Bake Off with the Bake Off 2015 - Week 1 - Cake!

Not wanting to start me off lightly, Gav selected the hardest challenge. I suspect he is starting as he means to go on! Here's how I did:

Week 1 - Cake!
The Challenge
Black Forest Gateaux

I've never made a Gateaux before, but it seemed fairly straight forward. As it was a Show Stopper, I needed to jazz it up a bit and make it pretty, I had some ideas up my sleeve

Ingredients
225g Butter
225g Caster Sugar
160g Self Raising Flour
65g Cocoa Powder
1/2 tsp Baking Powder
4 Medium Eggs
340g Morello Cherry Jam
1/2 Jar of Black Cherries in Kirsch
600ml Double Cream
2 tbsp Cocoa Powder
Fresh Cherries
1 bar of White Chocolate
1 bar of Milk Chocolate
1 chunk of Dark Chocolate

I preheated the oven to 190°C and prepared 3 tins. 

Then I mixed together the Butter, Sugar, Flour, Cocoa Powder, Baking Powder and Eggs in my super awesome mixer. I just love it when you can just chuck everything in and mix, none of this "cream this", "gradually add that". Once it was looking nicely mixed together, I divided it between my prepared cake tins. 

As I had divided them before baking them, they really did not take long in the oven, after 15 minutes, they were done.

With the sponges made, they needed to cool, thankfully I had enough to do preparing the decoration and the filling. I started off with the chocolate decoration on the top of the cake. I melted some white chocolate

Once the chocolate had melted and cooled a little, I dipped the fresh cherries into the bowl and coated each one, then placed them on a piece of baking parchment. Before the chocolate could set, I grated the dark chocolate over the top of them.

Satisfied that they were sorted and just needed to set, I then had to speed along to the fillings. In a saucepan, I emptied the jar of cherry jam and the half a jar of black cherries in kirsch and simmered for 5 minutes, realised that it needed to reduce a bit more and kept it going for another 3 minutes, then left to cool.

Whilst the cherry filling was cooling, I whipped the cream in the mixer, all the while being extremely grateful for having the whisking element to the mixer. I've had to whisk cream by hand before and it really hurts after a while. Once stiff peaks were forming, I stopped the mixer and started assembly. I had sponge, cherry filling, cream, sponge, cherry filling, cream, sponge. Like so:

With the remainder of the cream, I added the 2 tablespoons of cocoa and mixed together. Be really careful not to over whip your cream, it will go weird. When the cocoa was mixed in, I covered the entire Gateaux.

After it was covered, it was time to play with more chocolate! I melted the bar of milk chocolate let it cool a little. I spread out a rectangle on a plate. I then ripped up some strips of baking parchment and placed them one by one in the chocolate and layered them onto the cake.

In between layers, I popped the Gateaux in the freezer for a few minutes to set the chocolate and peel off the parchment.

When I had finished, I had a nice rustic looking Gateaux

I added my previously prepared white chocolate coated cherries and scattered some more grated dark chocolate  over the top and I was done

Here's just a little look into the inside after it had been cut

It was delicious as it looks. I quite enjoyed the process of making this one, I can bake cakes easily, so it was not an overly complicated bake for me. but the extra chocolate parts were a challenge, especially the side layers.  I earned full points for this one, I will have to give a Gateaux a go again in the future, I definitely need a chocolate one in my life!