- Girl bye, oh.
- [Rie] No, I'm just trying to help you.
Don't show your boobs on camera.
- I don't...
Whoa! (both laughing)
(upbeat rock music)
Hi guys, it's Alex.
So today I'm gonna be making a giant rain drop cake,
it's really cool.
It's this clear looking cake,
although I don't really know why they call it a cake
'cause it looks more like jello to me.
We've actually made a couple on our page, Tasty Japan,
because rain drop cake was invented in Japan.
It's usually served with a roasted soybean flour
and the black syrup.
I've never even made a regular size rain drop cake before
but there's only a couple of ingredients
that actually go into it
so I feel like it can make a giant one.
(tense piano music)
Okay.
Ugh.
This is too watery.
(beep) this (beep) cake, (beep) (laughs)
I don't know, like I don't know this cake.
Alright, let's make it rain.
(laughs)
So before I even try to make a giant rain drop cake,
I feel like I should start small,
make a regular size rain drop cake.
Let's see what happens.
So rain drop cake really only takes three main ingredients.
Water, sugar, and this thing called agar agar.
It's actually made from algae or sea kelp.
You can buy agar agar in most health food stores,
you can order it on Amazon or go to any Asian market.
So, it's not that hard to find.
You need to bring that to a boil on high heat.
Now that we're at a boil, I'm gonna reduce the heat to low
and we're gonna cook that for two more minutes.
♪ Two minutes, two minutes, we gotta wait for two minutes ♪
This may be the easiest one we've done yet.
Although we haven't really done anything yet
so maybe I shouldn't be saying anything.
I'm already like a little tiny bit concerned
just because I feel like this isn't completely clear,
it's a little more opaque and that will be a problem.
(laughs)
Where's our ice?
(laughs) I just need to get this out of here.
So now we put the pan in the ice bath
and we're gonna leave it in there for three minutes.
Whoa, it's thick.
This doesn't seem right.
Where's Rie, Rie!
- Tell me what you're doing
and tell me what you are going to do with this.
(both laugh)
- If I knew, why would I ask you over?
So it has to be a problem with the agar because
there's only three ingredients in this,
sugar, water and agar.
I did see that there were two kinds,
so there's powder and flakes.
- Yeah.
- I could only find the flakes so that's what I bought.
- I think you might need to use powder
'cause they work differently.
Glop.
- Okay so, here is my experiment.
I'm going to try to grind up this agar
into a powder from the flakes version.
(food processor whirring)
It didn't do anything.
They're still flakes.
I think we gotta go get the powder.
Okay, so we're taking a little field trip
to the Japanese market to go find some agar powder
because the flakes just aren't cutting it.
I don't know where I'm going.
So they were out of stock.
I guess a lot of people are making rain drop cakes today
but I'm gonna try to go to a different Japanese market.
They're out of stock too.
(melancholy piano music) It's not that hard to find.
Okay, we finally have the agar agar powder.
It took me three stores to find this
so I really hope that it works.
I'm ready for some rain, it's been a dry summer.
(laughs)
So this time I'm also gonna use bottled spring water.
The tap water kind of tasted too metallic
and also this should give us a pure rain drop.
I'm just gonna do two tablespoons
of the agar powder we have
and hopefully it works this time.
I'm just gonna pour it into this bowl
and put it in the fridge to cool.
It looks clearer than last time
but I'm curious to see what it looks like once it's set.
Oop, how did that happen? (laughs)
Oh, that's weird.
(laughs) It looks like a breast implant.
I do much prefer the taste of it
with the bottled spring water than the tap water.
Consistency, I'm gonna give myself about an eight,
clarity,
three.
Hi, it's day two.
I feel like I've identified a few of the factors
that have been going wrong,
so I'm gonna try to remedy those today.
I'm going to blend up the sugar
to make it more of like a baker's fine sugar
which will make it easier to dissolve in the hot water.
They sell agar agar in a few forms I've learnt.
I'm gonna use the pure powder with nothing added to it.
This is gonna make it much easier to measure out properly
and it should also dissolve easier into water.
I used two tablespoons of agar agar last time
and that was way too much,
like you only need an eighth of a teaspoon per cup of water.
I don't know how I was so off but, uh, yeah. (laughs)
so I'm gonna let that come to a simmer
and then I'm gonna add in our fine baker's sugar.
I guess technically every rain drop cake
is a giant rain drop cake because raindrops are tiny.
I'm feeling confident about this one, it looks really clear.
I'm just gonna pour this in here.
Oops, spilling a little bit.
And we're gonna put this in the fridge.
Just so I don't waste an hour of my day,
I'm actually gonna just make another one
and change up the ratio just to see what that does.
So instead of an eighth of a teaspoon,
I'm gonna try to use a forth of a teaspoon.
Whoa, okay.
So this is the forth of a teaspoon of agar agar.
Definitely clearer than yesterday,
still not completely transparent
but it's not quite the sensation
of like a raindrop bursting.
If this one doesn't work then I'm going to be crying
my own raindrops from my eyes.
Okay.
As crazy as it sounds, I do think we're closer.
I need to fall somewhere in between these two.
Hopefully forth time is the charm.
This time I'm gonna do the same exact method
but just with a quarter teaspoon of agar agar
and one and a half cups water.
Hopefully this is the sweet spot.
One hour.
(bowl clinking)
It's stuck a little.
(bowl clinking and cake glooping)
Oop.
Okay.
It just got really stuck onto the bottom of the bowl.
Yeah, I feel like it's raindrop-y.
