Drunken Cherry Cake with Mascarpone – Chocolate Sponge Recipe
Our home-style cherry cake can hardly be called a classic, though it is hugely popular. There are countless recipes for cakes like this, and what they share is the main ingredient – fresh cherries laced with brandy or cognac. Beyond that, the recipes differ widely in method and in what goes into them. Remarkably, for all the endless arguments, the cakes turn out delicious.
Around the world, the classic cherry cake is the Schwarzwald, or Black Forest. It is a wonderful chocolate sponge soaked in Kirschwasser, a cherry brandy. The cream is usually whipped cream with cherries, and the top is covered with cherries, chocolate and chocolate shavings. There are variations, of course, though they change the look more than the taste.
The base of a drunken cherry dessert is a chocolate sponge. It is a fairly simple batter made of eggs, sugar and wheat flour. Baking powder and cocoa powder go in together with the flour. In the oven the sponge rises well and turns fluffy. After that you can either slice it into layers or hollow it out for the cherry cream, whichever you prefer. Both ways work.
Naturally, no exotic spirits went into our home version – most likely we had never even heard the names. But cherry liqueurs and homemade cherry infusions did a fine job of soaking both the sponge and the cherries. In the simplest version it was plain brandy or cognac. The alcohol, by the way, made the cake a poor choice for a table with children at it. Often the soaking syrup had no alcohol in it at all.
The season for ripe cherries is short, so they are usually frozen to be used at any time of year. These days it is easy to buy frozen cherries, pitted or not. They are perfectly good for cooking, and the juice that collects as they thaw is excellent for soaking the sponge.
For the cream you can use whipped cream or, better still, mascarpone, the soft Italian cream cheese. Incidentally, the wonderful pairing of the cheese and cocoa makes Drunken Cherry cake taste rather like a cherry tiramisu, which is exactly what many people love about it. It is worth stirring some sponge crumbs and trimmings left over from baking into the cream. That makes the filling firmer. And use good dark chocolate for the glaze, you will be glad you did – when my daughter and I made the cake, we took chocolate with 80% cocoa, but you can go higher.
Ingredients
over 3 kg
- For the sponge
- Eggs 11
- Cocoa 4 tbsp
- Sugar 2 cups
- Wheat flour 1.5 cups
- Vanilla, baking powder to taste
- For the filling
- Frozen pitted cherries 800 g
- Brandy 150 ml
- Sugar 1 cup
- For the cream
- Mascarpone cheese 500 g
- Cocoa 1.5 tbsp
- Sweetened condensed milk 0.5 can
- For the glaze
- Dark chocolate 120 g
- Cream (20%) 200 ml
- Chocolate for decorating 50 g
Step-by-step recipe
- First and foremost, Drunken Cherry cake is a lot of cherries, and only then cream and sponge. The pitted cherries, not counting their juice, should make up more than a quarter of the dessert's total weight. Thaw the frozen cherries and pour off the juice – you will need it for soaking the sponge. Add a cup of sugar and 150 ml of brandy to the cherries themselves. The drunken cherries will not hold all the brandy you add, by the way – all the liquid will have to be drained off. Leave the cherries to soak for 2–3 hours, or longer if you have the time.
- How to bake the sponge for the cake
- Sponge batter is made fairly runny so that it can be poured into the pan. You will need a mixer – it is the handiest way to combine everything. Crack all the eggs into the mixer bowl, making sure no bits of shell get in, then add two cups of sugar and a little liquid vanilla. Beat the eggs and sugar until you have a good foam and the sugar has almost dissolved.
- We add vanilla and orange zest to a plain sponge, since they mask the taste of the egg yolks. A chocolate sponge has no such problem, so you can leave the flavorings out. And the cherries give the cake plenty of flavor anyway, completely drowning out any eggy note. Sift the wheat flour, add the dark cocoa and the baking powder, and stir. The packet of baking powder always says how much flour it is meant for, and it is worth keeping to that ratio. The cake should come out tall. Combine the flour with the egg foam – you should get a thick, flowing batter for the sponge.
- Prepare a large cake pan for the sponge. Line the bottom with baking paper and brush the paper and the sides of the pan with a little vegetable oil. Keep in mind that the sponge rises as it bakes, and the pan has to be tall enough. Allow for that and fill the pan with batter only halfway up.
