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Off late I have been busy with too many things. Sadly, baking and blogging weren’t the top priorities.It was Valentine’s Day celebration all over the blogging world,I saw so many wonderful recipes, posts, photographs and I just couldn’t resist myself in joining the bandwagon. I know I am late, but then what the heck :)

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I was reading on the net that -In the second half of the twentieth century, the practice of exchanging cards was extended to all manner of gifts in the United States, usually from a man to a woman. Such gifts typically include roses and chocolates.In the 1980s, the diamond industry began to promote Valentine’s Day as an occasion for giving jewelry. The day has come to be associated with a generic platonic greeting of “Happy Valentine’s Day”. Imagine if we women got jewelry instead of flowers and chocolates. Wow…honey I hope you are reading this one:)

I baked my all-time favorite Black Forest Cake again. This is one cake that has made multiple entries in my kitchen. You’ll find this one in my blog too – here. I had baked one for my daughter’s first birthday. It was actually the first time I had baked such a huge cake (12”x18”). By the way, I have never found Black Forest Cake at any restaurants/ coffee shops in the US. I wonder why??

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This time I wanted to use whole wheat. So I baked a Chocolate Whole Wheat Genoise Cake adapted from King Arthur Flour’s - Whole Grain Baking book . Though this cake uses whole wheat pastry flour, it DOES use a lot of eggs. The cake tasted very chocolaty and was slightly dense. I have baked this earlier too but had frosted it with chocolate ganache. You really have to pay attention while baking. Unlike any other cake, this one doesn’t rise much. I over baked my cake when I had made this the first time ( I was hoping it would rise up well, so increased the baking time which resulted in a little hard cake). So watch out.

BLACK FOREST CAKE ( MADE WITH CHOCOLATE WHOLE WHEAT GENOISE )

Makes one 8 ” cake(4 layers)

CHOCOLATE WHOLE WHEAT GENOISE
Ingredients:

½ cup( 1 stick) unsalted butter
1 ½ cup whole wheat pastry flour
¾ cup unsweetened cocoa, natural or dutch processed
2 tablespoon unbleached all –purpose flour
7 large eggs
3 large egg yolks
¼ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 ¼ cup granulated sugar

SYRUP

6 - 8 oz Maraschino cherries with the syrup
2 tablespoon sugar
½ teaspoon corn flour( optional )

FROSTING

1 ½ cup heavy whipping cream
1 ½ tablespoon granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

DECORATION
Chocolate shavings, MAraschino Cherries, Chocolate chips/bars for Filigree

Directions: Preheat oven to 325F. Grease and slightly flour the pans lightly with nonstick spray and line with parchment paper. Melt the butter over low heat and set aside to cool at room temperature. Whisk together the whole wheat pastry flour,cocoa and all purpose flour in a medium bowl;set aside.
Combine the eggs, egg yolks, salt,vanilla and sugar in a large bowl. Place the mixing bowl over a larger bowl half filled with hot tap water.Whisk the mixture until it feels just slightly warm to the touch when you touch it in the center with your finger( 3 to 5 minutes). If you want to be precise, use a thermometer – the egg mixture should be at 100F. Warming the eggs and dissolving the sugar this way will ensure they reach the highest possible volume when beaten.
Place the mixing bowl on your stand mixer and beat with a wire whip until the mixture is tripled in volume and a very pale yellow color. This will take 5 to 8 minutes on high speed, depending on the power of your mixer. When done the egg mixture should fall off the whisk and mound for a moment before disappearing back into the bowl.

Remove the bowl from the mixer and use a whisk to gently fold in the reserved flour cocoa mixture by hand, until no streaks of flour remain. Gently fold in the melted cooled butter, a little at a time, taking care not to mix more than necessary to get the butter to disappear. If you pour in too much at once, the butter will collapse the egg foam, then pool on the bottom of the mixing bowl, making it harder to distribute. The volume of the batter will decrease a bit during this process, but a light touch and quick, confident strokes from the bottom of the bowl up through the batter will see you through.
Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake until the chocolate is fragrant and the top springs back when lightly touched in the center, 25-27 minutes. Remove the cake from the oven and place on a rack to completely cool before assembling. . Also, slice each cake horizontally into two.

SYRUP: Drain the maraschino cherries from the bottle, reserve the liquid. Crush or chop the cherries. Bring the liquid, cherries and sugar to a boil – stirring until the sugar dissolves. Using a spoon, remove half of the liquid in a cup. Allow the cherry mixture to thicken a little. You may use ½ teaspoon of cornflour,if needed. Set aside and allow it to cool.

WHIPPED CREAM:Place cream in the bowl of a stand mixer. Add sugar and vanilla extract and whip until it thickens and the whip starts to leave tracks as it moves through the cream. Beat until the cream forms medium peaks.

ASSEMBLING THE CAKE – Place one cake layer on a cake board or a plate. Drizzle the syrup all over and put a generous dollop of cream and spread uniformly; and finally spread the cherry mixture. Place the next layer on top, repeat the same for the second and third layer too. After placing the last one, spread the whipped cream on top and sides and frost the cake. Decorate as per your liking-you may use some chocolate shavings/chips/sprinklers and maraschino cherries. For the Filigree – Melt some chocolate (I used 4 Ghirardelli squares) in the microwave. Pour it on a pastry bag or zip lock bag. Make a small hole on the bag and make designs on a parchment paper (measure the height and circumference of the cake and cut the parchment based on this measurement before you start). Allow it too set in the refrigerator for ten minutes or so. Wrap it around the cake and press it gently so that it sticks to the frosting on the sides. Gently peel the parchment.

Usually Kirsch syrup is used which I didn’t have, so chose an easier option for the simple syrup. Also since I was planning to do the filigree, I didn’t want to frost much on the sides as it wouldn’t be seen. Hope you enjoy baking this:)

Bon Appétit

Nina

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