Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street Television

- You know, the blender was not invented until 1922.

And then Fred Waring-- this makes no sense to me-- the band leader, he bought the company, and he started doing the Waring Blender.

So when he traveled around the country with his band, he'd also promote the blender.

So the Waring Blender became ubiquitous in the kitchen, right?

So you make cocktails or smoothies or milkshakes.

But then chefs got hold of it, and they did hollandaise sauces, and they make mayonnaise with it.

But one of the most interesting things to do with the blender, I never heard of until a couple years ago.

So I was in Mexico City at the Coyoacn Market.

Early in the morning.

It's dark, it's cold.

I'm in the back, you know, of this really nice restaurant, "La Cocina de mi Mam," and I was served a piece of corn cake.

Now, this is not cornbread; it's not cake.

It's sort of in-between, very nice, velvety texture, and it was absolutely phenomenal.

So I asked the cook, I said, you know, how do you make it?

She said, well, I make it in a blender.

And I'm going, like, a blender cake?

Really interesting, because most of the time with cakes, you gotta cream the butter and the sugar, and you have to do it for five minutes and it has to get a nice light color and texture, where you have to add eggs one at a time and beat for 20 seconds between each addition; it's fussy.

So this means that most of the prep is just done in a blender.

So we'll show you how to make that Mexican cake, which is amazing, that corn cake; then we're gonna do a Brazilian-style carrot cake.

Now, this recipe also uses a blender, and finally, we're gonna do an all-purpose yellow cake.

Now, as a kid, I started baking when I was seven or eight.

And I started with box cakes, like most people did.

And the one thing I liked about them, I didn't like the taste, but I loved the texture.

So this yellow cake has the box cake texture, but has great flavor.

And again, you use the blender.

So let's go into the kitchen and turn the blender into a cake-making tool and make three great cakes that are super easy to make.

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The heart of your home is the kitchen.

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- So what if you took cornbread and married it to chiffon cake?

Well, you get what I'm about to make, which is my favorite one-layer cake in the entire world.

Now, I didn't invent this.

I just stumbled across it, actually, in Mexico City.

So the thing about this recipe is, obviously, it's based on corn.

And we have sweet corn here in the United States, and you need about a cup-and-a-half of kernels.

Unfortunately, in Mexico, they use a very different kind of corn.

They use something that we would call dent corn here in this country, which is very starchy; it's not really a sweet corn.

And it's called dent corn because the kernels have little dents in the top.

So this is a good example of translating a recipe from one culture to another, because the corn they use is actually quite different.

So in this recipe, in addition to fresh corn, we also have to use cornmeal, and we're going to use a little cornstarch, too.

So to get just the right taste and texture, we have those two additions.

By the way, you can use frozen corn if you like.

Use a little bit more.

I think you might use a cup-and-three-quarters, something like that, if you have frozen corn, which is fine.

So there we have a cup-and-a-half of corn.

Now let's start adding the other ingredients.

Cornmeal, as I said.

Yogurt.

And a can of sweetened condensed milk.

So we're gonna let this sit for ten minutes, like you would for a popover batter, for example.

And what we really liked about this blender, in addition to the fact that it's really easy, you can't mess it up, is it gives you that texture.

And I said it was like, you know, cornbread married to chiffon cake.

This cake has a velvety texture, and one of the reasons it does is because we're dealing with a blender which aerates it just right.

So it's been ten minutes, and now we have two eggs and two yolks, half-a-cup of vegetable oil.

So it's not super frothy on top, you don't want to over aerate it, but everything is mixed properly.

Now we have the dry ingredients: all-purpose flour, little over one-and-a-half cups, plus a couple tablespoons.

We're adding two tablespoons of cornstarch, and we have two teaspoons of baking powder, and we have a little salt.

Dry ingredients.

And now we're just going to pour in the wet ingredients.

Now, a whisk is a really good thing to use for a cake batter, as long as you do it fairly gently.

Get rid of the streaks of flour.

But then you want to stop, because if you overwork the batter, you don't get that perfect texture.

It gets a little tighter.

There's a little more gluten development.

So we prepped a nine-inch cake pan.

