Vegan Gluten Free Blackforest Cake

It was Toby's birthday on Wednesday and to celebrate I made him a cake yesterday. At his request I made blackforest cake. I looked at about a dozen recipes for regular gluteny non-vegan blackforest cakes and combined several elements. I discovered that black forest cake is called black forest gateau and Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte in some parts of the world and most versions of blackforest cake are not really authentic and neither was mine. Traditionally black forest cake included a shortcrust pastry base and looked quite different. Although I did buy kirsch (cherry liquour) especially which hopefully scores me some point for authenticity. I even had to make a special trip to Dan murphies since coles and safeway liquor stores didn't sell it.

Instead of making the gluten free cake from scratch I purchased 2 packets of g/f most chocolate mud cake. I was hoping that they were big enough to cut into half so I could have four layers but unfortunately they weren't. I do love this cake mix though it's rich, moist although a tad oily. All I needed to do was add oil, water and egg replacer.

So here's the basic recipe:

• 2 x deliciously free most chocolate mud cake plus required egg replacer and veg oil
  
• Approximately 1/8 of a Dark Chocolate Block to make shavings
  
• 1 can of soyatoo spray cream (I still have some leftover)
  

Ganache- I altered the recipe from here:
1 Cup Dark Vegan Chocolate
2 Tbsp. Margarine
1/3 Cup Soy Milk
1/4 teaspoon of Cinnamon

In the top of a double boiler, place the margarine and soy milk. Bring the water below to a very low simmer and whisk. Mix in the cinnamon. Add the chocolate. Once it looks like it is beginning to melt, whisk until smooth. Remove from the heat immediately. Allow mixture to cool.

Cherries mixture:
1 800gram jar of morello cherries (I didn't end up using all of the cherries but would next time)
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon corn starch
1/3 cup of Kirsch (or enough to cover cherries)

Drain cherries (reserving the syrup) and put aside. Heat cherry syrup with corn starch, sugar and vanilla essence. Pour kirsch over drained cherries while you slowly bring cherry syrup to boil. Once Mixture had reduced and thickened, drain kirsch from cherries and add them to heat for a minute. Allow mixture to cool. In hindsight, I could have allowed this to reduce further.


And the assembling of the cake:
I sprinkled a generous amount of kirsch on the first layer.
Put a layer of ganache on top:
Put the cherry mixture on top:
And then some soyatoo 'cream':
Put the other cake on top, sprinkle more kirsch and then add more ganache:

I then used the soyatoo cream to make a couples of rings around the side to keep in plenty of cherries on top. Looks wise I should have perhaps left it there but I couldn't help myself.
And sprinkled plenty of chocolate flakes on top:
And decided that I needed to add more ganache to the sides. I didn't have enough ganache though so I combined the ganache with soyawhip and then coated the sides. And because I went a little overboard with the chocolate flakes I decided to add more soyatoo and one cherry on top:


Here's a inside peak:

And the sign of a good cake, it was finished pretty quickly:
I thought maybe I added too much 'cream' but it's so mild you can barely taste it. I was pretty pleased with the taste and texture. In fact taste wise it's my favourite cake that I've made but next time I would add more kirsch and cherries and try to improve the cherry syrup.