- Hey, you're watching Preppy Kitchen where I,
John Kanell teach you how
to make delicious home-made dishes
to share with your family and friends.
Today we're making a spooky delicious spiderweb sheet cake.
Look at this thing, is that a real spider?
No, it's made out of M&M's and some chocolate
but it looks pretty spooky to me.
Let's get started.
First off we have the wet ingredients.
That's one half of a cup of sour cream or plain yogurt.
If you're wondering like where am I, what is this kitchen.
This doesn't look like my new kitchen situation.
The renovations are dragging on a bit,
they got a bit crazy loud and dusty
and for the kids' sake,
we've moved into a rental house
just until it gets more settled there.
All right, three whole room temperature eggs right in there.
One cup of buttermilk.
Three quarters of a cup of vegetable oil.
You're gonna add in a tablespoon of vanilla.
Give it a good whisk,
I'm just giving it a pre-whisk because next to go in
is a cup and a half of hot coffee.
It's the extra half cup that I was gonna do off camera
but maybe you wanna watch that happen too.
Now, we're gonna set this aside carefully.
This island is not as big as my usual one.
For the dry ingredients,
I'm using three cups or 360 grams of all-purpose flour,
two and two thirds cups of sugar which is 533 grams.
I'm gonna sift this out now because this is a big cake
and my little sifter is getting full.
Half a cup of cocoa powder, this is important,
if you can get a good cocoa powder, go for it.
I'm using Velveron's right now
but there's tons of great brands out there.
You definitely do wanna sift out any cocoa powder
because it really clumps up very easily.
One tablespoon of baking soda,
one and a half teaspoons of baking powder.
Sift that out,
last three quarters of a teaspoon of salt.
You can use whatever salt you want,
it doesn't make a huge difference in this
and a lot of it is personal taste too.
You might like maybe you like a saltier cake,
salt and chocolate is really good.
Right now, we're gonna give this a careful, careful whisk.
You can make this in your stand mixer too,
by the way but today I'm gonna make it in the bowl.
That's how it's gonna be.
Okay, so now we're at our final step for the batter,
I'm so excited.
There we go, mega cake batter.
Smells so good.
Coffee and chocolate is a winning mix.
One thing I wanna warn you about,
this makes a very liquidy batter.
I should have totally,
should have made this in the stand mixer.
What was I thinking?
Whatever, I've ultimate control over this batter
since I'm doing it by hand, look at that.
There's gonna be everything mixed in properly.
If you want a different kind of cake,
check out my German chocolate cake.
That has the most delicate chocolate (mumbles),
the batter is amazing.
You're using fluffed-up egg whites in that one
and folding it in.
It's a little bit more stepwise but that's my cake.
If it was my birthday coming up soon,
I would totally be requesting that
from somebody if that somebody could cook.
Okay, there we go.
Now we have a nice, thin batter.
Looks kinda crazy but that's what I want.
No more pockets left in there,
it's nice and smooth.
Onward and upward, this is how it should be.
This is a quarter sheet-cake-size, sheet cake pan.
It's nine by 13 and what I like
to do is line it with parchment paper.
You just snip the edges off like this
and then it will fit right in there
and make all of your Virgo dreams come true.
There we go, look at that.
And then the cake will just pop right out
and you peel the paper off and I feel
like it gives you a little bit extra tenderness
at the very edge 'cause it doesn't quite caramelize
as much, that's my thought.
Okay, now we're just gonna pour this in.
One final stir,
if I drop it all over myself I would laugh and laugh
and cry and cry and cry.
All right, in you go.
Look at that, just get the rest of it out there.
Okay, this is gonna bake at 350 for almost an hour
like 50 minutes, you're gonna notice the cake comes up,
the center will be nice and springy and if you try it
with a toothpick in the center,
it'll come out clean.
In you go, carefully.
(crashing lighting)
My cake baked and it's cooling.
And in the meantime, a crazy storm rolled in,
I don't know if you can tell but it's dark outside.
You'll have to excuse any thunder you hear,
it's a little bit spooky all of a sudden.
(playful, scary music)
Anyways, for the buttercream
I'm starting off by making a chocolate ganache.
I'm gonna add this in at the end.
It really makes things nice
and just a little bit more chocolatey,
silky smooth which I love.
I wanna end up with about a third of a cup
and you can always add in more chocolate.
There's literally never too much chocolate in a buttercream.
Do a heaping third of a cup.
Rough chop, gonna add that into a bowl carefully,
not making any kind of a mess.
I'm pouring in just a couple
of tablespoons of heavy cream here.
It will help it melt up.
This goes into the microwave,
little like 30-seconds burst of half-power
until it's mostly melted.
Two 30-second bursts at half-power
and you can see that's all it needed, nice and smooth.
This will be great for the buttercream.
In the meantime, we'll let it cool down just a bit.
It's only slightly warm.
By the way, that was semi-sweet chocolate
but you can use bitter-sweet, anything you want.
Into my stand mixer I'm adding three sticks one
and a half cups about 340 grams of unsalted butter.
If you wonder way a lot of recipes call
for unsalted butter
when they have you add salt back in anyways,
it's just because different butters have different amounts
of salt in there and controlling bakers
like me wanna have that precise amount
of salt every time but you could use salted butter.
Just don't add any more salt.
I get a lot of questions about that.
I have half a cup of cocoa powder to add in.
This is like a nice Dutch processed one.
I'm gonna sift it, I don't want big cocoa powder lumps
and cocoa powder has so many lumps.
