Black Forest Cake

 Bake #4 of 2025: Black Forest Cake via Sally's Baking & America's Test Kitchen

As long-time fans of The Great British Bake Off, a "Black Forest Gateau" has been on my to-bake list for quite a while. To be honest, I'm not a huge fan of cherries, but Charlie has said for years that he'd love to try it. If curiosity alone isn't a good enough reason for a massive, random-Tuesday cake, I don't know what is!

I used recipes for the cake and the cherry syrup from Sally's Baking, but a stabilized whipped cream and garnish from America's Test Kitchen (via this older cookbook).**

Results: Personally, I think it's okay, but the whole "don't love cherries" thing is really working against me here. Everyone else who tasted it said it was delicious, but if anything, needed more cherry flavor. Charlie specifically really liked the chocolate cake, but I also found it just okay. A fun one to try, but not one I'll come back to frequently.

Notes:

• This cake requires several components, for which it is often hard to get one large chunk of dedicated time. As such, I prepped the cherries and the syrup reduction the night before, as well as pre-measured all the cake ingredients for easy "bring to room temp" the next morning. Don't be intimidated by more complicated bakes - just go into them with a plan, one step at a time!
• **Reasoning behind the "frankenrecipe": I was planning to just make the ATK recipe, but it specifically calls for jarred sour cherries, which were extremely difficult to find in the US. Sally's recipe calls for canned sweet cherries, which are much easier to find, but I worried that the cakes from both recipes would have been adjusted for the sweetness/sourness of the cherries, so instead of risking unbalanced sweetness, I opted to make Sally's cake and cherries. Additionally, both cakes called for a whipped cream frosting, but knowing this will be shared and probably not eaten all on the first day, I used ATK's more stabilized whipped cream, which uses a sugar, cornstarch, and cream mixture cooked and cooled then added to the whipping cream. Lastly, Sally's recipe is smothered in a chocolate ganache, which felt maybe too heavy for an already rich cake, so I stuck with ATK's suggestion of shaved semisweet chocolate garnish instead (plus, one less thing to make).