Lesson 8: Gateau Forêt noire ( Black Forest Cake)

I know it’s three days of lessons, but I’m going to skip lessons 5, 6, & 7 for now. At some point, once I have my notes in order, I’ll blog about how to turn brioches, croissants, and puff pastry dough into buttery delights like fruit cake, croissants and pithiviers. So here we are with lesson 8—black forest cake.

A black forest cakes has three layers, and it’s made of chocolate genoise soaked with each layer flavoured with kirsch syrup, and piled with chantilly cream and cherries. The cake is decorated with chantilly cream, sweet cherries and chocolate bits and shavings.

Genoise

4 eggs

2 egg yolks

150 g sugar

120 g flour, sifted

30 g cocoa powder, sifted

25 g melted

Directions

1. Sift cocoa and flour. Set aside.
2. Combine the eggs and sugar in a large bowl. Immediately set the bowl over a hot water bath or bain-marie and whisk until the mixture doubles in volume and the water reaches boiling point.
3. Remove the bowl from the heat, and whisk the eggs until they are very light yellow and thick to ribbon stage. This may take 8 to 10 minutes. You can use a mixer using a whisk attachment.
4. Fold in the sifted flour and cocoa in three or four stages, being careful not to deflate the foam. Fold gently until all the flour is blended.
5. If the butter is warm, add a bit of the folded mixture into the butter, stir, and then add the butter to the folded mixture. Carefully fold in the melted butter. Fold in the butter completely, but be careful not to over mix or the cake will be tough. If you forget to add butter, which I did in my practical, your genoise will be dry. The remedy is to add more syrup between the layers.
6. Immediately pan with scraper in a 9 inch round pan and bake on the rack at 365F for about 25 minutes.

Kirsch Syrup

200 g sugar

200 ml water

30 g Kirsch

Directions

1. Place sugar in water in a saucepan and boil until the sugar is dissolved.
2. Remove from heat and let cool.
3. Add the Kirsch.
4. Set aside.

Chantilly Cream

600 ml 35% cream

60 g icing sugar, sifted

2 g vanilla

Directions

1. Make sure that the cream and all equipment and utensils are chilled.
2. Whip the cream by hand or machine until forms soft peaks.
3. Add the sugar and vanilla. Continue to whip until the cream forms stiff peaks but is still smooth.  Do not overwhip the cream it will become grainy and then separate to form particles of butter.

You will also need chocolate bits and shavings and sweet dark pitted griottine cherries for this recipe.

Assembly

1. Carefully slice the cooled-off genoise into three even layers with a bread knife. Place the two first slices on parchment paper, set aside.
2. With the bottom layer of genoise, moisten the layer and sides with plenty of syrup.
3. With a pastry bag fitted with a large plain tip (10mm) or plain tube, pipe a circle of chantilly cream in centre of the layer. Working inward to the edge. You should have a ring of cream.
4. Using a spoon, place well-drained cherries between the rings. I added about 25 cherries for each layer.
5. Pipe three diagonal lines across the ring to hold the second layer in place.
6. Top with the second layer of genoise. Moisten layers and sides with a lot of syrup.
7. Pipe ring, spread cherries, and pipe diagonal lines.
8. Top with third layer with smooth top up. Score. Moisten with the rest of the syrup.—use it all It’s important you moisten here or it will be dry because this toughest part of the genoise.
9. Lightly mask the sides of the cake, refrigerate the cake for a good 10 minutes. Note: the chantilly cream should always be cold and whisk before piping.
10. Mask the sides of the cake, then the top.
11. With a star tip (E6) pipe eight rosettes with chantilly cream around the tops edge of the cake so that there is one each wedge.
12. Mask the sides of the cake with chocolate shavings.
13. Place a drained cherry on each rosette

This filled domed cake should be spongy, moist and easy to slice, and there should be no shortage of whipped cream and cherries. Enjoy every bite! It’s better the next day.

Lesson 4: Tartapalooza!

Tarts, and more tarts! Last Friday, we made three different tarts–one with apples, the other with strawberries, and last one with lemons. All had incredible depth of flavour.

The tangy lemon tart was by far my favourite. Here’s the recipe. I’ll share the other two in the weeks ahead. The flavour for this recipe is comes from both the zest and the juice. Make sure when you are grating the zest that you don’t add the white pith–it’s quite bitter and will change the taste of your tart. I like to use a fine-gauge Microplane as it removes the zest without digging into the skin.

