Black Forest Cake
Black Forest Cake is one of my favourite cakes. For this cake, I used Alex Goh's chocolate chiffon cake as the cake base but I have made my own modifications to this recipe. The modifications were made based on my observations from cooking programme and advices from experienced bakers.
This is the cake base:
This is the finished product for my dd's birthday:
Ingredients:
(A)
4 egg yolks
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp rum or kirsch
40g castor sugar
(B)
25g cocoa powder
85ml warm corn oil
(C)
135ml warm water
(D)
125g cake flour
1/2 baking soda
1/2 baking powder
(E)
4 egg whites1/2 tsp cream of tartar
50g castor sugar
Filling
15 fresh cherries pitted and halved (dried with paper towel)
25 canned pitted sour cherries halved drain well
500ml whipping cream whipped with 2 tbsp icing sugar
100g shaved Lindt 70% Dark Chocolate
10 - 12 Fresh whole cherries with stems for decoration/maraschino cherries with stems
Method :
1. Mix ingredients (A) well with a hand whisk.
2. Stir cocoa powder in warmed oil until dissolved and pour into yolk mixture.
3. Stir (C) into yolk mixture.
4. Sieve ingredient (D) and stir it into yolk mixture.
5. Whip egg whites in a clean mixing bowl until big bubbles are formed. Add in the cream of tartar and whip until white in colour. Add in sugar over 3 times and whip until egg whites is stiff. 6. Pour 1/2 white into yolk mixture and blend well.
7. Pour yolk mixture into the remaining egg white mixture and blend well.
8. Pour batter into clean baking pan and bake at 175C for 45 minutes or until cooked.
9. Invert cake and leave to cool. Then cut cooled cake into 2 or 3 layers.
10. Whip the cream with icing sugar until stiff.
11. Add pitted fresh and sour cherries into half portion of the whipped cream.
12. Sandwich the cake with (11).
13. Frost the cake with the remaining half portion of whipped cream and decorate as appropriate with chocolate shavings and fresh whole cherries.
Notes:
Baking soda is alkaline in nature. It is used in most chocolate cakes to act as a leavening and to neutralize acidic nature of chocolate/cocoa powder and to give the cake a darker colour.
Chocolate cakes will give you a sourish taste if you do not use baking soda.
Remember to line the base of your cake pan with baking paper.
Labels: Cakes
posted by Florence @ 10:11 AM
47 Comments:
florence
Yr chocolate chiffon cake looks so perfect. I can see it's so soft & fluffy and stand upright. My chiffon & sponge cake don't always turn out right, sometimes ok & sometimes not. Sometimes my cake got a waist at the side and wrinkles on the surface. I always have to replace some flour with some premix to get a good sponge cake.
I have done this and it is really yummy. One question, does it shrink alot?
Since I don't have a chiffon tin, I baked mine in a square tin. Somehow, the cake shrink by nearly 2cm on all sides. Where did i go wrong?
Hi preciousmoment,
I don't think my cake shrink that much as you can see from the picture the metallic cake base is about as big as the cake. I didn't use a chiffon pan either as I use this as a birthday cake base.
Reasons for shrinkage could be:
1. Overbake
2. Egg white either underbeaten or overbeaten.
3. Are the ingredients at room temperature eg. eggs?
4. Did you warm the oil?
Maybe you should give it another try and isolate your problems to find a remedy.
Did your orange chiffon cake shrink that much?
Dear Florence,
I tried your recipe and it really worked!! Chiffon sponge cake turned out exactly the way you said!! I am so pleased. Thank you!! I used a round 9" cake tin and did not use a chiffon tin either!!.
Ning Ning
Hi Ning Ning,
Wow! You did it! Glad that this chiffon turned out well for you.
Maybe you would like to try the orange chiffon and pandan chiffon as they are really yummy to!
Happy baking. :)
Thanks Florence for helping me to identify the problem. I will try again this week. I suspect it could be No 1 coz' the rest of your pointers, I followed correctly. Wish me luck.
