- [Babish] Listen, everybody.
Let's bake a delicious cake for Mario.
(humming)
♪ I don't remember how the rest of this goes ♪
♪ But there's music and it's copyrighted so I can't use it ♪
Hey, what's up guys?
Welcome back to Binging with Babish,
where this week, we're taking a look
at the thank you cake from the end of Mario 64,
which as I'm saying it, I'm realizing is thoroughly
within Arcade with Alvin territory.
But the movie just came out,
and I grew up playing this game,
and I've always wanted to make a proper tiered cake,
and other reasons that I'm making an exception.
First, let's start with the filling,
and I think it's fitting to make it peach filling.
I got a 32 ounce pack of frozen peaches
that I'm placing in my 12-inch wide high-walled saute pan,
along with six ounces of water
and seven ounces of light brown sugar.
We're bringing this mixture to the simmer
and cooking it for seven to 10 minutes
until the peaches are completely tender,
utilizing a potato masher to mash the peaches
in place of potatoes.
Then we're whisking together one ounce of corn starch
with two ounces of water and slowly splashing the slurry
into the peaches while keeping them moving,
continuing to cook over medium low heat
until it's practically pie filling.
We're then chilling this mixture entirely,
at least a few hours, up to overnight,
during which time we can consider cake.
Our structurally-sound sponge starts with 625 grams
of all-purpose flour with a teaspoon of kosher salt,
regular-sized whisk until homogenous,
and mixing about a teaspoon, or however much that was,
vanilla extract to two cups of milk.
Lastly, into the bowl of a stand mixer goes four sticks,
or 450 grams, of unsalted butter,
with 525 grams of granulated sugar,
and one tablespoon of baking powder.
Then we're hooking it into the stand mixer,
slowly ramping it up to high speed
and creaming for two to three minutes,
until the butter has lightened in color
and could be accurately described as fluffy.
Then it's time to give our bowl the first
of many thorough scrapings
before starting to add 400 grams of eggs, one at a time,
beating thoroughly for about 30 seconds,
and studiously scraping the bowl after each edition.
Then we're adding our dry stuff and milk and stages.
First, a third of our salty flour,
mix just enough so that no dry patches remain,
followed by half of our vanilla-spiked milk.
Then another third of the flour, the rest of the milk,
and then the last third of flour,
scraping the bowl between each addition.
Toward the end, your batter might start looking curdled,
but don't worry after the final flour stage,
it should come together
into something instantly recognizable as cake batter,
smooth, thick, and borderline unpourable.
This recipe is gonna fill two 10-inch cake pans,
which we're gonna prep
by spraying evenly with non-stick spray
and lining with a round of parchment paper.
Add half the cake batter, gently spread it around evenly,
and tap it with great vigor, both to even it out
and to release any trapped air bubbles.
For the smaller six-inch top layers,
we're doing a third recipe, all the amounts for which
will be in the recipe on the website.
And then depending on which size cake you're baking,
these are headed into a 350 degree Fahrenheit oven
for anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes,
until they clock 200 degrees Fahrenheit
and spring back when poked.
Next up, we're making Swiss meringue buttercream,
a very stable frosting that firms when chilled.
First combining 14 large egg whites
with 900 grams of granulated sugar,
regular size whisking until homogenous and snotty,
and then bringing it over to the stove top
where we have a shallow pan of simmering water at the ready.
We're placing our heatproof bowl over top,
far away from the water, whisking constantly
until the mixture reaches 145 degrees Fahrenheit.
Then immediately off the heat,
we're dumping that straight into the bowl of a stand mixer,
slowly cranking it up to high speed
and keeping it there for an inordinate 10 to 15 minutes,
enough time so that it nearly triples in volume
and achieves the very stiffest of stiff peaks.
In other words, when you pull out the wire whip
and invert it, it should look like this.
Now, at this juncture, the mixer may still be quite warm,
so if it feels at all toasty to the inside of your wrist,
just keep it going at your mixer's lowest speed
until the temperature of the outside of the bowl
matches that of the human body.
Now at this point, we're gonna start adding
an astounding amount of unsalted butter,
six sticks, or 675 grams, at room temperature,
one little piece at a time,
while the mixer is running on medium high speed.
Now, if the buttercream starts to look runny like this,
don't be afraid to take the whole bowl
and throw it in the fridge for 15 to 20 minutes.
You just want the butter to incorporate, not melt.
This process will eventually re-thicken the buttercream
into something that lives up to its name.
Swiss meringue buttercream is rich, eggy, thick,
and wildly smooth, and now it's going to become the mortar
with which we build our cakey house.
First, I'm placing about a quarter of it in a piping bag
for assorted reasons, and then I'm placing one
of our completely cooled 12-inch cake rounds
on a cake board on a cake stand.
Then using my very longest knife, I'm cutting
and occasionally rotating to trim off the rounded top.
Once you've popped off the initial cap,
don't be afraid to make lots of minor adjustments,
and to eat them, all of them.
