- But he's fixated on the cake.
He's says it's a loony cake?
- I believe,
when they told Connor his mom was getting
you know,
- Going to the funny farm.
- Taken into mental healthcare,
they gave him cake, dad and whoever,
just to calm him down,
to have a sugar, bite a cake.
So he was eating Victoria sponge for like, a week straight.
- Oh, right.
Okay. So Loony Cake.
- [Babish] Hey, what's up guys?
Welcome back to Binging with Babish
where this week we're taking a look
at Loony Cake from succession.
A never seen but hilariously described Victoria sponge cake,
most often served with berries and creams,
sort of like an upgraded strawberry shortcake.
This is a decidedly English confection,
so I'm going to be referring
to a recipe by the one and only Mary Berry.
Starting first with a strawberry jam,
beheading and quartering 600 grams of fresh strawberries,
and placing into a shallow wide saucepan,
along with the juice of one lemon,
and a positively eye watering 440 grams of sugar.
First, we're just gonna give things a sort of
cursory mix before allowing to macerate
at room temperature for 30 minutes.
Then we're bringing this guy up to a simmer
and holding him there over low heat
for 1 to 1 1/2 hours until a sample spoonful
of strawberry goo placed on a briefly frozen dinner plate
runs not.
Next up, the cake,
and Victoria sponge might be the easiest cake in the world.
Basically, you're just sifting the dry ingredients.
340 grams of sugar, 340 grams of self-rising flour
a 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, three teaspoons baking powder,
six large eggs at room temperature and shells removed,
and 340 grams or three sticks
of unsalted room temperature butter
with an optional one teaspoon of vanilla extract.
All of this is thrown
devil may care into the bowl of a stand mixer
and paddled lightly until homogenous.
That's it.
No premixing, no adding in stages.
Just dump, mix, and go.
Once you've mixed it just enough
so that a smooth batter forms
and no dry nor wet streaks remain,
this stuff's ready to bake.
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit
and engage in some light arts and crafts.
Heavily lubricating and parchment paper lining
two 10 inch cake pans.
Then we're gonna evenly divide the batter between the pans.
You can do this with a scale,
or you can just eyeball it like I'm doing
if you want slightly worse results.
Smooth things out with a rubber spat
and then channel your inner road rage,
violently turning and smacking the cake pan
like a hapless steering wheel.
Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 20 to 30 minutes
until the cakes spring back when poked
allowing to cool completely in the pan.
Next and last are whipped style cream,
combining about a cup and 1/2 of heavy cream
with about a teaspoon of vanilla paste
or a scraped vanilla pod.
Maybe like 30 to 40 grams of powdered sugar.
Whip until the mixture has
an almost whipped cream-like consistency,
just firm enough to hold its shape,
but not over whipped,
so there aren't large air bubbles.
Throw down a little smear
on the bottom of your cake stand
to act as sort of glue,
retrieve the less attractive of the two cake rounds,
and place it in the center of your cake stand.
Now, this cake baked up with a sort of concave top to it,
which I'm gonna lean into,
generously spreading whipped cream on top
and using its sort of bowl-like form factor
to hold the strawberry jam in place.
Once you got the center layer as loaded up as possible,
top it up with the other cake round.
And then my Achilles' heel, cake decoration.
I've got a star shaped tip here that I'm just
gonna use to dot the entire surface of the cake,
which is gonna act as a bed for some strategic strawberries.
Place those in the decorative pattern of your choice
that won't be too difficult to cut around.
And there you have it, a classic Victoria sponge cake
in the jam sandwich configuration.
Let's cut ourselves a slice.
Unfortunately, looks like my whipped cream
got a little smooshed,
but no matter, let's see how it tastes.
And upgraded strawberry shortcake is an apt way
to describe this.
The cake has a delicate open, almost cornbread-like texture.
Maybe not my favorite cake, but certainly the easiest.
So how do we make such a simple cake worthy
of a royal family wedding?
And my first thought was the most expensive
or specialty iteration beach ingredient.
First, some non-homogenized raw milk
from a raw certified dairy farm
in the North Fork of Long Island.
Vertically grown Oishii strawberries,
clocking in at $1-$2 per berry,
wasan bone sugar, a bag of which runs about $35
plus shipping and handling,
Beurre Bordier, a French butter that'll run you
about $12 for this little stick.
Some milled to order white Lammas cake flour
coming in at $8 a pound.
Quail eggs, 'cause they're the fanciest eggs
I can think of or get my hands on.
And some wild foraged Columbia vanilla beans,
3 of which will run you about 50 bucks.
Now I thought it'd be interesting to follow almost
exactly the same method for making the cake,
albeit with much more expensive ingredients.
