- What makes you so special?
Everybody worries about something.
- That's exactly what makes me so special.
I don't even have to floss.
(diners chattering)
(groans)
What?
- [Host] Hey, what's up, guys?
Welcome back to Binging with Babish,
where this week it's Groundhog Day,
so we're taking a look at the angel food cake
disgustingly eaten by one of my favorite actors
in one of my favorite movies of all time, "Groundhog Day."
To make angel food cake,
we need eight or nine eggs at room temperature.
A quick way to bring them to room temperature
is to place them in tepid water for about 15 minutes.
I say eight or nine eggs
because we need 350 grams of egg white,
and your mileage may vary
depending on the size of your eggs.
So we're separating and weighing those out
into the bowl of a stand mixer,
which we're gonna place into the stand mixer.
Add two teaspoons of vanilla extract,
and beat on medium-high speed for about 30 seconds
until light, frothy, and snotty.
Sorry, that's kinda gross, but accurate.
Next up, we're combining half a teaspoon of kosher salt
with 360 grams of sugar, tiny-whisking to combine,
and then very slowly sprinkling about half the mixture
into the beating egg whites.
Once you got about half of that added, set it aside,
and continue to beat the egg white mixture on high speed
until it forms a light, fluffy, sticky mass
known as a French meringue.
We're beating this to stiff peaks, that is,
when you remove your wire whisk, a stiff peak should remain.
Then we're sifting together the remaining sugar
and 125 grams of cake flour onto a sheet of parchment.
This is going to create a very charming little mountain,
which we're gonna dump directly into our meringue
with the assistance of our parchment.
And now we have to very, very gently and carefully
fold the dry ingredients into the meringue.
There's no baking powder or baking soda
or other leaveners in angel food cake,
so in order to keep the cake light and fluffy,
we need to not deflate the egg whites
that we've so carefully inflated.
So once you got the mixture nice and smooth,
it's time to dump it into a tube pan.
We're not greasing with any butter or oil
because we need the cake batter to stick to
and climb the sides of the pan.
Get the batter all in there and smooth it out,
wipe down the sides of the pan,
and place it into a 350-degree Fahrenheit oven
for anywhere from 30 to 40 minutes, until it's golden brown
and looking very much like an angel food cake.
Now, one of the quirky parts about these cakes
is that they have to be cooled upside down.
This prevents their delicate interior
from collapsing during the cooling process.
So we're giving this guy
at least two hours standing on its head
before even attempting to extract.
To do so, we need to run a knife,
or a thin cake spatula like this one, around the outside.
Because, like I mentioned before, the cake needs to stick
to the side of the pan to remain voluminous.
Most angel food cake pans have a removable bottom.
If yours does not,
make sure you line the bottom with parchment paper,
otherwise you ain't never gonna get it out.
Don't worry too much about its rough texture,
that's part of an angel food cake's charm.
And since the one in the movie
clearly had a pink sort of whipped cream on it,
we get to decorate ours and cover up our mistakes.
Given that it was pink,
I'm going to make a raspberry whipped cream.
We're starting off with two cups of heavy cream
in a big old bowl, sifting in a half cup,
or about 60 grams worth, of powdered sugar,
adding a quarter teaspoon of kosher salt
and a half teaspoon of...
(stutters) Oh dear.
Well, if I may quote the movie,
you can't put that anywhere, pal.
Good save.
Once we've retrieved our meas cup,
we're gonna add one teaspoon of raspberry extract.
Now to bring that faux raspberry pink color,
I'm adding pink and red food coloring.
Then, using a hand mixer or a stand mixer,
or a wire whisk and your pure upper body strength,
we're whipping it to stiff peaks.
And we're almost ready to decorate,
but I've got one more thing I wanna whip up.
I've got half a cup of raspberry jam
and a tablespoon of water
that I'm going to melt over low heat, allow to cool,
and then use to glaze some fresh raspberries.
Just toss them together a little bit
to make sure that they're evenly coated,
and you'll have some shiny, elegant raspberry jewels
to place atop your cakey crown,
which we're gonna decorate simply
by dumping all the whipped cream on top
and spreading it down the sides of the cake.
As you can see, my whipped cream looks a little rough,
and that's 'cause I definitely overbeat it.
But using one of these elegant cake patterns
around the outside of the cake
should make it look a little more professional.
