It’s Black Forest Cake season, yayyy! Hello summer, hello cherry season & hello delicious eggless black forest cake trifle! I love the way the flavours came together – a one bowl eggless chocolate cake, silky smooth almond cream, quickest stove top cherry pie filling and finally a luscious ganache to tie it all in! Each element in this eggess trifle is one I use often in different desserts at different times; just what I love about simple desserts like these!
The stone fruit season is probably my next most favourite fruit in season after mangoes, and it’s not difficult to see why. Come summer and the plains of North India are flooded by the most luscious stone fruit from the hills. We are quite fortunate to get the juiciest local cherries, peaches, apricots, nectarines too sometimes if we’re lucky. Stone fruit are packed with health benefits, and we’re not complaining!
It’s that time of the year when a fruit diet makes a lot of sense as you tick off the iron and fibre boxes, and the ‘how can this be so delicious‘ box too!! We’re quite spoilt for choice with some of the most tempting stone fruit crammed into a clutch of summer months. Thankfully mangoes appear a little early, so once we really enjoy that load of fresh mangoes, it’s often time to dive into stone fruit!
Some of our favourite ways to enjoy stone fruit is crumbles where often you can have dessert for breakfast or breakfast for dessert, something that works brilliantly. A breakfast crumble might be the most enjoyable way to begin the day, while a generous scoop of vanilla ice cream on a serving of crumble a great way to end it. You get the drift…
Crumbles apart, a dessert said to owe its origins to Germany, that has been very popular in India ever since I can remember is the Black Forest Cake or gateau or the BFC. Every little local corner bakery in Delhi would sell a BFC when we were kids, the popular choice next only to a pineapple cream cake. I can’t remember if we had any other choices but in the golden or rather good old days, we were perfectly happy with 2 choices, happier still to dig into a light as a cloud Black Forest Cake!
Back then, the bakery bought cake and cream were always light and airy with the quintessential layers. A whipped cream from a local dairy, sweetened cherries always from a can, the sponge barely chocolate in taste, yet the cake was a treat. It’s no wonder that you’ll see so many versions of the eggless black forest cake here on the blog, a nostalgia of sorts to hang on to the years that went by. The jelly cake below is one of our favourite cakes inspired by a few BFC ingredients. The Eggless Chocolate Cherry Jelly Cake, though not quite a black forest cake, was too delicious.
The classic black forest cake is very inspirational and quite simple to reimagine. It’s got easy enough elements to play around with, and takes well to add ins like a dark chocolate ganache etc. And quite predictably, the outcome is always spoon or bowl if not finger licking good!
So here’s my quick trifle like favourite take on this quintessential egg free summer dessert which promises layers upon layers of deliciousness. Who doesn’t love a good black forest cake and this one’s as good AND as simple as it gets.
Eggless Black Forest Cake Trifle
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2 Round mixing bowls
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1 Small saucepan
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1 Cherry pitter
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1 Electric hand blender
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1 Oven
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2 4″ square baking molds
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1 4″ Square glass serving dish
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1 Piping bag fitted with a large 2A nozzle
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1 Small tea strainer / sieve
Eggless chocolate sponge (makes two 4″ cakes)
- 105 g buttermilk
- 25 g oil
- 50 g castor sugar
- 1/4 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- Pinch salt
- 8 g cocoa powder
- 25 g wholewheat flour/atta
- 50 g all purpose flour
Almond cream
- 150 g cream cheese chilled
- Few drops almond extract or vanilla extract
- 2 tbsp icing sugar
- 50 g whipping cream chilled
Chocolate ganache
- 50 g cream 25% fat
- 40 g 55% couverture chocolate
Cherry pie filling
- 250 g cherries pitted
- 1 tbsp cornflour
- 1 tbsp water
- 50 g sugar
- Juice of 1 lime
- 25 ml Kirsch cherry brandy or simple sugar syrup for moistening
To finish
- Fresh cherries, edible flowers, fresh mint
- 1 tsp cocoa powder
Eggless chocolate sponge
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Preheat the oven to 180C.
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Line the base of two 4″ square baking / steel dessert tins with foil and the sides with parchment.
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In a large bowl, add all the ingredients and give them a good whisk with an electric hand mixer.
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Divide the batter between the tins, about 130g batter per tin. Bake for 18-20 minutes, until the tester comes out clean. Cool completely, then trim the tops.
Almond cream
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In a small bowl, whip the cream cheese, almond extract and icing sugar until smooth. Reserve.
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In a large bowl, whip the whipping cream to firm peaks, then add in the whipped cream cheese and beat until smooth. Transfer to a piping bag with a 2A nozzle fitted.
Cherry pie filling
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Whisk everything together in a heavy bottom pan and gently simmer for about 5 minutes until thick and glossy, the cherries still holding shape. Strain the cherries out and reserve in a bowl. Reduce the liquid until thick, then stir it back into the reserved cherries. Cool.
Assemble
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Layer 1 – Line the base of a 4″ dessert bowl with a layer of cake. Moisten with Kirsch.
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Layer 2 – Pipe over a layer of almond cream.
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Layer 3 – Top the cream with the cherry pie filling you might not need all the cherry liquid.
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Layer 4 – Pour over a layer of ganache.
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Layer 5 – Place the second layer of chocolate sponge over the ganache and moisten it with Kirsch.
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Layer 6 – Pipe over a layer of almond cream.
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Dust the top with cocoa powder and garnish with fresh cherries, mint, edible flowers etc.