Guten tag! Today's country is Germany. It's the third week of Oktoberfest in Munich so what better to celebrate with than pretzels and black forest cake?
I ended up making this meal over the course of two days. I started on the sponge cakes and the cherry syrup first.
The sponge starts with 9 eggs. Nine. Eggs. They're whipped with sugar for about 10 minutes to get as much air into them as possible. There's no baking powder or soda in the cake, so the beaten eggs are the only rising agent.
I've never made sponge cake, so it was surprising how fluffy just the eggs and sugar got. It was also nerve-wracking because when you add in the flour, cocoa powder, and butter you have to fold them in super carefully so you don't knock all the air out. It's not as easy as the contestants on Great British Bake Off make it seem, but they probably make genoise sponge all the time.
The cake is baked in two pans. One of mine (the bottom one) rose much better. The top one was perfectly fine but was a bit sticky and hard to handle compared to the other one.
The cherries were soaked in kirsch, a cherry liqueur, then strained to separate the cherries from the syrup.
The next day, I sliced both the cakes into two layers and started on the pretzels. Luckily the pretzel recipe I used called for using a stand mixer with the dough hook. There's no way I would have been able to knead the dough for these for 20+ minutes with full use of only one hand.
Once the dough is done kneading, it rests a bit before being cut into balls. Each of these balls are then rolled into ropes to be shaped.
The shaping process wasn't as difficult as I was expecting. It's basically a U shape with the ends twisted twice and brought down to the bottom of the U.
Not bad for my first time! I found that the balls that were smaller ended up being easier to shape because I could get the rope thinner. I suppose making the ropes long would work too, but then I'd end up with much bigger pretzels that I would have to bake in batches.
While the pretzels rested for nearly 3 hours (45 minutes in a warm place + 3 hours refrigerated) I started assembling my cake.
I first had to make the whipped cream, which has a bit of that cherry liqueur for a slight kick. I know that European cakes are generally not as sweet as American ones, but I'm not a huge fan of the whipped cream that they make. It literally just tastes like...cream. That's been whipped. So I added a bit more sugar than the recipe called for. It still wasn't super sweet, though.
Each layer of the cake is brushed with the syrup from the cherries and kirsch, then topped with whipped cream. The internal layers are then topped with the chopped cherries.
Eventually the entire cake is covered with the whipped cream. The little dabs (supposed to be flowers but I don't own pastry bags/tips) are where the whole cherries go.
After the cake is iced, it's covered in dark chocolate shavings. These are made by melting the chocolate down, spreading it on a baking sheet, refrigerating it a few minutes, then scraping it off.
The chocolate was a bit difficult to deal with since it started melting the second I touched it. I've got chocolate all over the velcro on my finger splint.
Once the cake was done I was able to start more of the pretzel process.
Normally these would go into food-grade lye to develop their crust, but an alternative is baking soda dissolved in boiling water. They're boiled for only 30 seconds before draining and baking.
If only you could transmit smells through blog posts. These smelled SO good every time I opened the oven to check on them.
The ones on the near end look a bit more like traditional pretzels compared to the ones on the far end that look more like bread rolls. Both were delicious though!
They were a bit breadier than most pretzels, but I found that really enjoyable. Who doesn't like bread?
The best thing about the cake was that it isn't overly sweet, which means you can cut a bigger slice without feeling sick after eating it!
Both of these dishes are best enjoyed with a nice German Oktoberfest beer. Prost!
Recipes Used: Pretzels // Black Forest Cake
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