GBBO 2015: Week1 Cakes - Black Forest Gateaux

For the first week of GBBO I decided to make two of the bakes because why make things easy for myself? I have never made this cake before, or even considered making it before, and it had more elements to it than I usually try to do for a cake so I knew it was going to be a challenge for me - which is the whole point of this! 

I searched for a recipe online and a lot of recipes varied quite a bit with ingredients and quantities, so in the end I settled on a recipe from a reliable recipe website - bbcgoodfood.com

Ingredients:

300g plain flour

175g butter

375g golden caster sugar

2 eggs

25g cocoa

200g dark chocolate

200g natural yoghurt

1tsp bicarbonate of soda

100g Morello cherry jam

500ml double cream

3tbsp icing sugar

425g tin of pitted cherries

1 punnet of fresh cherries (optional)

I should firstly mention that I did not use kirsch in this recipe as I don't like to use alcohol in baking - just a personal preference! I replaced the kirsch with the juice from the tin of cherries. 

So first is the usual preparations; preheat the fan oven to 160 degrees Celsius, and grease and line with greaseproof paper three round 20cm cake tins.

To make the cake batter firstly combine the flour, sugar, cocoa and bicarbonate of soda in a mixing bowl.

In a separate mixing bowl place the eggs and yoghurt and whisk them together.

Then add this to the first mixing bowl with the other ingredients in.

Take the butter and 75g of the dark chocolate and place them into a pan on a low heat, then stir until melted.

Add this to the mixing bowl of ingredients. Add 100ml of boiling water to the bowl.

Whisk!

Divide the mixture equally between the three cake tins - this is actually way more difficult than it sounds. Pop the tins in the oven and bake for 25 minutes. Time for a sit down after all that.

Time for the cakes to come out of the oven to be dressed. I think this is where I went a tad wrong. When the cakes come out the oven, THEN pour over them some of the liquid from the tinned cherries and let them cool. I made the error of letting them cool and then putting a few tablespoons of the liquid onto each layer of cake. This made the cake too moist and you will see the result of this further down the page.

Take the tin of cherries, drain them, and mix the cherries with the jam.

Measure 200ml of the cream and put this into a pan over a low heat. Leave on the heat long enough for the cream to get hot but not boil or burn. Then pour the hot cream over the remainder of the chocolate and stir it until the chocolate is melted and it mixture resembles Nutella.

Whisk together the icing sugar and the rest of the cream (300ml) until it looks good and creamy.

Time to assemble everything! A layer of cake first, then half of the cream and then half of the jammy cherries on top of that. Repeat. Then when the third layer of cake has been stacked, get the bowl of Nutella-looking chocolate and spread that all over the top. I finished it with a few fresh cherries on top as I thought this would make it look fancy and pretty. I don't really recommend this step though as cherries are more expensive than gold it turns out and they don't even get eaten as people take them off the top to eat the cake.

The final product turned out fairly well considering I have never made or even eaten this cake before. I did have a problem with the cake layers though; the liquid from the tin of cherries made them too moist and they had stuck a little to the cake tins so were quite uneven to start with. When the cake was finished it looked good - if not very messy, but then slowly as the minutes passed a crack formed down the middle of the cake on the top layer. Ten minutes later the crack had turned into the Grand Canyon of cakes.