Black Forest cake

Black Forest cake

Ingredients:

{For the cake}

All-purpose flour - 265 gms

Castor sugar - 400 gms

Milk - 200 ml

Vegetable oil - 100 ml

Eggs - 3 nos.

Cocoa powder (unsweetened) - 65 gms

Baking soda - 1 & 1/2 tsp

Salt - 1 tsp

Vanilla extract - 1 tsp

Kirschwasser/cherry liquor/cherry brandy - 3 tbsp

{For the filling}

Thick whipping cream - 120 ml

Castor sugar - 120 gms

Cherries (canned) - 1 can

Teaspoon vanilla extract - 1/2 tsp

Kirschwasser - 1 tbsp

A pinch of salt

{For the topping}

Thick whipped cream

maraschino cherries

bittersweet chocolate shavings.

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 175°C.
2. Grease two 9″ round baking dishes and keep aside.
3. Sift together flour, cocoa and baking soda. Set aside.
4. In a large bowl, add the sifted mixture, sugar, salt, eggs, milk, oil, and vanilla extract. Mix well.
5. Pour this batter into the greased baking dishes and bake for 35 to 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean.
6. Allow the cakes to cool. When completely cooled, cut each layer horizontally in half to get four layers total
7. Sprinkle layers with Kirschwasser.
8. For the filling, in a bowl whip the cream to stiff peaks. Now add vanilla extract, Kirschwasser, sugar and salt. Mix well.
9. Spread first layer of cake with one-third of the filling. Now spread one -third of the cherries. Place a second layer on this layer and repeat the process for three layers.
10. Now place the fourth layer and cover the sides and top off the cake with whipped cream. Sprinkle chocolate shavings on sides and top of the cake. Now, place as many maraschino cherries you want on the cake.

Enjoy ! Your Black Forest cake is perfect.

Did you know that the cake is named not directly after the Black Forest (Schwarzwald) mountain range in southwestern Germany but rather from the specialty liquor of that region, known as Schwarzwälder Kirsch(wasser) and distilled from tart cherries. This is the ingredient, with its distinctive cherry pit flavor and alcoholic content, that gives the cake a special kick. Cherries, cream, and Kirschwasser were first combined in the form of a dessert in which cooked cherries were served with cream and Kirschwasser, while a cake combining cherries, biscuit and cream (but without Kirschwasser) probably originated in Germany.

Today, the Swiss canton of Zug is world-renowned for its Zuger Kirschtorte, a biscuit-based cake which formerly contained no Kirschwasser. A version from the canton of Basel also exists. The confectioner Josef Keller (1887–1981) claimed to have invented Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte in its present form in 1915 at the then prominent Café Agner in Bad Godesberg, now a suburb of Bonn about 500 km north of the Black Forest.