Chocolate, beautiful chocolate

What's a chocolate diamond? Hmmm, well I did a little surfing last night, and I couldn't really find any useful info. I even went to the GIA homepage, and couldn't get anywhere that gave me any info. Basically what it is is a diamond with so much body color that it is actually brown. Of course these are much less desirable than white diamonds, which are designated 'D' for the most colorless, and going all the way down the alphabet. There are probably impurities in the carbon that give it that color. We will see if it's shiny and sparkly and seductive when we sees the precious in person, yesssss....

For a look at it, go here:

http://www.acntv.com/estore/product.asp?product_id=PWT239-6&src=s&grp=RING

On a related note, I recently thought to myself: Why can't Black Forest torte have ganache in it? Why not? It was really, truly a puzzle. The few recipes I found didn't have ganache in them. One had melted chocolate spread on the bottom pastry layer, but that begged the question: why only on the bottom layer?

So, when Tim asked for Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte for his birthday, I set about devising one that would satisfy me just as much as him. What a giving, selfless, altruistic soul I am....

Blackout Cake

1 1/2 sticks (6 ounces/170 g) butter, softened
3 cups granulated white sugar (675 g)
3 eggs
2 teaspoons (10 ml) vanilla extract
4 ounces (112 g) unsweetened chocolate, melted
3 cups flour
3 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup (190 ml) buttermilk
1 1/3 C (332 ml) boiling water

1 recipe Chocolate Ganache

3/4 to 1 cup diced toasted almonds

1. Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease 3 8-inch (20 cm) round cake pans. Dust with flour and tap out excess.

2. In large bowl, beat together butter and sugar with electric mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 1 to 2 minutes. Add eggs and vanilla and beat until well blended. Add melted chocolate and beat 1 to 2 minutes.

3. Mix together flour, baking soda and salt. Add to the chocolate mixture in two additions alternately with the buttermilk. Beat until well blended. With mixer on low speed, add boiling water and beat until smooth (batter will be thin). Pour batter into prepared pans.

4. Bake 35 to 40 minutes, or until tooth-pick/cake tester inserted in center comes out clean. Let cool in pans 10 to 15 minutes then unmold onto racks and let cool completely.

5. Cover a cake layer with chocolate ganache. Set second layer on top, and repeat. Set third layer on top. Frost top and sides of cake with remaining ganache. Press almonds into side of cake. Refrigerate 3 to 4 hours, or until ganache is firm, before serving.

Chocolate Ganache

18 ounces (1.1 kg or 504 g) semisweet or bittersweet chocolate chips, or chopped chocolate)
1 1/2 C (375 ml) heavy cream
2 tablespoons (28 g) butter, cut up
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. In a heavy 2-quart glass measure, combine chocolate and cream. Heat in microwave on high 3 minutes, or until melted and smooth when stirred. Stir in butter and vanilla.

2. Cover and refrigerate 1 to 1 1/2 hours, or until ganache holds its shape and is thick enough to spread on cake.

NOTES:

Take that ganache recipe above and double it. That way you will have plenty for between the layers, and for a thick frosting, decorating, and ample bowl-licking. I put some in a pastry bag with a decorator tip and pipe mounds and stars on top. Ganache is fun stuff. You can leave it warm and pour it like glaze, or leave it at room temperature for a yogurt-like consistency. Or chill it down, and it's like clay.

I usually leave off the almonds.

Watch it when you add the boiling water. I have a bit of a mess from it sloshing over the sides of the bowl. We don't want burns, either.

The recipe is written for 2 9-inch layers, but that is a load of bull. Too much batter, at least for my pans, and they overflow. Three layers will give you quite a tall cake, but it looks pretty darn impressive :).

