We had a previous celebration a week ago where a friend of ours celebrated their 15th anniversary together. Now this called for a celebration cake - and having downloaded Donna Hay's latest iPad magazine app featuring celebration cakes, it wasn't very difficult to find a recipe from the list, based on the ingredients that I have.
The winner was a black forest cake. The recipe was meant to be for smaller, semi individual serves. However I didn't have the smaller cake tins, so I thought I'd dish out the same amount but use a 12" springform tin instead. And because I didn't have fresh cherries at hand, I had to decorate the top with strawberries, which are widely available this time of the year. I did use tinned cherries, which was covered with the cake batter, before baking.
The great part about this recipe is the chocolate shards - Donna had a very elegant (i.e. not messy!) way of creating the chocolate shards. The magazine had a video to show this, my version are in the photos below.
Prepare 2 sheets of baking paper, around 3 feet long.
Melt 300g of 75% dark chocolate (either bain marie, or microwave) and spread over one piece of baking paper. Leave a couple of centimetres away from the edge.
Place the other sheet of baking paper on top and smooth it out to remove air bubbles.
Roll it out and put in the fridge to set. I used a rolling pin to make it easier although the instructions didn't say so!
When set (maybe an hour or 2 to be sure) hold one end of the bottom baking paper and unroll the top part. This will create the shards.
I'll post the recipe later when I get the chance!