First, I'm sifting the sugar, which is incredibly fine
but comes outta the bag very rocky,
followed by the flour, baking powder, and salt,
which I'm gonna whisk to combine
before adding the wet stuff.
First up, 36 quail eggs,
each of which must be painstakingly cracked.
But if you wanna make a tom light
you gotta break some gregs.
Since these are so small
I'm beating these guys together before adding
them to a party along with the vanilla extract
and roughly $35 worth of room temperature butter.
These guys are getting gently beaten together,
same deal as before,
until it forms a smooth, noticeably darker batter.
I think because of the cane sugar
and the very high yolk to white ratio of quail eggs.
These are getting the same treatment,
smoothed, swirled, and stopped and baked for the same
amount of time and the same make and model of oven
until they spring back when poked,
or they register 200 degrees Fahrenheit
at their thickest point.
Now we gotta make the whipped cream.
First we have to harvest the heavy cream
from the unhomogenized milk,
which we're gonna let sit undisturbed
in the fridge overnight.
I should say for your safety,
you should not consume raw milk.
Next up, the most expensive strawberry jam of all time,
about 600 grams or 80 bucks worth of Oishii strawberries
combined with 440 grams of our fancy sugar,
and allowed to macerate for 30 minutes
before simmering gently with the juice of one lemon,
I couldn't find any fancy lemons,
for 1 to 1 1/2 hours,
during which time I lost track of the heat
for about two minutes and managed
to thoroughly scorch the jam.
So after a few deep breaths
and trying in vain to forgive myself,
I popped open another six boxes of Oishii strawberries.
I managed to make a batch of the gel
then that I hadn't burned.
The next day,
we have our specifically undisturbed milk,
the top of which you can kind of see
the heavy cream has risen.
So I'm gonna carefully skim that off.
And as I'm recording this,
I realize that's why they call it skim milk.
Before making the whipped cream,
to which you might notice
I'm adding 450 grams of mascarpone cheese,
and to the 125 grams of sifted powdered sugar,
I'm adding 1 1/2 teaspoons of whipped cream stabilizer
before cutting and scraping my wild forged vanilla beans,
scooping the pods' contents into the bowl.
We're beating that all together
with a wire whisk until it's smooth,
scraping down the sides of the bowl,
then adding our 600 grams of hand harvested heavy cream
slowly at first and stopping to scrape down the sides
of the bowl if things get too chunky.
And the mascarpone cheese
and the optional whipped cream stabilizer is
gonna make a much more frosting-like whipped cream,
lending structural integrity to our cake,
which as you can see,
I'm trimming because it's slightly uneven,
laying down a little bit of whipped cream
to act as glue,
and placing the cake cut side down.
Then to contain my jam,
I'm first gonna lay down a thin layer of whipped cream,
piping a ring of whipped cream around the side
so that it can act as a sort of above ground pool.
Then I'm filling this void with the Oishii strawberry jam,
which I think I cooked a little bit longer
than the batch for the first cake,
giving it a more stable and gelled consistency.
On top of that goes our second cake.
And I wasn't sure how to frost this one fancier,
so I decided to cover the whole thing evenly
with whipped cream, and then using a bench scraper,
scraped off the sides, giving it the trendy, naked cake look
which is also admittedly much, much easier.
Then on top, I wanted to do a sort of
stacked crescent moon of decoration.
So first I dotted one side of the cake
with rosettes of decreasing height,
then arranged that with quartered and half strawberries,
and what I hope were edible flowers.
Probably just take those off before I serve.
And there you have it, the fancified Victoria sponge.
Total cost of production, about $220,
300 if you count my batch of burnt jam.
But will that cost be reflected in the quality of the cake?
And the answer is not really.
The cake had a slightly more tender texture,
I think just because I sifted together the dry stuff first.
But other than that, it was a dead ringer.
So I can think of only one fitting way to say farewell
to one of the best TV shows of all time.
And that is a meal fit for a king.
Bread butts, milk, a whole egg, shell included,
many generous dashes of hot sauce,
a gob of expired Branston pickle.
And on the table there was also Heinz beans
and various salad dressings.
I had to skip Chevon's spit
because I didn't have any on hand,
I didn't think it would make an appreciable difference
in the final product,
blended until relatively smooth.
And let's give it a taste.
Jeremy Strong apparently actually chugged this mixture.
So in solidarity, I'm gonna give this an actual taste.
And by virtue of all the acid from the pickles,
salad dressing, and hot sauce,
and the little bits of bread and eggshell,
it has both the flavor and texture of puke.
I can think of only one fitting use for this stuff.
To be worn as a crown.
And I'm not sure if my head is big
or my blender is small or both,
but try as I might,
I couldn't get it to rest on my dome.
Oh well.
So long Succession, and long live the king.
(upbeat music)