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Enjoy this curated selection of theme-related dances for celebrations and holidays, or find a dance associated with a special calendar day, or EVEN your own birthday!
Mar 28
Black Forest Cake Day
Putting the Cherry on the Cake
Other Scottish Country Dances for this Day
Today's Musings, History & Folklore
"Pretty, pretty please with a cherry on top!"
This 3-couple strathspey in a 4-couple set offers ample opportunity to practice your covering—a common teaching point! Devised by Mervyn Short in memory of Ann Dix, it honors her oft-repeated encouragement to dancers: “Putting the cherry on the cake,” those final touches of excellence and elegance. Indeed, this dance provides plenty of chances to refine that very skill Ann loved to emphasize.
With reels, poussettes, turns, and a final allemande, you have your pick of figures in which to “put the cherry on top”!
And if all this talk of cherries has you thinking of something sweet, you’re not alone. Warm, inviting bakeries are a perfect refuge on cool spring days—and an excellent excuse to peruse the cake counter. One of the most famous cherry-topped desserts even has its own day today: Black Forest Cake, the indulgent German Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte, rich with chocolate and cherries. Get thee to a bakery—or better yet, make your own!
Of course, if you’re out of Kirschwasser or simply can’t locate your cherry pitter today, there are plenty of other classic cherry desserts to tempt you.
British Cherry Cake (with cherries baked right through the sponge), Cherries Jubilee (with cherries flambéed to dramatic effect), and even the delightfully over-the-top Cherpumple—a whimsical creation in which pies are baked inside cakes and stacked together. In a Cherpumple, apple pie nestles in spice cake, pumpkin in yellow cake, and cherry in white cake.
And of course, after all that indulgence, what better way to celebrate than by taking to the floor—where a fine strathspey lets you carry that sweetness straight into your dancing! 🕺 💃 🍰 🍰 🍰 ❤️ ❤️ ❤️
Putting the Cherry on the Cake
March 28th is Black Forest Cake Day, named for German dessert Schwarzwalder Kirschtorte, meaning “Black Forest Cherry Torte”.
Most often, the Black Forest cake is made of several layers of chocolate cake with whipped cream and cherries between each layer. The cake is then decorated with whipped cream, maraschino cherries and chocolate shavings.
But in traditional recipes, sour Morello cherries are used between the layers, and Kirschwasser (a clear fruit liquor distilled from tart Morello cherries) is added to the whipped cream, not the cake mass. Unlike other cakes flavoured with alcoholic drinks which are then baked, this cake retains much of its alcoholic zing!
The cake is actually named after the specialty liquor (Schwarzwalder Kirschwasser) of the region of the Black Forest (Schwarzwald) mountain range in southwestern Germany. Because morellos were originally grown in the Black Forest regions of Germany, kirschwasser is believed to have originated there. A café in Bad Godesberg (part of the former (West) German capital, Bonn or another café in Tübingen (south of Stuttgart) are both potentially the originators of this dessert, believed to have been created in the late 1920s. Black Forest cake only rose to its current popularity as the most iconic German cake after WWII.
In Germany Kirschwasser is a mandatory ingredient, otherwise, the cake can not legally be sold under the Schwarzwalder Kirschtorte name.
The cherries are fermented complete with their stones. Unlike cherry liqueurs and other “cherry brandies”, kirschwasser is not sweet.
The best kirschwassers have subtle flavors of cherry and a slight bitter-almond taste that derives from the stones.
For an authentic traditional recipe containing all sorts of delicious ingredients, click the Morello cherries!
Click the dance cribs or description below to link to a printable version of the dance!