There are four parts to this recipe, so it will take at least 2 hours to make. You will have to make the pie crust, almond cream, the lemon filling and the Italian meringue. Except for the Italian meringue, you can make the other parts in advance.

Part One—Pie Crust

200 g flour, sifted

100 g butter

70 g icing sugar

3 egg yolks

4 ml milk

1 lemon, peel

Directions

1. Add zest to flour.
2. In a mixer on lowest speed with paddle attachment, add the butter and icing sugar, incorporate until soft.
3. Add the salt and eggs, mix, and slowly incorporate the flour. Add milk at this point if the dough is dry.
4. Form into a ball, flatten, saran wrap and chill until it’s the dough has hardened.

While you are waiting, prepare the almond cream and the lemon filling.

Part Two–Almond Cream

60 g icing sugar, sifted

60 g butter, softened

60 g almond powder

6 g flour

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp Grand Marnier

Directions

1. In a mixer on low speed, whisk the butter until creamy.
2. Add the sugar, mix until incorporated.
3. Add the almond powder, whisk until incorporated.
4. Add one whole egg, and combine.
5. Add the vanilla and rum, whisk until its pale and thick.
6. Wrap and refrigerate.

Part Three–Lemon Filling

2 lemons, juice

1 lemon, zest

100 g sugar

3 eggs

Directions

Add lemon juice, zest, sugar, eggs in a large pot over medium heat, add a ½ tsp of flour or cornstarch to help coagulate the eggs. Whisk the mixture until you start seeing steam, and the mixture changes to a bright yellow and is thick enough to coat your spoon or spatula. Cool off the cream.

Rolling Pie Dough

When the almond cream and lemon filling are done, butter your pie mould. Take out the cold pie dough, and lightly flour your surface. If your pie dough is not cold, it will shrink when cooked. Rollout the dough slowly from the centre and push away from yourself. Turn the dough a quarter turn to the right and repeat. Turning the dough helps to roll it out evenly and to make sure it’s not sticking. Keep rolling and turning the dough a couple until it reaches the size you need. Roll the dough a couple inches larger than the mould. To see if the dough is a the right size, hold the pan over the dough.  Place the rolling pin at one end of the dough and loosely roll the dough up around the rolling pin. Place the mould directly underneath the rolling pin and gently unroll the dough into the mould. Carefully lift up the sides of the dough and fit it against the bottom and sides of the mould, without stretching or tearing, which will cause the dough to shrink as it bakes. To remove the excess dough, run the rolling pin over the top edges to cut the dough evenly.  Chill the pie dough for 5 minutes.

Pre-Bake or Blind Bake Crust

Preheat oven 375F. Score your pie dough with fork marks, so that the crust can release stem. Line the pastry shell with parchment paper, leaving excess of parchment paper on all sides so you can lift it. Fill the shell top the top with pie weights to hold its shape during baking. Bake for about 8 minutes. When the first stage of blind baking is done, carefully remove the weights, spread the almond cream and return the pie crust back in the oven for about 15 minutes. When baking is done, let cool. Keep the pie crust/almond cream in the mould.

Part Four-Italian Meringue

100 g egg whites

200 g sugar

1 tsp cream of tartar

70 ml water

Directions

1. Heat the sugar and water in a small saucepan until the sugar dissolves and the mixture boils. Boil until a candy thermometer placed in the syrup registers 117C or 243F.
2. While the syrup is cooking, whisk the egg whites in a mixing machine with the cream of tartar until they form soft peaks.
3. With the machine running, very slowly whisk the hot syrup.
4. Continue beating until the meringue is cool and forms firm peaks.

Assembly

1. Spread the cooled off lemon filling to pie crust/almond cream.
2. Pipe Italian meringue in ripples or peaks.
3. Bake at 375F for about 6 – 8 minutes or until surface is browned. Do not use higher temperatures, which will cause the surface of the meringue to shrink.
4. Remove from the oven and cool. Serve immediately because the meringue will start to “weep”–fall apart, particularly in humid conditions. So make plenty!

Lesson 3: Crème (Creams)

From left to right: pastry cream, crème anglaise,  crème chantilly, ganache, crème au beurre (butter cream), crème d'amande (almond cream), and far right crème  bavaroise, and Italian meringue.

Pastry Creams

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