lesson 8: black forest cake

Last week we were introduced to make 3 basic cakes: black forest, moka, and mexican. It was the first time we make cake in class and it happened to be black forest. This is the time to practice the masking and decorating black forest cake as well as learning how to temper with chocolate. 3 hours were definitely not enough for me to be done in time. I took a lot of time on masking the cake with Chantilly cream all over it. I sort of screwed up because I didn't cut the cardboard to a nice round shape that was placed on the bottom of the cake before masking. I was the last to finish masking my cake and I was really in a rush to pipe the rosettes and all of them were piped too close to each other and not on the edge which made my cake looked smaller.

I started off with baking genoise cake, was supposed to add butter on it but because my batter was deflating as I fold it with flour, the chef asked me to forgo the butter. Then as the cake was baking, I went on to make chocolate shavings. It was fun to learn that! And move on to chantilly cream and draining the cherries.

The chef's verdict about my end product was that it's not too bad for a first-timer. Definitely need to practice on masking the cake properly, and slicing the cake to 3 layers in an even way.

This week I have decided to make another black forest and again I forgo the butter, although on exam day if I get to make this cake, I have to add the butter. I realized that having a big rubber spatula helps a lot faster to mix the flour on the whipped eggs, therefore it won't deflates because in practical class, my spatula was smaller and I took a longer time to fold the flour. Anyways, this time around the cake turned out very spongey and dense. And I made a mistake by not letting the cake to cool down in room temperature after I took it out from oven. I immediately placed it on cooling rack with parchment paper above it and store the cake in the fridge to cool down faster. In the end, I got my genoise sticked on the parchment paper and the bottom of the cake became sticky. It can be fixed by slicing the bottom with bread knife to be even. Oh, I did not put enough syrup on each layer hence the dry texture. Also once again, I didn't slice the genoise into 3 layers nicely. It was bad. I didn't know that it would be hard to slice layers on a cake!?

By the way, I didn't put up the recipe for what I've done in school because we basically have to write our own "how-to" in class while watching the chef doing the demo. So my recipes are somewhat messy and unorganized and it's possible I missed some steps because I was daydreaming in class or wasn't really in the zone. I just didn't want to put up my unreliable recipes and screw up somebody else's cake although I can put up the ingredients if anyone's interested.
Just let me know. It doesn't hurt to ask :)


my first attempt of black forest in practical class




my second attempt of black forest at home




demo class and cakes made by the chef