welcome friends welcome back to the kitchen welcome back to sunday morning in the old
cookbook show a couple of weeks ago i did a recipe out of this swans down cake recipe book
and i referred to the swans down cake manual and that swans down isn't sold where i live in canada
but that i could buy it from you know amazon um for 131 dollars for a box of flour which seemed
ridiculous to me so i didn't buy it and thank you to everyone who has now sent us boxes of
swans down a flower our p.o box is overflowing with flour i have lots of swans down to to play
around with now so i thought i'd revisit another cake recipe this time from this cookbook called
the best chocolate and cocoa recipes put out by walter baker and company incorporated
which was at this point part of general foods same company that brought you swans
down and all these other cookbooks and so in this cookbook all of the recipes use general
foods products so it calls for swans down cake flour it calls for baker's unsweetened chocolate
calumet baking powder and so on and so on and so forth at this point baker's chocolate is no longer
part of general foods it seems to be part of craft at this point craft heinz or at least here in
canada it's part of craft heinz so we're going to get into this recipe um it starts out very basic
in the traditional north american cake method going to cream together the butter and sugar
so while that's creaming together we'll deal with the dry ingredients i have the swans
down flour i've already sifted it before measuring it i've often said on the show
that i no longer sift flour and that is if it asks to be sifted after measuring
if the recipe asks you to sift it before measuring it's very important to sift it before measuring
the changes because in north america we use volume um if we used a scale and did things by weight
this would be a moot point you wouldn't have to worry about it but because we do it by
volume sifting it before measuring it gives the flower greater volume and if it asks for that
the only way to get an accurate measurement is by sifting ahead of time if it asks you to sift
afterwards i just don't do it anymore so i've got the flour here i'm going to add baking soda
and salt now it asks you to sift this three times so i will do it because the recipe asks for it
but i'm doing it grudgingly okay so one last thing about sifting flour and we'll move on this recipe
was written in what i consider to be the golden age of recipe writing especially in these what i
would call corporate cookbooks where these giant food companies have you know laboratories staffed
with recipe writers and home economists and food scientists designing and testing these recipes
and they're written out in a way that's very easy to understand but there's a couple of
points of language in these around sifting flour that i think a lot of people stumble on
and it has to do with a comma and where the comma appears if if the recipe calls for one cup
of sifted flour you sift the flour and then you measure it if it asks for one cup of flour comma
sifted you measure the flour first and then you sift it and that subtle use of language tells you
the difference between the two and the way recipes are written today 2022
recipes are written in a very sloppy manner today i think they're not tested the way they used to be
they're not vetted the way they used to be there's no one editing the recipes the way they used to in
this time period so that was an egg i just added to the sugar and butter and we're going to cream
that in and i've made a mistake but it'll be fine so i added the soda in with the flour i'm supposed
to add the soda to the sour cream the sour cream would activate it and get it moving before we
add it into the cake but putting it all in is going to be fine it's it will make absolutely no
difference in the end i'm going to deal with the chocolate next so this recipe asks for
two squares of baker's unsweetened chocolate that i have to melt and a couple of weeks ago or a few
weeks ago we did a recipe that was brownies from the same time period asked for one and a half or
two and a half squares of chocolate and down in the comments section a lot of people said oh i've
got the wrong amount of chocolate because what's a square and baker's chocolate has
changed the shape of their chocolate which is true baker's has changed away from this square and
this square has always equaled one ounce of chocolate one square equals one ounce
and it came in this shape break down the middle so each of these sides was a half ounce of chocolate
it's still available in canada in this form but they have and there were eight of these squares
in a box for eight ounces total but bakers has switched their manufacturing to this new format
and when you open it up there's two bars of chocolate inside there's still eight ounces of
chocolate in a box same amount of chocolate in the box but when you open up the bar
it's now this kind of chocolate bar shape and each of these little rectangles is a quarter ounce
and it's marked right on it that it's a quarter ounce so now it's this shape that is one square
of chocolate to equal one ounce and it sounds from the comment section like a lot of people
got caught out by that and didn't realize what a square of chocolate what the equivalent of square
of chocolate was or is so when you see that in a recipe it means one ounce by weight of chocolate
um and so you just have to use the appropriate amount you can use any kind of bar chocolate if
you wanted to so i'm going to take these inside i'm going to melt them in the microwave and we'll
move on with the recipe okay so i melted the chocolate out of order from the recipe
because i think it's i think it's important if you are not a regular cake baker or you're not someone
who spends a lot of time in the kitchen doing stuff in order can be overwhelming and if you
got all of the ingredients the flour and the sour cream into here all mixed together and then went
to melt the chocolate and and do this next step which is to mix in boiling water something that um
i've always been told not to do but anyway we're gonna do that i i think the batter would be in the
mixer too long um and that the soda would activate and your cake might not be as uh
as good so i think that doing it in this order out of order is probably best for most people so there
we go chocolate mixed with water hot boiling water now we are supposed to mix flour and sour cream
into the butter sugar mixture um half and half and half and half so we'll turn this
