I want to make a black forest cake next week for my kid’s birthday. Do you have any tried and true recipes? If not, I’ll probably use this one. https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/black-forest-cake/#tasty-recipes-66596
Red, blue and blackberries layered in a very silky and light lemon crème patisserie. Made with rice flour rather than cornstarch/flour, the pastry cream was an Alice Medrich recipe from her book “Flavor Flours”.
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Beautiful loaf, Shellybean!
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I’ve never made one but that recipe looks fab!
That’s one recipe I said I would revisit because the pastry cream just didn’t thicken up enough when I tried it, and it’s rare I find a Medrich recipe that doesn’t work out. Your dessert looks absolutely gorgeous!
Here is the second cheesy wool roll bread:
@Sasha I saw someone post about that recipe on Reddit and they loved it.
I have to admit I’ve never managed to like any Black Forest cake. At least more authentic ones, rather than American style like the Sally’s recipe. The combo sounds great, but weirdly I always find the end result bland and under-sweetened. The cherries are barely sweet, the cream is barely sweet the cake is barely sweet. I have been meaning to tackle Black Forest for a while so I can get it to my liking. Some of the recipes that appeal are from Cook’s Illustrated, a recipe from Flo Braker in Baking For All Occasions, and some from youtube.
I’m not sure Aya’s would get past my usual problems, but her recipes are always so good that I’ve considered it:
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Thanks @Shellybean . I would have jumped on something you tried and liked, but since you’ve just bookmarked those for yourself, I may start with Sally’s. My kiddo loves chocolate and cherries, so once I round up the kirsch and canned fruit, I should be good. The recipe appealed to me because it finishes with whipped cream and ganache, both of which I prefer to buttercream.
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Thanks , Gretchen! It’s easy and really good, I had an overload of berries in it.
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Shellybean, I’ve made the pastry cream 4 x recently and fortunately, no problem. I’ve even made half, and was successful. Perhaps it was the rice flour? I used the Thai as suggested and weighed the amount, the weighed amount looks visually more than the volume amount given in the recipe.
I used Thai and most likely weighed it, so who knows. It was a while ago and could have just been a fluke. It thickened, but was still fairly loose.
We had blizzard like conditions here on Friday, so my plans were cancelled… and I decided to make cookies that are a Project. I had leftover pecans from Christmas ( I don’t like them) and a staff meeting on Monday. I found this recipe https://www.davidlebovitz.com/oatmeal-and-pecan-brittle-cookies-recipe-claire-saffitz-dessert-person/ and decided to tackle it. I made the pecan brittle the Friday night, the dough on Saturday, and baked the cookies on Sunday morning. I went with the smaller sized version that Lebovitz baked. They smelled really good, and the staff loved them! Not sure I would invest that much time again, but it was fun…
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I love a project cookie!
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I made one a while back, also for a kid birthday. Looked at that recipe, but ganache is not in my (or kid’s) experience of Black Forest cake, so I did not follow it and kept looking for versions rather than a singular recipe, mostly European recipes rather than American.
What I ultimately did was try to replicate what we have eaten as Black Forest cake using components I was comfortable with — main parts were the shortcrust pastry base (which I looked up) and the chocolate cake layers, for which I used my standard recipe for birthday cakes (crazy cake / amazon cake).
I did not stabilize the whipped cream (we had vegetarians so no gelatin, and I was concerned about cornstarch altering the flavor).
Kid was happy. Pics of the cake are on WFD.
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I have little personal experience with this cake. Primarily I knew it was chocolate and cherry - something the kiddo really likes. I had no idea that some versions of the cake have a short pastry layer. That is interesting.
I think simplifies things considerably, because you’re not trying to make it turn out like something specific
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I’ve tinkered with a lemon-poppyseed scone recipe from Epicurious, omitting the egg and adding a few tablespoons of milk to make up for it. I find I like them much better without the egg - less cakey, and more scone-like.
This is a half batch for 6 smallish scones (one of which disappeared in the testing process). I’ve made the full recipe before for 8 extremely-generous scones, which also works well.
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I made a batch of yogurt and for the second time I ended up with a clotted cream-like result.
I looked into it and got a couple of explanations.
This seems much better an explanation:
The Ph one seems like it could be the culprit.
Anyway, I decided to make this coffee cake with my unsatisfactory yogurt since it’s fine to use if not ideal for eating.
Honestly I don’t love it. One, Stella Parks often abuses cinnamon and this is the case here. When I make her pumpkin muffins I cut the cinnamon in half because I’m total she employs 2 tbsp for those. Here I left it alone because this is a big cake. But 2 tsp would have been better.
I’m also not a fan of the crumbs containing more sugar than flour.
I cut the sugar down in the cake, but only to 13 oz since there’s a substantial amount of tangy yogurt.
My issue is I don’t like the crumb of this cake. It looks like Stella’s and the description sounds just like it. The yogurt makes it almost spongy (as in an actual sponge, not cake) and a bit gummy when warm. It’s nowhere near as good as some of my favorite coffee cakes (namely the amazing sour cream coffee cake recipe from Carole Walter and Baked’s version).
Speaking of the crumb here, lots of people reported that dreaded gummy layer on the bottom. I’ve seen explanations about this being due to over-creaming and I’ve never bought them. One, tons of people including Stella Parks call for very long creaming periods— longer than the supposed time these sources claim one should cream. And two, I’ve had cakes baked in 9x13 pans where most of the cake was okay but one section had this gummy layer. So how can over-creaming be the culprit?
Instead I believe this is a matter of temperature of the batter. It’s still possible that some batter will end up warmer than others, and with an oven having certain hot spots I can see how one section might end up with that separation. This would also explain why over-creaming is seen as the culprit— the temperature of the batter rises as the creaming goes on.
Aside from that, I played around with fruit tartlets today. The crust is 1-2-3 dough and the filling is pastry cream, with a layer of chocolate underneath for keeping the crust from softening. I’ve said I’ll only bother with fruit tarts when mango season is in full force because there just isn’t a great selection of pretty fruit here that works for tarts, but on the other hand, even the sour, lackluster strawberries and grapes are greatly helped by pastry cream and buttery sweet tart crust. Still, mango, pineapple, and maybe some orange or pomelo plus canned peaches if need be would be my choice over the strawberries. A half batch of pastry cream made enough for 8 tartlets.
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I’ve been using starter from https://bacillusbulgaricus.com/ for over a year now and have had lovely yogurt ever since. I’ve done yogurt, buttermilk, filmjolk and sour cream so far, and all of the starters have performed very well. I also use a yogurt maker as a fix and forget so there’s no worry about temperatures.
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Thanks. I’ve made yogurt with my circulator with both powdered starter and purchased yogurt and it always worked out except for this batch and another before. Though now I’m trying to remember if that batch before was with this same yogurt.
For buttermilk I use kefir and I love it, and I make cultured cream with it that I like more than sour cream and crème fraiche. Kefir has the benefit of lasting forever as long as you bother to feed the grains once in a while, which is an amazing perk.
Now, that sounds good! I see deliciousness in the near future.
