Since I haven’t fixed the broken ‘Spaghetti Blogonaise’, I’ll put this recipe in here for now. (Actually, now I think of it, I should fix this one too!)

Anyway, back to food porn.  Yesterday I made Black Forest Lamingtons, an invention born out of my need to use up some of the duplicates in the pantry (cherries, coconut and condensed milk. If I could have worked out how to add polenta I’d be singing, but sadly need to reserve that for another cake).

The cake recipe I used was one I found randomly on the Nestle India website, which uses condensed milk instead of eggs and sugar, and while it turned out really nice any chocolate buttercake recipe will do.  Just before pouring it into the tin, stir through one well drained and chopped/torn can of cherries. As a further digression, I actually forgot the cherries until I had put it in the oven and turned around to see them still there on the bench. So, poking them into the mix works also.

After the cake had cooled, I cut it into smallish cubes and put it in the freezer for half an hour.  I then sliced each cube in half horizontally and sandwiched them with whipped cream. Then back into the freezer.

I mixed the reserved syrup from the cherries with a little water and some sugar and brought it up to the boil, and stirred through some cornflour (first dissolved in a little more water).  I thickened it a little; not as thick as you would for ‘proper’ black forest cake as it needs to soak into the cake a little. I also added a little vanilla and a splash of chocolate liqueur.

Then just finished them as per normal lamingtons. Dip in the syrup and toss in coconut. Freezing them a little means they don’t fall apart as they would when fresh.

I was a bit disappointed with them last night, but this morning the syrup had soaked into them and they were pretty good. Next time, I will either add less water to the cherry mix or add some kirsch to it, as the cherry flavour wasn’t as prominent as I would like.