For Christmas I wanted to make a dessert. A quick look around my mom’s pantry and I found a couple jars of sour cherries; perfect for a black forest cake. I went off and found a decent recipe at allrecipes.com and wet about putting the cake together. I was actually amazed at how simple it was to make.

Despite how easy it was a made a few mistakes. Like after I made the cherry filling, and started to put the cake together, I didn’t cool the filling long enough and put it on the whip cream only to have the cream start to melt. That was bad. I had to scrape off all the cream and filling and cool things down a bit longer.

My next mistake was having to freeze the cake rather than put it in the fridge. We had no room in the fridge so we put it outside to cool. This didn’t allow for the cream and cherries to mix with the cake layers as much as they should have. Finally my last mistake was pointed out to me by our Bavarian neighbor, and was more of a mistake with the recipe. Traditional Black forest cake is made with Schwarzwaelder Kirschwasser, or if you don’t have access to that, needs at least some rum added to it. I had no booze, and the cake seemed to lack that little bit of zing alcohol seems to add to a dessert.

All in all I am happy with how the cake turned out for a first attempt. Next time though I expect perfection and will be sure to make a few modifications to my recipe.