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Now understand, this recipe is damn good on its own. I've made it several times, to rave reviews at work and family dinners. It's courtesy of my sister-in-law, who is a formidable cook in her own right. I took that cake recipe, and made just the batter. I filled four 4-inch springform pans about 2/3 full with batter, and baked them. Took about 40 minutes. This cake always takes so much longer to bake than what it says. Just keep checking and poking. I baked the rest of the batter, and I froze the cake. I'm thinking that will make a very nice trifle later. With fall and winter approaching, the Dark Times will be coming. When a multi-media chocolate dessert might be the only medicine between me and the abyss. Anyway: Why did I use this cake recipe? Because the ones in the actual Black Forest cake recipes didn't sound chocolaty enough. And I like this cake. A lot.

The thing about this cake is that you have got to use parchment paper. Got to. It's a very sticky, moist cake. I didn't with the little springform pans, so I had to be careful getting the cakes out. But if you carefully wiggle a butter knife between the base and the cake, they will come free.

Next I made some ganache. Took 1/3 of the original recipe in the Blackout Cake (that would be 6 ounces of chocolate, and 1/2 cup heavy cream. Set this aside for a few hours at room temp, and it will acquire the proper delectable spreading consistency.

Now for the cherries. Yes, the cherries. What to do about those... Did we want the pie filling stuff in the cans that has a few shriveled cherries in pink sauce? No, we did not. But neither did we want loose ones that could fall all over the place, like in one recipe I saw. Here I turned to Emeril's recipe at FoodTV.com, and used his recipe for the kirsche syrup and cherries:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,,FOOD_9936_9976,00.html

For the filling:
2 cups sugar
1 cup water
1 1/4 cups kirsch
2 (15-ounce) cans dark sweet pitted cherries in heavy syrup
2 tablespoons cornstarch

For the filling: Combine the sugar and water in a small saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar, and cook for 2 minutes. Remove from the heat and let cool completely. Stir in 1 cup of the kirsch and stir to mix. In another saucepan over medium heat, bring the cherries to a boil in their syrup. In a small bowl, dissolve the cornstarch in the remaining 1/4 cup kirsch and add to the cherry mixture. Whisk until it thickens, about 2 minutes. Remove from the heat and cool completely.

While the syrup and cherries were cooling, I carefully cut the 4 cakes in 4 layers with a serrated knife. BTW, I only made half the syrup. That was still way, way too much. But the leftovers have been good stirred into coffee...

After I'd sat on my butt for a while and channel-surfed through useless TV shows, alternating with watching Hurricane Frances footage, I drizzled some of the kirsch syrup on each of the cake layers. I spread a spoonful of ganache on all but the top layer. I spooned some of the cherries over that, except the tops. I stacked the layers up with the help of a big pancake turner, and popped them in the fridge to chill/set. Meanwhile, I whipped about a cup or so of heavy cream, with about a tablespoon of powdered sugar and a dash of vanilla extract. I covered each of the 4 mini-tortes with whipped cream. Then, for the garnish, I took two regular sized Hershey bars and used a vegetable peeler to shower chocolate curls all over the tops. Of course, the too-small remaining pieces had to be eaten immediately.

Why the heck did I make 4 small cakes instead of one big one? Well, isn't that obvious? To save vast amounts of calories, of course. Having a huge torte in the fridge taunting and sweetly singing and whispering to you is simply not a good weight management tactic. However, 4 small ones that sing to you in much smaller voices is much more sensible. Right? Say yes, dammit...

No really, when I'm tired, I'm indecisive. Which is pretty much 100% of the time. So one little cake turned into two, you know, just in case it turned out really good, and Tim wanted to enjoy more than one, and then I said what the hell, why not use all 4 springform pans, and then this one cake kind of tipped and looked crappy, so I figured I'd practice and get One Really Nice Looking One, and I managed to make all of them look halfway decent by the time I slathered on the whipped cream, and then I said, hey! I can take two of these to work, and ship half the calories out of the house! Yeah!

We've now eaten almost through the 4th cake.

In case anyone out there is wondering, no I do not weigh 300 pounds. But this old bod wants to. Really bad.

BTW, this cake went really well with Thomas Hooker Imperial Porter, from Troutbrook Brewing Company.

Tschüs!