- Preheat the oven to 190–200 °C and put the pan with the batter in. A sponge usually takes 45–60 minutes, depending on how deep the batter is. Check for doneness by piercing the sponge with a toothpick – it should come out clean, with no raw batter clinging to the wood. The top of the sponge usually comes out domed.
- Take the baked sponge out of the oven and let it cool. Turn it out of the pan and peel off the baking paper. Then, with a sharp knife, cut the sponge into three layers of roughly equal thickness. With the same knife, trim a little crumb off the layers; it will be used to thicken the cream. While you make the cream, stack the layers with sheets of baking paper between them.
- How to make the filling for the cake
- For the cream we decided to use mascarpone, the Italian cream cheese, and condensed milk instead of sugar. Put the cream cheese in the mixer bowl – we used a half-kilo tub – and add half a standard can of condensed milk. Combine them and add a little cocoa powder. Mix the cream thoroughly until it is as smooth as possible.
- Set aside about a third of the cream in a separate bowl. It is for coating the top and sides of the assembled cake before the chocolate goes on. Tip the cherries soaked in brandy and sugar into a colander and let all the liquid drain away. The cherries should be as dry as you can get them. Add all the remaining sponge crumbs and the cherries to the cream. Fold everything together with a spatula.
- How to assemble the dessert
- It is easiest to stack the layers on a large flat-bottomed platter. Later the assembled cake will have to be moved onto a stand or a rack to be covered with chocolate. So decide in advance how you will do that without damaging the layers. It may be worth slipping the base of the cake pan under the bottom layer – it is flat and will not get in the way. Besides, it stays out of sight, and you can slice the cake on it at the table.
- Place the first layer on the base or platter. It needs to be soaked with the cherry juice left from thawing. For something special, mix the juice with the leftover brandy the cherries were soaked in. Then spread half of the cherry cream over it. Spoon the juice over the layer with an ordinary spoon, covering the whole surface – the sponge should be moist. Level the cream with a spatula so that it is even in thickness.
- Set the second layer on top of the cream and soak it with juice the same way as the bottom one. Spread all the remaining cherry cream over it and level it. Top with the last layer and soak it as well. Press every layer down lightly with your palms. All that is left is to coat the top and sides of the cake with the plain cream, the one without cherries. Smooth the cream so it is even and leaves no gaps.
- Making the chocolate glaze – ganache
- Pastry chefs usually make ganache as a dessert in its own right or as a glaze that sets on desserts and cakes. It is nothing more than a mixture of dark chocolate and cream. It counts as a cream and can be made light or dark, firm or slightly soft, and it can be flavored. What matters is that the ganache stays liquid while you pour it over the cake and sets afterwards. Heat the cream and pieces of dark chocolate in a small saucepan. The chocolate will melt quite quickly and blend with the cream. Adjust the ratio of cream to chocolate until the mixture is close to runny honey in consistency.
- Set the cake on a cake stand. A rack placed over a rimmed baking sheet will do instead. Slowly pour the liquid chocolate over the top of the cake so that it spreads from the center to the edges and runs down the sides. You can tilt the cake from side to side to help the ganache spread evenly. Use a spatula to spread the chocolate if you need to. Work fast, because the chocolate sets quickly.
- How to decorate
- Once the chocolate is on, decorate the cake right away. The first decoration that comes to mind is, of course, fresh cherries. But to my taste it is better to grate some ordinary chocolate and scatter it over the top. You can also shave a chocolate bar with a knife. Or, if you can get them, decorate the Drunken Cherry cake with store-bought chocolate shavings or flakes. Then put the cake somewhere cold so the chocolate sets completely.
- We usually make the chocolate cherry cake the day before a celebration, and overnight it has time to soak through and chill properly. The dessert is very heavy – ours weighed more than three kilograms, enough for a big crowd. Serve it on the same platter it was assembled on. The cake does not fall apart when sliced. But the hard chocolate shell can crack untidily, so cut it with care.
- To serve, place the slices on dessert plates with small forks alongside. The cake goes beautifully with tea or a cappuccino. Then again, it is a treat in its own right.
Yield: over 3 kg Calories: 250 Prep: 30 mins Cook: 1 h 30 mins Total: 2 h (not counting soaking the cherries and chilling) Category: Desserts and Drinks Cuisine: European Rating: