come out slightly thicker. When they’re baked, put them on a rack to cool. Then, whip the cream, sugar, and vanilla together. This is kind of a lot, so for this I’d use a hand mixer. In a separate bowl take out about 1/3 and with a spoon combine in the cherry liqueur. This makes it a nice pink color. Don’t do this at all if you don’t want to use cherry liqueur; leave all the whipped cream in the same bowl. Put the one or two bowls in the fridge. When the cakes are cool wrap each in plastic wrap and put them in the fridge. Pour yourself a glass of Sekt (it’s German Prosecco) and hum “The Ode to Joy.” Idly wonder whatever happened to Nina Hagen and make a mental note to check on the health of Michael Schumacher. Mourn the passing of Siegfried from Siegfried and Roy.
Take the bar of chocolate out of the fridge and shave it, using a mandoline or a vegetable peeler. Do it so that you’re shaving from the narrower side, if it’s a rectangle, so that the shavings are small. They should curl in a very attractive way. Put those in a bowl in the fridge for a few minutes.
Remove cakes from the fridge and with a long, sharp knife cut them horizontally in two, giving you four even layers. Take out the bowl of whipped cream with the liqueur in it. Place the first cake layer on a plate and spoon on a layer of the cherry pie filling. Put another cake layer on top and spread a layer of the cherry whipped cream. Now add the third layer of cake and another layer of the cherry whipped cream. You should have used all of it but if not…
Top with the fourth cake layer and remove the virgin whipped cream and frost the whole thing. If you have any leftover cherry whipped cream add it here and mix it around and then frost. Remove the chocolate shavings from the fridge, sprinkle on top and add to the sides using the back of a spoon to press them into place. This is very tedious.
Try to judge how many slices you want to get out of this. Let’s say 10. Put a dollop of whipped cream in ten evenly spaced spots around the perimeter of the top of the cake. Top each dollop with a maraschino cherry. Refrigerate until you’re ready to serve.
Serve with: the Sekt, or strong coffee. You can have the coffee “Mit Schlag” (topped with whipped cream) but that’s probably a little too much. For mood music, put on Falco’s “Der Kommissar,” preferably the German version, or if it is a dark and stormy night, Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries.”
Mm, a semi homemade cake. I’m into it.
Have you ever seen this one?
Yes! God I love Sandra Lee and whatever insane person decided she should have a cooking show.
What the hell, was that mayonnaise?
With Sandy, you never know.
@MatthewCrawley, here is an embarrassing question: why do my cakes come out with domed tops? It makes it terribly difficult to do the slice into four and layer thing…Also, yummy – and you make it sound so simple.
I…I don’t know? Do you use box mixes? I’m guessing not. I cede the floor to any bakers who want to weigh in. Another aspect of my 1950s-ishness is my fondness for the boxed and the canned. I make cakes so rarely I’m trying to remember if I’ve ever really noticed this. Maybe it happens to me too and I just ignore it and do my best.
I am not a baker, so take my advice with a whole tub of salt, but I do watch a lot of cooking videos. I believe a domed top means the cake baked too quickly, like you should have had the temp a little lower? But also it seems to happen to plenty of pros and they just cut the top flat (carefully with a serrated knife) before stacking.
Hell, I did that shit for a living for years and never really figured it out. Most of the time the dome wasn’t enough to be a problem and I would use the domed tops as inner layers and invert them so they could sink into the filling while remaining level on top. If the domes were pronounced then I’d just do with BigDamnHeroes sad and use a serrated knife to cut it off.
“Cheaters sometimes win.”
This should be a topic for a NOT–all of the bullshit we were fed as kids by adults who damned well knew better. You know the sayings:
“It doesn’t matter if you win or lose..blah, blah, blah.”
“Work hard and play by the rules, blah, blah, blah.”
“Evil never triumphs, blah, blah, blah.”
“Money can’t buy happiness, blah, blah, blah”
“Don’t say anything until your lawyer is present…” Wait, actually I think that one might be OK.
Hahhahah maybe tomorrow night??
Is it easier to bake the cake the day before and then fill and ice it? I tried baking a cake for my birthday last year, it was good but not pretty.
You don’t necessarily have to wait a whole day, but the cake should be put in the fridge for a few hours just so that it is completely set and cool.
I occasionally do a thing my friend Emily and I refer to as Hate Baking. If I like you I might cheat with a recipe. If I can’t stand you I will want to show you up and go all out. This normally took place at the office. I’m sure this cake is delicious but for the workplace Oktoberfest nothing less than this Black Forest Gateau would do. The animosity was aimed at one particular person who would always have his wife make the exact dessert I’d already signed up for. So I stopped signing up and started hate baking. Mine was not as pretty because you can’t get fresh cherries here in October. I used frozen cherries for the filling and bourbon cherries from a jar on top. I normally can’t make pretty food it looked really good.
Love it! My hate bake was aimed at coworkers who refused to acknowledge the vegans in the office, I don’t even remember how I did it but it was an apricot tart in puff pastry. Did the point get across? No, when I suggested a gluten free cake for the guy who was gluten intolerant I got blank stares.
That’s really bad when they don’t even get the message. My nemesis did and eventually stopped trying to compete. It was a weird gauntlet to throw down, I never understood why he started it.
My friend Emily’s coworkers don’t entirely get it either but they are smart enough to sense something. She can tell it makes them uncomfortable. They spent the first two years she was there being terrible to her and her response was to make them delicious food. Not to befriend them or even in a kill them with kindness way. Just to show there’s one more thing she can do better than them, lol. We bonded over vindictive baked goods.
I’d like to hear more about this apricot tart if you remember the recipe. We have a restaurant here that makes a fabulous apricot rosemary dumpling. And now I’m hungry.
vindictive baked goods is a phrase that should be used more often.
Re apricot tart: I know I used frozen puff pastry for the tart, I think I got frostbite standing in front of the freezer section reading the ingredient labels. I’ll poke around to see if I wrote down the rest.
One of my favorite places to go is a French bakery and restaurant (La Bonne Bouchée, located in the suburb of Creve Coeur, of course). Among their many delicious confections is a Black Forest cake that they make with thinly sliced strawberries instead of cherries and holy fuck is it amazing.
Anyways, if you want to swap the cherries for strawberries, highly recommend!