Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street Television

- I don't know, I think it's a perfect one-bowl cake.

- Perfect was the word I was looking for.

(Cheryl laughs) - The cake is so nice and sweet.

It's fabulous.

- Once you taste one with the cocoa, and the cinnamon, and that little bit of heat from the chili powder, it kind of keeps you coming back for more.

- You know, everyone loves cakes.

So today we're going to show you three of our favorite recipes.

We start with a chocolate Bundt cake with dark chocolate glaze from Cheryl Day from Back in the Day Bakery in Savannah.

Then we do a plum cake with spiced almond crumble with cardamom and cloves.

And we finish up with mini almond cakes with spiced chocolate, inspired by the flavors of Mexican hot chocolate.

Please stay tuned.

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- Well, I'd like to introduce myself as Cheryl Day's baking assistant.

Because you're going to tell me what to do because you're the expert.

Cheryl is, of course, from Back in the Day Bakery in Savannah, Georgia.

We've met on the show before.

- I'm excited about this cake because it's one of my favorites.

Easy peasy cake.

- The chocolate Bundt cake.

- The chocolate Bundt cake.

What we're going to start with is a great Bundt pan.

And what you're going to do, Chris, is make, like a little paste out of the butter and cocoa.

Very chocolatey cake.

And with your pastry brush, you're going to get in all your crevices and kind of coat the pan rather than having that flour, because it's a really dark, dark cake.

And we're going to glaze it with ganache.

So, yeah, just work that magic in there.

- So what about spraying?

- I just do it the old fashioned way.

- All right.

- So just make sure you get it all in the crevices, and then that way it's going to come right out.

- Well, the name of your bakery is Back in the Day.

- It's Back in the Day.

- So of course you're going to do it... you're not going to do like... - (chuckling): I really still do it all back in the day.

So in here, I've got my... all my dry.

I've got flour.

I'm going to add in my sugar.

I love a one-bowl recipe.

It's going to be the sugar, the cocoa.

- So can I ask you a question?

So some chocolate cakes use cocoa powder, and some use melted chocolate.

- Yes.

- What's the difference and why?

- Well, you've had my other cake, and I do use chocolate, melted chocolate in that.

This one is just a simple one-bowl cake, and it is definitely an old fashioned kind of flavor with the cocoa.

I can't decide which I prefer.

I think I just love chocolate cake.

Yeah, so I've got baking soda, baking powder, and salt that's going in this with the dry ingredients.

So, Chris, if you would whisk my eggs.

That's going in next.

Thank you.

So I've got some fresh brewed coffee here.

Coffee always makes chocolate flavor come out.

And I do do this by hand.

- In the bakery?

- Now, if I'm doing a big batch, I definitely will cheat.

But yeah, if I'm just doing one at home, absolutely.

So you see how thick that is and nice and glossy.

So I'm going to get you to add in the eggs.

Just slowly.

Yeah... And I'll just stir.

And I may have you take over just so you can see how thick it is.

- You're going to let me drive the tractor here?

- Pretty much.

- Finally, I get to...

I get the driver's seat?

- Pretty much.

And then lastly, we're going to add the oil, buttermilk, and vanilla.

So we're going to just kind of let that emulsify.

- And what kind of oil is this?

- This is actually grapeseed oil.

- Okay.

- But any, you know, non-flavorful neutral oil works great.

- (whispering): But not canola oil.

(laughs) Please.

Okay, so you'll get that all in.

Isn't that a beautiful batter, though?

- Yeah, it's glossy, it's rich, it's thick.

- I mean it's glossy, it's rich.

And it's going to pour right in.

- You notice how Cheryl very quickly transferred this to me?

That was smart.

- It's that teamwork, you know?

I mean I can't do...

There's no me without you.

And vice versa.

(both laughing) And then, lastly, vanilla.

So we're all set, and I'm going to let you pour this in.

(Cheryl laughing) - Well, you have a lighter colored apron, that's why, right?

- It's pretty easy to do, though.

Like look at that beautiful batter.

And then we're going to pop this in the oven, Chris, preheated 350 for about 40 to 45 minutes, and it's going to rise up super tall.

And I do like to, you know, usually you'll hear people say test it until it comes out clean with a skewer or-- - No.

Not for chocolate cake should not come out clean, right?

- It, it really shouldn't come out clean.

There should be, if anything, like a little... a few crumbs.

Definitely tap.

Get any air bubbles.

- Can I just say something about toothpicks for a second?

The toothpick industry got together 50 years ago, they had a secret conference.

They decided they would sell more toothpicks if everybody used them for baking.

