- Hi, my name is Bill Yosses and I was lucky enough
to be the Pastry Chef for two Presidents,
George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
And I'm going to be making President George W. Bush's
favorite cake, the seven layer chocolate cake.
(soft music)
This was a cake that the President,
President Bush asked for his birthday.
His birthday is actually July 6th
but we used to celebrate it on the 4th of July.
It starts out with butter and sugar that we blend together
in the electric mixer.
I like to start with soft butter.
You can either leave it out
for a few hours on the kitchen counter.
You don't want it to melt
because when butter is melted, it separates
into what's called the milk solids and the fats.
And then we're gonna add our sugar
and we're going to put it on medium speed.
So I'll tell you a story about my first impression
of President Bush was when I went for my interview
and I was not aware that it would be face-to-face.
So you're invited to make a cake
and a dessert sort of like a, you know, test, which I did.
And then I was invited to go up to meet the President.
And so it was the President, the first lady
and Stephen Hadley the National Security Advisor
and Condoleezza Rice.
So these were people
that I had read about for years and admired.
And so obviously I was a little bit starstruck
kind of stumble is sort of stuttered out
both honored to be here, sir.
And without missing a beat, he just said
look me in the eye and very humbly said it is for me too.
That was the first impression that I got
of being there face-to-face with him.
And it's not the kind of impression
that maybe a person would get
from reading news stories about how the man was.
But anyway, that was a great start.
And I certainly learned how to make a cake that he enjoyed
for his birthday and I got the job.
We're gonna alternate liquids and dries.
You slowly add the dry ingredients, which is flour
more flour and the baking powder, cocoa powder.
And then the liquids are whole eggs and buttermilk.
And these are gonna go in here, alternately.
So it all comes together into a smooth mess.
(soft music)
So now that the cake batter is mixed together
we're going to put it into our mold.
(soft music)
Now we have the cake in its cake mold,
we're gonna bake it at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.
What I mentioned before is that President Bush
really loved desserts yet he was very fit.
He could still outrun the young secret service members
who were with him when he used to do weekend rides
in Camp David, he did mountain biking
and they could not keep up with him.
He used to say to me
you're the reason I have to exercise so much.
But one funny story happened while I was at the White House.
So I had overheard people talking
that the President said, oh, I have to eat healthy
or I have to lose some weight, something like that.
So for dessert that night
I thought I would do the right thing
and I would make a delicious apple salad.
So we served the apple salad.
The Butler's take it into the President
and right away the Butler comes back with the plate.
Sets it down on the counter in the kitchen and says,
"Don't ever make that again."
And I said, "Why?
"I thought that I thought I heard
"That he wanted to have a healthy dessert."
And he goes, "What happened was I put the dessert down,
And the President said, "What's that?"
And he said, "That's apple salad, sir."
And the President said, "Apple salad?
"Apple salad is not a dessert.
"Apple salad is a salad," and got up and walked away.
Believe me, there was no more apple salad served
at the White House.
And while we're letting this cool
we're gonna make the icing that goes on top of it
starts out with butter, we'll put that on double broiler
which means water boiling under this to melt the butter.
At the same time, we're gonna add our chocolates.
We'll let that get started
and start to melt before we add anything else.
So there's a number of things that you learn
when you start to work at the White House.
And they're not really written down.
Obviously there's a few things which become
evident right away.
You always refer to the President as Mr. President,
if he enters the room, you stand
likewise for the first lady, the prestige of the office
the honor of the office obviously requires a lot
of respect as kitchen personnel, we always had to be ready.
We used to say on time is 15 minutes late.
Like you always have to be there 15 minutes
before ready to serve.
And it's so happens that George W. Bush
was a fairly quick eater.
He did everything with sort of deliberation and intent.
And he just liked to get things done and including dinner.
But if a guest was not accustomed to being served
at the White House, they may not have been aware
of a very old tradition, which probably dates back
to England and the Kings and Queens of England.
And that is that when the Head of State
is finished eating your finished eating.
So in the case of George Bush
he would sometimes get through his plate and the Butlers
and service staff would clear his plate
and everybody else's.
So if you were a talkative person
you might not have very much to eat out of state debt.
The amazing thing is he was very, very fit.
President Bush was, but I think most nights he ate dessert
and I think it was something he looked forward to
after a hard day, like, well at least I have a dessert
to look forward to.
