Germany Recipes – Black Forest Gateau (Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte)

Ingredients

For the sponge:
6 egg yolks
200g egg
1 cup sugar
80g sifted flour
20g cocoa powder
35g wheat flour
40 g melted chocolate
greaseproof paper

For the Syrup:
300g cold water
150g sugar
70g kirschwassser (cherry liquor)

For the Filling:
400g cherries in a jar (Schattenmorellen)
1 litre cream (32% fat)
corn flour
70g sugar
5g Vanilla sugar
cinnamon
roasted peel of lemon
80g Kirschwasser (45%)
100g syrup (see above)

For the Topping:
choco curls (make from a chocolate bar by shaving with vegetable peeler) 
fresh or glace cherries for decoration

Method

1. Heat the eggs and the sugar in a metal bowl over the cooker for a few minutes to around fifty degrees. Remove the bowl from the fire and keep whisking the eggs to aerate the mixture until thick and fluffy, about 10 minutes. The mixture should go about 4 or 5 times as big and change colour. From orange to a very pale and white colour.

2. Add the flour and the cocoa powder and fold it in very gently. Then add the melted butter and stir it carefully.

3. Put the mixture into a double lined tin, flatten it out and bake it in a pre-heated (200C) oven for about 20 minutes.

4. Take the cake out of the oven. Turn it upside down and cut some cracks into the greaseproof paper, so that the steam can evaporate. Let it rest for twenty four hours.

5. Open a jar of cherries, pour two tablespoons of cherry liquor in a glass bowl, and the rest of the cherry liquor into a pan. Add one and a half tablespoons of sugar and a spoonful of corn flour to the cherry liquor in the glass bowl, the corn flour acts as a thickener. Also add a pinch of roasted peel of lemon and cinnamon to it.

6. Heat the rest of the cherry liquor left in the pan and let it come up to the boil.

7. Add the cherry mixture to the cherry liquor and keep stirring. Then add the cherries and heat them through.

8. Pour it into a bowl to thicken and cool down.

9. Divide the sponge into three layers and pour melted chocolate onto the bottom one and spread it evenly. This is going to be the bottom of the cake and it will give the whole gateau stability. While it cools down in the fridge, make the whipped cream and the syrup.

10. For the whipped cream, whip together cream, sugar and vanilla sugar. The key is to start whipping slowly, making the mixture lighter.

11. For the syrup, put two parts water to one sugar in a bowl and stir it, and very important for an authentic Black Forest Gateau, add two schnapp glasses of Kirschwasser.

12. Take the chocolate base out of the fridge and brush on some Kirschwasser syrup on it, add part of the cherry mixture, and about 250 g of whipped cream. Put the second layer onto the cake, brush on some more of the Kirschwasser syrup and put 350 g of whipped cream. Put the third layer onto the cake, brush on some Kirschwasser syrup, and spread the rest of the whipped cream onto the cake.

13. Then, decorate the top of the cake with more cream with a decorating pipe and the bottom with chocolate shavings. Place the rest of the chocolate shavings in the centre of the cake with some glace cherries.

Recipe from Mr Holz (Baker – Konditorei Backerei, Baiersbronn)