Hi! I’m Jess Weiss, pastry chef for Union Square Hospitality Group.
We’re gonna make chocolate cake today, but before we get started,
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Can someone tell me why I’m at the circus?
That would be me.
My name is Ammed Tuniziani, and I am one of the trapeze flyers here
at the Big Apple Circus.
Oh my god! That’s so exciting.
Today you will be cooking at my house.
It’s an R.V.
Oh...okay. That’s new for me.
Ever did that before?
No, that’s a first for me.
Well, we have a microwave oven.
Okay.
And we have hot and cold water.
Okay.
This is going to be exciting.
I think all those three will work.
I hope so!
Yes. You ready?
Yeah! Let's do it.
Alright, let’s get you there.
I took a trapeze class, really a core workout.
Hi! So nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you, Estefani.
This is so great!
Guys, this is not what I was expecting.
They said R.V. and I was like….
Is it too small?
No, it’s so much better.
Thank you.
Good luck to you.
Yeah, right I’m the one that needs the luck.
Alright, see you later.
Bye guys.
Okay, I need some stuff, sooo I’m gonna take a look around.
Where should we start?
Voilà. Mixing bowl.
Oooo. Fancy.
They don’t have a lot of stuff.
Very important for baking, something to measure.
They have a shot glass.
That will work really well.
Has potential to soften our butter.
Sifter. Score.
Apron. Check.
Okay, so we need a cup of flour.
This is 2 tablespoons, to this line.
Haha.
This is really great.
Which is 1 ounce.
So, technically we need 8 of these by volume.
Bare with me.
It’s 1...
2…
3…
It would suck if I lost count.
4…
5…
6…
7…
8. Woo.
I’d fire you if you took that long.
Sugar next.
Cup of this as well.
8.
Also, really important for cakes to sift.
So, finding that sifter was definitely a win.
Okay, now I’m ready for cocoa powder.
We’re gonna do 2/3s of a cup.
I need about 5.5 of these guys.
Looks pretty good.
Two more things.
I like to use table salt in baking.
Almost like a pinch in the palm of my hand.
Last but not least, baking soda.
Too little, we’re not gonna have a nice rise in our cake.
Too much, explosion city.
We need a teaspoon of this.
Yeah, feels good.
And then, guess what we get to do.
Sift.
Oop.
Aww, fail.
That’s okay.
This is savable.
Okay. Sifting is finally over.
So, we’re gonna get into measuring our wet ingredients.
And we’re gonna need an egg for this.
Some oil.
2/3s of a cup.
About 5.5 of these.
I’m gonna add some water to this.
We’re gonna go with cold water.
And we need a cup, so we need 8 of these.
8.
Final ingredient.
We got some vanilla for flavor.
A little splish-splash, and we’re good to go.
Gonna add our dry.
Very carefully.
Okay, looking good.
Normally I would use a whisk to do this.
Fork, pretty much like a whisk, just smaller, so we’re gonna go with it.
It should be a little bit lumpy.
It’s not gonna be perfectly smooth.
It’s looking pretty good.
We’re getting ready to bake.
I’m a little nervous now.
Yeah.
In order to do this, we’re gonna wanna give it a little bit of grease,
so that hopefully our cake will come out.
Because I’m not sure how much this is going to rise in here, I’m not gonna
fill it like a 2/3s full, like I normally would because we don’t want to
have an explosion in the microwave.
Should take around 2 minutes.
This is gonna be very much like when you’re figuring out your popcorn setting
in your microwave.
We’re not 100% sure how powerful this is.
So, I set the cook time for 1 minute and 45 seconds.
I think from power-level perspective, we’re just gonna let it ride at full power,
and see what happens.
Ooo it’s rising.
I can see it rising.
Uh oh. We might have gone too full.
Though it hasn’t exploded.
***Beep. Beep.***
Oooo.
That actually looks, and feels,
pretty good.
It’s springy.
It’s not like, super soft, and it’s not really hard.
So, it’s looking pretty money.
For this icing, we need a cup of butter, so that’s 2 sticks.
If you forgot to take it out, like I did, cause I was very distracted,
I’m gonna cut it up into smaller pieces.
So, it’s gonna get to room temperature and softer a little bit faster.
Then we need 4 cups of powdered sugar.
I’m tougher than the bag.
We’re gonna do a hack.
I’m gonna measure 8 into here, and then I’m gonna look at where it hits in
this cup.
And then I’m just going to measure this 4 times as opposed to having to do all
of those individual little glasses.
This is much faster.
4.
There we go.
I’m gonna use the trusty potato masher, and that is gonna help us smush our butter.
Some people might be saying, “You have a microwave right there.”
For me that’s a scary proposition.
It changes the texture of the icing.
Keep that cold butter consistency.
This is pretty much nothing.
Try having to whip, you know, 12 or 15 egg whites to stiff peak
by hand without a mixer.
Now you’re talking tough.
We’re gonna add the powdered sugar a little bit at a time.
We’re not gonna sift this guy.
We should be able to work out those lumps relatively easily.
Okay, we’re sooo close.
I want to add a little bit of salt to this.
Vanilla, hazelnut spread, a little bit of milk to get it to a nice
frosting consistency.
Who knew that baking was like going to the gym.
It’s a nice arm workout.
This holds.
Tells me that it’s spreadable, but it’s stiff enough so that it
won’t slide off of it.
That’s gonna be great.
This is the moment of truth whether or not they come out.
I’m gonna take the knife, I’m gonna kind of push a little bit up on the bottom.
Make sure that the cake isn’t stuck at the top of the mug.
Let’s cross our fingers.
I have a cake. Yay!
I saw a chocolate bar that I’m gonna steal.
And I also saw bananas in the corner.
Great flavor.
Oh.
Is this a plantain?
I thought it was a banana.
Thanks for looking out guys.
We’re gonna have some fun.
I’m gonna smash this with a little bit of sugar, and cook it in the microwave.
I get curve balls in the kitchen all the time.
While that’s cooking, I’m gonna chop some chocolate.
I’m gonna add a little vanilla.
Dessert backbone.
I’m also gonna add the very last of this paste.
It’s gonna work.
I wanna use a little bit of a seesaw motion and keep the knife as flat
as possible.
So, I’m gonna put the plantain, chocolate fun in the middle.
So, when I ice it I wanna kinda go top, down.
This crumb coat is gonna be basically a base layer.
We’re so close.
Okay, I feel really good about that.
So, I’m gonna put finishing touches.
Start at the top.
Gives me a little bit better control and understanding of
what’s going on.
Always looking at my knife when I’m putting it back in the icing to make
sure that there’s not any crumbs on it.
The icing goes way back to baking at home with my mom when I was a
little kid; and her making our birthday cakes.
I got this chopped up chocolate. Sprinkle it around the bottom.
There we go. I feel relieved.
Wow, wow, wow.
Made you guys some cake.
They look good.
That looks so good.
Mhmm.
It is actually good.
Haha.
You won’t stop eating, huh?
It’s already half gone. Look at this.
I loved it.
Thank you so much.
I’m happy!
I came into this needing to make chocolate cake.
No real oven, no way to measure except for this tiny shot glass.
I’m really excited. I think I did a pretty good job.
Thanks for watching.
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Now I’m gonna taste.