Butter Cake
Cream the butter and sugar. Add eggs one by one and fold in flour and baking powder. Pour into a greased baking tin & bake at 180°C for 55 minutes.

Chocolate Cake
Melt chocolate and butter together, then beat the eggs and sugar together and fold the cool chocolate mix through. Sift the flour and fold into the chocolate mix.
Pour into a greased baking tin and bake at 180°C for 1 hour.

Chocolate Mousse
Beat the egg yolks with the sugar for 5 minutes, or until stiff. A food mixer with a paddle attachment can be used for this.

Gently warm the milk in a small pan. Remove it from the heat and stir in the beaten egg yolks. Return to a medium heat and cook for a further 2-3 minutes, stirring frequently. Use a digital probe to monitor when the temperature of the mixture reaches 80°C and remove from the heat.

Finely chop the chocolate and place it in a medium sized bowl. Pour the warm milk and the eggs over the chocolate and stir until the chocolate has melted. Add the salt and leave to cool.

Whip the cream until soft peaks form. Fold the cream into the cooled chocolate mixture.

Chocolate Ganache
(Martin uses the mousse recipe from the Heston Blumenthal book but any basic mousse recipe is fine to use.)
Gently heat the cream, glucose syrup and salt. Break the chocolate into a bowl then stir in the warm cream. When the chocolate has melted entirely, add the butter and stir until that too has melted. Spoon the mixture into a piping bag and place it in the fridge for at least an hour to stiffen.

Cherries
Drain a jar of whole sour cherries (morello cherries), keeping the juice in a saucepan. Add a vanilla bean and sugar and reduce to a syrup.

To Build Your Black Forest Cake
Start with a layer of butter cake (one half of the butter cake cut across the diameter)
Splash cake with Kirsch
Pipe a layer of mouse around the outside of the cake (you are building a wall to keep in the cherries)
Add the cherries within the confines of your ‘mousse wall’
A layer of chocolate cake
A layer of cream
Another layer of butter cake
Pipe on another layer of the Mousse Wall and then add cherries
Another layer of chocolate cake
Another splash of Kirsch
Then another layer of cream
Another layer of butter cake
Topped with another layer of mousse (but this time fill the mousse over all the cake – no wall and no cherries)
Final layer of chocolate cake
Pour ganache over the top
Add topping of chocolate shards and whole cherries (preferable fresh ones that have been soaked in kirsch for 1 week)

Let set and settle for 3-6 hours.