My friend Katie is celebrating her 30-mumbles birthday and her absolute favorite cake is a black forest cake.

Personal confession: I am indifferent towards black forest cake. I am, at best, lukewarm towards black forest cake, which I suppose is better than my violently-in-opposition-of feelings towards German chocolate cake and hummingbird cake. If I am being paid to create a cake for someone, I will readily put such opinions aside and do exactly what they’ve requested. But since I was baking this cake out of the goodness of my admittedly cold, unfeeling heart, I decided that it was perfectly fine to be just a little selfish. So here is black forest cake-ish: all the basic elements of black forest cake, but done how I would like it.