How to Butcher a Black Forest Cake (and still make it taste delicious)

The Black Forest cake in its natural habitat.

The Black Forest Cake wasn’t created in the Black Forest of Germany (obviously, you can’t bake a cake in a forest…) but was named after the cherries that grow there.

The Bollenhut

Now I have been making this cake for YEARS and nobody ever told me that there was a black forest

cake hat. This hat is truly sensational, and combines two of my top 100 favorite things: cherries and hats.

At this point I feel that it is my civic duty as a global citizen to share with you the secrets behind this delicious cake.

Here is the first secret: I cheat.

They don’t sell Kirchwasser at Wal-Mart and I don’t have the patience to bake a chocolate cake from scratch. However they do sell cool whip, cherry pie filling and chocolate cake mix at Wal-Mart, and my short attention span can deal with all of those things!

So without further ado, here is the college kid’s version of a Black Forest Cake:

Make the chocolate cake according to the directions on the box. Put it in two circular pans.

I know what you may be thinking: that is not a circle. I know. I know my shapes and I also know I don’t have enough money to buy circular pans. So I went with rectangles cut in half. Hopefully it’ll taste the same!

Remove it from pan. I have never done such a perfect job. This cake flip is so good it should be on the cover of a magazine. Or win a blogging contest.

Lather some Cool Whip and cherry pie filling on top of that baby.

Now plop the other cake on top and repeat the last step. Feel free to make it fancy.

Wow. That is one not aesthetically pleasing cake. But it tastes good, further proving that it is truly what’s on the inside that counts.

This German tradition that I have so cavalierly butchered holds its own amongst the desert battle throughout Europe. In my expert opinion (I eat a lot of deserts) the Black Forest cake crushes the cannoli (figuratively and literally, it is a very dense cake), defeats flan and massacres macaroons. Black Forest cake is yet another example of German excellence, throughout not only Europe, but the world.