Hello

To start things off, I shall post a recipe that was made not-so-long ago... Christmas! We don't celebrate Christmas the same way as Westerners. Sure we eat turkey (those store bought frozen ones *ahem* lazy), and we do have a Christmas tree, but we don't give presents nor have friends or family come over for a big Christmas Day lunch. But this year, I did make dessert for our Christmas dinner. This dessert is a wonderful twist on the -Aussie- Chocolate Ripple Cake.

For those of you who are not familiar with Chocolate Ripple Cakes, they are possibly the easiest 'cakes' to make. Instead of -cake- use plain chocolate buiscuits. Whip some cream with sugar and vanilla and sandwich the cream between the chocolate biscuits, and continuing to make a log. Then cover it with the rest of the cream and refridgerate. The biscuits will absorb the moisture from the cream and become cake-like.

This time though, instead of just cream covering the chocolate biscuits, a portion of the cream was mixed with chopped cherries and cocoa. Then the whole ensemble was topped with chocolate curls and remaining cherries.

Now, what do you get when you cross chocolate, cherries and cream? Black Forest Cake! So this year for Christmas, I made Black Forest Ripple Cake, acquired from Taste.com.au - it's a wonderful site which compiles recipes from Australia's food magazines.

I added some chocolate leaves and shaved some chocolate to represent leaf litter, to add to the whole 'forest' theme. Don't do what I did, and soak the biscuits in the liquid from the canned cherries. Yeah, it didn't look very nice when brownish reddish coloured liquid started seeping out the bottom.

All in all, it was very delicious. I love black forest cakes, and this is ok. Personally I wouldn't mind making traditional black forest cake as opposed to this, but it's perfect for those who want a simple yet amazing dessert.

Recipe obtained from here.