Remember this photo?  I promised that I would get to the other two cakes : )  First, let me share with you the process of making and assembling the beautiful black forest cake on the left.  The cake is layered with cherry cream and topped with cherry compote.

For our black forest cake, we baked a 6 inch chocolate chiffon cake base.  After the cake cooled, we sliced our cake into three layers and spread coating chocolate on one side of one layer.  This layer was put chocolate-side down on our cake board to prevent the simple syrup from soaking the cake board.  After the layer was in place, we covered the layer with the cherry liqueur simple syrup.  Below is our teacher, adding her coating chocolate.We made our cherry cream and filled a piping bag.  We covered our first layer with the cherry cream and added sliced rum cherries on top of the cream.  You’ll notice bits of cake on top of my cherry cream. During class, I added the next layer of cake, forgetting to add my rum cherries.   If you happen to make the same mistake….I PROMISE these rum cherries are worth carefully removing the layer of cake and reassembling.  We added one more layer of cake and repeated the above process….more syrup, more cream, more cherries. Although you can add the cherry cream using a spatula, I was able to keep the amount consistent over the entire layer by using my piping bag.  Below you’ll notice how we swirled the cream out from the center of the cake with the piping bag. After adding the final layer of cake on top, we added a very thin crumb coat of cherry cream to the entire cake and placed the cake in the refrigerator to let the crumb coat set.The next step was so much fun!  I had never experimented with modeling chocolate before this class, but it is definitely worth the extra effort to make the cake extra special. We first measured the height of our cake.  The modeling chocolate needs to extend roughly .5 inches above the cake in order to hold the cherry compote on top.  We rolled out modeling chocolate into a log about 1.5 inches thick and 10 inches long.  Using a rolling pin, we rolled out the chocolate until it was roughly 20 inches long and until it was the appropriate height for each of our cakes. Using a ruler and a pizza slicer, we made sure the size of the modeling chocolate was the same height over the entire length.  I took a great picture of our teacher measuring the chocolate.Once the chocolate was cut, we centered the modeling chocolate in the back of the cake and worked it around to the front, pressing it gently against the cake.  We worked the two edges of the chocolate together by gently pressing with our fingers. The heat from my hands melted the chocolate just enough to hold the edges together.  You can see in the photo above that our teacher used her fingertips to create a ruffled appearance on one side of her modeling chocolate.  I decided to leave the top edge of my chocolate even.

Once we assembled the modeling chocolate around the cake, we added the cherry compote to the top.   Although the cake involved quite a few steps and took a little bit of time to assemble, it was work all of the effort!  It is a beautiful cake…and even prettier sliced.  If any of you guys out there want to try your hand at this black forest cake, send me a quick e-mail.  I’ll be glad to share.

Happy Baking!