Black Forest Gateaux
"What cake would you like for your birthday?"
"Chocolate"
"Just chocolate?"
"Yes. With cherries! Like a black forest gateaux"
"Hmm... I could do that"
That was how my day on Wednesday turned to chaos.
The recipe itself (from Cakes and Deserts, a random out of print recipe book I have) looked pretty straightforward, just a chocolate sponge layered with whipped cream and cherries in sauce. The first trauma was in getting some of the ingredients. The recipe specifically wanted tinned cherries "in juice" but after 3 supermarkets, I could only find them in syrup. The bigger problem was finding the kirsch, cherry liqueur which would give it a bit of oomph. I didn't think it was that unusual, but none of the supermarkets had any, nor the off license I finally tracked down. Oh well, tea total gateaux.
Next trauma, when I poured the sponge mix into the prescribed tin, it came pretty much up to the brim. Fortunately I happen to have two tins of this size, so I distributed the mix between the two. I screwed up though, given that I was supposed to have three layers of sponge I shouldn't have distributed the sponge evenly, but put twice as much in one as the other. So I ended up with two even cakes which I then divided into four layers in total. This is where it started to get ridiculous.
The thing with a black forest gateaux is that each layer of sponge has cream and cherries, and cherries have a fixed diameter. So I ended up with a construction with 4 layers of sponge, 3 layers of cream and 3 layers of cherries and the whole thing ended up half a foot tall! The thing bits of sponge also had a tendency to crumble and I ended up having a slightly hysterical time trying to use cherries and whipped cream as construction material. Then I ran out of cream and cherries to cover the top (which had cracked apart) and the whole thing got a bit out of hand.
So it looked impressively massive, but a bit shoddy to be honest. Of course look is secondary to taste and it tasted pretty fantastic. It did miss the kick from the alcohol, but the sponge had a good flavour and heft to it balanced by the lightness of the whipped cream, the cherries weren't too sweet and I added in some extra fresh ones as well. It was actually better on the second day than the first as everything bonded together, and was still really good on day four.