Carole’s Black Forest Cake #GBBOBloggers2015 – Cake Week

The Great British Bake off is back on our TV screens which means that yet again the Great Bloggers Bake Off is back as we all join in by baking along.

The series opened with cake week and gave the contestants the challenges of making Madeira cake, Frosted Walnut cake or a showstopper take on the 70s classic Black Forest Gateau.

Now I’ve never made *any* of those so I was up for a new challenge whatever I picked. Having watched the episode I decided out of the three, I most fancied putting a twist on the Black Forest Gateau.

I’m not the biggest fan of fruit and chocolate so I knew that I wanted to somehow lessen the heaviness of chocolate without losing the classic Black Forest flavours – I sat down and formulated a Bake Off Style plan…

Plan made, I made a quick trip to Tesco to get my ingredients before getting on with the first job on my list of cake prep – pitting cherries and settling them in a bowl full of Kirsch for the night!

 

Carole’s Black Forest Cake

Layer One – Boozy Cherry Cake:

Ingredients:

140g Self Raising Flour

½ tsp Cinnamon

50g Golden Caster Sugar

1 Egg

4 tbsp Milk

85g Butter, melted

350g Fresh Cherries

Kirsch

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For the ‘topping’:

25g Plain Flour

¼ tsp Cinnamon

25g Golden Caster Sugar

25g Butter, diced

Method:

Several hours/the night before you want to bake the cake, remove the stalks and stones from the cherries and put them to soak in some Kirsch to make them nice and boozy.

Then:

• Preheat to 160°C (fan)/180°C
• Grease and line a 20cm cake tin
• Sift flour, cinnamon and sugar into a bowl
• Make a well and add the egg, milk and melted butter
• Beat together until the mixture is thick and smooth
• Pour into prepared tin and spread evenly
• Scatter the boozy cherries over the mix and gently press in

• Tip all the topping ingredients into a bowl
• Rub in the butter until the mixture becomes crumb-like
• Work the mixture until it begins to come together in pea-sized pieces
• Scatter the topping over the cherries
• Bake for 30-35 minutes
• Leave in tin to cool enough to handle, then remove from tin and leave to cool on a wire rack until cold

Layer Two – Chocolate Sponge:

Ingredients:

113g Butter

113g Golden Caster Sugar

2 Eggs

88g Self Raising Flour

25g Cocoa Powder

Method:

• Preheat oven to 160°C (fan)/180°C
• Grease and line a 20cm sandwich tin
• Cream together the butter and sugar
• Gradually beat in the eggs (adding a tiny bit of flour if it starts to curdle)
• Add the rest of the flour and cocoa and mix until thick and smooth
• Pour into the tin

• Bake for 25-30 minutes
• Cool completely on a wire rack

For the Fresh Whipped Cream Filling/Topping:

Ingredients:

300ml Whipping Cream

30g Icing Sugar

1 tsp Vanilla Extract

Method:

• Whip the cream until it begins to get thick
• Sift in the icing sugar and add the vanilla extract
• Keep whipping until the cream is thick enough to form stiff peaks but still soft enough to spread/smooth over the cake.

Constructing the Cake

• Place the cherry cake on your cake base and spread a layer of cream over the top

• Sandwich the chocolate sponge on top
• Cover the chocolate sponge in whipped cream and decorate with fresh cherries and chocolate twirls or whatever else you fancy

Many thanks to Tesco who are sponsoring this year’s Great Bloggers Bake Off and who kindly provided me with a £20 gift card to buy all the ingredients I needed to make my Black Forest Cake including the super tasty Kirsch I soaked the cherries in overnight. For more great recipe ideas check out the baking section on Tesco Real Food – you can never have too much cake 😉

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The Great Bloggers Bake Off 2015 is being hosted by the lovely Jenny at Mummy Mishaps and if you hop over there you can take a look at all the other super tasty entries in the linky.