Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte or Black Forest Cake, Well Almost!

Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte literally translates as Cherry Cake from the Black Forest region of Germany. I don’t think there are too many people who haven’t heard of this cake of German origin or don’t like it. I am one of those few who don’t! This mainly because I’m not very fond of cakes or confections filled or decorated with cream or frosting.

My husband and daughter, however, love the Black Forest Cake. It was my husband’s birthday about 2 weeks back and I had planned to surprise him with a home-made version. After making quite a few layered cakes for the Daring Bakers challenges, I thought I could handle this.

We were also having a few guests to dinner the night before his birthday (no, it wasn’t a party, just a coincidence) so I thought I could serve the cake for dessert. I don’t normally experiment with food when guests are expected, so I had made some of Cynthia’s coconut ice-cream just in case the cake was a disaster.

I had seen and bookmarked a recipe for this cake from Eva’s blog Sweet Sins, quite a while back. She is a German living in Australia and had a recipe without using Kirsch (a cherry liquor) and I thought if a German could make a Black Forest Cake without Kirsch, then so could I. I managed to get all the ingredients, including a can of cherries (luckily not the sickly sweet ones in syrup).
So this post will show you a not very good picture of a badly decorated piece of cake which came from an excellent Black Forest Cake!
A printable version of my adaptation is here.

I used her recipe with a few modifications to suit the ingredients I had on hand. Eva had suggested I could use rum in place of Kirsch, but we’re teetotalers and I don’t like the flavour or taste of rum even in chocolate or Xmas cakes.

I used 3 tbsp of cocoa instead of dark chocolate to cut down on the fat and calories (this might seem silly when you consider how much cream goes into the cake!). I added 2 tbsp of cornstarch to the flour, and this makes a lot of difference to the cake.

For the cherry filling, I had some frozen cherry compote (I had made this earlier when I had an excess of cherries) to which I added a little of the liquid from the canned cherries and liquidized to a grainy spreadable consistency.

For the whipped cream, I used 400ml of cream (25% fat) and Tarla Dalal’s recipe (which I got from Arundati). The only thing was that the day I was decorating the cake was a warm day and so by the time I was ready to pipe out the cream to decorate the cake, the cream wouldn’t hold its shape! The swirls I piped out spread and dripped down the sides!! So I ended up covering those mistakes with some more shaved chocolate and had a weird looking cake and no cherries on top.

But hey, there was cherry filling on the inside so it was a Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte. Well, almost.

How was the cake?
It was good, very good. I actually liked it. It was light and not too sweet.
I still have those cherries in my fridge and I will try making this again. Hopefully, this time, it will look prettier and I’ll be able to get some pictures.

By the way, I found decorating the sides of the cake with chocolate shavings quite difficult and messy. Any suggestions for a neater and easier way to do this?

Eva’s recipe uses 6 eggs but I couldn’t smell or taste any. That surprised me. The cake was soft with a lovely texture, yet firm enough to cut into three layers without any difficulty.

And Tarla Dalal’s whipped cream was just right and not too sweet. I only wish the weather was cooler and I would have had a prettier cake. But I didn’t see anyone complaining. All the guests, and my husband of course, opted for the cake and thoroughly enjoyed it. They had smaller helpings of the coconut ice-cream too. I only got one slice which I managed to photograph before my daughter polished it off. You don’t get good pictures when a someone keeps asking “Are you through, can I eat that?”


I would like to thank both Simran of Bombay Foodie and Curry Leaf of Tasty Curry Leaf for giving me a Wylde Woman Award. My apologies for taking so long to acknowledge it.

I am wondering if they made a mistake while givng this one to me, because there is nothing "wylde" about me. I'm probably one of the staidest people around. :)