Category: cherries

Categories
cherries chocolate jam

black forest doughnuts

Dark chocolate and cherry might be my favourite combination. That dark bitterness and the punch of sweet-sour cherry is just magic. So why not stick it in a doughnut?!

One of the things that gets overlooked when working with chocolate is the importance of seasoning it. A little salt with chocolate improves it immensely, spiking the flavour and lifting it. Salt cuts the sweetness, providing contrast to the sweetness that’s irresistible.

Maldon Salt sent me some of their new salt mills, and this seemed like the perfect excuse to use them. I use Maldon Salt in everything, it’s always been my favourite salt. I grin when I see it on TV shows from all over the world.

Available from Morrisons stores nationwide as well as Tesco, Ocado and other retailers. RRP from £3.50 / 55g.

But on with the recipe. I used a jam / pastry syringe for this recipe, which is inexpensive but a bit of a single-use gadget, so you can always poke jam in with a spoon though it’s a little tricky.

Here’s my black forest trifle if you fancy something a little quicker.

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black forest doughnuts

Course Dessert
Servings 24 doughnuts
Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

  • 10 g yeast
  • 300 g strong flour
  • 30 g sugar plus a couple of tablespoons for sprinkling
  • 5 g Maldon sea salt plus more for sprinkling
  • 40 g butter softened
  • 75 g milk at room temperature
  • 2 eggs
  • 200 g black cherry jam
  • 150 g dark chocolate

Instructions

  • For best results use a stand mixer. It's perfectly possible to do by hand but things are easier and fluffier with a machine. Combine the yeast, flour, sugar and salt, then stir in the milk. When combined, work in the butter a chunk at a time. Knead thoroughly or beat for a further 3 - 5 minutes.
  • Leave the dough to rise, covered, for an hour.
  • Get a large baking tray out to hold the dough balls. Dust it with a thin layer of flour. Portion the dough into even golf-ball sized pieces. For best results, use a very sharp, thin knife and weigh the dough balls. It should make around 24. When you have your balls ready cover loosely and leave to prove for a further hour.
  • Heat oil for frying to 175C. When ready, gently lower the dough balls into the hot oil and cook for about 2 minutes on each side, or until golden brown. Only cook about 3-4 at a time to avoid overcrowding the pan. Transfer to kitchen paper to drain while you finish the batch. Roll on a plate of sugar to coat.
  • For the filling, heat the jam gently in a saucepan and add a tablespoon of water to loosen it. Use a jam syringe to inject jam into the centre of the dough balls.
  • Put a pan of water on the hob on a gentle simmer and place a bowl on top. Break the chocolate into it and sprinkle salt into it. When melted, turn off the heat. Dip the doughnuts one by one into the chocolate to give them a little chocolate hat. Best eaten same day.
Categories
cherries chocolate cream food jam

black forest trifle

When making this, I had to search my blog in case I’d made something like this before. I have a severe weakness for ‘black forest’-flavoured things and I appear to have 4 separate choc-cherry desserts in my collection!

This one has been back and forth with In Search of Heston and me, we’ve noticed how obsessed Heston Blumenthal is with both Black Forest things. and trifle. There was one made for Waitrose but to be honest it sounded weird (lime?). This version is not likely one that Heston would make – not quite enough genius touches – but a tribute nonetheless. A Heston version would no doubt spherify intense cherry compote into cherry shapes and impale them with a stick of dark chocolate for the stem. This version is dead easy to do, kid-friendly (if you skip the Kirsch) and great fun to assemble.

I also hadn’t planned on sticking a biscuit in the top, but a friend had brought these smashing things from Border and they were tremendous. I could’ve skipped making this and just eaten the biscuits instead, they were that good.

Black forest trifle (serves 4):

1 chocolate swiss roll

1 jar black cherry jam

12 cherries

Kirsch (a couple of tablespoons I guess)

500g chocolate custard

1 meringue nest

Squirty cream

Dark chocolate (for grating)

  1. Put swiss roll slices at the bottom of your trifle bowl or individual serving dishes. Douse with Kirsch. Slather the swiss roll with jam.
  2. Halve nine of the cherries and stone them. Bury the cherries in the jam. Steep the remaining 4 cherries in a little Kirsch until time to serve.
  3. Top the jammy cherries with chocolate custard and refrigerate until serving. Top with crumbled meringue nest, squirty cream, a grating of chocolate and a final boozy whole cherry.
Categories
cake cherries chocolate food

black forest layer cake

If there’s a dessert I’m guaranteed to go giddy for, it’s Black Forest Gateau. The combination of cherry, chocolate and cream is just perfect. And so if I see an opportunity to reinvent it, I’m there.

