This cookies and cream cake is probably may favorite cake, and it is made by my friend
Adrianna Horton.
"I feel so odd getting my face so close to a cake."
She's the proprietor of the Oh Honey Baking Company that operates out of the Mill Hill
Bakers Collective here in beautiful Macon, Georgia.
She's gonna show us how she makes it. The cakes themselves are a little elaborate. You
could totally just bake from a box — two chocolate layers and one white layer. My main
goal here was to learn some pro-level decorating techniques. You could apply all of this at
home, or simplify the recipe and just do the basic frosting. Take whatever you want from
it.
First the chocolate layers. As you may know I'm not too big on precision, but Adriana
is, so get ready for some very precise quantities. As always, the recipe is in the description.
She starts with 183 grams of flour, 300 grams of brown sugar, 60 grams of dutch cocoa powder
— the dutch process is what makes it taste like an Oreo — and 3 grams of baking soda.
"So now we're going to put this on the mixer with a paddle attachment."
You could certainly use a hand mixer for this. Just get it mixed up. Now she's warming up
185 grams of water in the microwave — just warm, it should not be boiling. Then she'll
mix in a standard 2 gram packet of instant coffee crystals. You could certainly use an
equivalent amount of fresh coffee, but we want to drink our coffee. This really won't
make the cake taste like coffee; it basically just supports the chocolate flavor.
"It mellows it out a little bit, keeps it from getting too sweet."
Two whole eggs go into the warm water mixture, along with 60 grams of vegetable oil — yes,
she really does weigh everything. Mix that up and let the natural emulsifiers in the
egg yokes bring the oil and water together there. Mix that in, along with 125 grams of
softened butter. She's using salted butter. If you're using unsalted, put in a little
pinch of salt. And she doesn't cream the butter with the sugar to create bubbles. She wants
density, but she will mix the whole batter a bit until it goes a little but fluffier.
Last ingredient:
"This is 130 grams of buttermilk."
"That's pretty"
"Mmm hmm."
Batter goes into 8-inch cake pans. To prevent sticking, Adriana does not use parchment rounds.
Instead...
"Baker's Joy."
Nonstick spray with flour in it, and she really sprays it on.
"I feel joy. They don't stick. They won't stick."
Split the batter evenly into two pans, and there's the outer chocolate layers.
Now for the inner white cake layer that will look like the cream in the giant Oreo. Adriana's
recipe has a complication, in that it requires an egg and a half. How do you get half an
egg?
"You just take the egg, and you're gonna weigh it."
Then you beat it, so that when you pour off half the weight, you're pouring off equal
quantities of white and yoke, which have very different properties in a cake batter.
185 grams of all-purpose flour. 185 grams of white sugar. An eighth of teaspoon of baking
soda, one and half teaspoons of baking powder, and a quarter teaspoon of salt.
"I did not realize that I have chocolate on my finger."
Nobody notices!
Get all that combined, and now she's weighing out two separate quantities of milk. One is
83 grams, the other is 56 grams...
"...that I'm going to combine with my 40 grams of oil."
Set that aside, then add one and a half eggs to the other quantity of milk, along with
a teaspoon and a half of vanilla. I don't claim to understand the dark arts at work
here. Again, feel free to just bake one white cake and two chocolate cakes from a box.
Into the dry ingredients she's now putting in 115 grams — that a whole stick — of
softened salted butter, one tablespoon at a time.
"You kinda want it to end up looking like breadcrumbs."
One thing I notice about Adriana is she's very diligent about scraping down the edges
frequently.
"We're gonna add our milk and oil mixture."
Then comes the milk, eggs and vanilla mixture, in three doses. Nice and slow.
"One last scrape down."
Baker's Joy in another pan, and then all of this goes into that one pan. Note how she
thumps her pans to rid of any large air bubbles. There might be a little less chocolate batter
in the chocolate pans, but that batter takes a little longer to bake, so the result is
both flavors should end up being done around the same time, after about 20 minutes.
"You just kinda half to open it and poke it."
Poker comes out clean, you're good. Then you have to let those cakes cool all the way down
before you decorate them. During which time, Adriana and I require a lovely beverage, and
fortunately I have several boxes that have arrived from Trade Coffee, the sponsor of
this video.