Clean up any rough edges, clean up the cake stand,
and then it's time to place our berries.
To make sure that they're evenly spaced,
I like to place one at the top,
then one at the bottom, one on each side,
and then fill in the spaces in between each berry.
And that's all there is to it.
Make sure you slice with a serrated knife
using a sawing motion, as this cake is very easy to squish.
And as you can see,
I definitely didn't let it cool long enough,
it kinda collapsed a little bit,
but it's absolutely delicious.
It's simple, light, and tasty.
And the best part is, you can fit a whole slice
into your mouth at once if you try hard enough.
I'm kidding, don't try this at home,
leave this to me and Bill Murray, and other food experts.
Hope you guys celebrate by watching "Groundhog Day,"
maybe making a cake, and not eating it in...
(groans)
- What?
- [Host] Hey, what's up, guys?
(stutters)
This is very, very strange,
I'm having the oddest sense of déjà vu,
I'm sure that we just did
angel food cake from "Groundhog Day,"
but, um, here we are, so...
Let's make us a cake, I guess.
We need nine egg whites at room temperature.
The best way to do this is with some water.
You know, Bill Murray used his time loop
as an opportunity to learn a few things,
so I'm gonna try some stuff different.
First off, I'm gonna add
one teaspoon of cream of tartar to our egg whites,
this is gonna help give us a more stable emulsion.
I'm also not gonna beat it as much.
Apparently, bringing it all the way to stiff peaks
can cause your cake to collapse,
so I've got some nice soft peaks here.
The combination of these two changes
should make it easier to fold in the dry ingredients
without collapsing the egg whites.
Next up, my cake definitely had some bubbles on its exterior
where the batter didn't meet the pan.
So I'm starting by adding about a third of the batter
and pressing it firmly into all the corners,
followed by the rest of the batter,
which I'm gonna smooth out
and make sure that the pan is extra clean.
This is gonna make getting the cake out of the pan
a little easier.
Next, I feel like the last cake was a little overbaked,
so I'm gonna leave it in the 350-degree Fahrenheit oven
for about five minutes less.
And as you can see, it's taller, it's got a more even top,
and I'm poking it rather than patting it.
We're still turning it upside down to cool it off,
but this time I'm letting it go for at least three hours.
I wanna make sure that it's totally cool
so that it does not collapse.
Do my "surprised hands" gesture that I forgot to do,
then pretty much the same procedure from here,
we're loosening the sides of the cake from the pan,
popping it out, and as you can see,
much more consistent exterior and no concave sides.
Then just comes the whipped cream frosting,
which I'm only gonna make one tweak to.
I'm going to stabilize it using gelatin.
I'm gonna slowly dissolve
one tablespoon of unflavored gelatin
in a quarter cup of ice water.
Once that's all dissolved and no dry spots remain,
we need to melt it in a double boiler,
but just until it's melted, not hot.
Set that aside to cool off a little bit,
and we're making our whipped cream as before,
maybe with a little extra food coloring
for a more dramatic pink.
But just before the whipped cream becomes light and fluffy,
we're gonna slowly stream in our gelatin mixture,
continuing to beat until we reach stiff peaks,
but taking care not to overbeat.
And there you have it, stabilized whipped cream,
which will keep its shape for days,
unlike regular whipped cream
which will start to deflate after a couple of hours.
We're gonna decorate our cake as before,
this time using a different cake pattern
because we feel like it.
Clean up any rough spots, clean up the cake stand,
dot with raspberries, and as you can see,
it's a pretty noticeable improvement.
It's taller, it's fluffier, it's smoother, it's pinkier.
Just goes to show that baking is truly a science,
and that the slightest tweaks to ingredients or methodology
can produce dramatic results.
And "Groundhog Day," at its core, was about growing
and learning to be a better version of yourself.
And I feel like I've accomplished that today.
I wonder if this is going to be my Bill Murray moment
where I finally break free of the...
(groans)
- What?
- [Host] Okay, screw this,
it's time to take a page out of Phil Connors' book.
Wow, they really don't make these things like they used to.
I bought this alarm clock
specifically because it looked cheap and smashable.
Bill Murray did it with his bare hands,
and I'm using all my strength and tools,
possibly permanently ruining my tabletop.
There we go. It's dead. I am free.
Happy Groundhog Day, everybody.
(upbeat, cheery music)