Chocolate and sour cherry jelly cake

Black forest adjacent

I can’t imagine July without chocolate and cherries in some combination, be it a tart or a classic Black Forest cake. This year my husband requested something like Black Forest cake, but with more cherries and less cream. Challenge accepted!

Inspired by

Nicola Lamb

’s elegant jelly and custard cake and Natalie Paull’s “The Notorious BFC (Black Forest Cake) from her cookbook Beatrix Bakes, I wanted to include a cherry-loaded layer of jelly into my cake. Made with the juices from lightly simmered sour cherries augmented by additional pure cherry juice, its gently wobbly texture and brightness is the perfect foil for soft chocolate cake and cream.

A slightly geeky element in this cake is a cherry pit syrup, a Bravetart recipe I’ve used for the past several cherry seasons. It pulls cherry and almond flavor from the plethora of pits after a day of cherry processing, and I love the idea of using as much of the fruit as possible.¹ However, if you’re using pre-pitted cherries, I would just replace this with regular simple syrup or even plain cherry juice, spiked with a little kirsch if you’d like.

This cake has several components, but you can space them out over several days if you’d like. I made it over two days, breaking up the work as follows:

Day 1 morning: Pit cherries (reserve fruit in fridge for jelly), start cherry pit syrup, make pastry cream, make chocolate chiffon cake

Day 1 afternoon: Make cherry jelly, cut cake layers, strain cherry pit syrup, finish creme legere, assemble cake and chill overnight

Day 1 evening: Make whipped milk chocolate ganache base (needs to chill overnight before whipping)

Day 2: Whip milk chocolate ganache, unmold cake, decorate, eat!

Cherries, elsewhere:

• Brown butter cherry blondies

• Black forest cake

• Chocolate cherry tart

• Sour cherry lime popsicles

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Chocolate and sour cherry jelly cake

Makes one 8” square cake