Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte

The story

Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte, Black Forest cherry cake, is chocolate sponge layered with sour cherries, whipped cream and Kirschwasser, the clear cherry brandy of the Black Forest. Its origin is disputed. The best-known claim names Josef Keller, a young confectioner from Riedlingen in Swabia, who is said to have created it in 1915 at Café Ahrend in Bad Godesberg. He later took the recipe to his own café in Radolfzell on Lake Constance, and the town museum keeps it. Keller's cake had only one layer, so the Black Forest tourism board calls it a likely precursor. A Tübingen city archivist credits Erwin Hildenbrand, who baked the cake in a Tübingen café in 1930, though that claim rests on secondhand memories. Keller himself said similar cherry-and-cream cakes were made in the Black Forest in good cherry years, and farm women in the southern Black Forest did combine cherries, fresh cream and Kirschwasser in a dessert called Schwarzwälder Crème. The cake spread across Germany from the 1930s. Schwarzwälder Kirsch, the region's cherry brandy, carries a legally protected name. Bake the sponge a day ahead and assemble the cake on the morning of your dinner, so the cream has time to set.