Baking Adventures (and Occasional Cooking Too!): Black Forest Cake (and Fireflies)

A co-worker friend invited some girls over for a "Girls Night In" since her fiance was away on his bachelor trip. We rented a chick flick (Leap Year), had wine/champagne, pizza, fruit and cheese. I volunteered to make dessert.

We ended up not watching the movie; I did not drink any wine or champagne (just pink lemonade); and instead played with the 9-month-old baby Drew who quickly turned out to be the de facto guest of honor. We stayed outside until the sun started to set, and the fireflies started dancing.

As a West Coast girl, fireflies were a fantasy to me while I was growing up. They existed in country songs and modern day fairy tales, but not in real life. It wasn't until last summer that I saw my first firefly. It was an experience that was fascinating then, and still enchanting now.

The fact that they buzz about so leisurely and lackadaisical that you can easily catch them enhances their romanticism a zillion times. They are what summer evenings should be all about: taking things slowly, brightening the cool end of a hot day, and bringing childish awe and delight to an otherwise unremarkable setting.

The dessert I opted to bring was Black Forest Cake. Coming off the high of accomplishing croissants, I wanted to again attempt something new. I wanted it to be technically challenging and to present well--and taste good too.

Genoise cake is something I have generally stayed away from. Having attempted it a couple times in the past with unfortunate results, I was a little apprehensive to try it again. So I formulated a backup plan: I would make the genoise the night before and if it sucked, then it would go in the garbage can and *gasp* boxed cake mix would have to do for the Girls Night In.

I used America's Test Kitchen's recipe for Chocolate Genoise, which is in their Baking Illustrated book. Genoise can be tricky because it is a cake that uses no chemical leaveners--no baking soda or baking powder. Any loft it gets comes solely from the air that you beat into the eggs. So how do you preserve that air throughout the mixing and baking process? You have to stabilize the eggs by beating them while slightly cooking them over a bain marie (hot water bath).

But you also have to be careful about not over-cooking the eggs and scrambling them. In this case, I used a thermometer to keep the temperature around 100-110 degrees F. I had to take the bowl off and on the simmering water bath a couple times until the eggs formed the proper texture. You know they are rightly beaten when they become pale yellow and form a thick ribbon as they fall from the beaters.

How did the genoise turn out? Not bad. The texture was much improved, and I would even venture to call the genoise my most successful one yet. The only problem was that I used a springform pan slightly too large for the recipe, so my cake was thinner than I would have liked. This made it more difficult to slice the layers, but it still made for a pretty tasty cake!

1. Macerate the tart cherries in cherry wine (or kirsch liqueur if you can find it). Using sweet cherries will be too sweet.