Hi Florence
Made yr Black Forest Cake yesterday for my nephew's B'Day.
Overall it was nice but the top of my cake had quite a few cracks and I guess I did not mix it well enough as my base was a little heavy.
Regards
EJS
Hi Florence, can we use 1 tsp of baking soda instead of 1/2 tsp of baking soda and 1/2 tsp of baking powder?
Hi,
I used 1/2 tsp of baking soda and 1/2 tsp baking powder because:
1. Prevent the cake surface from cracking up.
2. Acid/alkaline properties and colour problems in chocolate cake already written in my notes in this post.
Hi Florence, i was tring this recipe but i was wondering if i was doing anything wrong because my egg whites when mixed with cream of tartar never turned completely white. the white was barely noticeable... is that okay? and i used jumbo size eggs so i dont know if the porportion is too much egg whites
Hi Jon,
Size of egg is not a problem!
Cream of tartar will not change the color of the egg white.
But can the egg white be beaten till stiff peaks formed?
If the egg white is stiff enough then there won't be a problem.
For more details please see:
http://www.baking911.com/howto/egg_whites_beat.htm
Scroll to the bottom of the page and it will show you the stiff peaks stage of beatn egg whites.
Hope this is of help to you. :)
Hi Florence, I juz tried this recipe last Fri...it turned out really good, my husband says it's really nice, this is definitely a keeper, thanx for sharing!
Hi Lin,
Glad that yr hubby and you liked this cake.
Is your blog OK now?
Or have you started your webpages?
Do let me know when either is up so that I can shop for recipes at your site. Hee..hee... *w*
Hi Florence! I figure my blogs were gone permanently cos I haven't received any news from blogger. Anyway, I'm working on my recipe website & it's gonna take a while, I'll definitely let u know once everything is up :)
Hi Lin,
Am looking forward to your notice!
Hi Florence
Made yr BForest again this time it worked out perfect, so light. The only thing is the surface of the cake always cracks. I have made it three times now and each time it cracks even when I turn down the oven temperature.
Love yr recipes tried yr strawberry mousse cake and quite a few other ones all turned out quite well and the sweetness is just right. Thanks again.
Regards EJS
Hi EJS,
Maybe you can steam bake your cake.
Hi florence, what should be the normal height for the cake? yours look very tall ^_^
Hi jim,
My cake is about 5.5 - 6cm tall.
Hi this site is really great!
I just have one problem, I can't perfect the chiffon cake. The base of my cake is hard and it lacks volume (i think), maybe because I didn't whip the egg whites stiff enough. Anyway I dnt have a heavy duty cake mixer, Im just using a hand mixer. Jst want to know how many (approximate) minutes should i beat the egg whites?
The most important thing about beating egg white to stiff peak are :
1) Make sure that there is NO egg yore in the egg white.
2) The mixing bowl must be absolutely clean. Oil residue will prevent the egg white to form stiff peak. Stainless steel bowl is best.
With the above two requirements met you can use a hand mixer to beat the egg white to stiff peak.
Hi anonymous,
Thank you! :)
Dear Florence, I would like to try ur black forest cake recipe as it has many rave reviews n the pic of ur chocolate chiffon is so delish! May I ask - using a normal cake tin ( not the springform type), and without greasing - how do we remove the cake? Wont the bottom of the cake stick onto the bottom of the cake tin? ( as compared to when we use chiffon tube tin, we need to use a knife to remove the base of the cake ). Please advise.
Becky
Hi Becky,
Even with a springform mould you still have to line the base of the cake pan with baking paper. :D
Hi i just wondered if you had the recipe for the egg custard tarts??
Thank you
Hi
I would like to try out this recipe and would like to clarify the following:
1. Do I need to grease or line paper at the side of the cake pan? I understand from the comments here that I need to line bottom of the pan.
2. When invert the cake to cool, do I remove the cake pan or leave it with the cake to cool together? If it's latter, would the condensation of the bottom cake (due to the wax paper lined at the bottom) causing the bottom to collapse?