down and we'll mix in maybe three scoops of flour ah it's going in nicely four scoops of flour
and then i'm supposed to put in a half a cup of sour cream so
put that in first and then we'll go back to the flour and just mix it back and forth
now we mix in the chocolate hot water mixture
now i have two nine inch round cake pans and i've made a parchment paper disc to put in
the bottom of each this has mixed enough now the oven is preheated to 350 degrees
fahrenheit and we'll get these cakes in i'm going to divide the batter equally between the two
between the two cake pans that's a really good looking cake batter um
i'm liking this this is pretty good okay so into the cake pan and to everyone who asks
yes the oven works it is a working oven it is hot the sink works the tap works it all works
okay the cakes are baked i'm going to set them here let them cool down to room temperature you
don't want to put frosting on them until they've cooled at least to room temperature and now it's
time to make the frosting and i have to admit that one of the reasons i wanted to make this
recipe was to make the frosting because i've never made this kind of frosting before and it's
called the quick chocolate frosting it tells you that this is the one that you should use
so it's four squares of baker's unsweetened chocolate four ounces of chocolate pretty easy
then it says one and a quarter cups 14 ounces of cold condensed milk condensed milk now condensed
milk in canada comes in a 300 milliliter can 300 milliliter can i have to assume
1931 american cookbook using american measurements one and a quarter cups is 10 u.s fluid ounces 300
milliliters is roughly 10 us fluid ounces i have to assume that the 14 ounces that they're talking
about is by weight into this pot over a low flame i'm going to put the can of condensed milk
and yes it is sweetened condensed milk is sweetened here in canada in the united states
now four ounces of chocolate i'm going to put that in i've got this over a low flame
and we're just supposed to stir it until the chocolate melts into the condensed milk
and i'm supposed to stir it constantly until it's thickened and i'm i'm imagining in my brain
something along the lines of a chocolate dulce de leche because we're going to be caramel we're
going to be driving off more of the water that's in the milk in the in the condensed milk and
caramelizing those sugars a little bit as we melt the chocolate in and i've got some water standing
by because it tells me to add a few drops at a time if needed to get a spreadable consistency
now it's starting to get thick and the question that crosses my mind is why cook it thicker
only to add water to thin it out and i have to imagine that this is about developing flavor
caramelizing some of those sugars that are in the condensed milk
that's just a guess i haven't tasted it yet i'm trying to resist
i can't resist okay it's gonna be hot let's see
it's chocolatey definitely chocolaty i'm gonna cook a little bit further
there are some caramel notes coming through from that condensed milk now this is really thick and
it is kind of spreadable i'm going to take it off the heat i'm worried about it scorching now this
is spreadable i'm going to say that's spreadable doesn't say whether i should let it cool before i
try to put it on the cake i know you're supposed to let the cakes cool before you put frosting on
them this doesn't say it just says makes enough frosting to cover tops of two nine inch layers
thin with water a few drops at a time until the right consistency to spread
um
i am going to let that cool just a little bit before i start putting it on the cake
i'm not gonna put any water in we'll see if that's a mistake in a moment
yeah okay so that's good now a little bit on the plate
cake on top
so glenn it's great that uh we we tasted those things but but i found this when do we get to
try this oh julie found the cake okay so yes let's have the cake now um there's this back in here i
want to talk about the icing in that case i'll get a spoon um so i've never made this icing before
and there was something about the icing that seemed vaguely familiar in the back of my brain
you may or may not know i spent quite a bit of time on youtube um and so
there are a bunch of youtube food channels that have
outlandish like click-baity titles um we added chocolate to
condensed milk you'll be amazed at what happened two ingredient two-minute chocolate fudge
uh-huh i was gonna say it's got a fudgy texture to it it's it's all of the recipes
are exactly that and they've got most of these videos have between 40 and 50 million views
so feel free to encourage 40 to 50 million people to stop by stop buying check out
our cake video because our two ingredient two ingredient two ingredient fudge two-minute fudge
is gonna be really close to the cake goes with the cake okay so there's the cake
look at the props well there's more well
oh all this stuff hey you got some sun down flower swans swan down swine down swans down
flowers so we use the swans down cake flower which is ground apparently 27 times finer than any other
all-purpose flour which i don't know how that stacks up against
other cake flours there you go um
it's a pretty standard chocolate cake all right got all the textures got the flavors it's not
it's not dried out all the things what do you like about a chocolate cake it is a standard
chocolate cake it doesn't have vanilla in it um which i don't know if you'd miss i mean that's
one of those things where you automatically put vanilla in almost everything you bake
and do you i mean yes there are some things where you would notice that you've got vanilla in it
a lot of times you don't but there's so many other flavors there's so many other
flavors there's dough so it's got a nice chocolatey flavor it is moist that that's
where you know that chocolate cure would just oh the chocolate instead of vanilla would just
yes a chocolate you need a big scoop of icing i thought i already did that taste test oh but
i need to get in on that okay
great cake incredible icing i may do an old cookbook show where we do an incredible two
ingredient two minute chocolate fudge because that's really good um that's now my favorite
chocolate icing really yeah i don't know that's a tough one there's some really good buttercreams
out there chocolate butter creams are really cool that's you know okay so this is my this is
my new favorite summertime hot picnic chocolate icing that's probably a good job because it's
not going to melt it's not going to melt and run off so thanks for stopping by see you again soon
you