Sawaddee ka welcome to hot thai kitchen today I'm making an insanely good dessert in Thailand we
call it toffee cake but what it is is a mocha cake with a coffee toffee cashew crust on top
I mean that just sounds good I've actually never seen this cake outside of Thailand so if you've
seen something similar please let me know I'd love to hear more about it and let's get started this
cake typically uses Asian genoise genoise is a type of cake that's a bit tricky to
make it involves egg foam and all that tricky stuff so I've modified it to be a very simple
cake basically a dump and stir type cake which I love so I've got a pot here which I'm going
to cook my flavor base in and the flavor base is coffee and chocolate just a little water and this
water is going to help my coffee dissolve now I am using Nescafe which is the most popular type
of instant coffee in Thailand if you don't want to buy a whole jar of instant coffee just for
this recipe you could also try a really strong brewed espresso or you can try the Starbucks
via if you've got those so once the coffee is dissolved I'm going to add the chocolate so this
is semi-sweet chocolate that I've chopped up get that mixed up some vegetable oil and some butter
and then I'm just gonna cook this over medium medium low heat and you want to be stirring and
scraping the bottom so your chocolate doesn't scorch once everything is dissolved and smooth
I'm just gonna set it aside and let it cool while we get our other stuff ready I've got
some all-purpose flour here no need to sift it because we're gonna whisk everything together I'm
going to add some baking soda and a little bit of baking powder some salt and some sugar the sugar
grains will break up any lumps of flour or baking powder wet ingredients next I've got two eggs and
I'm very excited to be whisking them with my new little tiny whisk so cute some vanilla going in
there yogurt and I'm using full fat yogurt here and whisk away I'm slightly obsessed with mini
kitchen utensils you can pose it's like not very efficient to the hole so as long as it's smooth
you don't have any more clumps lumps of yogurt ready to go and now all we need to do is mix
everything together so my mocha base mmm drink that scrape every bit okay this is what a rubber
spat is good for just give it a quick mix just so everything is combined together and it'll be very
thick that's okay we're not done yet and when a change weapon here to my whisk the egg mixture
and it will slowly come together so easy as you can see it's dump and stir and it's really moist
and tender and nice that's it when it's smooth you are ready to bake this I am using a quarter sheet
pan basically it's about twelve by eight eight and a half if you've got a 12 by nine sort of brownie
pan that'll work as well and I'm going to line it with parchment on the bottom but the slides I'm
going to grease with a little bit of oil parchment down spread it out when you're pouring so you have
less spreading out to do afterwards that's so heavy actually for this I like to use my offset
spatula just run your knife one more time to get rid of any large bubbles and to even it out sorry
Amanda spatula these things are so useful by the way these little offset spatula for everything
dah-dah-dah here it is to test doneness we can just do the standard toothpick test you can see
those holes there you basically use a stick the toothpick in the center you pull it out
and if it's clean then you're good to go okay so I'm going to let this cake rest and cool for now
while we make the the topping which really is the best part of this cake and you don't want to pour
the topping on a very hot cake because right now it's not very stable yet it's still really soft
and the topping is quite heavy it'll crush it but it doesn't need to cool completely it just
needs to be warm and the cake has stabilized okay I'm just gonna put this fine there and we can get
our topping going a little fun fact about cashews they're one of the only two types of nuts that we
use in our cooking the other one being obviously peanuts however I think this cake would be really
good with pecans so if you want to try go for it so I've got some roasted unsalted cashews here
and I'm going to roughly chop them so I run my knife over most of them so once I've got most of
them cut in half I'm going to go and pick out the ones that are still whole and cut them separately
and the reason why is I don't want to keep cutting until everything is you know all cut because then
I got I get a lot of little cashew dust like that which I don't want but at the same time I don't
want any whole ones because the whole ones will stick up really high on the top and then when
I go to boil the top it'll burn because it sticks up higher than everyone else so just go around and
quickly pick out the ones that are either whole or just really fat so now I'm going to cut these
ones let's make the most delicious part of this cake we're going with some evaporated milk this
is unsweetened it's not the same as condensed milk the instant coffee again you could use
the via packets or some strong espresso get that resolved a little butter lots and lots of butter
while that's going to set it on low heat I'm going to show you a little trick so I've got
sugar here I'm going to add my flour also the salt toffee or caramel without salt it's not
good and then I'm going to whisk all this together using my other mini whisk and what this does is it
disperses the flour so that when you add it to the liquid the flour won't clump up so it's the
same idea as when you make a flour slurry with some water you dissolve the flour first so you
don't get clumps you can also put it in a jar and shake shake shake once all the butter is gone you
can go ahead and add the sugar flour mixture you want to be whisking it at the same time
though so that again you don't have any clumps of flour I'm going to change weapon now so I can
scrape the bottom there's something about the combination of coffee and butter that smell now
that has come to a boil I am going to stop and go in with the cashews I always salivate whenever I
get to this stage because it just smells crazy good and that's it that is the topping now the
tip is don't make the topping too far in advance because you want the toppings to still be hot and
fluid so you can easily spread it over your cake so don't do this while your cake is baking okay
and I'm just gonna go ahead and leather it on so compared to the toffee cake that you can get in
Thailand this one has less cake it's something that I've always wanted to do because I always
find that the ones in Thailand there's too much cake and not enough topping so now I get to make
it exactly how I want it and I always save a little bit in the pot because I generally find
that I have to fill the edges in the corner and it's just easier to get it from the pot rather
than to try to spread stuff out from the middle this is the funnest part it's the part where the
topping becomes toffee we're going to put this under the broiler and it's going to caramelize
and brown the top and it also dry it up so that we can cut it a little the topic don't run a
were everywhere all right so just to show you what this looks like this one browned
a little too much in the middle but it's still okay this is actually my first time using this
oven to broil it the edges aren't as browned as the one in the center that's typical so you try
to move the pan as much as you can but before you cut it you want to let it cool completely because
this is still soft so you want to wait until the sugar is cool before we take it out but I
have one ready okay so this is one that I made at home as you can see it's a little more even
because I know my oven a little better so I'm able to manipulate it cutting there's a little
trick to this you want to first flip it out before you do that you want to loosen the sides put the
cutting board on top of the pan hold firmly and and then you hope that it comes out that I peel
off the parchment so there's a little bit of a trick in cutting this cake you want to cut it
upside down because if you cut it through the nuts the nuts will crush the cake so I'm just
going to make incisions until I hit the nuts I'm not cutting through the nuts with a serrated knife
you're going to go in with a regular chef's knife and cut the nuts in one confident move
just like that okay now this cake keeps really well you can give it to your friends in a care
package let's try it I love that coffee flavor and the combination of the coffee flavor and
the caramelized sugar oh my god the cake is rich and moist and the tops crunchy it's just so so
good I promise you you give this to your friends your family your loved ones and they are going to
love it and then love you for it so I hope you give this a try it's a little bit of work but
it's really not difficult and when you do make it send me a photo on Facebook Twitter or Instagram
and the recipe as always is on top I am calm and I will see you next time for your next delicious hi