We just sprayed it and pour that in.

The other thing about this recipe is you know, my six-year-old can make it.

It's really not hard; except for the part with the knife and the corn at the beginning.

But besides that, it's easy to do.

We'll give a couple of taps.

This goes into a 350 oven for roughly 40, 45 minutes.

And the other thing that's great about this is, by the way, it doesn't have an icing, it doesn't have a frosting, it doesn't have a glaze.

It's just a really simple cake.

But it doesn't need any of those things.

So 350, for 40 minutes or so.

So when it's done, and it's done when you press the center top of the cake just with your finger or fork, it should spring back.

Let it sit on a rack on the counter for about 30 minutes.

Run a knife around the circumference, flip it out, and flip it back, and let it sit on a cooling rack until it's absolutely cooled.

I've made this more than a few times.

This is the best one I've ever seen.

And then we'll put a little powdered sugar.

As I say, you don't need frosting or icing or whatever.

I mean, this is a great cheater trick, right?

For almost any cake, even if it doesn't look great, you can always do this and everybody's impressed.

This is a cake nobody's had, probably, in your neighborhood or at your dinner party.

They eat it a lot in Mexico.

But it's not one of those things I knew about till I went down.

So that's it; it has that wonderful texture.

You can see it looks like a close crumb, but it's very velvety, almost satiny.

And the flavor... Mm...

It's almost like this has custard in it.

You know what I mean?

It has that wonderful texture.

Maybe it's the sweetened condensed milk, I think, probably also adds texture to this cake.

But it's really singular, and it's easy, and it's delicious.

So that's our panqu de elote from Mexico City, from "La Cocina de mi Mam."

A great corn cake.

Easy to make and absolutely delicious.

- Our friend, the blender here, is the reason why somewhere, thank you, in the world, there is a carrot cake that actually is orange, like carrots are orange, has that earthy sweetness of carrots, and has a beautiful moist texture.

That place, specifically, is Brazil.

And the difference is how the carrots are prepared.

First, though, let's deal with our dry ingredients, and then we'll get on to the blender and the magic of creating an orange carrot cake.

So, in one bowl, off to the side, we have 262 grams of all-purpose flour.

And we're going to whisk in two teaspoons of baking powder and half a teaspoon of salt.

And now we have our carrots.

And this is 12 ounces, three-quarters of a pound when they still have their peels on.

Then you peel them and you cut them into one-inch pieces.

Now, when you grate carrots, which is something we love to do for salads, you burst some of the cells and you get more carrot flavor.

But it's not enough for a cake.

But when you pure them in a blender, imagine how many more cells you're bursting and how much more flavor and moisture you're releasing.

That's the secret to this blender cake.

So, to our carrots, we want to add in 321 grams of white sugar and one half-cup of neutral oil.

We're also going to add in three eggs.

Technically, two teaspoons of vanilla.

But I measure by the cap.

And I always add in a little more.

A little extra cause we can.

So we're gonna add three-quarters-of-a-cup of coconut cream.

So, quick note.

While we took the inspiration for this cake from Brazil, in terms of pureing the carrots, we took some liberties with the flavors.

One is the coconut cream.

And I just wanna make sure you know the difference between coconut cream, which is this beautiful, thick, gorgeous white liquid, versus coconut milk, which you might use for a curry, or a smoothie, which is much thinner.

You also want to make sure you don't get cream of coconut.

That's for cocktails.

And last, we're going to add in two teaspoons of orange zest, which is basically half an orange.

I also don't measure this.

And we'll play with that orange flavor again with our glaze.

So no cream cheese frosting today.

We're going to have a nice chocolate glaze.

Another reason this cake is wonderful, there's chocolate involved.

All right, start slow, and then once everything's going, cause you've got your carrots at the bottom, you can speed up your blender.

It's gonna take a while.

You want this to be very, very smooth.

And we're off to the races.

(whirring stops) And I'm gonna scrape down my blender.

I love blender speeds now; it's not like high, low, medium, it's "milkshake" or "fruit smoothie."

I was at "milkshake" speed.

All right, perfect.

It's a three-step cake; thank you, blender.