Thank you.
Cheers
JC
Hi,
1) I only line the bottom of the pan and not the sides. No greasing is needed.
2) Leave to cool inverted without unmoulding for about 15 minutes. Then unmould and remove the bottom lining.
Hi Florence,
Based on your comment on No 2, if we were to unmould it after 15 mins, maybe it is not completely cool yet, would it still collapse?
I made a batch of chiffon last night and I have the problem of it collapsing on the bottom when I invert the tin to cool. I also lined the bottom of tin, Maybe you cna help?
Thanks,
Lene
Hello Florence
I just tried baking this cake. It came out quite dense and the height didn't shrink much after cooling. I used a round springform pan. Is this how it is suppose to be? I was thinking a chiffon was light and airy..my cake top didn't look like yours.. the skin stuck to the cooling rack.
Also.. what is a 20cm pan in inches? If I added an extra egg, would i also have to increase the other ingredients?
Jennifer
Hi Florence,
just wanna tell you that I baked the chocolate chiffon cake successfully! Thank you for sharing this recipe online. Definitely a keeper!
Hi Florence: I just found this site, WOW, incredible recipes you're posting. However, since I live in the opposite of your world, I am stumped by some terminologies that you use. What is castor sugar? Also, if it's not too much trouble, could you translate the gram measurements to ounces, or cups. Thanks so much.
Hi,
For measurements in ounces, please divide those items in grams by 28.5 to get the equivalent in ounces.
Hi Florence, do you think I can use this chiffon recipe to make the Wilton Wonder Mould cake, where it is dome shaped? I would prefer sponge base to a rich butter cake and this looks highly recommended! I would need to grease the mould then flour it for easy removal, but not sure if your recipe will work with this mould. Thanks for your advice.
Bernice,
I don't think this recipe will work for the wonder mould. As you'll need to grease then flour the mould, am afraid the cake will not rise.
Florence, thanks for your prompt advice. I guess I'll just look for some sponge recipe and hopefully that would hold up.
Hi Florence,
I tried three times making chiffon cakes in my 9x13x3 rectangular pan using 8 separated eggs when I was in the Philippines with a success but when I came back in Europe, I tried the same recipe and the same pan but it wont' rise. It came out like a hotmilk cake, spongy but not fluffy! Does humidity has some thing to do with this? Thanks for this webpage.
Purple
Wow !
The cake looks so nice ..
Im going to try it in the weekend =)
Hopefully it turns out right !
Good blog and thanks for sharing=)
So nice of you..
Hi Florence,
Your cake looks so good. I was wondering what other fruits can I pair this recipe with if i dont want to use cherries?
Also if I want to convert this to a plain cake, what are the adjustments?
Pls correct me if Im wrong but I tot we dont havt to grease and line pans if baking chiffon cakes? Rene
Rene,
No need to grease the pan.
Hi Florence,
How do you shave the choc so nicely? Did you use any special gadget? I tried shaving some chocs (using a spoon) for my earl grey mousse cake and it's so messy.
Hi Florence
The whipping cream refer to dairy or non- dairy?
Thks
Could you give me the place where you purchase the molds ? Next time I'm in town, I will stop by and check the place out.
Thanks.
Hallo,
May I know how do u do the "happy birthday" thingi to put onto the cake? Kindly email me at alemap_c@hotmail.com.
Thank u!
Pamela :)
Hi Pamela,
The birthday tag is store bought. I only piped the nanme on it.
hallo again!
sorry to separate the comments but i just went thru the recipe thoroughly and want to ask a few more qns..
at
(A) could i leave out rum/kirsch?
(B) instead of corn oil, could i use olive oil?
and
(D)could i use fine flour instead of cake flour?
Thank u v much! im gg to try this for the upcoming father's day! (:
cheers,
Pam
Pam,
Answers to your questions:
(A) Yes
(B) Yes, but i rather not, you can use canola oil, grapeseed oil etc
(D) Yes
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