Hello everyone we are back with another one of our quirky but delicious recipe. It’ pretty simple and easy to make with items mostly found in our kitchen. I don’t know about you guys but I love a black forest cake. As a kid I was pretty curious about what it meant, I always imagined a huge forest cake which was obviously black.

Black Forest Cake

It is originally a German inspired cake, with layers of chocolate sponge cake, having whipped cream and cherries added between them.

So when I say it’s a deconstructed cake you already know we’re going to move away a bit from the traditional route. I’ll let you in on a little secret of how this dish actually came to be. I had some leftover ingredients from a cake I made and had some guests coming over. Well any guesses to what was made then?

Enough of the chit chatting let’s get to making this!

1.     Ingredients:

The ingredients you will need are pretty simple and stuff you will already have:

The Cake:

You can either use a store bought chocolate cake or bake one yourself, I had some leftover cake that I baked so I used that.

Coffee Soak:

This step is crucial as it makes the cake nice and moist. What you’ll want to do is take half a cup of milk and 2 teaspoons of sugar and half teaspoon of instant coffee. Mix it all up and you have your soak.

Chocolate Custard:

Trust the process. Don’t panic yet.

Take 2 cups of milk, add ¼ cup sugar and 3-4 Tbsp. of Cocoa Powder. Heat it up on the stove make sure the sugar dissolves and it has no lumps. If you want you can add 10gm of chocolate and dissolve it. Now to thicken it up you can us vanilla custard powder or corn flour whatever you have on hand.

Add a bit of milk and your powder of choice. Mix it up and add it to the custard. Keep it on the heat and stir, scraping the bottom of the pan making sure it doesn’t stick. Once you’re happy with the desired consistency take it off, and set to cool.

Ganache/ Chocolate Sauce:

This step is optional but if you want, take 1 part chocolate and 1 part heavy cream, microwave on 10 second intervals to make sure all the chocolate is melted.

Or you can use store bought chocolate sauce.

The filling:

So typically we use a filling of whipped cream and cherries. I usually make this when I have fresh cherries on hand, I don’t like using the canned ones.

Take a pack of heavy cream, make sure it’s chilled, add a 1/4th of a cup of icing sugar and whip on high speed till stiff peaks form.

Assembling time:

So here is where you can use your creativity, and amaze your guests. Use a transparent bowl or if you have one called a trifle bowl. Where you can see each of the individual layers of your dessert.

·       Add a base layer of your cake

·       Soak it with the coffee soak

·       At this point if you want to, you can add a few dollops of the ganache

·       Add a layer of pitted cherries

·       Add the custard on top

·       Add a thin layer of whipped cream

·       Now keep on doing this process till your dish fills up

Add a thick layer of whipped cream for the top most layer and some chocolate shavings for a little flair, and some cherries with the stems on them. Keep it chilled for a few hours or for the best taste keep it refrigerated overnight. Try this out and believe me you won’t want to make anything else. 

A little tip: you can replace the cherries with some walnuts, do a little less soak, and add bits of chocolate pieces in between for a more brownie like taste.