- Welcome to another episode of Budget Eats.
Today, we have Budget Birthday.
It is my birthday today.
We're gonna be trying to make a multilayer birthday cake
that is most like my favorite birthday cake ever for $5.
We're gonna try.
I don't know if we're gonna succeed.
So, if you know me,
you know that I'm not a great big fan of birthdays,
birthday, You were only born once.
It's not a birthday again after that.
So, I'm gonna petition that today,
we change the name birthday to cake day.
My ideal birthday cake comes from Chinese bakeries.
They have a very soft, fluffy sponge cake,
layered with this light whipped cream,
only slightly sweetened, not very buttery at all
but definitely very creamy and rich.
My favorite variation has taro cream in the middle layers.
And because heavy cream is so expensive as is butter,
we're gonna try to make this cake
without my favorite component
which is the whipped cream frosting.
I went shopping yesterday.
I grabbed up all the ingredients
and that I think will fit into this budget.
I got some blueberries, still keep some of that fruitiness
of the original Chinese bakery birthday cakes.
And there, I also got some sugar, some taro.
It looks like it's from an ancient, ancient landscape.
Underneath this craggly, fibrous, woodsy surface,
lies delicious starch.
Eggs, a little bit of butter.
We're going to use just a touch of butter.
The flour was about 2.69 for a five pound bag.
So, I'm just gonna use whatever flour I have at home
and we'll weigh that out and we'll calculate
the unit price for that.
We're only gonna be using nine ingredients today.
There's going to be eggs, there's going to be sugar, flour,
corn starch, a pinch of salt
which I'm not adding into the budget
because of pinch of salt is like a penny guys.
We're gonna be using a total of two tablespoons of butter.
Butter is expensive.
Then we're going to be using some taro for the taro cream,
some coconut cream to make that taro cream extra creamy
and extra fragrant
and blueberries and the splash of vanilla extract.
And that's it.
Now, obviously, I can't buy all the ingredients for the cake
for under $5 so we're just gonna count the unit price.
We're gonna count the price of the ingredient
in the amount that is used in this recipe.
The first thing that we have to make is the cake
because the cake needs to cool completely,
before we can put anything else on top of it.
The cake that I'm making today is going to be a sponge cake.
My general rule of thumb is try not to exceed
two thirds up the height of your cake pan,
otherwise, it might just be too much batter.
We're going to preheat our oven to 350 degrees.
In the bowl of our stand mixer,
we're gonna fit it with a whisk attachment.
We're going to add three whole eggs and three egg yolks
into the stand mixer.
Whenever you are separating egg whites,
be sure that your hands are clean
and your bowls are clean of all oils and fats.
Only water can touch egg whites.
If any fats touch egg whites,
they will not turn into meringue.
Clean hands, clean bowls, no fats.
And we're going to whip it until it's lightened
and slightly foamy about two to three minutes.
We're going to gradually add in about a half cup of sugar
and we're going to keep whipping at medium speed
until it's lightened and ribbony,
about eight to 10 minutes more.
Meanwhile, in another medium bowl,
we're going to sift together
the flour, corn starch and salt.
And an another large bowl,
we're going to be using a hand mixer to whip
three remaining egg whites until they're foamy.
We're going to continue whipping them,
gradually adding in the remaining bit of sugar that we have,
until medium stiff peaks form, maybe about five minutes.
We're going to fold our flour mixture
into the whole egg sugar mixture in two batches.
And once that's fully incorporated,
we're going to gently fold in our egg white meringue
in two batches.
Then we're going to add in our cooled melted butter
and fold to combine.
And then, it's time to pour into our cake pans.
You know how sometimes you tell people,
don't do this because it will lead to failure
and then you do it anyway.
That's what's gonna happen here.
We are well over the two thirds mark of this cake pan
but you know what?
Let's just do it.
It's been 30 minutes.
I've lowered the oven temperature down to 325,
midway through because I started smelling the cake.
And when you start smelling the cake,
it usually means it's just about baked
but I wanted to make sure that it had even heating
so I dropped the temperature and let it cook
for the full 30 minutes.
It looks good.
While our cake is cooling, let's make our taro.
For the taro cream, we're gonna appeal the sides
and make sure that none of that woodiness remains behind.
We're going to cube them into about half inch cubes
and then we're gonna throw them in a large pot
with a pinch of salt
and we're going to cover it with water.
We're going to let that boil and cook
until it's completely tender and creamy
when we mash it with a fork.
It might take 10, 12, even 15 minutes, depending.
We're going to stir in our sugar.
And we're going to stir in our coconut cream
while that mixture is still hot.
We're gonna cook it and reduce it until it thickens
to about the texture of peanut butter.
When we're flipping the cake out,
I just use an offset to go all around the edge
of the cake pan very carefully
and then I gently tip it upside down
until the cake pops into my hand,
then we'll let it cool off completely,
before we divided into layers.
We're going to go ahead thump our blueberries, sugar
and a little bit of water into the pot
until it gets to a nice syrupy consistency.
We're going to strain this,
once it gets to that thick, syrupy texture.
So, we have a very pretty
blueberry syrup jam compote creation.
I'm hoping that this will help us dye the taro
a little bit more vibrantly purple.
And it tastes pretty sweet, very fruity, very fresh,
slightly citrusy which I think will balance out
very nicely with the coconut milk that's in the taro.
As for the taro,
it's very smooth, very creamy.
Just like peanut butter.
Kind of tastes like peanut butter too.
What a delight?
That's so good.
- [Aaron] June, don't eat all the taro now.
You need it for the cake.
- I don't, this is my cake.
Now that's what I call purple.
So now, we're going to transfer the taro
into another container and we're gonna let that
cool completely while we work on our frosting.