Dry ingredients, liquid ingredients, combine.

And then we're going to put them into a Bundt pan, which I'll explain in a minute.

It's beautiful!

It's orange, like a carrot.

I like to get it started with a spatula.

It's nice to use a glass bowl because you can see if you've got all your flour bits... ...up from the bottom.

And you do.

You want to be gentle, don't overmix.

Okay, so instead of a nine-inch round, we're going to make a statement carrot cake by using a beautiful Bundt.

You also want to make sure you spray it with baking spray, not cooking spray.

Baking spray is more helpful; this can stick.

So really make sure you get even the center and all around the sides.

All right, so now you just want to pour this in here.

This is going to go into a preheated 350-degree oven for about 45 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean.

Once you take your cake out of the oven, put it on a wire rack and let it cool for 30 minutes.

Then take a silicone spatula and run it around that inside tube to make sure you loosen that crumb.

And then invert it onto the wire rack and let it cool completely to room temperature before you glaze it.

And now we're gonna make our chocolate glaze.

So we wanna take about three-quarters-of-a-cup of fresh squeezed orange juice, if you have it.

And then you wanna bring this up just to a simmer.

And then we're gonna pour it on top of 113 grams or four ounces of finely chopped chocolate.

Simmering orange juice, swirl it around so all the chocolate gets submerged.

And I'm going to let this sit for just a couple minutes, let it melt, and then we'll move on to the next step.

All right, when it's been two minutes or as long as you can possibly wait, you're just going to whisk this until smooth.

Oh, perfect, whisking right up.

Yay, surface area.

Yay, finely chopped chocolate, yay, hot orange juice.

Okay, once it's smooth, you want to add in just a little bit of oil, about a teaspoon, and then whisk this again.

We're going to let this cool to about room temperature so that it will set up nicely once we pour it on.

So you want a nice big spoon.

You pour it in the middle, and you want it to cascade down the front and into the middle, and I'll show you a little trick in case it's not doing all the cascading you want, Pick it up and give it a little tap.

That will help smooth things out on the top.

And then, I like a sprinkle.

The last thing, just give it ten minutes so the glaze can set up, and then you can dive in.

All right, when you're cutting a piece for yourself or someone you love, this is what you do.

You look inside and you find the place where all the chocolate's pooled.

And that's your piece.

This is a real slice of cake.

Now, let's give it a taste.

Lo and behold, you know what it tastes like?

Carrots-- but better.

It's sweet and earthy like carrots are.

It's the best part of the vegetable.

But then it's also got that lovely orange zest, a little hint of coconut, and, of course, a chocolate glaze.

So not only is it beautifully orange, which you can tell I love, that texture is perfect.

It's not dry, it's moist.

Thank you, blender.

The blender gave us color, it gave us sweetness.

And the chocolate gave us the icing on the cake.

- This beautiful, golden hued vanilla cake is The perfect birthday cake you all know and love.

Making a cake like this from scratch just makes it extra special for the person that you're making it for.

I've simplified it by using the blender, so you don't have to cream the butter, add the eggs, whip in the flour, make sure everything is correct.

With the blender, you can just add all your wet ingredients, whisk it into your dry ingredients, and you're done; it takes only a few minutes.

I have made many, many, many cakes in my time, and this is so easy, delicious, you'll love it.

I want to first whisk my dry ingredients.

So I have cake flour here.

Cake flour is low in protein, so it makes a really tender, light cake.

So that's why we want to use that.

We have some baking powder.

We have a little bit of baking soda.

This cake has buttermilk in it, and so baking soda is something you might want to add if you're using something acidic, like buttermilk in your cake.

Gives it a nice rise.

So that's it, those are done.

And then we're going to add all our wet ingredients.

I'm going to add sugar.

I have melted our butter so we don't even have to worry about creaming it.

Our buttermilk, which kind of makes the cake not so sweet.

I love to add buttermilk to a cake.

Two eggs and two yolks.

Some vanilla.

And this little extra ingredient I'm adding is two tablespoons of oil.

Oil is 100% fat.

Butter has some water in it.

