Welcome to How To Cook That I'm Ann Reardon and today we're making a
gravity-defying popcorn cake. It looks like it's just a pot with popcorn
exploding out of the top but it's actually a rich chocolate cake with
layers of cream and salted caramel. And very exciting news today we have a
giveaway you could win one of 6 KitchenAid stand-mixers!!! I'll tell you
more about that and you'll need to watch the video CAREFULLY to enter that one :)
Let's start with the lid - first you want to temper some chocolate if you
don't know how to do that watch my chocolate secrets video and I'll link
you to that below and at the end. It's important that you temper your chocolate
or it won't set at room temperature. To make the dome shaped lid, spray a
little oil on the underside of a pan lid and then gently rub it with some paper
towel so that you have a thin layer of oil. Pour on a good amount of your
tempered chocolate and spread it out around the lid. As it starts to thicken
as it sets just spread it out from the middle back towards the edges so the
edges aren't super thin and then place that in the fridge to set. Now for our
cake we need some butter and dark chocolate in a bowl sugar eggs and yes
there's lots of eggs because it's a rich cake flour cocoa powder and baking
powder. First thing you'll need to do is melt the butter and chocolate in the
microwave. Once that is melted add in the sugar and
the eggs and whisk those together well and I'll put all the recipe quantities
for this cake on the howtocookthat.net website for you in grams and ounces and
cups and there's a link to that below. Then mix in the flour baking powder and
cocoa until it's just combined and you don't want to over mix it once you've
added the flour. Split that between three 8-inch baking tins and bake those in the
oven for around 25 minutes or until a knife inserted into the center comes out
clean. Next put some water sugar and glucose syrup into a pan and we're
making our yummy salted caramel for between the layers of our cake. Give that
a little stir to make sure all the sugar is wet. Try not to get any sugar up on
the sides of the pan. If you do just wash it off using a
wet pastry brush because if you have sugar crystals on the edge it'll make
our caramel crystallize and go more like fudge and we don't want that. Leave it
unstirred so that it can just boil and bubble away and after a few minutes it
will thicken and start to turn golden. Leave it for just a few seconds more to
let it get an even golden color but watch that you don't burn it we don't
want to burnt flavor to it. Remove it from the heat and add in your vanilla
and the cream being careful not to get burnt by the steam as you add that in.
Now you'll end up with lumps of caramel in your cream and that's just fine don't
panic just return it to the heat and keep stirring it until that caramel is
melted into the cream. Add in your salt and now it's time to test the thickness ...
to do that you just put a small amount of the caramel into a bowl of cold water.
And then you can just see how thick it is I'll just tip out the water so you
can see this caramel is still really liquidy we want it to be quite a lot
thicker so return it to the heat and boil it unstirred. And every 30 seconds
or so take a spoonful and tip it into cold water and then check the thickness.
See how now that's a lot thicker and it's just sitting on my finger now there
that looks about right to me so you can take it off the heat and pour it into a
bowl. Now it still looks thin but that's because what's in the pan is really hot
and it will thicken as it cools. Let's check on our lid. Just run your nail
around the edge and then flip it over and there you have the domed part of
your saucepan lid. To make the edge look good I'm going to use a fondant extruder
to make a snake of black fondant if you don't have one you can just roll one.
Then rub a little bit of water around the edge of the chocolate and wrap that
fondant around the lid and then use a knife to gently press it onto the
chocolate that looks much better. To make a handle just roll a thick snake of
black and then use your fingers to press down and keep rolling to make it thinner
on each side. Chop off the excess and then fold the ends down. Now you just
want to check using a ruler that that's the
right width for your lid and then leave the fondant to dry out. To make the
outside of the pot I'm gonna need something round to make the right shape
but this tin is not tall enough so I'm gonna put it on a bowl there like that.
Then I'm gonna wrap a piece of acetate around and then make a mark here where
those two are joining so that I know where the chocolate has to go to. Then where
I've drawn that mark I'm gonna put another piece of acetate just beyond it
and stick that into place. Now wrap a smaller piece of acetate around the tin
so that we have something that's covering that and we can get the
chocolate off later. On your bigger piece of acetate spread tempered chocolate in
an even layer all over it, don't you just love melted chocolate! It looks amazing.
