Chocolate Cake with Cherry Filling

This cake is my take on a black forest cake. I just combined the idea of using chocolate and cherry together and hence chocolate cherry cake was born. It’s a very simple recipe and it tastes amazingly delicious with the soft sponge, the fluffy icing and the thick chocolate sauce on top. Every mouthful of this cake is luscious and moreish.

I have experimented a lot with the filling of this cake. Sometimes I substituted chocolate butter cream in place of vanilla and then I skip the whole step of adding the ganache.

I also added strawberries (fresh ones) in place of cherries. But I heated the strawberries in a pan with a little bit of sugar and lemon juice to give it a jammy consistency so that the spreading becomes easier. It also gives a nice tang and tartness to the cake which balances the sweetness in the sponge and the ganache.

This cake is light, fluffy, outright delicious and moist. Please note that I have used less sugar in making this cake. However, if you wish, you can add more for the sponge as well as the icing. I am using 50 grams of cocoa which is actually a lot of it but it makes the cake very dark and the flavor of chocolate is accentuated all the more with the addition of this cocoa.

For the Cake:

200 grams butter

200 grams flour

50 grams good cocoa powder  

1 tsp baking powder

150 grams sugar

½ tsp baking soda

1 tsp vanilla essence

1 cup milk

4 eggs at room temperature

A pinch of salt

Sift the flour, cocoa, Baking powder, Soda and a good pinch of salt and keep aside.

I always use an electric handheld mixer and that makes my job ten times easier. Cream the Softened butter and sugar until light and fluffy. The mixture should look very pale, almost white, start adding in one egg at a time. Beat the egg in completely before adding another one. Add the vanilla now.

Start adding the flour and fold it in completely before drizzling in a third of the milk. Again add the flour and then the milk.

The mixture should be dropping consistency. It shouldn’t look clumpy but it should look like a gorgeously glossy and dark mix.

Bake in a round loose bottomed 8 inch cake tin at 180 degrees for 50-60 minutes. Please start checking the cake from 50 minutes on wards with a tester. Once done, let it cool for sometime in the tin and take it out and let it cool down completely.

For the Icing:

200 gms butter

150 grms icing sugar

½ cup cherries pitted (Preserved )

1 tsp vanilla essence

Blitz the pitted cherries and make it into a mush. Strain the liquid and keep aside. Beat the Butter on high until very pale. Start adding the icing sugar and beat it in completely.

For the Assembly:

Cut the Cake in half. Add a layer of butter cream icing and spread it evenly on both the layers. We are doing this so that the sponge is not soaked in the cherry liquid (even after straining, an amount of liquid is left in the cherries so its important to put the butter cream on both the cake layers). Add the cherries and spread it on the butter cream. Now, put the layers on top of each other making sure that the butter cream sandwiches the cherry mush.

Ice the cake completely covering every inch in that luscious butter cream. And keep it in the fridge to set.

For the Ganache:

200 grms dark chocolate

75 gms Butter

1-2 tbsp Single Cream

Please note that this step has to be done after the cake is completely iced. On a double boiler, melt the chocolate and butter. Add the single cream. Take it off the double boilers and let it come to room temperature.

Once the chocolate sauce comes to room temperature, slowly drizzle the sauce on top of the iced cake and keep turning the cake letting the sauce drop from the sides creating the dropping effect. Leave it in the fridge for an hour before serving.