Now let's mix in this cocoa powder.
Look at this amazing fudgy butter,
no sugar in there yet so you don't wanna eat it
but look at that, so rich.
Right, so scrape that bowl down,
take this off one more time
and listen, this is a sheet cake
so if you're like
hey, I don't wanna do any sifting, you're crazy,
don't do any sifting, I'm a little crazy.
(rolling thunder)
But, that being said I will be sifting in one pound
of confectioners sugar, a bit at a time.
I measured this on the scale earlier.
It's like half a bag or a full one-pound bag
or add a little bit at a time
and see how sweet you like your buttercream.
It'll get just a scotch sweeter with the ganache added in.
If you're piping the buttercream,
you always wanna sift it
because those lumps will clog your piping tip
and lead to a nightmare situation.
Mix a little bit in and we're gonna repeat this.
Sprinkling in three quarters of a teaspoon roughly of salt.
This really wakes the buttercream up
and give you a lot of flavor.
Takes away that sugar sweetness.
Dump the rest of the sugar in and sift it up.
That easy, pile the mixer back on.
Okay, one more time.
You can drizzle in a tablespoon or so of cream right now
to loosen things up
and always scrape that bowl down.
There's a lot of layers going on in this bowl.
All right, let's take a look and see what's going on.
This buttercream looks nice and pretty smooth.
I like the color and what about the flavor?
It's good but you know what will make it better?
Some chocolate ganache.
This takes it over the top in my opinion.
Get it all out there.
Okay, mix it up.
Can you tell the difference?
It's a little like more liquidy and silky now.
This will be just wonderful on that sheet cake.
Ah, I can't wait.
Before we decorate the cake, the very last step is
to melt a little bit of white chocolate
like about a quarter cup with maybe a teaspoon of cream.
This is gonna make a very simple white chocolate ganache
that we can drizzle over in a spiral pattern for our web.
It's really easy and so fast.
White chocolate is notoriously finicky at least in my book.
One 30-second 50%-power zap later
and it looks like it kind of seized up.
If it does seize up and you're using it
for something where it doesn't need to be perfect,
a little butter and cream later,
it looks like it'll come back to life.
This is not gonna be a silky, amazing ganache
but it will be workable for our spiderweb.
It's gonna cool the sheet cake out and start decorating.
Our spider is gonna be so easy and really cute.
All you need is one peanut M&M
and one regular M&M chocolate brown flavor.
One is the head and one is the body.
And then, little legs.
The little legs are gonna get piped with
just a couple tablespoons of chocolate
that I microwaved so it melted.
I'm just using a piping bag that I cut the tip of off
but you could use a regular plastic bag
that you cut the tip off too.
Now, all I've to do are pipe little V-shapes.
And you can go back over to thicken that up
because they have to stand up on their own.
You need eight legs but you're gonna have a couple safety
just in case something happens.
This totally reminds me of my bat cake.
You can click up here for that.
It is a crazy looking cake with bats all over it
but we made them with candy melts
because they had to be a lot stronger.
Now, this is gonna go into the fridge to chill.
It'll be ready super fast, let's go.
My cake is all cooled, look at this.
Soft, soft, soft.
Okay, here is how I like to apply my frosting
on any sheet cake, with an ice-cream scoop.
Why, because you can add it on,
you can get a nice tick layer and not worry
about tearing any cake ever
because you're just kind of smoothing it out.
You're not like pulling anything too hard.
If that makes sense.
Or using a small offset spatula to smooth it out.
You can use whatever you want, even a knife works well.
It does not have to be perfect
but I'm adding that spiderweb on
so I wanna have a nice flat canvass to start from.
I feel like I'm gonna stop being a crazy person
in three, two, one.
White chocolate ganache went into a piping bag
with the tip snipped off.
You can use the small round tip once again
and right now, I'm gonna choose the center
of where I want my web to be.
That's a total tongue twister.
I'm gonna choose the center of where I want my web to be.
It's gonna be right here, kind of off-center.
All right, so I'm just gonna make a big spiral.
(sputtering)
If it's not perfect, it's okay.
It's not as if everyone's watching and judging.
Once you're to the edge where the web stops,
you just kind of stop and start.
Okay, that doesn't look great
but it's not done yet so don't worry.
Now we're gonna use our skewer.
Just take your skewer and drag it along.
It's not gonna look amazing at first
but it comes together I tell you, it comes together.
This is a really fun cake
because so many people tried it at home.
I got many, many DM's and emails
with people showing me their Halloween cakes
and that looked great.
I love seeing people trying my recipes out.
It makes me happy.
First of all, I got to tell you
that looks pretty nice, I would eat that cake and like,
Halloween perfect spiderweb sheet cake, boom.
I'm giving my spider little eyes
with just the smallest dollop
of that white chocolate ganache
that I'm applying with the skewer.
I was trying to decide to give the spider a small body
or a big body but I feel like the bigger it is,
it might be a little too creepy
so we're gonna go with the smaller body.
Now place the head.
Now we can place the legs.
Remember an arachnid has eight legs
that's four on each side.
(crashing lighting)
If you like this recipe,
you've got to check out my Halloween playlist.
It has all my favorite Halloween recipes including
those crazy witch-hat cupcakes.
Oh my gosh, those had millions of views on Instagram alone.
It was crazy, you got to see that one.
Time for a bite.
Fudgy, fluffy, rich just perfect, hint of salt, the works.
You got to make this cake.
Okay, if you like this recipe,
hit that like button to subscribe
and I'll see you in the next video.