Sunday Treats: Black forest Cake

There is nothing as comforting as a lovely blackforest cake. I had one last evening from the Grand Hyatt in Mumbai and it was divine. I totally think they make some of the best cakes in the world!

So I got inspired from it and thought that I'd not make the fancy version that I ate, but I'll make those wonderful comfort food versions full of cream and chocolate shaving and those canned cherries that I totally love. I felt like I was at the Taj Pastry shop a hundred years ago. I realized that this cake is just all about assembling and is super easy to make and it's not so fattening if you use a vegetable based non dairy whipped topping (you can ask for Rich's Cream). All the fun with less calories!!

Yes I know some of you will be thinking, man this girl's taken all the short cuts to make this cake but really I feel like if I'm going to come back after my long day of work, I don't want to spend hours in the kitchen as well as buy expensive ingredients that I may not use after like kirch and all. However, I will say that when I can lay my hands on real cherries, the fresh ones, I totally prefer using them. I always buy like a kilo of cherries when I want to make some cherry based dessert because I know that I am going to end up eating quite a few along the way...!!

Ok so here we go!

You will need:

2 full chocolate cakes. The ready made mix ones will do just fine
2 litres of this Cream topping - whisked/whipped and kept ready in the fridge
2 tins of Cherries
If you are using fresh cherries, you will need Sugar Syrup - 2 cups sugar, 1/2 a cup water mixed together till the mixture becomes homogeneous. if not then you can use the juice of the canned cherries

A string to cut the cakes
loaaaads of chocolate shavings. You get a separate packet of only chocolate shavings and can find this at your nearest gourmet store (I get it from Sante in Bandra)

Method:
Kepp some good looking cherries that are de-seeded on the side for decoration
Take your two ready and cooled chocolate cakes and take a string.
Put the string around the cake like shown in the diagram


Cross the string and pull so that the string cut fully into the cake and you have two horizontal pieces of cake

Put the first cake on the plate and put a little bit of sugar syrup on it. Don't put too much on the bottom layers because it will get too mushy and soggy at the bottom


Slap some whipped cream on top and smoothen it out
Add some cherries that have been de-seeded on top of the layer


Repeat these layers till you are done with all four of the cake layers
Put Cream on the top and on the sides of the cake to make it look decorative. Decorate with whipped cream and cherries and you are totally good to go!

Love it!