Here, at last, is my post about my contribution to the last Bury St Edmunds Clandestine Cake Club which took place in July. For my full write and pictures of all the gorgeous cakes have a look here.
The theme was Summer Fruit & Veg and I asked everyone to use seasonal British produce where possible. I decided to use one of my favourites, the cherry, which is a key ingredient in the all-time classic Black Forest Gateau. There are many, many versions of the recipe out there but I decided to use one I found on the Waitrose website. A lot of recipes use cherry jam for the filling however this one appealed to me as it uses fresh cherries.
I had high hopes for the cake as I was making it however when I came to remove the sponge from it's tin I was disappointed to see that it hadn't risen nearly as much as I'd expected. If you compare the picture next to the recipe to mine you can see that my sponges are half the size. I really wonder if the Waitrose picture contains two whole sponges rather than one cut in half. The recipe does, however, require the folding in of egg whites so maybe I was just too heavy handed.
If I'd had the ingredients to hand I might have tried an alternative but I didn't so had to make do with what I had. Thankfully, when I had finished filling and topping the sponges it looked pretty good and I think it tasted fine too. Not surprisingly the cake was quite dense but the fruit and cream helped to balance it out a bit.
I loved the flavours in this cake and I think it looks pretty impressive but next time I'll try a different recipe.
You can find the recipe here.