Whether you're a coffee novice or a total chemist, Trade can help you discover new coffees
from the nation's top roasters. You just fill out this questionnaire online, and Trade will
match you to some coffees and then mail them right to your door. Free shipping. I don't
drink a ton of coffee, so I opt for pre-ground. Hmm. Passion House "LSD Blend." That should
go well with cake. Because you watch me, you can get 30 percent off your first bag when
you sign up. The first 100 people who click my link in the description will get that deal.
Mmm. LSD of course actually just stands for Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, and as promised
this delivers a "flavor trip through notes of juicy candied orange." Since I like it,
I can rate it as such online, and then Trade's algorithm will send me more stuff according
to my constantly evolving preferences. Thanks to Trade.
Now, time to make the frosting. She's making a big batch. The recipe that I have in the
description is half this quantity — just enough to frost one cake. She's got a whole
pound of softened salted butter.
"It wasn't until I started making it with salted butter that I myself could actually
eat the butter ream. Like, I don't like buttercream. I'm the kind of person that will, like, take
the cupcake, and just take all of the frosting off and just eat the cupcake. But whenever
I started making this frosting I was like, 'OK, I can handle buttercream.'"
In goes one and three quarter cups of shortening. That'll get you a more stable, smoother buttercream
than if you just used butter.
"And then we're gonna get it going, and then scrape the sides down, and then we're gonna
let it whip for 10 to 15 minutes."
Gotta get air in there. The air is what transforms this into frosting. While we're waiting, we'll
pulverize six Oreos. Some bakers would like to take the cream filling out...
"But it's my opinion that it doesn't matter."
You could theoretically do this by hand, but you want to get it to a very fine crumb, otherwise
the frosting won't spread smoothly.
The fat mixture now has plenty of air in it.
"And you can kinda see how much lighter it is now."
Time for the sugar to go in.
"Don't do this any higher than the lowest setting on your mixer, because you'll end
up with a face full of powdered sugar. Learn from my mistakes."
Entire two-pound bag of powdered sugar.
"As it starts to get all the powdered sugar incorporated, you just kinda slowly start
turning it up."
Again, always scraping down the bowl. Big pockets of powdered sugar can easily hide
at the bottom of the bowl.
"I've got about two teaspoons of vanilla."
You can put that in at any stage of the process.
Now the finished buttercream she's gonna divide into two even portions. One will get the Oreos,
the other we'll keep white for decoration. The non-Oreo bowl will probably have more
than we need in it, but...
"We can always add more to our Oreo, but we can't take away."
Any extra will keep sealed in the fridge for two weeks. In goes the pulverized Oreos.
"Mmmm."
That's Mount Junk Food right there. Get that thoroughly mixed in.
"So that's probably good right there."
Alright, time to get the thoroughly-cooled cakes ready by leveling them. You can use
a terrifying cake leveler like our friend Mary Virginia has there, or you can go free-hand
with a big serrated knife.
"But just take it kinda slow, and you can just turn the cake as you're cutting."
She'll just clean that up a little bit and brush off the crumbs, otherwise they'll all
get mixed into the frosting.
Same thing on the white cake.
"The safest way to do it is just to do a little bit at a time."
And what do you do with those leftover humps?
"It makes me sad to throw them away, but I don't like cake pops, and I don't ever want
anyone to ask me for cake pops, so please don't ever ask me for cake pops."
They're usually made by grinding up cake remnants and mixing them with frosting.
"It's like somebody's chewing up your cake for you."
Yeesh.
OK, now we get to some secrets of the pros here. This is a disposable cardboard cake
round. You can buy these. You probably don't own a plate that's wide and flat enough to
perfectly hold a cake, hence the round. A little buttercream on the round to glue the
cake to it, and under that is a cake turntable. If you don't have one, you could try a lazy
Susan.
"If you don't have a lazy Susan, I don't know what else you could use, other than an actual
cake turntable. They do have them at Walmart for like 25 dollars."
Yeah, if there's one single difference between pro cakes and amateur cakes, it's having some
kind of spinny thing, because look at how it allows her to get an even, and more importantly,
thin layer of frosting. Buttercream is intense stuff — most people don't want a ton of
it, and the turntable allows you to scrape the buttercream down to less than a quarter
inch if you want. White layer goes on. She's using an offset spatula, but you really could
use any big knife. Lord, I could watch people using cake spinners and pottery wheels all
day.