(soft music)
Sort of the epitome of service at the White House
in terms of food is the state dinner.
And actually it's also political high point.
The state dinner is sort of everything that the presidency
tries to achieve rolled up into a two or three day ceremony.
So for example, the Head of State of the country arrives
there's been months and months of preparation.
At the White House, we're trying to present
the best of America, the best ingredients,
everything the best we can.
So we want America to be represented there,
but at the same time, we want to honor the visitor.
So I might include for example, ingredients
from that person's country or a technique kind
of dessert that they love in that country.
Now that the cake is cool
we're going to start cutting it with about three fingers.
You'll get seven layers.
And in order to be sure that our cake is even
all the way up, we use the same piece of cake
to guide our knife on the other layers.
So now we're gonna build the cake and the filling
is this beautiful chocolate icing.
This cake is sort of like what the French
might call it terrain
or it's a rectangular cake rectangular and high.
Working at the White House,
there was some very interesting things that I learned
about entertaining heads of state things
which don't always make it into the newspaper
but the state dinner is kind of the ultimate.
The ultimate entertaining at the White House
the ultimate of kind of everything.
It's statecraft, diplomacy, politics
everything important, all rolled into one.
So for example, one of the last state dinners
that the Bush's gave was for the President of Ghana
the West African country, every state dinner, it's the same
there's a morning ceremony they arrive,
there is a military parade.
There's a Fife and Drum Corps,
sort of like a revolutionary war
style part is part of the army.
They, perform on the South lawn.
That's where the President gives a speech
welcoming the Head of State.
And after that, they go in for lunch
and then they break up the Head of State
along goes into the Oval Office with the President.
There's a lot of tradition going back decades or centuries
even about how to receive a foreign Head of State.
And just to give you an example of how precise
this is one of the very interesting departments
in the White House located in the East Wing,
the First Lady's Wing is the Calligraphy Department.
So for a true state dinner, each menu is hand written
in calligraphy by a member of this team.
It's all not only drawn out in perfect script
on these beautiful paper, but even more important
than that each country has besides its flag
they also have what you might call
I think heraldry or sort of coat of arms.
And that's usually a very intricate sort of, you know
it has dragons or lions or whatever each country uses.
But in this case
the calligraphers had to draw that heraldry
on the top of the menu card, the size of a quarter.
Think about that.
I mean, they're using like, you know
a mouse whisker to draw some of these
like very intricate details.
And they did it perfectly times 200 times 300
however many people were invited to a state dinner.
You know, it's one of the things I like to talk about
because there's this whole team of people who work
at the White House who really don't get credit
and they don't want to get credit.
They don't want a lot of this sort of news to be out there
because it's private to the family.
But I always sing their praises
because they're really like the unsung
American heroes, I think.
And many of them have been there
for President after President many administrations.
In fact, I can tell you one story, one man
when I started working there said,
"Remember don't throw the leftovers away
"Because many Eisenhower told me that."
And I thought he was joking.
This man was not joking.
He was in his 70s when I started to work there in 2007.
And he had started working for Eisenhower.
And as a young man, a very young man who was Afro-American
started working like 20 years old in the White House
and he was still there.
Imagine all, he had seen the American history he had seen
and he was devoted to his job.
Basically these are, you know, personal member inces
of families, but a real American treasure.
So we've said, let our cake set up in the fridge.
So it has a nice and firm surface.
And now it's gonna get the secondary glaze.
At this point, we kind of overdo it.
We kind of over pour this chocolate glaze on it.
The beauty of this cake is its simplicity.
And we just top it with a little chopped walnuts
and it's ready to slice and serve.
(soft music)
This delicious cake to me is a symbol
of the very straightforward and simple pleasures
of desserts and food.
And, in a way how food brings us together
because you have to remember
that when the President and Mrs. Bush hired me
they knew that I was a New Yorker, liberal Democrat.
I mean, it's sort of saying the same thing
and yet they still hired me those extra considerations
about political party didn't come into the conversation.
And it's something that I admire about them.
I'm grateful to them for giving me the chance to serve
and I'm proud of having worked for them.
It's okay (Bill laughing)
No, the reason I say that, so I once remember Julia Child
interviewing a chef famous New York chef
who tasted his own dish and said, "Delicious."
And she of course said,
"If you do say so yourself," (Bill laughing)
so I'm always leery about praising my own food too much.
(soft music)