- [Babish] This episode is brought to you by Cash App.
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that's money, and that's Cash App.
You know what else is money?
Really, really perfect circles, nice dry cherries,
and getting to drop a cake on your boss's head.
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- It spread as far as the eye could see,
all over the floor of this vast building,
and it was this deep.
And one plumber said, "Look at all that water,"
a-and the second plumber said, "Yes,
and that's just the top of it."
(tense music)
(fingers snap) (cake squelches)
I'm so sorry.
It's my nephew.
He's very disturbed.
- [Babish] Hey, what's up, guys?
Welcome back to "Binging with Babish," where this week,
we're taking a look at Aunt Petunia's pudding
from "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets,"
which, to me, looks like a windtorte,
something that I saw on "Great British Baking Show."
So what we're talking about here is a layer cake
made primarily of meringue and secured together
with whipped cream, plus some maraschino cherries
and what looked to me like a purple custard of some kind.
I imagine this color and the custard's flavor coming
from some fussy old person's liqueur, in this case,
creme de cassis, a digestif made from blackcurrants.
So first up, the lengthiest step in our process:
making the meringue.
For a French meringue, in the bowl of a stand mixer
go six large egg whites, which we're gonna help
to stabilize with 1/2 teaspoon of cream of tartar
and flavor with 1/4 teaspoon of vanilla extract.
Go ahead and whip these guys together
until they are light and frothy, one to two minutes,
and then begins the slow and steady process
of adding the sugar, 430 grams of the stuff,
added a little tiny bit at a time.
Then all those sugar granules are gonna punch lots
and lots of little holes into the egg whites, I think,
whipping it up, volumizing, and stiffening it
as we continue to beat it together
on high speed for four to five minutes
until we have achieved a state of stiff peaks,
just enough so that the meringue stands up on its own.
Take great care not to over-whip.
Now I'm dumping the stuff into two separate piping bags,
one with a star tip,
the other with a plain ol' boring round tip.
Then, on several sheets of parchment paper,
I am tracing out one nine-inch and three eight-inch circles,
which I'm going to secure in place on a rimmed baking sheet
using a little bit of nonstick spray,
insert my drawings face-down, and boom:
nontoxic circle templates.
Now, the edges of each meringue disk looked
like they were piped using a star-shaped pastry tip.
Then I'm flooding the center using the round tip,
flattening it out, and piping out one more ring
on the outside of the top layer to act
as a sort of custard barrier.
So I'm ending up with one large base layer,
two middle layers to hold the custard, and one top layer.
These guys are headed
into a preheated 225 degree Fahrenheit convection oven
for 1 1/2 to 2 hours or until they are completely dry.
Another one thing I learned from that episode
of "Great British Breaking Show"
is that you gotta let your meringues
cool completely in the oven.
Temperature shock causes cracks,
and while even the best meringue
is gonna have a few hairline fractures,
you can prevent total collapse by waiting
until your oven is cool to the touch.
So there's the structural basises for our cake.
Now we need to address the masonry.
For the custard, I am combining 90 grams of sugar
with 30 grams of corn starch,
tiny whisking until the corn starch is evenly dispersed,
and creating a slurry with 100 mL of whole milk.
Then, our remaining 575 milliliters of milk
is being combined with 50 grams of sugar
and one teaspoon of kosher salt,
getting placed in a large saucepan over medium-high heat,
and being brought to a bare simmer, killing the heat,
adding the remaining 50 grams of sugar
to four large beaten eggs, whisking until combined,
and then slowly streaming in the hot milk mixture,
all while whisking constantly and impassionately
to prevent curdling of the eggs.
Once the eggs are tempered, we're gonna return them
back to the pan, place them over medium-low heat,
and bring them up to just barely a boil.
Once you see little puffs of steam escaping
from the little bubbles underneath the foam,
once again remove this from the heat,
refresh your corn starch slurry,
which probably settled a little bit,
then, while whisking constantly,
slowly drizzle it in so as to prevent clumps
and put it back over medium-low heat,
once again while whisking constantly.
Kendall says that in culinary school,
they said that you're not making custard
unless your shins are sweating.
After one to two minutes, the custard should thicken.
Take it off the heat,
and then we can start letting it cool off
while we flavor and color it with this blackcurrant liqueur.
This stuff tastes extraordinarily sweet
and distinctly of dark, rich berries,
so I'm hoping that it will lend its beautiful color
and flavor to my custard,
which it did not, because, as it turns out,
when you mix purple and yellow, you get kinda gray.
It tastes kinda good, but we're going to need
to augment heavily with food coloring
until we get that slightly off-putting Aunt Petunia brand
of purple, which we're gonna strain
directly onto some plastic wrap set in a rimmed baking sheet
to catch any curdled egg chunks, tuck it in for bed,
and get it into the fridge for at least two hours
or until completely chilled and up to three days.
Next and last may be my favorite part of this pudding party.
We're making whipped cream reinforced with cream cheese.
We're starting off with two blocks
or 550 grams of room-temperature cream cheese
that we're beating into a consistent consistency.
Then we're sifting in 200 grams of powdered sugar,
loving what high shutter speeds do with suspended particles.
Add 1/2 teaspoon each vanilla extract and kosher salt
and beat together just like we would
on any other cream cheese frosting Tuesday,
scraping down the sides of the bowl
to ensure even consistency and then slowly streaming in
675 milliliters of cold heavy cream.
Once all the cream has been added,
go ahead and continue beating
until you've achieved a state of stiff peaks.
And there you have it, folks:
a frosting with the consistency of whipped cream
but the flavor of cream cheese frosting.
Now, that's what I call wizardry. Sorry.
Then I'm dividing this batch in half
so I can color each green and purple respectively,
and then we're ready to start doing one of the things
that I am worst at: cake assembly and decoration.
We're starting with a dollop of frosting
to keep our base layer in place.
Then it looked like the first layer
just had some green frosting holding it up,
so I'm using that as a base for our first custard layer,
which, as you can see in the unfortunate way
I'm squeezing it, makes it kind of like an alien autopsy.
But once that's over with,
I can fill the cavity with, (sighs)
fill the waiting void, that's no better,
uh, make a custard puddle, there, that's better,
which I'm going to decorate
with more green whipped cream frosting,
top with another custard puddle or cuddle for short,
more structural green, and our top layer.
Now all there is left to do
is imitate the many floral decorations,
green and purple all around the cake
or pavlova or windtorte is what it actually is, kind of.
Last but not least, cherries on the bottom and top levels,
bottom on the green, top on alternating short purples.
And there you have it: Aunt Petunia's pudding
or a cake that looks funny when it's dropped
on somebody's head by virtue of magic.
First let's, ooh, see if we can manage
to cut ourselves a piece.
And how's it taste?
It's okay, but it's way too sweet.
Ultimately, this cake only has one purpose:
sittin' and lookin' at,
admiring the subtle artistry of your piping, and...
Oh. What the devil?
It's disappeared, almost as if by magic.
(cake clatters) (Kendall laughs)
Oh! (laughing)
(Kendall laughing and speaking indistinctly)
- [Kendall] Perfect!
It sounded like a pile of books.
- I knew it was gonna be rigid.
Thanks again to Cash App.
That's money. That's Cash App.
Download Cash App from the App Store
or Google Play Store today to add your $Cashtag
to the 80 million and counting.
(upbeat music continues)