American Baker in Germany

To celebrate the Tag der deutschen Einheit (German reunification day, basically German independence day, celebrated October 3rd), we are making a traditional German recipe. This recipe comes from the Black Forest in southern Germany. To make a Black Forest Cherry Cake, you need two (or more) thin layers of chocolate cake. I used my vegan chocolate cake. You also need a lot of whipped cream. I whipped a liter, but used around 3/4 of it. I also used a package of cream stabilizer (Sahnesteif, consisting of corn starch) and powdered sugar to stabilize the whipped cream. I used canned cherries, drained. I'm showing a small bottle of Black Forest Cherry Water (Schwarzwälder Kirschwasser), but we didn't use it since this cake will also be eaten by my small children. If you want to use it, it is typically used by soaking the cherries in the schnapps and some people brush it on the cake layers and let it soak in. We also used shaved chocolate to decorate the sides. I bought it because...

This was a cake I made for a baby shower for a friend of mine. We found out she was having a boy, so blue was the main theme. And she had been craving fruit through the pregnancy. Her favorite fruits? Raspberries and cherries. I also happened to know this expectant mother doesn't care for fondant. So I decided not to cover the cake with fondant. But I could make some fondant decorations. I decided to make vanilla cake in my 10-inch square pans and fill my sphere pan about halfway full with batter and leveled them all. To make them taste like cherries, I made cherry syrup by boiling about 1/4 cup of cherry jam with 1/2 cup of water and painting it onto the cake with a brush.  Then I made a batch of Swiss meringue buttercream and flavored it with cherry jam again. It turns out the flavor really didn't come through at all. So I added about a teaspoon of strawberry flavoring to it and it just had a light, fruity aftertaste, but didn't taste strongly of any one fruit. The...