Eggless Black Forest Cake

Blogging Marathon# 33: Week 3/ Day 3
Theme: Eggless Cakes
Dish: Eggless Black Forest Cake

For the third day of BM# 33, we are celebrating my husband's birthday with an eggless Black Forest Cake. He was travelling on his actual birthday, so we are celebrating it over the weekend. 

Black forest cake brings back fond memories of enjoying time with family and friends back home. This was the usual pastry that we used to order at a bakery next to our school and this was also our favorite cake to order for birthdays and other occasions. Cool cakes, like this Pineapple Cool Cake, are quite famous in India. I remember black forest cake to be cool, moist and juicy -- not too sweet with super light frosting that was simply to die for.

It has been a very long time, infact many many years, that I ate this cake. But I wanted to recreate the cake as I remember it. So first I looked for an eggless chocolate recipe and found this Moist & Soft Chocolate Cake recipe @ Rak's Kitchen. Then I looked for black forest cake recipes for the filling and frosting ideas. After reading through a number of recipes I came up with below recipe.

* I couldn't find Canned Cherries in the supermarket (!!!). How strange is that!!!!!! I probably see them in every aisle when I don't them and today I couldn't find ANY in the entire store. So I ended up getting a jar of cherry pie filling. If you don't want to use the pie filling and would rather prepare your own filling, then simply cook some of the cherries in the drained cherry juice along with some sugar. Finally add some corn starch slurry to thicken the mixture and there you have a simple cherry filling.
** I used a 5" round cake pan and used the remaining batter to make 5 cupcakes. But this recipe will make a 8½x4½ loaf or 8" round cake or 12 cupcakes. Double the recipe and bake in 2 8" round pans for a 2 layer cake.

Ingredients:

For Chocolate Sponge Cake: Recipe adapted from Rak's Kitchen

All purpose flour - 1½cups

Sugar - 1cup
Cocoa Powder - 3tbsp
Baking Soda - 1tsp
Baking Powder - 1/8tsp
Salt - ¼tsp
Soymilk - 1cup
Apple cider Vinegar - 1tbsp
Oil - ¼cup
Vanilla extract - ½tsp

For Filling & Frosting:
Cherry Pie Filling - 1 cup (approximately)
Canned Cherries - 1 7oz. can
Heavy Cream - 1½cups
Confectioners Sugar - 1~1½cups
Vanilla extract - ½tsp

Method:

• Prepare the Cake: Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease and flour the cake pans.** Layer the bottom of the cake pan with a parchment paper.
• In a mixing bowl, combine soy milk and vinegar. Set aside for a few minutes to curdle. Add sugar, oil and vanilla extract to the soy milk mixture.
• In a large mixing bowl, sift flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder and salt.
• Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and using a whisk mix until just combined. DO NOT overmix.
• Pour the batter into the prepared pans and bake for 35-40 minutes if using a 8" round pan/ 20-22 minutes for the cupcakes/ 22-25 minutes for the 5" round pan.
• Let the cake cool in the pan for 10 minutes before inverting it over a wire rack to cool completely.
• Prepare the Filling & Frosting: Drain the cherries and reserve the syrup.
• Refrigerate the bowl and the beaters used for beating cream for at least 30 minutes. Once ready whip the cold heavy cream along with confectioners sugar and vanilla extract until stiff peaks form. Use right away or refrigerate until ready to use.
• Assemble the Cake: Once the cake is completely cooled using a serrated knife cut the cake into 2 horizontally. 
• Brush the drained cherry syrup on both the cake layers.
• Place the bottom layer on a plate or cake stand. Spread with the whipped cream and top it with the cherry pie filling. Don't spread the filling till the edge of the cake, leave at least ½" gap from the edge. This way filling won't spill out when the top layer is placed.
• Gently place the top layer over the cherry filling. Brush generously brushing with the cherry syrup. Frosting with the remaining whipped cream and decorate according to your preference. I used Wilton 1M tip to make the dollops on top. Then I arranged the drained cherries on top of the cake.
• Refrigerate for at least 2~3 hours or preferably overnight before cutting and enjoying the cake.

Lets check out what my fellow marathoners have cooked today for BM# 33.

I have been planning to make cupcakes for the Blogger's Buzz Photography Club (#BBPC), but haven't been able to. I have a yummy cupcake idea in my head and I think I found a recipe that will probably work. But it's still in theory stage, not sure when I will have time to actually make them. Which is why I decided to make this cake and cupcakes at the same time, so that I will have my #BBPC covered for this month. 

For the Cupcake: I cored the cupcake (removed the middle part of the cupcake) and filled it with the pie filling, brushed it with cherry syrup. Then frosted them with the same whipped cream frosting.

For this month's assignment, we were asked to take a picture of Cupcake using diffused Backlighting. Here's my attempt at doing it.

Update December 2013: Sending this cake over to Valli's Cake Mela.