The Great Canadian Baking Blunder: Black Forest Cake

Okay spoiler alert, this one wasn't actually a blunder; I just really like the title. I'm gonna have to come up with a different one for when things go right

My husband's birthday is coming up, and his favourite cake is black forest. I've missed making cakes, and I just bought myself a piping kit for my birthday, so I decided that today was the day! I saw a neat basket weave buttercream piping technique on reddit that looked like a good one to start with, so I came up with a design, and gave it a test run.

First up, the cake. I just decided on a simple chocolate cake recipe, with a bit of instant coffee in the batter to boost the chocolate flavour. The cake was going to have a lot added with fillings and icing, so I wanted to keep the base itself simple. It's like the rule KISS - keep it simple stupid!

Once it baked (and cooled), I cut it into three slices and soaked them in a coffee simple syrup.

Next up, assembling. I had a leftover chocolate ganache from dipping cream puffs (future blog to come), so I used that on one layer. For the second later, I used it to keep the cherry sauce that I made in place. (There probably is a term for my cherry sauce but I'm not sure what it is. Basically cherries, sugar, water, lemon juice, cornstarch.)

Then, the dreaded and feared buttercream.

I've never made buttercream before, so I decided to go with the first one Google suggested - Swiss buttercream. I used cocoa powder and instant coffee in it as well for flavour. It came together well! It was just a bit too sweet for my preferences, but I guess icing should be! So now it was on to the crumb coat.

Crumb coat was alright, but it wasn't quite even, as I'd discover later on.

Next: piping!

This is where my good luck started to break down.

My apartment is constantly too hot for humans let alone an icing made out of butter, and it turns out my hands get really hot too. The poor buttercream didn't have a chance. It started melting before I could finish neatly. But if that was my only true hiccup, I can't complain too much.

The lid was a piece of (untempered) chocolate that I'd piped into the right shape and then froze. I had to add more cherries than I'd planned on to keep it standing up!

All in all, I'm pleased with my first attempt, and I know what to fix for next time!

I also know what to add - how hard could a basket handle possibly be?