- Hi, I'm Rie.
Today, I'm going to take popular food and make it fancy.
- I've always wanted to do that.
(both laugh)
- Usually I host this show by myself.
But I have an amazing co-host today, Tway.
- Thank you so much for having me.
I am very excited to be here.
And doing that, is now cross off my bucket list.
- Oh, my god.
Thank you so much for saying that.
All right, let's see what we are making fancy today.
(Rie imitates drumroll)
Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup.
- My first thought is I have no thoughts
on how you would make this fancy.
Like what?
- You were born
in Vietnam. - Yeah.
- But you moved to United States when you were eight.
- Yes.
- Have you had this before?
- I have had many canned foods in my life
and I have never had this.
- Same, I've never had this before.
I think we should try.
- Let's try it.
This is a thick soup.
- This is thick.
- Cheers. (laughs)
Salty.
- Yeah, like hint
of mushroom. - Yeah.
Do you have any idea
of what we could possibly do with this?
- Yeah, I think I should maybe...
- I like how you're playing with it.
(Rie laughs)
Maybe...
- You know, if you stir, maybe great idea comes out.
I want to make it something very unexpected.
- Honestly Rie,
I feel like you've been doing this for way too long
and the ideas are just coming to you like it's nothing.
Close your eyes really quick.
(can thuds) - Oh, what's that?
(Tway laughs)
I have something for you.
And... open your eyes.
- What's this?
- I want you to randomly select one of these cans
to add to this recipe.
(cans thudding)
- Ooh.
- What's this?
- Dark sweet cherries.
- This doesn't belong together, you know that.
It's kinda help.
I wanted to do something unexpected
and a cherry and a mushroom, they're very unexpected.
- We're excited to...
- Make it fancy.
- All right, here's what I got.
Cherries.
- Chocolate.
- Heavy cream.
- Coffee.
- Cocoa powder.
- And... butter milk.
- From the pantry, we got...
baking powder.
- Sugar.
- Baking soda.
- Powdered sugar.
- Homemade almond extract.
- Cake flour.
- Vanilla extract.
- Corn starch.
- And... cherry liquor.
- Ooh.
- All right, let's get started.
(cans swooshing)
- Make it fancy.
- First and foremost, our star.
- Cream of mushroom. - Cream of mushroom.
How do you open with that long nail?
(can pops) Oh, it's actually much easier.
So I'm going to strain.
So I want to make mushroom and cream separate.
- I'm just going along with you.
I really don't know where we're taking this.
- I want to dehydrate mushroom.
You don't want to push too hard.
- Gotcha.
- But you kind of want to take the mushroom
out from this soup.
- [Tway] There you go.
Yum!
- So mushrooms are separated.
So I'm going to put mushroom on parchment paper.
And can you spread just one layer?
We are going to dehydrate until crispy.
- Fancy.
- So it took three hours to make this crispy.
So we gonna put this in a grinder.
Turns out, we dehydrated,
but there are not many mushrooms.
- Yeah.
- So it's just cream
- I still have no idea what we're doing, but we're here.
- Hold your ears.
(grinder whirs softly)
- It's not-
- [Producer] Is it working?
- No, not really.
- I'm gonna bring something else.
(grinder buzzes)
- Oh, maybe now it's coming out.
Oh. (claps hands)
Tway!
- Oh, wow!
- I'm so glad you are here.
- Can you dump?
Do you wanna taste it? - Yeah.
Let's do it.
- Cheers.
(Rie chuckles)
- That's salty.
- But it kind of has umami, too.
- Like a finishing salt.
- Yeah, right.
- Before we eat everything-
- [Both] Let's get fancy.
(bright classical music)
- So now, we are gonna make batter.
- Batter.
I don't know what this batter is gonna be for.
- I'm going to add sugar.
- So we're making something sweet?
- Maybe...
And cocoa powder.
- It smells good. - Nice.
Baking powder and baking soda.
I'm gonna put salt on the side.
And we are going to put all the wet ingredients
in one bowl.
Buttermilk and oil.
And I'm going to add two teaspoon of vanilla.
- A cap is a teaspoon? - One teaspoon.
- Oh, I did not know that.
Two eggs.
- [Rie] And the separated cream.
- [Tway] The star of the show.
(mixer whirs)
Yum!
- Do you really think so?
- No. (Rie laughs)
- Now, whisk the dry ingredient.
Tway, can you put wet ingredients to dry ingredients?
- Yes.
- And we gonna put hot coffee.
It's not the Vietnamese coffee
- But it'll do.
(mixer whirs)
- It smells good. (Tway screams)
- It really does smell really good.
- Let's change it to spatula.
- Smells like hot cocoa.
- So this looks good.
We gonna go on next step.
- Well, it's definitely cake.
- You never know.
All right, let's put batter
and I just wanna mention the smell.
- Yeah, it does not smell like cake.
- Yeah, it's like a mushroom.
- The mushroom is really coming through.
- We want to make it evenly.
I usually use sour cream or yogurt when I bake cake.
But mushroom doesn't have a lot of fat.
So it was very difficult to tweak around
how much moisture contents I should reduce
from the other ingredients.
Right, let's put this in an oven.
- Okay, let's go.
Cherries. - Yeah.
Mystery ingredient.
- Yeah, I was wondering when these were gonna come in.
- [Rie] And we are going to bring it to a boil.
- [Tway] Ooh, yes.
Chocolate cake with cherries.
- All right, so I have a masher.
