24/08/2025
👩🏻🍳A story of Friedas Recipes👩🏻🍳
Friedas daughter in law has kindly shared the history of her recipes which have a lovely story.
Thank you so much to Orla for sharing!
“ I wanted to share Friedas (a.k.a. Mausie) favourite specialty from when she first came to Ireland in the 1950s!
She introduced it to all her new friends in the South of Dublin who loved to visit her regularly. She would also have it for Bridge games at home, also for Poker nights, afternoon coffee with pals etc.
She is a great baker, and her recipes were very much in demand, although we know she wouldn’t part with her recipes for any money! She fell out with a friend once over her passing on the recipe to other ladies in their group of friends! Such was how Frieda protected her secret recipes!
This is one of her favourite bakes but no her exact recipe as this is not available to us sadly. This is one of the most authentic version today thought of her adored Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte which contained the fabulousKirsche which we might all have heard about…
None of them are written by the hand of Frieda herself but it is close to how she made her Black Forest Gateau (now called Cake!).
I got advice from her son who
1) Highlighted the sheer length of time it took to make
2) The necessary soaked cherries in Kirsch
3) The name was always Gateau here and not cake!
The original Black Forest Cake had no pastry base (old classic that no-one does much anymore). This divine, luscious cake recipe below is more modern.
Credit to ‘My German Recipes’ online for below. Hope this recipe does Frieda’s own recipe justice!
Black Forest Gateau (as Frieda called it) has three layers of chocolate, drenched with Kirschwasser, a Cherry Schnapps. Between the cake layers, there's a layer of cherries and a layer of whipping cream. The entire cake is covered in whipping cream and decorated with chocolate and red cherries on top.
For those wondering, Kirschwasser is made from fermented cherries and typically has 40% alcohol. The word comes from the German "Kirsche," meaning cherry, and "Wasser," meaning water.
If you prefer to make this cake without alcohol, you can substitute the Kirschwasser with Cherry juice.
Frieda's advice for baking this cake was always to bake it in the afternoon the day before you need it. Assemble it to the point where it's not yet decorated, leave a cake ring around it, and cover it with a large pot lid or similar. The next day, finish the cake with the decoration and serve it. It is seriously delicious!
Other than baking Frieda was the first in Ireland to make German Coleslaw and opened her own mini-factory in the basement of her house in Blackrock in the late '60's. She was the first to supply Dunnes!”
Evergreen Care Nursing Homes Ireland