Top chocolate layer goes on, and Adriana always puts the top cake on upside down.
"Because then, if you didn't cut it perfectly level with your serrated knife, it doesn't
really matter, because the cake pan has a nice right angle to it."
Now, a giant pile of frosting goes on the top, because it needs to start falling down
around the edges.
"I'm gonna push it down. And sometimes it'll kinda pull away from the cake it first, because
of the cookie crumbs, but if you just push it back into it, it'll sort itself out. See?"
Again, she's using the turntable as much to remove frosting as to add it. She's happy
when it's so thin that you start to see the cake peeking through.
"If you see the layers like that, it kinda adds to it."
Now is when Adriana would normally use a board scraper to smooth everything out perfectly,
but she's gonna try a home hack of cutting a square out of a plastic file folder.
That works surprisingly well, but she's going back to the board scraper. Again, paper-thin
layer of buttercream all around. I love that. I hate too much buttercream.
"And then clean up the board, which you can do with a paper towel."
And before the next stage of decorating, this has to cool thoroughly. She's putting it in
the freezer to get the outer shell nice and solid.
When it's cold enough, we'll make ganache, which is basically just melted chocolate and
cream. That's a cup of heavy cream. Adriana's heating it in a double boiler — that's a
bowl over a pan of boiling water. You can make ganache in the microwave, but boiling
water has the advantage of getting the mixture as hot as possible without ever making it
too hot.
"If you're doing ganache as like a filling, it doesn't have to get that hot. But whenever
you doing it as a drip, you want it to be very thin, or it's not going to fall down
the side like you see in all those drip cakes."
She says the temperature is perfect when you splash some cream up along the side and it
fizzes, just like that. In goes an entire 12 oz bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips. Just
whisking it in slowly. This makes way more ganache than you would need. The quantities
in the recipe downstairs are smaller. Beautiful stuff that is.
Get the cake out, and real quick, before the ganache firms up...
"You scoop it out, you put it on top, and then you're just gonna kinda smear it — just
slowly let it kinda fall off of the sides."
And that is what they call a drip cake. Gorgeous. Smooth out the top, and then back in the refrigerator
to set while we put the white frosting into a piping bag. Adriana is a fan of the reusable
ones.
"You can get one of these. It's about the same price as getting a pack of them and it'll
last you forever."
She's using a 1M tip for the bag. It fits automatically into the reusable bag. If you're
using a disposable bag, you have to cut the tip off the bag yourself. Here's how you measure
that.
"It's like that. Get right in the middle."
Then you can fill up your bag.
Now, as you can see, the ganache as not set enough yet. It's sticking to her finger when
she dabs it.
"If you put your buttercream dollops on that, they could slide off the side, and you don't
want that to happen."
Gotta chill it some more. Now you can see it's solid enough. She's just making little
roses with tight circles. The key to getting them evenly spaced is to do one, then do the
one immediately opposite. Then go halfway around in-between those and repeat. And then
the final touch — an Oreo leaning against each dollop.
"You just put it kinda in-between, and then lean it back."
Then one more in the middle, and we're done!
"There you go!"
"How do you feel about that?"
"Uh, I think it looks good!"
Yeah it does.
"I think it's really fancy and your lover would surely appreciate it."
"It's cookies."
"It's cookies. Yeah, it's fancy and yet it's like a giant Oreo."
"It's fancy cookies. It's fancy, with the love of a store-bought cookie Oreo."
Now note how she makes a slice, and then wipes her knife before making another cut. It's
all in the little things. Lordie, that is just glorious. I love how the pulverized Oreo
in the buttercream gives the frosting flavor and texture. It's not just pillowy fat.
"You think that people can achieve this at home?"
"Absolutely, you can absolutely achieve that at home."
"Give it a shot!"
"Do it!"
"Or don't, pay her!"
"Or don't!"
"Yeah, you can buy one from her."
"You are welcome to order one from me."
Hey thanks again to Trade Coffee for sponsoring this video. Remember, the first 100 people
who sign up with my link in the description will get 30% off their first bag of coffee.
Take the coffee quiz, and the promotion will apply automatically. Nothing goes better with
cake than coffee.