Black Forest Cake

Black for­est cake has long been among my per­son­al favorites, so much so that I used to go to the bak­ery and buy a full 9″ one for no occa­sion at all, and just eat it for dessert through­out the week. I was, how­ev­er, much less a fan of pay­ing the req­ui­site $40 each time I allowed myself that par­tic­u­lar indul­gence. So I tried to make my own, and after some tri­al and error, this is the result!

To be hon­est, this black for­est cake is essen­tial­ly just a reg­u­lar choco­late cake with just an added bonus or two, so the ingre­di­ents are most­ly the same as those you would see in a stan­dard choco­late cake recipe. The only dif­fer­ences between this black for­est cake and a reg­u­lar choco­late cake are a light brush­ing of cher­ry syrup on each lay­er of cake, and then a thick spread of cher­ry com­pote in between them:

• I use oil instead of but­ter to give the cake a bit more mois­ture; when I ini­tial­ly made it with but­ter, it came out notice­ably denser and dri­er (as my fam­i­ly, a.k.a. my pan­el of taste testers, was quick to point out).
• I like to add espres­so pow­der to my choco­late cakes, as it inten­si­fies the fla­vor of choco­late, but — in small quan­ti­ties — does­n’t make the cake taste of cof­fee. You can do with­out if you pre­fer, however.
• The boil­ing water achieves a sim­i­lar effect as the espres­so pow­der, in that it inten­si­fies the fla­vor of the cocoa pow­der, while also adding some mois­ture to the cake.

Mak­ing the cake itself is fair­ly straight­for­ward — just com­bine the dry ingre­di­ents in the bowl of a stand mix­er, whisk togeth­er the wet ingre­di­ents in a sep­a­rate bowl, and then com­bine the wet ingre­di­ents with  the dry ingre­di­ents. Care­ful­ly pour the boil­ing water into the bowl and mix on low speed. The bat­ter will be quite thin, so don’t wor­ry if it seems a bit watery. 

While the cake is bak­ing, I like to make the cher­ry com­pote, which for our pur­pos­es, is basi­cal­ly just cher­ries and orange juice cooked over medi­um heat — you can also add a dash of some kind of cher­ry liqueur. Make sure you allow the com­pote to cool, first at room tem­per­a­ture and then in the fridge, or else it will melt the cream off the cake when you frost it lat­er. I have also used Luxar­do’s maraschi­no cher­ries (these are not the same thing as the bright red maraschi­no cher­ries typ­i­cal­ly found near the ice cream sun­dae ingre­di­ents in the gro­cery store, which are both much too sweet and run­ny to act as a stand-in for com­pote here) as a spread over the cream lay­er, and thought it was delight­ful; they come in a thick syrup that makes them work very well. 

Light­ly brush the cake lay­ers in the cher­ry com­pote before frost­ing them. Spread a lay­er of cream over the first cake lay­er. I find that pip­ing a cir­cle around the cir­cum­fer­ence of the cake with a round pip­ing tip can make this eas­i­er — if you don’t have a pas­try bag, you can use a Ziploc bag, which I did here.

Pour the cher­ry com­pote onto the cream lay­er, gen­tly spread­ing it if nec­es­sary to ensure that it is even­ly dis­trib­uted across the frosting.

Stack the sec­ond lay­er on top of the cream and cher­ry lay­er, and then frost (using a turntable in con­junc­tion with an icing spat­u­la is espe­cial­ly help­ful for frost­ing the exte­ri­or of the cake). I went for a sort of raw/naked look here, admit­ted­ly because cake dec­o­rat­ing is not my forte, and a full coat of frost­ing takes me forever.

There are all sorts of ways you can dec­o­rate the cake, i.e.,  choco­late shav­ings on the side, cher­ries along the edge, etc. I like to use a drop flower cake pip­ing tip (I used the Wilton #224 tip here) to pipe some lit­tle flow­ers around the cake, and pour any remain­ing com­pote over the top; this is a nice way to use up any extra com­pote you may have left over! Please par­don the slop­py pip­ing — I can­not stress enough that cake dec­o­rat­ing is not my strong suit. 

And that’s all you need to do to make this black for­est cake! It’s prob­a­bly a lit­tle more labor-inten­sive than sim­ply pur­chas­ing one at the store, but I like to think that it also hap­pens to be a lot more fun. 

 

Pho­tog­ra­phy by Wil­son Tang