Before we move on to the frosting though,
our cake is completely cool.
Now, all I have to do is decide,
do I want a three tier cake or a two tier cake.
I wanna go three but hubris.
This cake is just a little bit taller
than an inch and a half,
meaning each layer will just be about half of an inch.
Do we believe in me?
Each layer will just be the width of my index finger.
It's not very even but I did it.
So, of course, I don't have a cake stand
because again, home kitchen
but I do have these cake pans
that I can just rotate off of a tray
so that's good enough, right?
When you're decorating a cake,
you really wanna make sure that you're pushing your filling
all the way out to the edges
and you can always clean it up later
but if you plopped down a layer of cake on top,
and then you realize,
damn, didn't go all the way to the edges,
it's a little hard to ease it out later.
What we're going to do is make a syrup
out of sugar and water until it heats up to about
240 to 245 degrees Fahrenheit.
In the meantime, we're going to fit our stand mixer
with a whisk attachment, drop our egg whites in there,
add a tiny pinch of salt
and we're going to mix it on low speed
until the syrup reaches about 215 degrees.
Then we're going to jack this up to medium high speed,
wait for it to get completely opaque and foamy.
And then we're gonna start streaming in our syrup
when it hits 245 degrees Fahrenheit.
At that stage, we're gonna plop in our softened butter
and our splash of vanilla.
Remember when I said I wanted a little richness
in the frosting so we're gonna add a little bit of butter.
Well, I really shouldn't have added
that little bit of butter.
This is a consistency before I added the butter
and it sticks and it stays.
And this is the consistency, after I add the butter.
If I keep shaking
I don't even know if it tastes better, mistakes.
And now, I have a whole tub of really runny fluff.
I think this probably happened
because my kitchen is quite warm right now.
The meringue was still kind of warm
when I plopped in the butter so it all just kind of melted.
I'm gonna pop the whole mixer bowl into the fridge,
let it set for maybe half an hour
and then we'll come back and maybe it'll be day fall,
nightfall, birthday fall.
You know, you know how it goes?
Will we have a birthday cake while it's still my cake day?
Doesn't matter now.
Happy cake day to me.
So, I'm not quite sure what I did wrong,
except I probably shouldn't have added the butter
but chemistry wise, I'm not sure why one piece of butter
would deflate and silk in the entire bowl of meringue.
If you know why this is happening,
please let me know down below
because now's as good a time as any to learn
what I did wrong.
What we do have still is our blueberry compote
and all the fibers that we pressed out.
Funny thing about blueberries.
There's a lot of pectin in here.
If we whip this into our meringue,
will help the meringue set up just the little touch more?
All I need is for the frosting to be slightly more stable
so that I can ice the cake with it.
I think what we'll do is take out half of the meringue,
save it, put it back in the fridge
while I work with half of it so that, you know,
I can still have something to fall back on.
Tastes pretty good
but definitely still runny.
It's beautiful color though.
Should we just frost it?
I'm gonna fridge this baby overnight
and we'll come back to him in the morning.
And we're back.
Same shirt, new person.
Happy cake day to me, day two.
Yesterday was my birthday.
Today is my cake day.
Let's decorate this baby.
We can't forget about the fruit, can we?
So, here it is.
Here's our beautiful cake day cake
and the blueberry icing is running all over the place.
And it's slowly encroaching upon our gel writing.
♪ Happy cake day to everybody in quarantine. ♪
♪ Happy day to you. ♪
♪ And many more. ♪
Let's eat cake, shall we?
Perfect layers.
It smells like cake, smells like a little bit of eggs,
a lot of sugar, a little bit of taro
and creaminess from the coconut milk, more sugar.
I think it's a great thing
that we let the cake rest overnight
because yesterday when I tasted a cake scrap,
it was kind of dry.
I think I might've put too much flour in the cake batter.
I'm not quite sure.
But after it sat overnight in the fridge
with the taro filling which has moisture in it,
that cake, it's pretty darn good.
Most of my friends that I know have had taro
and bubble tea applications
but I think if you like taro bubble tea,
you are going to love this cake.
Nothing artificial in here, as you saw.
Taro is a very light color but we colored it
with more blueberry syrup
and it's like the perfect shade of lavender.
Most of all, I'm just really impressed
at my layering skills.
I think we should take a moment to be inspired by this.
♪ Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah ♪
I'm not going to lie.
I think this is pretty beautiful.
It's like ugly beautiful
which my favorite things in life
are usually ugly beautiful.
Aaron, eat cake.
- [Aaron] Is this marshmallow on the side or something.
- [June] Yes, it's a marshmallow frosting.
I can't use butter so I can only use sugar and egg whites
which means marshmallow.
You're not eating the taro
You avoiding the taro?
- [Aaron] Which is the taro?
Oh, this.
- [June] Yeah.
- [Aaron] Yeah, I guess I am avoiding the taro.
Yeah, I mean it's mild.
It's a nice sort of pleasant, mild flavor.
June.
- [June] Yeah.
- [Aaron] This is the perfect food to make for your birthday
- It is.
- [Aaron] Because you made it for yourself
and without any regard to my preferences.
- This is true.
It's my birthday.
It's my cake.
- [Aaron] Yes, so, it's all for you.
- Oh, you don't like it?
- [Aaron] I think it's perfect for you, June.
- Cheers.
I give myself on this cake, a 10 out of (beep) 10 baby
because (beep) high standards,
(beep) perfection and yes, to everything that is delicious
and to your liking.
- [Aaron] June, this is a family show.
- For my birthday present,
I want y'all to tell me what the absolute,
most delicious cake you've ever had
in your entire life is, down below.
Do it, thank you.
And as always, stay hydrated,
feed yourself good things and take care of yourselves.
I'll see you next time.