Pastry Chef Alan Carter from Mission Beach Cafe (San Francisco) kindly shared with Zooey a few recipes from his collection. One of our favorites include this delicious Black Forest Cake - chocolate goodness and perfect for this beautiful holiday season!
Ingredients - Cake
Butter - 9oz Sugar - 3 cups Eggs - 4 + ¼ cup egg whites Milk - 1 ½ cups Cocoa powder - 1 cup Salt - 1 teaspoon Sour Cream - 1/3 cup Vanilla - 1 tablespoons All purpose Flour - 3 1/3 cups Baking powder - 2 teaspoon Baking Soda - 3/4 teaspoons Heavy cream - 1/3 cup whipped until soft peaks form
Directions
Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Dress two 9” cake pans with cooking spray and place a parchment circle at the bottom of each pan.
All dry ingredients together set aside, in a separate bowl put milk, cocoa, salt, sour cream, vanilla and mix together. Set aside.
Beat butter and sugar together in an electric mixer until fluffy (about 4 minutes), and then add two eggs one at a time. Then add egg whites and the last two eggs, beat mixture until fluffy again, another 1 min at high speed. Now add 1/3 of the flour mixture on low speed, add ½ chocolate mixture, another 1/3 of flour, ½ chocolate and the last of flour but do not mix completely, you should still see flour not fully incorporated. Remove batter from mixer and fold in the whipped cream and divide into the prepared 2 cake pans. Bake until toothpick comes out clean: 1 hour.
Using a long, thin, sharp knife, cut the cakes into 4 layers (2 rounds for each cake), measure from the bottom 1 ½ inches, then cut off the top from each layer. Now cut each of the two 1 ½ inch layers in half to equal 4 – ¾ inch layers. Put one of the cut layers in the food processor to make even cake crumbs.
To assemble the cake, brush each layer with simple syrup and cover with pudding icing (will be a 3-layer cake). Cover the top and the sides of the cake with the crumbs.
Ingredients - Pudding
Milk - 9 cups Sugar - 3 1/3 cups Salt - 1 ½ teaspoon Cornstarch - 1 cup Vanilla - 1 tablespoon Bittersweet Chocolate - 18 oz Gelatin - 1 ½ teaspoon mix with 2 tablespoons of cold water
Directions
Mix all dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Bring milk close to a boil, then pour a small amount into the dry ingredients then beat with a whisk until smooth. Add mixture back into the hot milk and cook until it reaches a full boil, remove from heat then add bloomed gelatin.
Ingredients - Syrup
4 cups - Water 6 cups - sugar
Directions
Bring to a boil or until sugar dissolves then cool.
Pastry Chef Alan Carter from Mission Beach Cafe (San Francisco) kindly shared with Zooey a few recipes from his collection. One of our favorites include this delicious Black Forest Cake - chocolate goodness and perfect for this beautiful holiday season!