A few weeks ago we were at a gastronomic summit in Germany and, among other things, we took a course to learn how to make the authentic Black Forest cake.
If you are thinking about the Black Forest cake that they put on the menu in bars or those frozen ones that they sell you in some pastry shops, forget it. This cake has nothing to do with those insipid sheets of cocoa sponge filled with vegetable cream based on palm oil. This is the recipe for the authentic Black Forest cake that we have brought from a famous course to learn how to prepare it, the course that is taught at the Café Zimmermann in the town of Todtmoos.
Ingredients for a 28 cm diameter mold
For The Shortcrust Pastry
- Wheat flour, 200 g
- Butter, 100g
- Egg, 1
- icing sugar, 50g
- Salt, 1/8 teaspoon
For The Cocoa Cake
- Flour, 110g
- sugar, 200g
- Butter, 60g
- Eggs, 6
- Cocoa powder, 30g
- Chemical yeast, 6 g
Prepare And Bake The Shortcrust Pastry Base
Put the flour in a bowl with the icing sugar and salt, mix and add the cold butter cut into small cubes. Mix with the help of your fingers until you get a mixture with a sandy texture. We incorporate the beaten egg and mix until a dough is formed that we will not knead, we simply shape it into a ball, wrap it with transparent film and let it rest in the refrigerator for an hour so that it takes consistency.
After that time, we stretch the broken dough on baking paper with the help of a rolling pin until it is about 4 millimeters thick. We cut a circle of 28 centimeters, we prick it with a fork in several places so that it does not swell when baking it. Bake for 20 minutes at 180ºC until golden. When it’s ready, take it out and let it cool on a rack.
Prepare The Cocoa Cake
Separate the egg yolks from the whites and reserve the latter. In a large bowl, beat the yolks with the sugar until they whiten and double their volume.
Melt the butter and add it in the form of thread while beating.
In another bowl, mix the flour, chemical booster, and cocoa powder. Sift the flour mixture over the mixture of yolks, sugar and butter.
We whip the egg whites to the point of snow and integrate them into the mass of our cocoa sponge cake with enveloping movements.
We prepare a 28 cm mold with baking paper or butter and flour or with release spray. Add the dough and bake for about 30-35 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean.
Assemble The Black Forest Cake
The broken dough that we have reserved will be the base of the cake. Once the cake is prepared and conveniently cooled on a rack, it is cut into three slices.
We mount the cream with the sugar, but the idea is that it is not too sweet. To give more stability to the cream and to make it hold firm from one day to the next, we reinforce it with some gelatin sheets. To do this, hydrate the gelatin leaves in cold water, when they are hydrated, drain them well, heat 3 tablespoons of cherry liqueur, and dissolve the gelatin in it. We incorporate this mixture into the whipped cream little by little and with gentle enveloping movements so that it does not lose air.
A layer of cherry jam is spread over the shortcrust pastry. The cake will be easier to assemble if we use a 28 cm diameter plating ring.
Next, one of the cake slices is placed. On top of this, a layer of whipped cream is spread. In the next slice, it is covered again with cream and with the Maraschino cherries hydrated in cherry liqueur. The last of the cake slices is placed on which more cherry liqueur is spread and covered with cream. It is unmolded and with the help of the pastry bag, the whole cake is completely covered with cream and left to rest in the fridge.
Serve
Once rested, the chocolate chip tablet will serve as a topping for the entire cake. Which is also sprinkled with icing sugar.
For decoration, whipped cream and half a cherry are placed on top of each portion.
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