Welcome to How To Cook That I'm Ann Reardon and this is an episode of Cake Rescue where we take
cake fails from across the internet and show you how to rescue them. Let's start with this one
by Emily in Uganda: A bit of a disaster it's all melted because we've got no fridge of course the
fridge is broken um so it's all melted down. No fridge is a big issue when it comes to frosting.
To recreate the fail I've made a cake and covered it in chocolate frosting and sprinkles and put
it outside in the sun and it only takes about 30 minutes for it to turn into a puddle of frosting.
30 minutes to go from this to this. We do live in Australia but it's only a mild 29 degrees C today
so it's not like it's super hot. To rescue this let's scoop the melted frosting from around the
base of the cake normally I'd say put the whole cake in the fridge first and let it firm up but
as she said her fridge was broken so that's not an option for this rescue. Use some paper towel and
clean up the plate and now we need to hide those messy edges, so to do that I'm going to add some
wafer biscuits all the way around the outside edge. Now without much frosting on the sides
these aren't going to stay on very well so we're going to need to use a ribbon to tie them and hold
them in place. Add some candles and it's rescued. Now prevention is better than cure so let's make
a bunch of different frostings and chuck them in the sun and see if any of them can cope with
the heat. Starting with ganache we'll make some using compound chocolate which contains vegetable
fat and has a higher melting point than cocoa butter which is the fat that's in real chocolate
and let's compare dark milk and white real and compound chocolates. To make ganache frosting
you just combine chocolate with hot cream stir it together and once it's cool you whip
it up and then you pipe it on. Now for ermine frosting which is made by heating together milk
flour butter and sugar to make a thick paste and then once that's completely cold you whip it up.
Next is Italian meringue and it's made by whipping egg whites and while they're whipping pouring in a
thin stream of very hot sugar syrup and this cooks the egg whites and you'll notice there is no fat
at all in this recipe. It's very light it's fluffy and it's bright white and if you like meringue you
will like this one. Swiss buttercream starts with an Italian meringue base but then you add butter
into it and whip that in. It pipes beautifully and has a lovely silky smooth texture but to
me it just tastes too buttery. French buttercream has a very similar method to the Swiss buttercream
but instead of starting with egg whites this one uses egg yolks this one also has that silky smooth
texture because the sugar was melted in the sugar syrup and the yolks give it more of a yellowy
colour. Now for the American buttercream which is what most people are familiar with it's just
butter whipped with icing sugar. On the left I've made the exact same recipe but using margarine
instead of butter. Margarine has a similar melting point to butter but noticeably it has more water
in it than the butter does but is around 80% fat while the margarine is only 60% fat. Next a vegan
buttercream using icing sugar mixed with coconut oil now this turned out really thick and it set
up super hard when it was in the fridge like too hard to eat it when it's refrigerated and your
coconut oil is about 90% fat so we've got even less liquid in it. Then my cream cheese frosting
I love this frosting it's made from cream cheese butter icing sugar and some Mascarpone cheese in
there too and for good measure we should of course try a store-bought frosting to
compare it and lastly plain whipped cream with nothing added to it no sugar just whipped cream.