- [Tway] So are we making like a syrup or something?
- So we are making simple syrup.
- Okay. - And cherry jam.
- Ooh.
- [Rie] We gonna strain.
Nice.
The cherry back in to the pot.
I am getting one tablespoon of cherry syrup.
One tablespoon of cornstarch.
- So this is like a cherry slurry.
- [Rie] Yeah, it's gonna make it thick.
- Thick. - Thick.
And I'm going to use half cup syrup.
Two tablespoon of cherry liquor.
I like to use alcohol
'cause it kind of mask some sort of like weird smell.
So this case is mushroom.
So this is homemade almond extract.
- Okay. - It took three months.
- That's special.
So why almond extract and not vanilla extract?
- Almond extract kind of compliments with cherry.
And this is made with cherry pit.
So it's kind of nice.
Go together.
Looks great.
Time for next step.
- Let's do it.
- All right.
Can you put heavy cream in a pot?
And we want to make sure not boil.
- Now we wait. - Now we wait.
So you moved when you were eight.
- Mm-hmm. - How did you learn English?
- From watching "SpongeBob."
- "SpongeBob."
- It was "SpongeBob" and then Anthony Bourdain.
- [Rie] So you want to cover hot heavy cream
and kind of want to count 30 seconds.
You can also use plastic.
So I kind of trap the heat.
- Oh, I'm learning all the tips and tricks.
I love this.
- Let's count.
- Wait, you count in Japanese
and I can count in Vietnamese.
(Rie counts in Japanese)
(Tway counts in Vietnamese)
(Rie counts in Japanese)
- Japanese just sounds so cool.
- Really?
I think Vietnamese sounds so cool, too.
So we shouldn't forget main ingredients.
- Mushroom powder. - Yes.
- Can we taste it?
Oh, that was good stuff.
- I think it kind of adds umami.
- You're a genius.
Okay, what's next?
- We will see. (Tway laughs)
- That's a lot of cream.
So I'm guessing we're making whipped cream, right?
- We'll see. (Tway laughs)
When I make whipped cream I usually use whisk.
- Okay. - I don't like using-
- Just wanna make your life harder.
- Yeah, but this is too much.
One litter.
- I still think you should use the whisk.
- Do you wanna do it?
- No.
- So we gonna put powdered sugar
and we gonna put cornstarch.
- [Tway] Oh, why cornstarch?
- 'Cause it stabilize the whipped cream.
And do you wanna put vanilla?
I think something is not right if I'm using this.
So let's use whisk.
Let's make our life harder.
- You know what?
Here you go.
You can do that.
- It's a good workout. - So how you feelin'?
- I think great.
Okay, your turn.
- Girl, move over.
(Rie laughs) (whisk whirs)
- [Rie] My soul kinda breaks a little bit.
- Then whisk it by hand. - It's okay.
It's okay.
- [Tway] I think this is nice.
- Let's decorate the thing.
- The cake.
- All right, so cake is baked
and it's cold. - So it's cake?
- Thing.
The things are baked and cold.
And we are going to dab.
- Okay.
(Rie laughs)
- I wish you gonna do that.
This is the cherry simple syrup we made
with the cherry liquor.
We have to use this oil.
It's gonna be drenched.
You guys cannot smell,
but we smell mushroom for sure.
Once you finish you can flip.
And we do other side.
- [Producer] Do you know what Campbell's Cream of Mushroom's
nickname is?
- Salty soup?
- Mushroom of the sea.
- [Producer] America's béchamel.
- Oh. - Oh...
- We do surgery. - Cake surgery?
- [Rie] Can you put this cake upside down onto this base.
And this is a cream we made earlier.
And then we gonna put jam.
So we pipe cream in a border.
So this cherry jam doesn't bleed out.
Second layer.
- [Tway] I really cannot wait to taste this cake.
- [Rie] Me too.
This is the ganache with dehydrated mushroom.
So we gonna decorate on top.
- [Tway] Nice.
- [Rie] We gonna put fresh cherries on top.
- [Tway] That is so pretty, yay!
- [Rie] We have chocolate curls.
- [Tway] Ah, fancy.
- We are done.
(bright classical music)
Cream of mushroom black forest cake.
Very fancy.
- This is super fancy.
I can't believe we made this.
- We made too much.
So I think we have to have our mutual friend.
- Do you think he would be able to guess what's in here?
- I don't think so. - I don't think so either.
- So we have very, very special guest.
H Woo. (claps hands)
- Are you wearing a suit?
- Just for you guys.
- We made a popular pantry item fancy.
This is what we made.
- Ah!
- Cake looks fantastic.
- Thank you.
Let's dig in.
- Cheers.
- Can you guess what popular item is in this?
- Is it like the hostess chocolate cake thing?
(Tway imitates buzzer)
- It's savory.
We'll give you a hint.
This popular item,
it's called America's béchamel.
- What?
(Rie laughs) - That's really good.
- I'll keep eating it, but-
- It's good, right?
- One more hint.
It's canned.
- One more hint. (Tway laughs)
- It's a soup.
- Oh, is it cream of mushroom?
- Yeah.
- No way.
(all laugh)
- Wait, there's one more secret ingredient.
- One more?
- But it's actually sweet.
And if you look at the cake,
you can tell on what it is.
- The cherries?
- Yes!
- Canned cherries.
One last things to do.
Three, two, one.
- Make it fancy!
- [Rie] H. Woo!
(whimsical music)