I wanted to reuse one of my favourite recipes of this year was Russian honey cake. It’s such an enjoyable technique I knew it had legs. And this black forest version proves it: the ‘cake’ is quite biscuity, but if you can stand to leave it in the fridge for a couple of nights, you will have a dense, squidgy and super moreish cake. So good.

Black forest cake (makes a cake about 20cm x 10cm):

For the dough:

3 large eggs

A big pinch of vanilla salt

220g caster sugar

70g butter

70g black cherry jam (I like Tiptree)

2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda

350g flour

200g cocoa

For the cream:

700ml double cream

300ml mascarpone

180g caster sugar

To finish:

The rest of the jar of black cherry jam

Dark chocolate (I found Co-op did a marvellous one with cranberries in that was perfect)

  1. Preheat the oven to 170°C. Line a large baking tray with greaseproof paper, then give that a little extra grease. Melt together the butter and jam until fluid and then turn off the heat.
  2. Whisk together the eggs, salt and sugar until pale and fluffy. Gradually whisk in the cherry jam butter a trickle at a time, and then sift in the bicarb, cocoa and flour. Stir until combined to a dough – this will be quite firm, more like a biscuit dough than a cake batter. Using wet hands press this mixture in to your baking tray, as thin as you can. Bake for around 8 – 10 mins, until the it is golden on top and a skewer inserted comes out clean. Peel off the paper and leave to cool.
  3. While it cools make the cream. Whip the cream and sugar until soft but still a touch runny, then incorporate the mascarpone and keep beating until it just holds its shape.
  4. When cool, slice the cake into long thirds. Then proceed to cut in half horizontally, by placing your hand on top and slicing across with your sharpest bread knife. You want a thickness of about 5mm.
  5. Slather one side of the cake slices with jam, and the other with cream. Sandwich together to make a giddy tower. Be generous with the cream as it is going to get absorbed by the sponge. Smooth some more cream over the top and sides of the cake and leave to set in the fridge for about 12 hours.
  6. Before serving grate over some dark chocolate.
Categories
cherries chicken mascarpone mushroom pie

30 minute chicken pie, smashed carrots and mascarpone cherries

At the risk of sounding like a raging sycophant, I haven’t yet come across a Jamie 30 Minute Meal that isn’t a) extremely doable in the time, and b) darn tasty to boot. But they just are!

This chicken pie is no exception. A rich and tasty pie that ticks all the “chicken pie please” boxes. There’s supposed to be peas & lettuce simmered in stock with this too, but the carrots were enough for me.

Dessert was a rapid and shameless quick switcheroo from a different 30 minute meal, but just what I fancied. Thick, creamy and sweet too.

30 minute chicken pie, smashed carrots and mascarpone cherries (serves 2):

For the pie:

2 skinless chicken breasts, sliced into 1 cm pieces

1 red onion, peeled

7 – 8 chestnut mushrooms

1 tablespoon flour

1 teaspoon English mustard

1 tablespoon creme fraiche

200ml chicken stock

A few sprigs of thyme, leaves picked

½ nutmeg

1 sheet of pre-rolled puff pastry

1 egg

For the smash:

4 – 5 carrots

Handful of parsley, roughly chopped

For the mascarpone cherries:

½ tin cherries

150g tub mascarpone

A little milk

1 heaped teaspoon icing sugar

Some shortbread biscuits

  1. Get the oven on 200°C, the kettle full and boiling, a big frying pan on a low heat, a large lidded saucepan on a low heat and chuck the thick slicer disc in the food processor.
  2. Add a little oil and butter to the frying pan, add the chicken and fry for a couple of minutes. Throw the mushrooms and onion into the food processor, slice and add to the pan. Stir in the flour, work it around the pan then add the mustard, creme fraiche, stock, thyme and nutmeg. Leave to simmer.
  3. Slice the carrots in the food processor and add to the saucepan. Cover with water from the kettle and bring up the heat – simmer for 15 minutes until tender.
  4. Check the chicken mix for seasoning, then tip into a baking dish. Cover with a sheet of puff pastry and slice liberally with a knife, then brush over the beaten egg. Pop in the oven for 15 minutes or until golden and puffed up.
  5. For the dessert, crumble some biscuits in the bottom of a serving bowl. Mix the mascarpone with some milk to slacken to a creamy paste, then stir in the sugar. Plop this on top of the biscuit and dot with cherries, tipping on a little of the tin juice with it. Put to one side until dinner’s done.
  6. Back at the carrots, if they’re tender drain, season, add a splash of oil and seasoning, then stir through the parsley. Get the pie out of the oven and start eating!
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