Thus Bakes Zarathustra

One of my earliest memories of Canberra was eating black forest cake in the then newly-constructed Belconnen Mall. This was the ’80s, and I would  have been five or six, and it horrifies me to think Belco Mall is as old as I am. I knew black forest cake to be a chocolate sponge split and filled with cream and tinned cherries, swathed in cream all around, with crushed chocolate biscuits pressed into the side. Fortunately, another friend had the good sense to have a birthday this week, right when I’m on a layer cake kick, so I decided to swede together a version of the black forest cake of my childhood. Out of anything, I bought two startlingly expensive 20cm sandwich tins for the last cake, and I’d like to get some use out of them.

So I did.

As an aside, can I say that I’ve always wanted to make a wedding cake? I’m really enjoying making these fiddly, lavishly iced cakes that require the use of an offset spatula and prayer to get together. Now that I know that cake tins may be rented, along with camera lenses, cars and the love of a good woman, the only thing standing between me and days of satisfying baking is a dearth of engaged acquaintances. So get on it, people I know. I want to see if I can handle fondant.

Back to the cake. I found a chocolate sponge recipe in a copy of the Margaret Fulton cookbook I picked up from an op shop a while ago. She suggests splitting the cake in half and filling it with whipped cream and sliced, ripe pear, which sounds pretty great to me. I doubled the recipe and made up the rest as I went along. Margaret’s sponge is a variation on a genoise, but she advises beating the eggs over a gentle heat. That worked brilliantly. The eggs reached that pivotal thick ribbon stage much faster than if they were beaten from cold, so I shall use the technique for all future genoise cakes.

Black Forest Cake
Adapted from Margaret Fulton

• 120g chocolate
• 1/2 cup water
• 2/3 cup flour
• 1 cup caster sugar + 2 tbsp
• 6 eggs
• Fat pinch salt
• 600g jar Morello cherries
• Packet Choc Ripple biscuits, or similar crisp chocolate biscuit
• 1 tbsp cornflour/arrowroot + 1 tsp
• 300ml cream
• Vanilla bean

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees C. Grease your pans, then line the bases with circles of baking paper. Grease the paper, then flour generously. I often skip the greasing-and-flouring but, trust me, you don’t want to. Here is proof I actually prepared my pans. I even mixed a tablespoon of cocoa powder in with the flour, even though I knew the outsides of my cakes would end up covered in cream and crushed Choc Ripple biscuit.

After you’ve prepared your pans, sift the flour with the salt three times, then set aside.  Coarsely chop the chocolate, then put in a medium heatproof bowl with the 1/2 cup of water. Yes, really. Set the bowl over a pan of simmering water and melt together chocolate and water until smooth. Remove from heat and set aside.

Set a larger pan of water simmering, then break the eggs into a large bowl. Gradually whisk in the flour, then set the bowl over the larger pan of simmering water and beat with a hand mixer until the eggs have tripled in volume and fall in thick ribbons when lifted. You want it reach a stage of thickness where a ribbon of mixture will settle on top of the mix for a few seconds before sinking in when the beaters are lifted. Remove the bowl from heat and continue to beat until the eggs have cooled, around 5 minutes. They will be very, very thick and voluminous, like this.

Alternately fold in the chocolate and flour with a spatula, starting and ending with flour. Be sure to get right to the bottom of the bowl with each turn. Divide the mixture between the two cake tins and bake for 40-45 minutes, until the tops feel springy and a toothpick comes out clean. Be sure to rotate the pans halfway through baking. Allow them to cool on a wire rack in their tins for about 20 minutes, then carefully turn out and allow to cool completely. Mine were a little collapsed and munted looking. No matter, they’ll come good in the end.

In the meantime, take your jar of cherries…

… and drain, reserving the liquid. Put the liquid into a small saucepan and whisk in 1 tbsp of thickener of choice (I used arrowroot, because I had it on hand for some reason, but you can use cornflour or potato flour) and 1 tbsp caster sugar.  Set over a moderate heat and cook, stirring continuously, until the liquid thickens, darkens and reduces a little. If you have amaretto or kirsch, by all means add a splash, but I didn’t. Pour through a sieve into a small bowl and set aside.

Pour your cream into a large bowl. Split your vanilla bean and scrape out its beany guts into the cream. Add a tablespoon of caster sugar and a teaspoon of arrowroot/cornstarch. Beat on high speed until the cream holds stiff peaks.

Now for the tricky part.

Take your cake plate or board and lay four strips of baking paper on it, forming an empty square like so.

Centre one of the cake layers over the plate, and generously brush with the reserved thickened cherry liquid. It will look moistly endometrial.

Spread a couple of heaped tablespoons of vanilla cream over the bottom layer with an offset spatula, then stud generously with cherries. You’ll probably have some left over, but try to get as many cherries on as possible.

Gingerly lower the second layer on top and try to align them. My cake looked, again, a touch, well, special at this point. That’s okay. It will be covered in cream. All will be well.

Spread the sides and top with cream using your offset spatula. You’ll probably have a lot of repair work to do on the sides; take your time, it’ll come good. When you’re done, take half the Choc Ripples and put them in a zip loc bag.

Smash to smithereens using a rolling pin. Using your hands, press the biscuit crumbs into the side of the cake. Pulverised biscuit will go everywhere, but that’s why there’s a dustpan and brush under the sink. When you’re done gently brush away remaining biscuit crumbs from the edges of the cake, then gingerly pull away the strips of  baking paper to reveal a clean plate. Decorate the top as you see fit - I used shaved chocolate and leftover cherries, but you can do as you see fit. Feel as though your grandmother would be proud.