Chocolate-Vanilla Cake with Cherries

In German this cake is called "Donauwellen", for which there just isn't a good translation. But despite the admittedly not very inspired title, I strongly recommend you try this. It takes a bit of patience to make, but if someone as notoriously impatient as me can do this, so can you. It consists of two layers of cake, filled with cherries and covered with buttercream and some dark chocolate coating. Yum!

Ingredients: 

1 large glass of cherries
530gr soft butter (my arteries are clogging up just writing this, but it's sooooo good!)
200gr sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
5 eggs
350gr flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
500ml milk
2 tablespoons of cocoa powder
300gr chocolate coating (dark)
1 pack of vanilla custard powder (for 500ml milk)


Preparation: 

1. Bring 450ml of milk to the boil in a small saucepan. Remove from the heat and stir in the custard powder, mixing well. Cover the top of the custard with some clingfilm and set aside to cool.

2. In a large bowl, mix 250gr of butter with 200gr sugar and the vanilla extract until smooth. Add the eggs, one at a time. Mix the flour and the baking powder in a bowl and add slowly to the butter-egg-sugar mixture. Whisk in the remainder of the milk and spread half of the dough on a baking tray (at least 2cm deep) covered with some baking paper. Mix the rest of the dough with the cocoa power and spread on top of the first layer. Drain the cherries and spread them evenly across the cake before placing the whole thing in the oven (175°C) for 30 mins. Remove and allow to cool.

3. For the buttercream, whisk 250gr of soft butter until smooth, then add the custard one spoonful at a time. Spread over the cake and place in the oven for at least one hour. 

4. Carefully melt the chocolate with 30gr of butter. Wait 10 mins or so until the mixture has cooled off slightly, then spread over the cake. Return to the fridge for another hour until the chocolate has set. 

I usually keep this cake in the fridge but recommend that you take it out half an hour before you want to eat it, to give it some time to warm up.


Recipe adapted from: www.lecker.de