Last weekend, for a friends' birthday, I thought I'd try a black forest cake. I had real difficulty with the genoise though... came out really dense, not light and airy... think the bain marie part did me in, hee hee, all because of laziness! I used my medium sized saucepan and bowl, which left not a lot of room to whisk 6 eggs and sugar vigorously. So after transferring to the mixer and beating for requisite 6-8 minutes, I was still not achieving "a ribbon that stays on the surface for a few seconds".. : P. But the volume did triple!!! Other than that, wonder if the way I added the dry ingredients affected it? The book says "slowly" - but what IS "slowly"? Like very small trickle slowly? Or "within 1 minute" slowly? Alarmed by the way putting in quickly reduced volume, but also remember reading somewhere that you do not want to overbeat once flour is added, or you will get a tough cake. So don't know what the right pace is. Also had a problem with my springform pan, which was an expensive looking free gift from Meyer, but also non-stick! So my cake didn't rise as much as it probably could, because it was pulling away from the sides, and worse - my batter kept dripping out the bottom!!!! Asked my baking guru friend, who recommended a kaiser pan from phoon huat. So will buy when I next attempt something requiring that.
Here it is... ended up using 1.5 recipes of genoise, because although I could have split one into three layers, they would have been REALLY FLIMSY discs. Anyway, what saved it was Griottines (sp?) from Culina...used a whole jar (including juices!) and they were so yum. Whipped the cream ok too, having learnt from a previous cupcake experience - will have to put that up later just for the whipped cream lesson alone! Fortunately our friends love alcohol so they enjoyed the cake!
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