MONIN Premium Black Forest Syrup 700ml

Product Information

Chocolate Hazelnut Cake: Layer of rich chocolate cake, creamy hazelnut frosting, and crunchy hazelnuts.

The alcohol concerned ought properly to be kirsch; Bell uses brandy, and Smith suggests rum as a substitute.I personally prefer my Black Forest Hot Chocolate without the chocolate sauce, as I find it a little sickly with it. The most contentious aspect of the whole affair; most of the recipes I find use a light, fatless sponge, which makes sense given the amount of cream it is generally considered necessary to ladle on top. If Black Forest isn’t your flavour of choice, my Costa Style Chocolate Orange Hot Chocolate recipe is also pretty epic! I’d recommend the former if you must (it does have the benefit of being considerably cheaper than proper kirschwasser), but if you can run to it, it’s a nice excuse to splash out and then drink the rest of the bottle at your leisure.

I only had a 9-inch pan and I ‘padded’ it out with foil, then lined with a sheet of foil to make it smaller. It might be a little small for all the batter, but as long as you don’t fill the pan more than 3/4 full, you should be ok.

Preheat the oven to 180C (160C fan)/350F/gas mark 4 and grease the base of a 20cm loose-bottomed or springform cake tin. In a medium bowl, mix together eggs, oil, vanilla, buttermilk, and water (pour the water slowly so it won’t cook the eggs). I find this rings true: if you use enough syrup (of which more later), then the cake becomes somewhat tricky to assemble for the amateur. The other thing I couldn’t figure out is HOW do you get the chocolate shavings onto the SIDE of the cake? Generously butter two 8-inch cake pans that are at least 2-inches high, and dust with cocoa powder, tapping the ramekins slightly to remove any excess.

The chocolate layers are so moist and the combination of chocolate, cherries and soft whipped cream is to-die-for. I was wondering for the whipped cream, would only 1 1/4 cup of heavy cream be enough to cover the entire cake? Spoon half the syrup over the slices and leave to sink in; you can add more if it is all absorbed, but don’t overload it. Delia Smith, Roger Pizey (described by Marco Pierre White as “one of the finest pastry chefs Britain has ever known” on the cover of his book, World’s Best Cakes) and Rita Amend, German blogger and native of the Rhine-Main, go down this road. Black forest cake originated in Germany and consists of layers of chocolate cake soaked in cherry syrup, cherry filling, and fluffy whipped cream.I recommend wrapping the cakes in plastic wrap and refrigerate or freeze them for several hours before cutting them. Though it may have been an unashamed tourist trap, the cake itself was a revelation: light but creamy, bursting with sour cherries and booze, it was a world away from my previous black forest gateau (BFG) experiences, largely at the hands of one Sara Lee at the tail end of the 1980s. Be generous with the cherries too: Pizey is so mean with them, recommending less than 100g for a 23cm cake, that I wonder if it is a typo, particularly as I also ran out of whipped cream two layers in.