Schwarzwaelder Torte (Black Forest Cake) - cooking recipe

Ingredients

cake layers
6 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup cocoa
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
Filling 1
1 (675 ml) jar sour cherries, no stones
2 -3 tablespoons potato starch
2 -3 tablespoons rum
Filling 2 and finishing icing
500 ml whipping cream
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
4 tablespoons white sugar
semisweet chocolate, for shavings (optional)

Preparation

Method:
Butter and flour two springforms (10 or 12\" in diameter), preheat oven to 300\u00b0F.
cake:
Sift the flour and cocoa together several times until of uniform colour.
Use a handheld electric beater or a tabletop kitchenmachine and beat the whole eggs with the vanilla and sugar until the eggs are thick and drop off the beaters in a wide v-shape.
Using a large whisk, draw the flour/cocoa mixture in about three lots carefully under the eggmixture until the entire mixture is of an even colour.
Pour evenly into the prepared pans, bake on the middle shelf side by side for 10 to 15 min or until you can smell the cake, it's beginning to draw from the sides and a testing stick comes out clean from the middle.
(I have a convection oven, but an ordinary one should do just as well if you ensure that air can reach all around).
Let cool for about 15 minutes, remove the sides and let cool completely.
The cake will shrink and fall a little.
Filling 1:
Meanwhile, drain the cherries into a small pot.
Use about 1/4 of the liquid to dissolve the starch,heat the rest to boiling and stir in the dissolved starch.
The endresult should be a rather thick red`goo'.
Cool for about 5 minutes and add the rum, stir in 1 Tbsp at a time, then add the cherries, stir until well coated and cool completely.
Filling 2 and icing:
Whip the whipping cream with the vanilla until about half stiff, then add the sugar 1 Tbsp at a time and continue to whip until stiff.
Put together the cake as follows:
Remove first layer from springform bottom and put on fancy seving plate.
Cover with cherry filling reserving 9 or 13 cherries for decoration.
Cover with a thin layer of whipped cream.
Cover with layer number 2.
Cover top with a thin layer of whipped cream.
Fill leftover cream into a decoratorbag with a star tip.
Starting on the bottom, pipe a serries of rosettes around the cake.
Pipe another layer of rosettes on top of that one and a third layer.
This should cover the sides of the cake.
Pipe a stripe along the upper rim to cover all cake.
Pipe a small ring in the middle and 8 (for 10 inch cake) or 12 (for 12 inch cake) evenly spaced stars near the rim.
Place a cherry in center and on each star.
Shave chocolate lightly over cake.
Variations:
for celiacs or people who are sensitive to wheat/ gluten.
substitute potatoestarch or rice starch for allpupose flour.
If you would like to make 3 cake layers, use 6 extralarge or seven eggs and add 1 Tbsp each of flour and cocoa.
The layers will shrink a little less.
Seperate the filling layers to first cherries, then whipped cream then top layer of cake.
You may need a little more whipped cream to finish the cake as described.