Black Forest Cake Made Simple in a Jar
My dad’s favorite cake is Black Forest cake - when ever he did something for us that he wasn’t too fond of doing, he’d joke that we’d have to pay him back with a Black Forest cake. We definitely did bake him one for emptying the camper van toilet on our camping trips. But that’s the least we could do as it isn’t exactly the nicest job to do. (At this point he would probably mention that we still owe him about 3 cakes from previous years)
For my dad’s birthday, I didn’t have quite enough time to make an entire cake, but thankfully I saw this cute recipe for making Black Forest cakes in a jar. It only takes about 30 minutes to prepare and tastes delicious. We actually ended up taking the dessert on a hike and eating it at the top of Uetliberg (One of Zürich’s mountains). It took me a little while to figure out how I could transport the food onto the mountain without the whipped cream flattening, so I am sharing my preparations with you: I cooked the cherry sauce and crushed the cookies ahead of time. I filled the cookies into the jars and packed them like that. We brought the heavy cream on the hike with some cooling elements. On top of the mountain we added the cream to our iSi Whip and made the whipped cream. Then we added the cherry sauce and the cream on top of the cookies and dessert was ready!
Black Forest cake:
Ingredients:
300g frozen cherries
200ml cherry or grape juice
1 tsp corn starch
250ml of whole fat cream (for whipping) or sweetened pre-whipped cream
50g sugar
2 - 3 tbsp of Kirsch
200g dark chocolate cookies
20g shaved chocolate curls
Instructions:
Defrost the cherries. Boil the cherry or grape juice in a pan. Mix the starch with a little bit of cold water. Then add it to the juice. Let it boil for 5 minutes. Add the cherries and the Kirsch. Let the cherry sauce cool down.
Add the cream and sugar to a bowl and mix until the whipped cream is stiff. If you are using pre-whipped cream you can leave out the sugar.
Crumble the cookies and spread evenly among the 4 - 5 jars.
If you are preparing the dessert ahead of time, leave the 3 parts (cherry sauce, cream and cookies) apart and add them together before eating. Once ready to prepare, add the cherry juice on top of the cookies and top with the whipped cream. Sprinkle the shaved chocolate curls on top and enjoy the delicious black forest cake!
