Black Forest Cake

It's my nephew's birthday and his favourite cake is Black Forest cake. "Auntie Giz, could you make me a black forest cake for my birthday"? With pleasure J... and really with pleasure since this kid NEVER asks for anything. He's always the first one up from the dinner table offering to help with dishes, preparing coffee and walking my dogs. At 12 years old I marvel at his selflessness and kind nature.

Thankfully, there is a world of black forest cake recipes - from the most elaborate to the dead simple. I guess you'll have a really hard time figuring out which one I opted for.

A huge big thank you goes out to a fellow blogger who really saved my skin.
Anna at Cookie Madness ingeniously had a quick and really delicious version.

Ingredients

1 cup milk
1 Tbsp vinegar
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups granulated sugar
3/4 cup unsweeted cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 cup strong brewed coffee, cold
1 tsp vanilla extract

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 F (175 C) Grease and flour two 8 inch cake pans

Combine milk and vinegar to make sour milk; set aside

Sift together the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

Whisk together the eggs, oil, coffee and vanilla in a large bowl. Stir in the sour milk. Gradually beat in the flour mixture, mixing just until incorporated.

Pour batter into prepared pans. Place pans on center rack and place a cookie sheet on lower rack just in case there are spill-overs. Bake for 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. (mine was done in 27 minutes). Cool completely before filling.

Assembly

With long serrated knife, split each cake layer horizontally in half. Tear one split layer into crumbs, set aside. For finer crumbs, you can pulse the cake layer in the food processor.

Place one cake layer on cake plate. Spread about 1 cup whipped cream, top with about 3/4 cup cherry topping. Top with second cake layer; repeat layers of whipped cream and cherry topping. Top with third cake layer. Frost side of cake with remaining whipped cream. Pat reserved crumbs onto frosting on side of cake. Arrange a bit more filling on top in a decorative way.

Filling:

2 (20 oz) cans pitted sour cherries
1 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup cornstarch
1 tsp vanilla extract

Drain cherries, reserving 1/2 cup juice. Combine reserved juice, cherries, 1 cup sugar and cornstarch in a 2 quart saucepan. Cook over low heat until thickened, stirring constantly. Stir in 1 tsp vanilla. Cool before using.

Whipped Cream:

3 cups heavy whipping cream
1/3 cup confectioner's sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract

Combine whipping cream and confectioner's sugar in a chilled medium bowl. Beat with an electric mixer at high speed until stiff peaks form. Beat in vanilla.

France Blogging: St. Emilion

We're less than two weeks away from the Tried, Tested and True II deadline. We'd really like to see a good showing of health-promoting recipes and our e-mail inbox is starting to feel a bit dejected. The more of you who post about the event on your blog and the cause of organ donation, the wider the audience we can get to in order to promote the cause! Please click on the ribbon for more details.



Please don't be overwhelmed by the details of the event! Just post a tried, tested and true recipe that incorporates healthier options. We've got three great prize packages to be won (and we'll send them anywhere)!

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Now - to return to my report about France. I know I'm kind of leading away from the food blogging path with these posts. Selfishly, I just want a written account of what we did. Plus, it's a great way to share my trip with my mother dearest, Giz (and, of course, you guys).

Following our first evening in Puisseguin, we started our day with a breakfast at the B&B. You can't tell from the picture, but I've got "big" plans to highlight a local dish we were introduced to at the B&B (there is a smallish hint of it in the picture).



Our hosts were definitely morning people. Unfortunately, my brain is slow to get moving in the morning and it wasn't until breakfast was nearly over that I could start communicating coherently in French.

I really like the exposed beam trend you see in France. It really warms the room up.



After breakfast, we headed to St. Emilion, a UNESCO village that is the main draw for the area.



With good reason too - the village is beautiful. You can read about the history of the village here. Also check out FX Cuisine's experience touring a winery and the region here.

I may be making this up...but I seem to recall reading somewhere that there is one wine store for every eight people living in St. Emilion. Judging by the number of wine stores I saw there, I'd believe it.



Here's part of one of the stores we walked in to. Before even looking at a couple of bottles, the man had poured us some wine and was talking a mile a minute about wine. St. Emilion is pretty sheltered from the rougher times other wine producers have been going through. From what I gather, most of the wine coming out of the region is already accounted for several years in advance. This isn't to say that you can't purchase wine in the region. The range of cost for wine is massive. As you can see in FX Cuisine's post, some bottles go for as much as 500 Euros each. Now, when asking what accounts for the expense, when other wines in the region are much cheaper, no one could really give me a straight answer. Wine producers set their own prices based on whatever value they feel their wine is worth. I guess supply and demand - if someone wants to pay for it.

