having bought a jar of griottes cherries recently, i have been waiting for an opportunity to make this, hidemi sugino's beautiful rendition of the forêt noire (black forest). i decided to do it for my birthday, which fell on the 7th. whenever it comes to making cakes for the extended family, i'll end up choosing chocolate since this is the most readily accepted one and i don't hv to worry whether they'll find matcha too weird or berries too tart if i were to make those flavors. everyone loves chocolate. having macaron orders back-to-back during my birthday week also meant there was just this much time to churn out a cake and this recipe is really one of the easier ones from sugino's book.


the griottes i bought. they're so yum i could just eat them straight from the jar. griottes are morello cherries soaked in kirsch and apparently, the brand griottines is said to be the best (and really expensive too) but the ones i got are not bad and rather cheap as well! a 1L jar for just S$40. as you can see, i used up so much syrup to soak the sponge.


cake is really good, just not a big fan of the choc joconde. i've made this sponge like 3 times now and all attempts turned out dry. not sure what i did wrong or if its supposed to be like this but i thought the chantilly was awesome and could be mistaken for a choc mousse made using the pâte à bombe method. i made this under 2 hrs so this must be one of the easiest entremets to attempt. the only time consuming part was lining the whole surface with griottes one by one coz there must be at least 60-70 of them. i can't imagine making this in its original size!


recipe source : le goût authentique retrouvé by hidemi sugino