Boozy Cheesy Cherry Cake

Many weeks ago - in January - one of our good friends, Elison, celebrated her birthday and we invited her over for dinner together with another good friend, Lynn. I've mentioned before that Eli is a great cook who also has very high standards so I'm always a bit nervous when baking a cake for her - especially her birthday cake!

The Lovely Wife suggested that I do something different instead of always going down the route of chocolate. I considered making her my Chocolate Trifle that she adores but then decided to try and dazzle her with something new.






She likes fruity cakes and she likes chocolate as well. She also likes a bit of booze in her desserts so I decided on a Boozy Cheesy Cherry Cake. You get the idea, some cream cheese, some cherries and some booze paired together with a chocolate sponge. I also added in some shaved chocolate for a bit of a crunch.

I used the recipe for a Chocolate Genoise from Le Cordon Bleu Home Collection-Chocolate and this is what I did.

Ingredients
Chocolate Genoise REcipe
4 Eggs
100g Caster Sugar
80g Plain flour
2 Tbsp Cocoa Powder
20g Butter, melted

1 Can Black Cherries
5 tsp Cherry Syrup from can
50ml Rum
125g Cream Cheese
400ml Whipping Cream
3 Tbsp Icing Sugar
100g bar of dark chocolate, chopped
Cocoa for dusting
Method
To make the sponge: preheat the oven to 180C. Butter and flour a 8 inch springform pan. Half fill a saucepan with water and bring to the boil. Remove from heat. Put the eggs and sugar into a large heatproof bowl and place over the saucepan making sure it is not touching the water. Using electric beaters, whisk for 5-10 minutes until the mixture is thick and light, has doubled in volume and leaves a trail as it falls from the beaters. The temperature of the mixture should never be hot, only warm. Remove the bowl from the pan of water and continue to beat until cold. Sift the flour and cocoa together and carefully fold into the whisked mixture with a large metal spoon until just combined. Stop folding as soon as flour and cocoa are combined or mixture will lose its volume. Gently but quickly fold in the warm butter. Pour the mixture into the tin and gently smooth the top with the back of the spoon. Bake on the middle shelf of oven for about 25-30 minutes or until springy and shrinking from the sides of the tin. Turn out onto a wire rack to cool. Clean the cake tin so it is ready to use later.

For cheese mix: Whip cream with icing sugar till stiff. Beat the cheese till soft then combine with the cream till smooth. Set aside.

Once cake is cool, cut into two halves. Place first half into bottom of cake tin. Mix together syrup from tin with rum. Soak the cake with half the rum/syrup mixture. Place a layer of cherries over the cake then cover with a little of the cream mixture. Add on the chopped chocolate and then cover with another thin layer of cream. Cover with the next half of cake and then cover with cream. Dust top of cake with cocoa and arrange some cherries on top.

The cake turned out really well. It was a little bit like a mix between a Black Forest and a Tiramisu but without the coffee flavour. The cheesy cream was lightly flavoured and went very well with the cherries.




The Birthday Girl, Elison gave it the thumbs up as did Lynn as well as the kids and The Lovely Wife. I must say I was rather pleased with how the cake turned out both in terms of looks as well as taste. So one more successful original cake recipe to add to my list!