Black Forest Tray-Bake

Today we have another classic from my Swabian homeland – this time in a slightly different form: Black Forest tray-bake! For me, the combination of chocolate, juicy cherries and cream is simply unbeatable.
This recipe differs from the traditional preparation by the dough used. Classically, a Black Forest cake is layered with a chocolate biscuit sponge. However, since this base is a bit more complicated to make, I used a simple sponge as a substitute.
We thicken the layer of cherries with a packet of custard powder. The procedure remains the same as for cooking pudding: Stir the powder in some collected cherry juice until smooth, boil the remaining liquid with cherries, remove from heat and slowly stir in the powder-juice mixture. Return the saucepan to the stove and immediately a kind of cherry pudding is formed, which we put on the chocolate base and let cool.
You can make the whipped cream a little more stable with a little cream stiffener, but it is not absolutely necessary. Let your creativity run free when decorating the cake!
Black Forest Tray-Bake
Ingredients
- 100 g butter room temperature
- 75 g sugar
- 1 pck. vanilla sugar
- 2 eggs
- 110 g flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 15 g baking cocoa
- 1 jar of sour cherries
- 25 g sugar
- 1 package vanilla pudding powder
- 400 ml whipped cream
- Chocolate shavings
Instructions
- For the sponge mixture, cream the butter with the sugar and vanilla sugar. Stir in eggs one at a time. Quickly fold in flour, cocoa and baking powder. Bake in a baking frame (approx. 20 x 25 cm) in a preheated oven at 160 °C convection oven for approx. 25 minutes.
- For the cherry pudding, place cherries with juice in a saucepan. Set aside 9 cherries for decoration. Skim off some juice and stir with sugar and pudding powder until smooth. Bring remaining juice to a boil, remove saucepan from heat and gently stir in pudding mixture. Bring to a boil again, stirring constantly, and spread evenly over chocolate base. Let cool completely.
- Whip cream until stiff and spread on top of cherries. Decorate as desired with a piping bag and sprinkle with chocolate sprinkles.