So when you have a cake that is all butter, it's delicious the first day, but then when you let it sit, like, another day, it doesn't stay as moist.

So the oil on the cake really does help keep that moistness for an extra day.

So I'm gonna put a couple of tablespoons of that in it.

Then all we're gonna do is blend it for 15 seconds.

So that's it, it smells like a delicious vanilla milkshake.

So I'm just going to add that to my dry ingredients, and we're going to whisk it up until it's nice and smooth.

So preparing the pans is really key.

You want to spray the pans with cooking spray, add a nice parchment circle, spray the pan again, and then add a few tablespoons of flour, shake it around the pan to cover it, and then you just tap out the excess.

And then you will have a perfectly prepared pan.

Then what I want to do is I'm going to just... ...tap these on the counter.

Make sure the batter's even, but tap it on the counter, you want to do that so you don't have a lot of bubbles in the cake when it's baked.

See, when I'm tapping it, you can see some of them kind of... ...come to the top and dissipate.

So a 350-degree oven, 22 to 25 minutes, and you will have a beautiful cake.

So for a cake this simple, I really wanted to come up with a frosting that was equally simple.

Buttercream can be anything from Swiss meringue, French meringue, they're delicious, but they're complicated.

American buttercream is, to me, so cloyingly sweet.

Some recipes have almost a two-pound bag of sugar in them.

So I didn't want something so sweet.

And I wanted to really incorporate a lot of heavy cream to this just so that you would get a lightness, almost like a whipped frosting that's in between a buttercream and whipped cream.

And I think I really accomplished that with this one, two, three frosting recipe.

- So, Rose, I do believe you have cracked the Holy Grail of American buttercream.

- I am pretty proud of that buttercream, Wes.

I will say.

- I am not really a big fan of that kind of buttercream, because it's always so sweet and sometimes really greasy.

- Yes.

- But I think you have figured out how to make it not so greasy and not so sweet.

I love a Swiss meringue buttercream.

So I'm very curious how long it's going to take you to make this versus making a Swiss meringue.

- Right.

- So I want to time this and see who's going to win here.

- Okay.

Well... - I think it's good.

So I'm gonna set your timer.

- Okay.

- Ready?

- I'm ready.

- One, two, three-- go!

- All right, this is a one, two, three buttercream.

And that is one cup of heavy cream, two sticks of butter, three cups of confectionery sugar.

It will be easy for you to remember anytime you wanna make it.

My butter is at room temperature.

You can do it if it's cold.

But it's just gonna take longer to make it.

So room temperature is what you want to do.

I'm gonna start my mixer.

I'm gonna beat this for about three or four minutes on medium because I want the butter to get really white and really creamy.

It's amazing, you'll see.

It's yellow when it goes in here, and the more you beat it, it's gonna actually turn white.

- All right, Swiss meringue buttercream consists of a cooked meringue, which is egg whites and sugar, that I will cook over a simmering pan of water.

And then I have to whip it and cool it down to get the butter into it.

So not hard, a lengthy process, But is really delicious.

- Now, you can see it's much lighter.

It's nice and creamy, it's ready to add the sugar.

I'm gonna turn the mixer to low and add my sugar about a quarter-of-a-cup at a time.

So I'm gonna add an entire cup of heavy cream to this.

And that's what's gonna give this frosting the consistency of something that's really close to a Swiss buttercream that Wes is making.

Now that I've added all the cream, this looks like it is broken and curdled.

It will come back together, trust me.

You just have to keep mixing it for about eight minutes, ten minutes, and it will come back together again.

You really cannot overbeat this.

That's, kind of, the beauty of this frosting.

- Onto the mixer it goes.

The idea here is to whip volume, so we have nice, fluffy icing, but also to cool down the meringue so when we add butter, it doesn't melt.

This takes the longest bit of time.

At least ten minutes.

Once the meringue is whipped and the bowl feels cool to the touch-- if it feels any warmer than body temperature, keep whipping-- and then I'll be able to add the butter to it.

- I'm adding my vanilla here, but it's really customizable.

You could add lemon zest, orange zest.

You can add chocolate.

So it really takes on any flavor that you want to add to it.