The more level your cake rounds are,
the more anchored and grounded your final cake will appear.
Now, I'm gonna pipe a solid half-inch thick ring
around the outer perimeter of this cake round.
This is gonna act as a sort of filling barrier,
preventing our peaches from swooshing out
as they become load-bearing peaches.
Go ahead and spoon a bunch on there and level it out
until it's the same height as the buttercream ring.
Rinse and repeat the beheading
and leveling process with the second cake round,
this time leaving it naked on top
as it's going to serve as our uppermost lower layer,
if that makes any sense at all.
Let's see if this helps.
Just put it on top of the peaches and stuff.
Very gently and as accurately as possible,
lay it on top of the first layer,
reinforcing the buttercream ring if necessary,
so that it's flush with the outside of the cake.
Now, in the game, it looked like the cake was naked
underneath the draped white frosting,
but I want a comprehensive crumb coat,
so I'm going to tint a small amount of the buttercream
what I will very generously call a cake-like brown,
and hit the top with a small amount of the white.
This is called the crumb coat,
and it basically seals away any errant crumbs
that might otherwise ruin our frosting.
This guy's headed into the fridge to firm up
while we rinse and repeat the process,
albeit on a smaller scale.
Same exact deal for the six-inch cakes,
but we're doing a white crumb coat all around.
While those are chilling,
I'm gonna make the little thank you chocolate bar.
I don't feel like tempering chocolate,
so I'm gonna use candy melts,
which are like if Easter chocolate was a little worse.
Basically just microwave these guys until they're melted,
and that's it, it's very forgiving.
So I'm spreading out a very, very thin, smooth layer
of the chocolate and pressing into it a rectangular cutter
as quickly as possible
because this stuff hardens almost instantly
when it's this thin.
Now, as for the writing, I practiced piping thank you
in white chocolate several plus times,
and I could not do it effectively.
So I decided to cut a sort of stencil out of acetate
and use it sort of like a stencil,
taping it taut over the chocolate rectangle
and spreading the white chocolate thinly over top.
Now, while this was very, very satisfying to peel off,
it looked a little sloppy,
but it's the best chocolate writing I'm gonna pull off
at this juncture, so there it is, thank you.
It's the thought that counts, not the handwriting.
So with our crumb coats applied,
it's time to start decorating in earnest.
I got our bottom half,
which I'm gonna load up with buttercream,
spread it evenly and press it down the sides.
The perfect sort of draping that you see
in the video game is probably best achieved
with fondant, but fondant is gross,
so this is my best buttercream approximation.
We're putting everything in the fridge
so that it firms up after application.
Busting out the top half
and this time evenly applying the buttercream.
I tried to round the edges,
but definitely ended up with more of a bevel,
which is at least geometrically sophisticated.
Next up, I've got eight of my very finest strawberries
that I'm gonna brush down with simple syrup
to make 'em glisten.
Grab our cake bottom and fetch five large boba straws
that I'm gonna insert all the way through the cake evenly
to act as a platform, pulling them up ever so slightly,
snipping off the tops, and pressing them back down.
This, for our top layer, is gonna act
as something we can all really use, a support system,
giving a level, sturdy surface
on which we can gently slide our cake top.
All the layers are placed,
and so begins the process of piping.
First, some decorative drapery around the bottom half,
a supportive strip upon which we can perch our placard.
I'm gonna cool it with the alliteration starting now.
Pipe a ring around the cardboard so as to hide it,
and begin placing seven florets
evenly around the cake's shelf,
crowning with eight much more simple
sort of dabs around the top.
These, of course, are gonna act as mounts
upon which our fruit can perch, strawberries on the florets,
which as you can see, I've drained on paper towels
to prevent them from gooing all over the place,
and I'm pretty sure those were fresh cherries on top,
but they're out of season,
so all I could find were maraschino.
Precariously place our power star, sorry, last time,
followed by our non-denominational Mario
and Peach figurine cake toppers.
Crank on the power star, and there you have it,
the thank you cake from Super Mario 64.
Oop, get this outta here.
Oop, got a little frosting there.
So let's excise ourself a slice
and see how our layers look and taste.
I'm heating my knife in hot water for nice clean slices.
As you can see, it looks very clean and neat.
I wish I had cut the cakes in half
and done triple layers of the peach stuff,
but I could only charitably call myself a baker.
That stuff's a little bit above my pay grade.
I mean, if that weren't already obvious.
And it tastes pretty good, at the end of the day,
it's a vanilla cake with meringue frosting,
hence my desire for more peach filling.
But Kendall, Steve, and Nico came up
with rather a brilliant solution, just pile more on top.
It's way easier than putting it inside the cake.
I should have told somebody
over at Great British Baking Show.
Thank you guys for watching, and while I've got you here,
I just wanted to remind you that you can pre-order
the "Basics with Babish" cookbook now,
ensuring that you get a copy
when it's released October 17th.
Check out the links in the video description.
(relaxed music)