And there it is 16 cupcakes with 16 different frostings sitting in the sun which ones do you
think will be the first to go ☀️ I did put all of these in the fridge overnight before putting them
in the sun to ensure that they all started at the exact same temperature. Taste wise my favourite
is the real milk chocolate ganache which sadly that is the first one to melt. It's looking like
a chocolate waterfall the ermine is the next one now remember that had butter milk and flour so the
starch and the flour did not help stabilise it in the heat. The compound milk chocolate ganache is
looking sad and the French buttercream is starting to drip as well. It will be interesting to see how
long the Swiss buttercream lasts given that they were identical except that the French used the
yolks and the Swiss used the whites and just like that the store-bought one suddenly bows out of
the competition after 30 minutes in the heat. The American buttercream made with margarine both the
white chocolate ganaches and the dark compound chocolate ganache are all melting at around the
same time. Take note that the buttercream made with butter is still standing while the margarine
one is melted even though the fats in them have a similar melting point. I would suggest
that's probably due to the difference in the water content because if you look at the other frostings
that were also based on butter they have melted even though the American buttercream one hasn't,
the only difference there is that there is a lot more water content so as the fat softens
the water is released and can go down and then the fat is kind of just floating down like it's
floating down a river and so you just see it pour down your cupcake. The Swiss buttercream
and cream cheese are reluctantly giving up which means we're down to four ... the whipped cream,
the Italian meringue, the American buttercream and the coconut oil one. Now coconut oil has a lower
melting point than butter so you would logically expect that to have melted first but as I said
before it's 90% fat there's hardly any liquid in it at all if we take a closer look at the coconut
one you can see that the fat is indeed melting and it's very very soft it just didn't flow down
because it didn't have that water content mixing with the sugar there. Now if you heated it hotter
that would turn to oil and it would run down but at this temperature it is holding. The American
buttercream that was just made from butter and icing sugar no additional liquids is still
standing if you added more liquid to that you could expect that to be melting more than it is.
The plain whipped cream with no sugar didn't drip down either doesn't look the nicest after half an
hour in the sun probably not the best and as expected the Italian meringue which has no
fat in it at all did not melt so that's probably your best option if you have to take it out into
the Sun. The next cake fail is this one by Eat and Burp she says she's sharing a cake failure in the
absence of essential modalities no Piping Bag no nozzles no sprinkles no turntable or spatula this
cake was born. So let's see if I can give you some useful tips if you find yourself in that situation
with no tools or equipment. The first thing I'd suggest is bake three cakes instead of two
because the height makes it look more impressive. Don't go taller than three or you're going to need
support between your layers. Using a spoon put frosting between those layers and then heap lots
on top of the cake and then just start to spread it out so that it spills over the sides slightly.
Look in your kitchen for a knife that has the longest straight edge, I'm using the back of a
bread knife. You could use a metal ruler just make sure you wash it really well first use
that to level off the top of the cake as best as you can it doesn't have to be perfect just
give it a couple of goes over to get it as flat as you can. Then use a butter knife and start
to spread the frosting down around the edges you're going to need more frosting than this
so just grab some more out of the bowl and keep spreading it out until that whole side is covered.
Then using your knife or ruler place it gently on the side of the cake and using your other hand to
turn the plate. scrape the excess frosting off the knife back into the bowl and keep repeating
that until it is smooth. Now I can't get down to the bottom here because my knife is rounded
at the bottom and the plate comes up so to fix that bit it's back to the butter knife and just
gently scrape around to even out the base there. Now grab a sandwich bag sticky tape and scissors
put sticky tape across one corner of the bag and wrap it around onto the back,
once you've done that on one side flip it over and repeat it on the other side on the same corner
just to make the plastic stiffer and thicker. Now we're going to make four cuts ... one here
another one just here and then put your scissors into the fold and cut it right on the edge there
and then do the same thing on the other side. Try to make each of these cuts around the same length.
Put frosting into your bag and use that to pipe stars around the top edge of your cake
I actually have a video about this exact hack and other cuts you can do using a plastic bag
to pipe. I came up with this idea about 10 years ago if you click on How To Cook That
under this video to go to the channel and then scroll down you'll see playlists by year I have
been making videos for a long time so you'll find that one in the 2012 playlist but you'll
have to forgive the video quality back then I was filming on an iPhone 4 which only filmed in
720p so not the 4K we get now. Also in those old videos is this easy chocolate decoration
idea you just melt some compound chocolate and spread it on the back of some leaves make sure
the leaves have not been sprayed with any pesticides at all and then pop them into the
freezer. Once they're set peel the leaves off from the chocolate and arrange your chocolate
leaves around the top of your cake and you have a cake that's made with no piping bag, no nozzles,
no sprinkles no turntable and no spatula. With thanks to my wonderful patrons for your amazing
support of this channel make it a great week by being kind to others and I'll see you on Friday 😊
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