A birthday cake

It was Fiona's birthday yesterday, so I said that I'd bake her a birthday cake this weekend. She likes Black Forest gateaux (as, incidentally, do I), but it's one of those faffy cakes that I don't tend to bake because it's so much effort. So what better excuse than her birthday! It's the same recipe as I used last time (waaaaay back in 2009!), with the only minor changes that I let the mixture down with a splash of milk before adding the egg whites because the batter looked really stiff, and I had to halve the quantities for the cherry gel because I only had one jar of morello cherries. But that's okay, as somewhere along the line, I lost my 20cm cake tin, so had to bake it in a larger, thinner one, which means that this one only has two layers - and I still ended up with leftover cherry gel. I guess having only two cake layers means it's not a proper Black Forest gateau, but then I guess none of my cakes are ever that accurate anyway!

Here it is straight from the oven. Less burnt than last time, but more cracked!

But as expected, once flipped over, it's looking lovely. I think it may have gone a bit dry, but we'll see how it is once it's actually finished.

My word, Black Forest gateau is a lot of work. The end result is really pretty though! The photos don't really do it justice; it turns out that my new phone really does have an appalling camera.

This is one seriously decadent cake. It's as delicious as you'd expect a cake with 800ml of cream to be!