I just gotta figure out how to keep it in a raindrop shape.
Should I just try to do the giant one?
Sometimes in life, you just gotta go for things.
Also I just wanna be done with this.
So I bought this metal cake bowl,
because it has no line at the bottom,
I felt it would be like the perfect mold.
I'm already anticipating that I'm gonna have to
tweak the amount of agar to water for the giant one
just because it's gonna need
to be a little bit stronger to hold it's shape.
So now I just have to figure out
how much water this actually is,
so I'm gonna pour it back into our measuring cup.
Oh, okay, that was full.
So let's just make this an even eight cups.
Eight cups divided by one and a quarter cups is...
(crew member laughs)
(laughs)
Anybody?
So I'm doing two teaspoons of our agar agar
and four teaspoons of our fine baker's sugar.
So because this mold doesn't have a bottom edge,
I'm putting it in this bowl to stabilize it
when I pour in the mixture.
Should I put in a flower or two?
We're gonna make a little bouquet at the bottom.
Wow, I wonder if this is gonna work, that would be amazing.
Yeah, they just move. (laughs)
I don't know how you're supposed to
make them sit at the bottom.
So the flowers not only don't stay at the bottom,
they've colored my raindrop to a weird swamp green.
I don't know about this.
Hopefully I did my math correctly, probably didn't.
I heard it.
(laughs)
Dang it.
It literally dyed the bowl.
So it's day three, hopefully third time is the charm.
So this was the giant bowl we used.
I went out and got two smaller sizes
because I feel as though this was just a little too big
and also it's still technically a giant rain drop cake so
I'm not cheating.
I've realized we really need to compensate
for the giant size of this
and it will just take a little more agar
than a normal sized rain drop cake would.
So I guess we'll just start boiling.
You know the drill. (laughs)
So I tried to dissolve this as much as possible
but I'm still gonna strain it
just as an added measure of precaution
to make sure we don't have any floaters in our raindrop.
It is set,
probably a little too set.
It's not flipping.
Ugh, I'm so over this.
Rie did tell me to do some trick
that like works with unmolding
and that is to spin, let's see if that worked.
(bowl clinking)
Rie, you've lied to me.
I'm really dizzy, oh my God.
(gasps)
(laughs)
Alright, it's day four.
I specifically wore this shirt
because I'm desperately trying to keep my cool vibes.
So last night I decided to make three test batches,
each with different ratios.
I also decided to use different bowls
because the other ones just weren't coming out.
I guess now it's time to flip them all and see which one,
if any of them, work.
♪ Gotta put my thing down, flip it and reverse it ♪
♪ Ti esrever dna ti pilf, nwod gniht ym tup ♪
So we're staring with this one,
one tablespoon of agar agar powder to eight cups of water
and one tablespoon of sugar.
Ooh!
Oh, okay.
That was really satisfying actually,
just like kind of fell out of the bowl.
It's super delicate but it's holding it's shape
which is really good.
These both have less agar to water.
I'm still gonna flip them but I'm pretty positive that
they are going to fall apart.
I don't know how to do this.
(water splashing) Okay.
Oh, yeah, shit.
I just really wanted to see what would happen.
Honestly, I'm pretty happy.
I think we still have one that's promising.
If we up this ratio just a little bit,
we'll have our rain drop cake.
Just gonna clean this up a little bit.
Okay.
This is it.
I hope this is it 'cause I don't wanna do this again.
It's important to actually dissolve your agar powder
in cold water first which is
something I wish I knew before. (laughs)
Now we're gonna be dissolving our agar
in cold water with the sugar
and then we're going to transfer it to heat
and bring that to a simmer,
not for too long, just a couple of minutes.
If you boil it or leave it on the heat for too long,
it will deactivate the agent.
♪ Bring it to a simmer ♪
♪ We're gonna get a simmer ♪
Okay, stop, two minutes, taking this off the heat.
Whoom.
I wish I had made a different noise than that
but I couldn't think of anything to say. (laughs)
(whistles) That was a better noise.
Oh God, that was a little messy.
I'm going to very carefully try to get this to the fridge.
Why do we do this so far from the fridge?
This is like the opposite of track and field.
Woo! (laughs)
That was honestly the hardest part of this whole thing.
Actually, no it wasn't. (laughs)
Is this day five?
- [Crew Member] This is day five.
- Hmm, how did we get here? (laughs)
So, I've let my rain drop cake chill overnight,
but before I even flip it, which I am terrified to do,
I'm gonna make my brown sugar syrup.
So all it takes is two cups of brown sugar
and one cup of water.
We're doing a lot of dissolving in this process.
All it is is dissolving.
Now I'm just gonna let it cool down and it will thicken up
which is the beauty of a syrup.
Okay, we've made it, it is time to flip this thing.
I am really, really, really, really, really, really,
really nervous.
I should've gone to pee before this.
It literally looks like water in here.
Just, you know, go for it.
God, get my hand out of there, (beep)
(triumphant classical music)
(laughs)
Oh my God, I did it!
Okay, here we go.
Woo.
Oh my God, I'm shaking, okay.
We've got some rain.
I'm gonna put this soybean flour around the edge.
Looks super good, it's like rustic.
I did it!
♪ I did it, I did it, I did ♪
I have to say the toppings really do make this.
You get the sweetness from the syrup we made
and then the roasted soybean flour
kind of gives it a nuttiness,
and it's also super refreshing so a great summer dessert.
Wet. (Alex and crew member laugh)
(classical music)
(camera shutters)