Black Forest Cake part 2: Everything else


Once the Genoise was cooled, I made cake syrup and chocolate shavings (sort of). Cake syrup is just 50% sucrose plus flavorings. The recipe calls for 50% syrup an 50% Kirsch. We didn’t have Kirsch and Texas doesn’t sell anything over 17% alcohol on Sundays, so I used some Frambois we had around.

The recipe calls for a half recipe of his 8 oz water version… and that is still way too much. In the end, probably half a cup is more than enough.

I managed to bisect the cake with a serrated knife. Then, due to lactose intolerance, I used Cool Whip instead of real whipped cream (sacrilege, I know). It turns out that Kraft started adding milk and cream to Cool Whip a while ago, so eating this will still require lactaid tablets, but the cream is less than 2% of the total, based on the ingredients. In other words < 2% is cream, casein, plus other stuff.

I forgot to take a pic of the middle layer of Cool Whip plus frozen sour cherries in a hexagonal array. First we brushed on some of the Frambois/Syrup solution, then a later of Cool Whip. Cherries were embedded. Then we put on the top layer put on and moistened it further. Leaving a lot of leftover syrup. Cool Whip all over the outside and then decorate. I don’t have a cake wheel, so we just balanced the cake (still on the springform bottom) on an inverted bowl.

We tried to make the chocolate shavings using this method. But we probably overcooled the chocolate and also didn’t make it thin enough. When I went to scrape it into curls, the whole sheet came off in one piece. So I broke it up into pieces for the central chocolate “forest”. Maraschino cherries around the rim. Not as fancy as Joe’s, but not bad looking for someone who rarely makes cakes. Into the fridge at about 7PM.

We had it for dessert. Pretty good… needed more sour cherries in the middle layer.