- Today we're making a showstopper
that is so easy you will be impressing
all of your friends, with very little effort.
It's a tiramisu sheet cake, and it has
all of the shortcuts, but even more flavor.
It's insane.
Okay, let's get started.
For the cake batter, we're gonna get our dry ingredients,
whisk 'em up, and then beat in the butter.
This way, all that gluten will be coated in fat,
and it's not gonna be as activated
when we mix in the wet ingredients,
which'll be a more tender cake that will be fluffier.
2 1/4 cups of cake flour,
teaspoon of baking powder,
1 1/2 cups of granulated sugar,
teaspoon of kosher salt,
give it a nice sift.
The cake flour is basically ground
even finer than regular flour,
so it should give you a more tender, cakey cake.
Give it a final whisk,
(metal lightly rattling)
and we can set aside into our mixer.
This recipe uses six egg whites,
and if you wanna go all out and make a true zabaglione
for your tiramisu sheet cake,
head over to the blog, look at my tiramisu cake,
and you can make the filling for that and spread it on top.
But I thought that a sheet cake should be easy,
so in the spirit of an easy breezy tiramisu cake,
we're not gonna make our egg yolk custard situation
with a mascarpone, we're gonna do
a mascarpone Chantilly frosting, which'll be amazing.
So, you can use these egg yolks for anything you want.
You can make a custard, a curd, whatever,
make a super-rich omelet, but we're only gonna use
the egg whites for the cake batter.
So, six room temperature egg whites,
(egg cracks) into our bowl.
Now we're gonna add a cup of room temperature milk,
two teaspoons of good vanilla.
You can use cheap vanilla if you want, but just don't.
Promise me, don't use imitation vanilla extract.
It's not cool.
Two teaspoons of almond extract,
kind of optional, but I like it in this.
I think the almond works well
with the brandy and the coffee.
You'll find out.
1/4 cup of sour cream, which I love,
as you know, for moisture.
And now we're gonna give this a nice whisk.
(liquid splashing)
Back to the standing mixer.
We've attached our paddle attachment,
and we're gonna beat in that room temperature butter.
Cut it into little cubes, or just
small slices as you go along, and then mix on low,
so the butter is really coating all that flour.
3/4 of a cup of unsalted butter, at room temperature.
You can see that I'm not cutting it into cubes,
I'm just using little slices, and getting into the mixer
without getting my hands super buttery.
So if you take a look, we kind of have this crumbly texture.
And that's all the butter and the flour and the sugar,
stuck in tiny little lumps,
almost like you're making pastry dough.
So the deal is that all of that gluten
has been protected by a layer of beautiful fat
from the butter, and when we mix in this wet mixture,
in a couple batches, the gluten won't activate as much,
so you're not gonna have that kind of stretchy,
bready, dense cake situation happening.
Just FYI, I first tried this out,
and I was like, "Whoa, this is different from my normal,
"either beat the egg whites and fold in,
"or wet and dry situation," so I wondered why,
and I thought it'd be interesting to share with you.
Now I'm ready to add my wet ingredients in,
and I'm gonna do half, mix, scrape the bowl down,
add the rest in, mix just a little bit longer,
and we're done.
Yeah, let's scrape that bowl down.
(machine whirs)
Now the rest.
Okay, now we're left with a very liquid-y batter,
but it's gonna be great, trust me.
I've had cakes before where,
like for my ultimate chocolate cake,
the batter is so watery, you're like,
"This is not gonna turn into a cake!"
And it turns into the most magical cake ever.
All right, so you could just pour the batter
directly into the pan, but I don't play that way.
So, I'm gonna line it with parchment paper,
just because it'll slip out like magic,
and I feel the edge you get
is just a little bit protected from the metal,
and a little bit less caramelized and dry.
Just my opinion.
Flip the pan upside down,
put your parchment paper on top, and just cut the corners.
So, it doesn't have to be exact.
Now, pan back right side up,
put that parchment paper back in.
(paper rustling)
(chuckling) It's an optional step,
crinkle, crinkle, crinkle, but whatever.
Okay, now we're gonna pour that batter in.
It's a pretty thin batter,
so you don't have to do too much evening out,
but just push off into the corners
to make sure that they're not like, super thin.
All right, now we're gonna pop into the oven
at 350 for about 30 to 35 minutes.
My cake is out of the oven, and it's all out and cooling.
I just wanna show you how beautiful it is,
and why I like the paper.
That's the bottom, and you can see
all that caramelization gets lifted off on the paper,
so you're left with a beautiful, moist cake,
which will accept the syrup really nicely.
So, my super fluffy, white, moist cake
is gonna be soaked in a highly alcoholic coffee mixture.
To do that, I have one cup of really strong coffee
from my mocha pot, which I love.
This is like my best friend.
Hello, I have twin boys, I'm real tired.
All the time!
(gentle cheerful music) (coffee splashes lightly)
That's real strong, okay.
Into my bowl.
About 1/3 of a cup of brandy, and, it's fully up to you,
I'm gonna do about two tablespoons
of a generic, (laughs) brandless, coffee liqueur.
