Earlier this month, I made a birthday cake for my father-in-law. He said he liked chocolate cake and since he is of German descent, I thought I’d make a Black Forest cake. However, due to our recent move to Minnesota and the current job climate, I had to borrow someone’s kitchen and their equipment. Therefore, I created this simple recipe for a Black Forest Sheet Cake.
I wasn’t sure how it would turn out, but my research suggested that others had done something similar to what I had in mind. The result was really quite good and the folks celebrating around the table loved it. In fact, everyone had seconds! Give it a try. It is easy to make and quite tasty.

Black Forest Sheet Cake
Equipment
- Electric Mixer
- 13" x 9" cake pan
Ingredients
- 1 box Triple chocolate cake mix
- water, as stated on the box
- oil, as stated on the box
- eggs, as stated on the box
- 2 cans cherry pie filling
- 2 cups heavy whipping cream
- 1½ teaspoon vanilla
- 1 jar marichino cherries, drained
Instructions
- Preheat oven to temporature recommended on the cake mix box.
- Follow instructions on the cake mix box to make the cake.
- Remove cake from the oven. Using the handle end of a wooden spoon, poke holes at regular intervals in the cake.
- In a microwave safe bowl, pour both cans of cherry pie mix in. Warm in microwave until the gel in liquid, approximately 2 to 5 minutes. Immediately pour on top of warm cake. Use wooden spoon to spread cherries around evenly and encourage the liquid to seep into the holes you poked.
- Let cool completely, approximately 2 to 3 hours.
- In a large bowl, whip the whipping cream until soft peaks form. Add vanilla. Continue whipping until stiff peaks form.
- Spread on top of cooled cake.
- Drain maraschino cherries. Decorate the top of the cake with three rows of five cherries. The cherries will be at the center of each slice. Refrigerate until ready to serve. Refrigerate left overs -- if you ahve any!
You can easily turn this Black Forest Sheet Cake into a variety of other cakes of your own. Here are some suggestions for different toppings and combinations.
- I used Betty Crocker Super Moist Cake Mix, Triple Chocolate Fudge cake mix, but you could use any brand or variety of cake mix. Devil’s food or even an ordinary chocolate cake could work well.
- You don’t have to start from a cake mix, you could make a chocolate cake from scratch.
- Try a different combination of cake mix and pie filling. Here are some suggestions:
- Yellow cake with apple pie filling.
- White cake with peach pie filling.
- Red velvet cake with raspberry pie filling.
- Lemon cake with lemon pie filling.
- Strawberry cake mix with key lime pie filling.
- Carrot cake mix with cheese cake pie filling.
- Try different toppings. You could easily use Cool Whip or Dream Whip instead of whipped cream. You could layer on pudding to make it extra-moist. If you’re using apple pie filling, why not try a streusel topping?
- Use chocolate covered cherries instead of maraschino cherries for decoration.
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