Then lift that piece up so that you have straight edges on it and the excess is
left on the counter. Once it starting to set but it's still a
little bit soft roll the chocolate around your cake tin. And once you've got
that all the way around just put that on the bowl like we did before. Repeat that
process with another thinner strip of acetate and we're going to use this bit
for around the pan lid. Wrap it around another cake tin lined with acetate and
then leave those to set. Once they are set you need to just slowly and gently
pull and turn pull and turn and it slowly, slowly will wiggle it off the tin.
Once it is free use a knife to remove that smaller piece of acetate from the
inside of the chocolate then have a look if you have any broken bits like here or
gaps you want to fill those now before you take the acetate off the outside so
just get a bit more tempered chocolate and fill those in. Peel the acetate off the
little ring of chocolate then get your pan lid and turn that upside down and
place the ring on top. Use some more tempered chocolate and pipe it around
the inside of the join so that it's nice and secure. Whip some cream in your mixer,
now I'm not gonna add any sugar to this one because our salted caramel is going to
give it all the sweetness it needs, so I'm just going to add a dash of vanilla
and mix that through. To support the lid I'm going to try and use this cake frame
I've used this once before on a big fondant cake and it was not strong
enough to hold it up it fell over. But hopefully on this one because it's
only holding the lid and it doesn't need to hold any cake weight hopefully it
will be all right. You could of course use a wooden cake board and a metal
support like I've shown you before and that would definitely be strong enough.
Place your first cake down over the support so that that upright piece is on
one side of the cake and then add the ring of chocolate over the top. Add a big
scoop of salted caramel and spread that out over the cake then add some whipped
cream and spread that out making sure you're getting it all the way to the
edges and then continue to stack it up with more cake caramel cream another
layer of cake and then a final layer of that yummy salted caramel this stuff is
great to keep in a jar for on top of ice cream or giving someone just a gift of a
jar of salted caramel and they can eat it by the spoonful it is yummy stuff. Wet
a little ball of fondant and add it to the lid and then you use those to attach
the handle into place. Now using a dry paintbrush and some silver luster dust
brush over the whole lid and the handle so that it looks like it's metal instead
of chocolate. Do the same with the outside of the pot brushing it all over
and make sure you brush on the inside edge as well and along the rim. Make two
more handles like we did before but make these ones bend out a bit on the ends
and use the cake tin to get them on the right angle to attach to the pot. Now
poke a lollipop stick into those handles so that we've got something to poke into
the cake so they don't just fall off and then brush those with silver luster dust
too. It's popcorn time! Pop a good amount of popcorn and then put that into a big
pot. In another pan some sugar and some water and keep some
butter to one side. Heat the sugar and water until it goes golden and then stir
in the butter. Immediately pour that over the popcorn and stir it around to get an
even coating on the popcorn instead of one big lump and again I'll put the
recipe quantities for this on the website. Tip your popcorn out onto some
baking paper YUM! And then using some gloves because it's still hot shape it
into a cylinder. You don't want to squash this or crush it you just want to gently
push it together while that caramel is cooling and setting just keep guiding it
into shape until you have a nice cylinder there and then just let it cool
and set. Add the top of the cake support into place and then add that big chunk
of caramel popcorn into the center. Put some chocolate onto the cake support and
rest the lid on top on an angle so it looks like it's just flying off the pan.
And now we want to make another batch of the caramel popcorn this stuff is so
yummy and then you want to add pieces and chunks of popcorn all over the
cylinder so it looks more like an explosion rather than an organized
cylinder in the middle. I used bits of set caramel as well to make a few pieces
that stick out of the side. Now to add the handles you want to heat up a metal
skewer and just poke that into your chocolate so you get a nice neat hole.
Then add your handles in on each side I should have made these handles a bit
earlier so they had a chance to firm up but they'll be okay if you're making the
cake make these handles at the same time as you make the one for the lid. And
there it is a gravity-defying caramel popcorn cake perfect for a movie night
celebration and now as I promised it's your chance to win one of six KitchenAid
stand mixers! To enter all you need to do is click on the entry form in the
description below ... you can enter from anywhere in the world and we have six
KitchenAid stand mixers to give away! Very Exciting!
Click here to go to the recipe and the entry form, here for chocolate
secrets and here for more of my videos make it a great week and I'll see you on Friday.