Give it a little whisk, and we're gonna set it aside.
Before I start my whipping cream,
I'm gonna have a little bit of coffee
and talk to you for a moment about
what the deal is when you're using coffee in a recipe.
If you use coffee in a chocolate recipe,
the coffee is really just there
to amp up the chocolate flavor.
You're typically not gonna taste any coffee.
In a tiramisu, however, you're definitely tasting it,
it is one of the star ingredients.
So I would make sure to use a coffee that you love.
Not a stale, old cup of coffee
from yesterday or the morning,
not like, a bad instant coffee.
There are some okay instant coffees I think.
But choose a coffee that you really love.
It should be strong, but it doesn't have to be like,
pure espresso, and it's, you know,
it's not gonna be a big deal one way or the other.
If it's a little bit weaker or stronger, or if you have to
dilute it with a bit of water, don't worry about it.
Now for my cup of coffee.
The frosting we're making for this
is a really simplified version of what a tiramisu should be.
Normally, you'd get your egg yolks, your sugar,
you would strain it, and whisk it over heat,
and create kind of a custard, into which you fold
several other ingredients, and it's delicious.
It's super delicious, check out my tiramisu cake recipe,
I'll put a link in the text below.
But a sheet cake should be simple.
It's like a party cake, or like a no-stress,
just easy breezy cake, so I don't wanna have any people
saying, "My egg yolks curdled,
"I have scrambled eggs, help!"
We're gonna do an easy, whipped cream version,
or a Chantilly version, where we just make a whipped cream,
and then we're gonna fold in the mascarpone.
The only dangerous, explosive part of this
is the mascarpone, because if you over-whip it,
it becomes a grainy, and kind of like
a cheesy situation, which isn't good.
Really just mix it a tiny little bit,
just so it's just mixed, you might even wanna do it by hand.
And definitely make sure you're using room temperature
mascarpone cheese, because the cold stuff
won't mix well, and it's gonna be a headache.
Okay, three cups of whipping cream.
We're gonna sift in a little bit less than a cup.
That's it. (metal rattling)
A lot of mess later, (laughs) just like,
splattering all over the place.
I don't know if you think that baking at home
is the only time messes happen,
but every single person who's like a blogger,
or just bakes a lot, will have a mess.
I promise you, even my mother,
who "cleans up as she goes along."
Okay.
I'm gonna add just a little bit of vanilla into this,
and then give it a final mix,
before we add our mascarpone cheese in.
(machine roaring)
For those of you not in the know,
mascarpone cheese tastes basically like solid cream.
It is amazing, ask any Italian person,
and they will confirm this, I promise.
All right, this is at room temperature,
we're gonna add it in, and I'm gonna just do this by hand.
That's perfect.
And lemme tell you, (mouth smacking)
it is intoxicatingly delicious.
I'm a whipped cream person, so I could just eat
this entire thing, I would eat the entire thing,
just by the spoon, and feel horribly sick later.
But that's later, but I would eat it. (laughs)
So, if you love whipped cream,
this is like whipped cream times 10 billion.
And if you're ever like, "Oh, my God,
"I wanna make a cake with whipped cream,
"but it's too unstable, it falls apart,"
whip in some mascarpone cheese.
If you're building the cake, I would recommend
two containers of mascarpone,
for three cups of whipped cream.
And then you can build, and it'll be
much more stable, and hold up.
It's still not gonna last a long time,
like you should really use it the day of,
or the next day at the latest,
because it starts to yellow over time.
But, you know, all good things can't last.
All right, now we're gonna make our cake!
I hardly ever do this, but I'm gonna trim
the edges of the cake, just so I get a really nice contrast
between the white fluffy cake,
and that beautiful brown coffee mixture.
Pour that brandy coffee mixture onto the cake slowly,
allowing it to all absorb into the sponge.
You really wanna soak this cake as much as possible.
You could even make it into a semi-poke cake,
just to make sure that all that coffee
gets soaked into that cake.
It's one o' the best parts!
So, you don't have to do this,
but because I always film these videos for Instagram,
and people like the visual, I'm using an ice cream scooper
to apply all of that delicious mascarpone frosting on.
It also lets you get a nice even layer,
you're not gonna tear the cake by moving it around too much.
Now, we're gonna use our offset spatula,
just to spread out the mascarpone frosting.
Doesn't have to be perfect, keep it nice and rustic,
and finish it off with a dusting
of really beautiful, and nice cocoa powder.
It gives you a nice finish, and that hint of chocolate
is just a beautiful little addition, and a nice visual
to contrast with that white, white frosting.
Mm, oh, my God!
I can't even tell you, (laughs)
this is like, take 70, I've just been eating pieces, like,
"Let's do it again, let's do it again, let's do it again."
It melts in your mouth, the cake is so fluffy and tender.
Use it for other recipes, you'll be
so happy with it, too, by the way.
And this mascarpone whipped cream topping is bananas.
Like, it's to die for.
All right, you have to make this recipe.
If you have any questions, ask me in the comments below.
Thanks for watching, hit that Like button,
and don't forget to subscribe.