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("Minecraft" game music)
- [Alvin] Hello there.
Welcome back to another episode of "Arcade with Alvin."
Today, I'll be making the cake from "Minecraft,"
which is made with only a few ingredients,
among which are wheat, a bucket of milk, and eggs.
One egg, to be precise.
Just gonna move over to our crafting table,
place down our ingredients one by one,
three wheat on top, followed by one sugar in the left,
one egg in the middle,
and another sugar on the right,
and on the bottom, to finish,
we have three buckets of milk.
All right, everything seems to be in order, and go.
And craft.
Okay, this, do the thing.
You're supposed to do the thing.
It's not working.
Weird.
Usually I just click the button and it's done.
Okay, it looks like I have to do this the real way.
Let's first try to make this cake
with the ratios given by the Minecraft recipe.
So in this wooden bowl I've made with three planks,
I'm gonna mix in a hundred grams of eggs
with 200 grams of sugar.
Once those are nice and beaten together,
I'm adding in 300 grams of milk,
stirring that in, and then adding 300 grams of flour.
This reflects the ratio
outlined in the crafting table recipe,
one part egg, two parts sugar, three parts flour,
and three parts milk.
And just like many things in "Minecraft,"
this cake has a beautiful cube shape.
So I'm pouring this batter
into a square greased cake pan,
baking this at 350 degrees for about 20 to 25 minutes.
And this cake's not looking so good.
There is no leavening agent whatsoever.
Kinda looks more like a square pancake than an actual cake.
Let's cut it open.
See how it tastes.
Let's take a look at the cross section here.
Ooh, ow. That burns.
Tastes like a pancake.
So it seems like following the game recipe
is not the best course of action.
However, we will not let this cake go to waste.
So we're gonna have some fun with the leftovers later,
but we're now gonna proceed
with a more traditional cake recipe.
To make those signature red squares on top of the cake,
I decided to make a sweet berry coulis.
Sweet berries can be found all throughout "Minecraft"
on thorny berry bushes,
which to me means that they're raspberries,
which is why I'm combining 12 ounces of raspberries
in a medium sauce pan
with 2 1/2 ounces of sugar,
and about juice of one half of a lemon.
The raspberries will start to break down
with the sugar and the heat.
And once there are no big chunks left,
I'm taking this off the heat
and straining this through a sieve
to create a nice glossy, red, beautiful berry mixture.
And to set this mixture,
I'm combining a packet of powder gelatin
with about half an ounce of sugar
and sprinkling this mixture
right on top of the raspberry stuff.
I'm making sure to stir the gelatin mixture
while it's still warm so that it can dissolve properly.
And once that's been done,
this gets poured onto a nice Silpat mat,
spreading it out, using the help of gravity,
and set to chill in the refrigerator.
Getting a little tired of my character's skin, though,
so I'm gonna swap out real quick.
All right, now that I've turned into dark mode Alvin,
it is time to make the actual cake itself.
In a large bowl, I'm combining 180 grams of whole eggs,
140 grams of egg yolks, 240 grams of whole milk,
and one tablespoon of vanilla paste,
and whisking to combine all the liquid ingredients
in a bowl first.
Then I'm combining 550 grams of cake flour
550 grams of sugar, a tablespoon of baking powder,
and two tablespoons of kosher salt in a stand mixer
and combining until smooth.
Then, as if we're almost making a pie crust,
I'm mixing first the dry ingredients
with 340 grams of softened unsalted butter
to make it a little pebbly of sorts.
Whoa.
If you're not spilling while you're baking,
you're just baking.
We're slowly adding one third of our liquids.
Once two more additions
of 1/3 liquid have been introduced, we are now
at three thirds of our liquid mixture incorporated,
and we can transfer our finished batter
into the same square baking pan from earlier.
The cake batter has now passed the quality control test.
I'm throwing this cake into a 350 degree oven
until it's done, which took us around 60 to 70 minutes.
It is now time to address
the maybe-it-will-work cake from earlier.
So from the leftovers we have earlier,
I'm slicing this cake-like bread
into more stick-like shapes.
Pretty satisfying, if I say so myself,
and in the large pan, we're gonna heat up a lot of butter.
