Black Forest cake - cherries soaked too long?

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avenison

Assistant Cook
Joined
Jun 24, 2011
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4
Hi everyone, I'm baking a black forest cake for a birthday, and I was hoping for some input - specifically with regards to the cherries. I'm doing it the "traditional" way, i.e. soaking fresh cherries in kirschwasser overnight. Problem being, the party date was changed. The cherries will have been drowned in the kirsch for 4 days by the time we eat them... I just tried a piece of one and it's fairly strong, but not sweet at all and doesn't taste much like a cherry anymore.

Should I just eat these and buy another bag of them to soak overnight? Or will the rest of the ingredients balance this out? Thanks for any tips!
 
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I would get new cherries and start again. Reason being, if these are strong after just 24 hours, they may be unbearable after 4 days. You want the cherries to add flavor with a hint of sweetness, not knock your guests off their feet - save the other spirits for that. ;)
 
Well, I couldn't find any more fresh ones, but I do have a bottle of sour cherries I could mix with the (no-longer-all-that-)sweet cherries. I ate another half of one, and it seemed better than the first... I may have just gotten an overripe piece the first time. I will try again (and again, if necessary :LOL: ) shortly, and figure out what to do from there. Thanks for the recommendation!

@Josie1945, thanks!
 
Welcome to DC! I hope you stick around--there are a lot of talented, caring folks that are part of this community.

We always used sour cherries when we made this in Germany and only used a small amount of Kirsch. I've made it with the bottled/canned sour cherries. And there was never any left...
 
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We don't have local cherries this far north, so I was torn about which to use. Bottled sour cherries are easy to get, but most of the the "traditional" recipes which involved soaking them called for either the Sweet or Bing varieties. In the end, fresh won over preserved, and the birthday girl's tastes favour sweet over sour.

At any rate, I drained them last night and then brushed the kirsch onto the cakes, hopefully this was not a bad move. I also realized that I only chopped up 3/4 of the bag of cherries, so I'm going to prepare the rest of them and replace an equal amount of the soaked ones. Hopefully this will even things out a bit! :cool:
 
Yes, those are indeed sour. Mixing in more fresh cherries worked great, but I don't think I would bother next time, the ones soaked in kirsch were fine. The difference in texture between them and the fresh ones was a bit odd though. Overall everyone said they really liked it, although I'd only give it a 6/10, but then I suppose the baker is more critical of their results... :)
 
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