Even if you don't like wine, the village itself is beautiful to visit. We took most of the photos of the village from the top of the clocktower, which can be accessed by obtaining a key from the tourist office.



R is always looking for stairs to climb when we're travelling. For once, it was actually enjoyable to climb a clocktower. I didn't have to deal with anyone's butt in my face. With only two keys to access the tower, there's really no competition for getting a good view.

Click on the panoramics for a better view of the city:













Here's another very typical view in the area:



Although I couldn't take pictures of it, we also took a tour of the monolithic church, catacombs and Emilion's (the monk the city was named after) quarters. Despite damage during the French Revolution, the city is very well preserved.

After spending the day in St. Emilion, we returned to the B&B for a bit of a rest before heading out for dinner.

We went to this restaurant:



The restaurant was very pretty, but it was somewhat uncomfortable to be the only two people in the restaurant. I expected it to be somewhat empty, given that it was the night of the European World Cup final, but not like this:



It wouldn't have been a big deal, but the waiter was clearly not interested in having customers either. When I asked for more time to decide, he stood there staring at me and said, "quickly". Lovely...

The food was good. We drank this:



I ordered the seafood risotto:



R ordered the brochette:



I felt that the price was high, for what we got. My meal was 15 Euros and R's was 18 Euros. The idea of getting one skewer of meat for what is probably about $30 Canadian was not particularly good value for money.

So, although the food may have tasted better than the previous night's, I enjoyed the other meal more.

We drove home in time to catch a great sunset. My camera (or perhaps camera skills) made capturing the sunset and the vinyards together quite difficult.




One last thought - I don't mean to come off like a complainer in my posts. I'd just rather be upfront about what was good and what wasn't to give an honest depiction of the experience. I wouldn't want to give glowing recommendations about somewhere just for the sake of being positive when it could mean that I've led someone astray.

Banana Pudding

Thank goodness for fellow bloggers and tagged recipes. I'm invited to a bar b que and I'm bringing dessert. It's hot and muggy and I don't feel much like baking or heating up the house. I'm kind of loving the air conditioning right about now. I also don't feel like bringing anything too heavy so no cheesecake. Then the lightbulb went off. I found this recipe at Cookie Baker Lynn and said "hmmm, this looks interesting.

So, not only is it an interesting recipe but it fits with this month's roundup for meringue at Greedy Gourmet



Pudding:

2/3 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/4 cups sugar (I used 1 cup)
1/2 tsp salt
4 cups 2% milk (I used a combination of 2% and skim milk)
1 (4 inch) vanilla bean, split lenthwise (seeded)
2 large eggs, lightly beaten

Meringue

4 large egg-whites
3/4 cup sugar (I used 1/2 cup)

80 vanilla wafers (about 1 box)
5 cups sliced banana (about 6 bananas)


1. Preheat oven to 325 F.

2. Lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups, level with a knife. Combine flour, 1 1/4 cups sugar, and salt in a large saucepan, stirring with a whisk. Gradually add milk, stirring until smooth. Scrape seeds from vanilla bean into milk mixture, and drop in the pod too. Cook over medium heat 12 minutes or until thick and bubbly, stirring constantly.



*Note: The stirring constantly is essential so you don't get burned bits infiltrating your creamy looking custard.

3. Place eggs in a large bowl; gradually add hot milk mixture (very gradually) stirring constantly. Pour mixture in pan; cook over medium heat 2 minutes or until thick and bubbly, stirring constantly. Discard vanilla bean.

4. Place egg whites in a large bowl; beat with a mixer (with whisk attachment) at high speed until egg whites are foamy. Add 3/4 cup sugar, 1 tabalespoon at a time, beating until stiff peaks form.

5. Arrange 33 vanilla wafers in bottom of a 3 quart round baking dish.


Arrange half of the sliced bananas over wafers.



Pour half of the custard over the bananas.



Repeat with another 33 vanilla wafers (I used less than 33), banana slices and custard. Top with meringue. Arrange remaining vanilla wafers around the edge of the meringue.

6. Bake at 325 F for 20 minutes or until lightly browned. Serve pudding warm or chilled. Cover leftovers with plastic wrap and store refrigerated.

Yield: 16 servings (3/4 cup serving size)

In my family you know you landed a winner when at the end of the night everyone's afraid to take home leftovers because they know it'll be calling them all night.