Black Forest Cake

by Janet Anderson

Ingredients :
2 cups of Self Raising flour
125 mls of cocoa powder
5 mls of baking powder
5 mls of bicarbonate of soda
1 ml salt
2.5 mls vanilla essence
2 cups of sugar
2 eggs
310 mls buttermilk
125 vegetable oil

Method :
Beat the eggs, sugar and vanilla essence together until light and fluffy.
Sift the flour, cocoa, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt together and add to the egg mixture.
Mix the buttermilk and oil together and fold into the egg/flour mixture.
Transfer mixture into two 25cm greased cake tins.
Bake at 180C for 35 minutes..
Wait for about 5 mins after removing from the oven before you loosen the sides and turn out the cakes onto a cooling rack. Allow to cool completely and then slice once through each cake layer to make 4 layers.

Topping and filling
Ingredients :
300 mls fresh cream
75 mls icing sugar
Kirsch Liquer (cherry liquer)
200 g canned / bottled sour cherries
A paste of 5ml cornflour mixed with a little cold water.
Flaky or grated chocolate

Method :
Drain about 250g of cherries in a sieve, gently squeezing out the juice. Reserve the juice.
Place half of the cherries in a saucepan and add 30mls of Kirsch and 20mls of the juice from the cherries and bring to a simmer.
Thicken the mixture with the cornflour and allow to cool completely - this will form part of the cake topping.
Sprinkle the 4 layers of cake with 100 mls of Kirsch.
Beat the cream and icing sugar together until stiff.
Start stacking the cake by speading about a 5th of the cream mixture on each layer, placing the uncooked half of the cherries on top of the cream on the second layer.
Once all 4 layers have been stacked, take the cooled cherry mixture and place in the centre of the top layer, spreading evenly (about 2 - 3 cm from the edge).
Use the last 5th of the cream to pipe rosettes around the edge.
Lastly, sprinkle the chocolate flakes over the top of the cake.

recipe Black Forest cake