High Spirited Sree's blog

Location: Culinary / Sweets / Black Forest Cake

My first successful trial baking a pastry cake. I guess it was really easy, the only tough part was whipping the cream as I dint have an electric mixer. It took me and hour or so to do the whipping. Seeing my effort, Ram bought me an electric mixer 🙂 .

I have started using the cake recipe for my pastry cakes from the zebra cake recipe

Recipe:

For the chocolate cake

Powdered Sugar -1 cup

Eggs – 2 nos

All purpose flour/ maida – 1 cup

Baking powder – 2 teaspoon

Cocoa powder – 2 teaspoon

Vanilla essence – 2 teaspoon

Milk – 1/2 cup

Oil – 1/2 cup

– In a bowl, beat eggs and sugar till smooth using a wire whisk

– add vanilla essence, milk and oil to the sugar-egg mixture

– In a separate bowl, sieve flour, baking powder and cocoa powder

– then transfer the flour mixture to the bowl containing sugar-egg mixture, one spoon at a time and fold in

– check for consistency and add more flour if required

– This picture is taken from the original Zebra cake recipe link to get an idea of the consistency of the cake mix

– I baked the cake in 2 parts.

– grease the microwave dish and pour 1/2 the cake mix

– baking time would be around 6-7 min for each trip, not on very high power.

– once cake is risen and looks dry, then try inserting toothpick to see it its done.

– Like I have mentioned in my earlier microwave oat bran cake, if overdone it might become like biscuit..so stay put near the microwave till the cake is done..

– let it cool .. 15 min..then run knife through the edges and lift a little using spoon.

– place aluminum foil on a plate and invert microwave dish on to it..

– then let it cool further.

– It doesn’t luk as beautiful as a sponge cake baked in oven but does taste wonderful and its soft

For the Icing

Whipped cream – 240 ml small pack (2 small packs if u have an icing bag and want to do some decoration on top of the cake)

Icing sugar – 3 tablespoon

– once u start ur baking, place a steel vessel in freezer for whipping

– take a tray of ice in plastic bowl(the bowl shld be big enough to contain the steel vessel)

– pour the whipped cream into the steel vessel and place the steel vessel into the plastic bowl.

– start whipping. if manually using a whisk, you should whip in a zig-zag manner rather than circles. this helps whipping.

– once it stiffens, add sugar and whisk further till u get really stiff peaks. Check for sweetness and then add more sugar if required

Sugar Syrup

water – 1/2 cup

sugar – 1/2 cup

vanilla essence – 2tsp

– mix all the ingredients well

– actual recipes call for boiling the water with sugar syrup. hehhe .. I like things done faster and quick. so I skipped boiling the sugar syrup. The cake did taste wonderful

For the pastry cake

cherries / mixed fruit jam (Ram and I hate cherries, so I opted for using jam ;-))

cooking chocolate/  ready made chocolate chips

–  if the cakes are not in regular shape, place one on top of the other and cut the edges so as to get a uniform shape

– now take one portion of the cake and using a spoon pour the sugar syrup on top of it.

– then using a knife spread the icing on top of the cake

– place cherries or jam on top of the icing

– now place the next piece of cake on top of the first one.

– once again pour the sugar syrup

– now spread the icing on top of the cake and on the sides.

– it doesnt matter if it isnt a neat spread or cake crumbles appear on the icing because we r going to put chocolate chips on the cake

– now sprinkle chocolate chips / grated cooking chocolate on top and sides of the cake.

– once again decorate with cherries/ jam

– if u have an icing bag and more icing u can decorate the top of the cake.

– place it in refrigerator for sometime and then serve

I bought a small pack of whipped cream, as this was my first trail, so didnt have much for decorting the cake. the second time I baked a pastry cake was for our anniversary, I bought a very big pack of whipped cream. I actually overdid my icing 🙂