I'm not gonna say a little bit, 'cause it's a lot,
and then throwing in all the sticks
from our maybe-it-will-work cake.
I like to arrange them in an even layer
so they get an even layer of browning on all sides.
Once they're looking nice and toasty,
I'm drizzling in a who-knows-how-much maple syrup,
but I do add a hefty pinch of salt,
'cause honestly, these are leftovers.
They're just for fun.
There's no measurements.
And as the syrup reduces,
the butter starts to brown,
and everybody becomes good friends.
We now have essentially
what I like to call caramelized French toast sticks,
turning slightly dense and chewy bread cake stuff
into more fluffy, yet crispy on the outside, sticks of fun.
Usually food experiments
can sometimes often end up in the trash,
but I like to turn them into something more fun.
Oh yeah. That's pretty fun.
And needless to say, Steve took home every single one.
Thanks, Steve.
With the studio smelling like
all the good things in the world,
the cake is now ready to be removed.
It smells really good,
and wait, I think I hear it making some sounds.
("Minecraft" cave sound effect echoes)
Oh, that's a creepy sound.
Oh, hi, Andrew.
He ate a lot of the sticks, too.
After making sure that our cake
is indeed done in the center,
it's now time to flip it over
and marvel at the perfectly square edges of our cake.
One last step to make sure
this is as "Minecraft" as possible
is to trim off any bit of the top
that does not resemble a perfectly flat edge.
You best believe we ate all these scraps, too.
The final component for our "Minecraft" cake
is the white frosting seen on top.
So to begin, we're gonna start
by combining two ounces of water
with seven ounces of sugar in a pot
until it's reached a boiling point.
This is our syrup.
Meanwhile, in a stand mixer,
I'm whipping six large egg yolks
until they've reached a nice, pale, ribbon-y consistency.
Once our syrup is not hot, but warm,
I'm pouring that in
while whipping the egg yolks at the same time.
We're essentially making egg yolk meringue here,
whipping this on a medium-high speed
until the entire mixture has cooled to room temperature,
and just like making an enriched dough,
like a brioche, I'm slowly adding in
about four sticks of unsalted butter at room temperature,
waiting for our egg mixture to eat up all the little butter
before adding a little bit more.
Kinda like feeding me as a kid.
You only can give it a little bit at a time,
because who knows where it's gonna go.
Once the eggs have completely consumed all the butter,
and is very happy,
I'm flavoring the buttercream
with about one teaspoon of vanilla extract,
and 1/2 a teaspoon of salt.
And in the game, the frosting is white,
so we're gonna fold in about six ounces
of melted white chocolate.
We are now gonna give our cake a little booster seat
so I can comfortably spread
a lot of this buttercream right on top.
Frosting cakes really is not my forte,
but I am trying to get it into as clean
and as sharp of a cube-like, square, flat shape
as much as possible to resemble the pixels in the game.
In order to get those super sharp, clean edges,
we decided to chill and freeze our cake
for about an hour or so
to let the frosting set up,
and then cut back into it to get nice, clean, sharp edges.
Once we're satisfied with the frosting shape,
it's now time to carefully
and strategically place on our sweet berry squares.
We're delicately arranging these red squares
as close to the game as possible,
carefully slicing, nudging, and placing
as to not disturb its perfectly square-like properties.
And I present to you,
even though not game recipe accurate,
our version of the cake from "Minecraft,"
a sturdy yellow cake base
with a white chocolate French buttercream frosting,
topped with sweet berry coulis squares.
Let's take a slice, shall we?
And you gotta say,
that is probably one of the most satisfying cross sections
I've ever seen.
Those square and clean edges are just something else,
something you could probably only find in "Minecraft,"
but how does it taste?
Quite good.
I think the sweet berry on top
really ties the whole thing together,
and makes sure that the buttercream and the cake
aren't too overbearing.
I am quite hungry, though.
So you'll have to excuse me
while I finish this entire cake by myself.
Let me just go ahead and eat this.
Takes about seven slices to finish the whole thing,
and wow, I am pretty full.
I feel good,
but I think I'm ready to go take on the Ender Dragon.
Now, where did my diamond pickax go?
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(mellow indie music)