I'm doing vanilla today, but you can do whatever you want.

- Swiss meringue buttercream is very stable, but it can kind of break apart while you're mixing it.

It can get kind of curd-ly, but just keep mixing.

That's the key to any buttercream, keep whipping.

It's gonna come back together.

- So it looks like we're just about there.

This has been going for about eight minutes.

It's nice and creamy.

It's come together.

I'm gonna put it on medium-high for another minute or two just to get that extra airiness.

And it looks like we are done.

(timer button beeps) How you doing over there, Wes?

- I'm getting there.

- So I'm gonna frost up this cake while I'm waiting for Wes.

- All right, Rose.

(timer button beeps) - You're done!

- Oh, you're already... - I'm starting to decorate because I had a little extra time.

- All right, so there it is.

Yours is 18 minutes, and mine is 30 minutes it took.

But, I mean, this is beautiful.

- Yeah, it's not really about time.

That's a classic icing, for sure.

- Yeah.

- If you have the time to make a beautiful Swiss meringue buttercream, you should.

Yeah, so this is a great frosting.

If you want to make a birthday cake, even on a weeknight, between the blender cake and this frosting, you'll be able to do it anytime you want.

Okay, so our cakes have cooled for an hour.

You can see this frosting is so light and fluffy.

I've added my frosting to the center of the cake, and I'm just gonna work to the sides of the cake, bring it almost to the edge, not completely.

Cause you're gonna put another cake on there, and that's gonna make some of the frosting, kind of, move to the edges of the cake anyway.

If you want your cake to be domed on the top, then you would use the dome side.

I kind of like it to be flat.

And then again, another, kind of, cuppish, three-quarters of a cup to a cup of frosting on the top.

And we're going to do the same thing.

We're just going to spread it out and move it to the edge.

So, as you can see, some of it is starting to spill over the edge.

And I'm going to start taking that frosting and moving it along the side of the cake, and I'm pretty happy with that.

Again, it's not completely perfect, but that's okay.

I have about a cup of frosting left.

So what I typically do is I will do the top border first, because if you were to run out, you can always press some of the sprinkles around the edge of the cake and that will look really fun and festive and you don't have to worry about it.

So I'm just going to do a border, so just... You want to press the pastry bag and then kind of release it a little and just hold the bag as you go and you'll have a fun little border all around the edge.

I'm a big fan of sprinkles.

You just press them along the edge of the bottom of the cake.

You could do something like that and put a few on the top and you'd be done and then just clean off the plate.

That's kind of fun.

Or you can also do a border.

Again, cake, fun.

Sprinkles always make everything fun and festive.

There she is, she's beautiful; I think we have to try a slice.

See how soft that cake is.

And there it is.

So this is a cake you would be so proud to serve anyone.

I'm going to take a little bite.

Look at how soft that crumb is.

It's really vanilla-y, but it's not too sweet.

That's the thing I really love about this cake.

Even the frosting, you can taste, kind of, that little bit of tang from the buttermilk.

It's a delicious cake.

I hope you'll try it.

So here it is; a perfect, tender blender cake.

A delicious one, two, three frosting that you will never forget how to make because the recipe is so simple.

For this and all the recipes for this season, go to MilkStreetTV.com.

- Recipes and episodes from this season of Milk Street are available at MilkStreetTV.com, along with shopping lists, printer-ready recipes, and step-by-step videos.

Access our content anytime to change the way you cook.

- The new Milk Street Cookbook is now available and includes every recipe from our TV show.

From cacio e pepe and skillet spanakopita, to Brazilian-style carrot cake and Thai coconut soup, the Milk Street Cookbook offers bolder, fresher, simpler recipes.

Order your copy of the Milk Street Cookbook for $27, 40% less than the cover price.

Call 855-MILK-177 or order online.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following: - MOWI salmon comes ready to cook, ready to grill, ready to season, or pre-seasoned and ready to eat.

In an assortment of flavors for an assortment of people.

MOWI Salmon.

- We pass down traditions here.

We create and connect.

We enjoy special moments.

Some simple, some grand.

The heart of your home is the kitchen.

The heart of your kitchen is The Galley.