Black Forrest Gateau with Fresh Cream and Black Cherries: 

My husband has been hinting for several weeks that he was expecting me to up my game on last years Retro Black Forrest Gateau (BFG) for his birthday this year.  I decided that I would therefore make the presentation a bit more classy by using dark chocolate Cigarellos to decorate the cake side.  I got the large box of 84 and used most of them around the 20cm cake so really glad I didn’t go cheap and get the smaller box.

This year I also used my new chocolate Genoese Sponge recipe to create a single cake which I sliced (successfully, thankfully) into three sponge sandwiches.  Like last year though I layered them again with fresh cream and Kirsch soaked black cherries.  Thankfully the husband was suitably impressed with the cake, although now starting to wonder what on earth I’m going to do next year to take this cake the ‘next step’?