Black forest cake

Recent black forest on my friends bday. 

Ingredients

1 pack of any brownie cake mix ( I used Devil's cake mix)

1/2 cup vegetable oil

3/4th Cup water

2 Eggs at room temperature

Melted butter A tsp

Flour For dusting

For Cherry Syrup:

2 Tbsp Maraschino Cherry syrup 
1 Tbsp Granulated Sugar 
1/2 Cup Water 

For Icing:

2 Cup Heavy Whipping cream 

9-10 Tbsp Powdered sugar/ Adjust as per your taste

1 Tbsp vanilla essence

For Decorating the cake:

Maraschino Cherries (pat them dry)/dry cherries from market.

1 bar of Semi sweet chocolate shavings

Method:

• Beat the egg until fluffy. Add the cake mix,vegetable oil and water. Beat until it reaches its consistency.I used 9 inch round cake pan for it, greased with butter and dusted it with all purpose flour. This batter will make two layer cake.  Bake as instructed at backside of your cake mix box.I baked it twice. If u have bigger pan you an bake as single cake and cut them into two layer.

• Before preparing icing place a mixing bowl,hand beater in which you will beat the whipping cream in the freezer. minimum for 1 hour. 

• Drain the cherries and pat them with paper towel. Reserve the juice.

• For Icing take out the mixing bowl which we kept in freezer and add 2 cups of heavy whipping cream and using the chilled beaters beat with a hand mixer slowly for a minute then add icing sugar, vanilla essence.

• Beat it on high to low speed and make sure you don't over beat it or else you will end up in buttery texture. Put back the icing in the freezer for an hour, this makes icing easy.( i skipped this step)

• For cherry syrup: Mix all the ingredients under the syrup, this is used to moisten the cake. Alternatively if you don't have cherry syrup you can also replace with sugar water.

Lets Decorate the cake

1. Once the cake is done, allow it to cool completely.
2. Now gently level the cake with the knife. 
3. Add the cherry syrup/sugar water on top of the two cake rounds and let it sit for 5 mins, this will moisten the cake. 
4. Meanwhile, grate the chocolates with the shredder.
5. Fill the prepared icing in the icing bag with any of your favorite nozzle. 
6. First keep one cake on the cake board.Spread the icing and level it. Again add few more scoops of icing on the top and level it. This will be center filling for our cake. Then, place a another cake on top of it. Repeat the same and smooth the cake completely.
7. Decorate you cake with prepared piping bag. Place cherries and add shredded chocolates in center of your cake.
8. For side decorations, take a big paper towel and place your cake board on it. Just throw or sprinkle the chocolates on the side of your cake.Throw until it forms thick chocolate layer as shown in picture. It will stick to the icing. Remove the spilled chocolates gentle and clean the cake board. If u have extra icing decorate the bottom layer of the cake with piping nozzle. Enjoy your delicious yummy moistened black forest !

Note

1.You can replace cherry syrup with sugar water

2.The reason why we are freezing bowl and hand beater before is that you will get a nice smoothy icing which will be easy to smother on the cake later.

I know its seems to be quite long process. But if u use cake mix baking is easy and decorating cake will be simple. Prepare needed thing like cherry syrup,icing and chocolate grating before staring an cake. Yummy home made delicious black forest cake is possible now!! Thanks Padhu for this wonderful recipe.