We are making chocolate cake. This is almost, not quite, but very close to a million-year-old
recipe that Hershey's originally published back in the Stone Age; long time ago. It's
one of the simplest, easiest chocolate cakes that you can put together and it's absolutely
delicious; perfectly moist, right amount of chocolate. It's my oldest kid's favorite.
Here's how we make it: I've got 2 cups of flour, 2 cups of sugar, ¾ cup of cocoa powder.
This is not the fancy Dutch processed; this is just plain old cocoa powder. 1½ baking
soda, 1½ baking powder, and a pinch of salt. We're going to whisk these together. This
is . . . you've got several different kinds of cakes; you can leaven a cake, that's what
makes it rise, when you're leavening. The creaming method, where you cream together
the butter and sugar ahead of time. You can also do it this way, where you've got instead
of butter, you're going to use oil and a dairy product with the eggs. Eggs provide some lift
in there, too. This is an oil cake, as opposed to a butter cake or a sponge cake. I'm pretty
sure the oil cakes . . . and I could be making this up. If I'm making this up, just forget
it. Pretty sure the oil cakes came about in the '40s, they were the chiffons. That's that
this is, this is a variation on that chiffon.
We mixed up our dry ingredients. Over here in our mixer, I've got 2 eggs. Because this
is the oil cake, or chiffon cake, you don't have to worry about incorporating this slowly
into the butter. Turn that on low. I like this one because it is easy. It's a really
hard to mess up; mix, mix, dump it and mix. I've got about 1 cup of milk, and in this
case, I use whole milk. I've done it with skim milk and it's okay, but whole milk tastes
better. Then I've got about a ½ cup of vegetable oil. I heard more and more about olive oil
cakes; I know that that's an Italian tradition. I know there's also certain types of olive
oil that you used to do that, and apparently, they're delicious. I haven't tried it yet,
but I want to. That's just plain old vegetable oil. He's all mixing up together over here.
Normally, you'd put in the vanilla at the end, I'm going to go and had it at this stage.
I like a big heavy slug of vanilla; I've got about 2 tablespoons. This is real vanilla
extract that I made. It's so easy: Use vanilla beans and vodka and make your own vanilla
extract. There's a video on that if you want to see how. I've got a video on all kinds
of stuff.
Egg and warm milk is yucky. This is all we have to do to this: Dry ingredients go in
here. A lot of cake batters, when you've got them at stage where you're putting together
your wet and dry ingredients, you'll notice that there's some . . . not sure how you call
it, maybe somebody or some texture to the batter, like this is about to look like in
a minute. This right now looks more like a traditional cake batter. See how thick that
is? However in this case, we're adding a cup of very hot water. I'm going to go slow so
it doesn't slosh. This makes an extremely thin batter, but don't freak out, that's what
you're after. I'm going to stop it just to make sure that I don't have any pockets of
dry ingredients. I love this cake when . . . other than the fact that it's Ricky's favorite,
I love this cake when I'm teaching somebody how to start baking, because it's so good
and it just doesn't take any time at all. You actually do have real homemade cake, and
it tastes like homemade cake. It doesn't taste like . . . not really big on the mixes. We
get rid of him.
These guys; we got 2, 9" pans. My oven is on 350°. See how thin that is? You want to
get it is even as you can. If you got a few little spots were something didn't mix up
all the way, don't worry about it much. A lot of the texture on many cakes can be absolutely
ruined by how much you over mix or under mix, so be aware of what kind of cake you're making.
In this case, it doesn't really matter if there are little lumps; it's like pancakes,
they cook out. In a lot of cakes if you've got lumps, you got to be careful not to over
mix it while you're getting rid of your lumps. I'm going into a 350° oven, it's going to
have half an hour, then I'll come back and show you the next step.
We had our little cakes in the oven for about 30 minutes. I think actually one of them took
about 34. Just put the skewer in the middle and if it comes out clean, it's a done. You
need to let it rest in the pans for a good 10 minutes, and that's because of carryover
cooking. The temperature will continue to rise enough to keep cooking the cake for a
little bit. If you let it rest in the pan, the cake has the chance to finish cooking,
If you try to turn it out too soon, it'll fall apart, so give it a minute to rest and
get over itself, and then you turn it out onto the little wire rack. It's funny, last
week I tried to frost a cake before it was cool enough, and it was a major disaster;
split all down the side. Make sure that your cakes are all the way fully cooled down; no
warmth left at all. Something else that's a cool trick if you have time to do it: If
you chill the cakes before you frost them, it's easier to get nice even frosting with
no crumbs. I'm not taking the time on this one. It's just a chocolate cake, just because
I felt like making chocolate cake.
I have chocolate butter cream frosting that I made a minute ago. You can check out that
video if you want to because this is pretty good stuff. This is the easiest, simplest
way to frost a layer cake. I've got him even. These little strips of parchment paper, that
doesn't do a thing except help keep your cake plate clean. I was almost out of parchment
paper so my little strips are a little bit stingy. Cut them little wider and they're
easier to work with. Plop it down in the middle just like that, and just ease it over to the
edges. If you want to and you are into decorating and the extra tools, you can use an offset
spatula for doing your frosting. I love to bake, I love to play with them, but I'm not
a cake decorator. I make homey cakes.
Number 2; let's see if we can get him over here in one piece. It's another thing: If
your cakes are not all the way cool down, you'll have a hard time moving them without
structural integrity issues. One other trick . . . I'm not going to do it this time, but
I'm going to show you how. You don't really need it on this cake. If you have a real tall
cake and it's cool, and you want to make sure that you keep your layers nice and even while
your frosting it, take a wooden skewer; just anchor it, just like that. I don't have to
do that for this one so I'm going to get rid of that. Getting frosting everywhere. Be nice
and generous over the top with the frosting. I went ahead and used most of this batch,
because here's what you going to do: Just like you did between the layers, you're going
to gently work it towards the edges, just like that. This makes it easier to get a nice
solid layer of frosting everywhere, including down the edges without dragging your knife
too much, which can tear the cake. Again, if you have time to chill it, chill it; that
makes it easier as well. Then once you get it to the edges, just work it down the sides.
Can you see what I'm doing? Go nice and slow. You don't want a huge, thick layer frosting.
I think these layer cakes are the best when you've got the perfect balance of cake. See;
got to be careful there. Cake and frosting; not too much of either one, in balance. Sounds
like some weird philosophy; not too much, but enough. Frosting not only is fabulous,
and that's just another excuse for more sugar and butter, but it actually will seal the
cake and help keep it moist. Almost done with this. My allergy's acting up.
This is our basic chocolate cake with chocolate butter cream. None of it is hard, none of
it is difficult. [inaudible: 10:21] it's good. Removing our strips. He's going in the fridge
to chill soon. As he gets nice and cold, I'll cut you a piece. Let's chill him up. I've
got chocolate cake. It's not really cool, I didn't chill it all the way because I've
got to go and I want cake, but I am going to show you what it looks like. These easiest
way to get your slices nice and even, which frankly I don't care, but if I don't do this
first, the boys will come in they'll just start hacking at the side of it. [inaudible:
11:06] little even to start out with. Just half, and then half, and half again. If it
were really chilly and all the way cool all the way through, I'd go ahead and cut it in
half one more time. Little people can't eat great, big, monster slices of cake even though
they like to look at it. Let's see. How we doing here? Can't get it off my knife. That
is perfect, simple, delicious. Man, chocolate cake, chocolate butter cream frosting, and
I've already got my big old glass of milk.
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