(stammering) ...no.

Can't you just press the top of a cake and see if it comes back?

- Especially a chocolate cake.

- Yeah.

- That's a good way to start for sure, because it will bounce back when you touch it, and it's pretty easy to tell.

- Yeah.

- Okay, so we'll get this in the oven at 40 to 45 minutes, and then we'll be back.

Look at that beautiful cake.

- That is... and none of it got stuck in the Bundt pan.

- None of it.

And you see it's completely dark and rich.

- It is gorgeous.

- Okay, so I'm going to put you to work.

Shocking.

- Shockingly.

- We're going to make the glaze.

But now I want you to see how simple it is to do and to show off your knife skills, because they're incredible.

So first of all, I'm going to get you to chop the chocolate up really fine.

Then we're going to do a double boiler situation.

- So I'm going to switch here?

- Yeah, I'm going to switch with you.

- Okay.

- And then we're going to glaze it in the end.

But so, yeah, if you could chop your chocolate fine for me, because what we're going to do, Chris, is then pop it in the bowl.

Then we're going to add cream, butter, vanilla, salt, and, again, more coffee.

- Ganache 101.

- Ganache 101.

Yeah.

- 101, yeah.

- I'm going to go ahead and get our butter melted.

- I'll just spend the next half hour chopping the chocolate.

It's all right.

- All right, so I'm going to go ahead and add the cream.

Then the butter will continue to melt.

And then we have salt.

If you could pop the salt in here for me.

And we'll wait on the vanilla.

So, Chris, if you could add in our sugar, because we do want to make this a little sweet.

All right, so we're melting the chocolate.

And making sure that I don't get this too hot.

Just making sure that it's going to stay nice and shiny.

This looks perfect.

But I like to add a little bit of coffee.

So if you could just drizzle in, let's start with maybe just a little tablespoon, and that's going to really make it shiny.

And we'll stop there, and then you can just add the vanilla.

And that looks perfect.

Now that you've done all the hard work... - Oh, sure.

- I'm going to make it beautiful.

We're just going to let this set up just a little bit.

- Okay.

- And then we'll glaze the cake.

- We'll glaze the cake.

Okay.

- Okay?

So I like to start just a little bit on the outside because it's going to, you know, it's going to run down, but you want to try to make it look as beautiful as you can.

And then if you have extra glaze, you can save it, or you can put it on a little drizzle on your slice of cake when we eat it.

- Okay, that looks good.

- So we're going to let this stand for about 15 minutes, and then we'll, we'll have a slice.

- Okay.

- Can't wait for you to try it.

So here we are.

- Praise, oh great one.

(Cheryl laughing) - (chuckling): That looks pretty good.

- Doesn't it look good?

- Yeah.

I'd say so.

- See, it stayed nice and shiny, and it's perfect.

You always say I slice big slices, so.

- You do.

I'm going to have you... - No, you go ahead.

Oh, you want me to do it?

- Going to let you do it.

- Oh.

- I'm going to see what you think is an appropriate size of chocolate cake.

- I don't know, this could be a test of our relationship.

- Slices beautifully.

Actually, it's kind of cheating because it's got those little lines for you.

- It does.

- Oh, that's gorgeous.

- Mm.

The texture almost looks like devil's food cake, doesn't it?

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Mm.

- Mm.

Man, that is good.

It's also, I have to say, the problem with chocolate dessert sometimes if you eat a whole piece of it or a whole bowl, halfway through, you go like, I'm done.

- Yeah.

You could have another slice.

- Yeah, I could definitely.

(Cheryl laughs) I will have another slice.

But this, but this you can keep eating it because it's not overly chocolatey.

- It's not overly sweet either.

- Mm, no, it's not.

- it's just...

I don't know, I think it's a perfect one-bowl cake.

- Perfect was the word I was looking for.

Cheryl, thank you very much.

Chocolate Bundt cake with a dark chocolate glaze.

Not too sweet, great texture, one bowl.

What else can I say?

- Today we're going to be making a delicious dessert called plum cake with spiced almond crumble.

We were inspired by a recipe we found in an award-winning cookbook called Suqar by Greg and Lucy Malouf.

To get started, we're going to be making the crumb topping first.

I've already toasted a half a cup of sliced almonds.

I like to do that in a skillet on a stove top.

I just toasted them over medium heat for about three to four minutes.

I'm going to transfer them to this plate to cool.

Okay, and now I have here half a cup of all-purpose flour.

I'm going to add to that half a cup of light brown sugar, Quarter teaspoon of table salt.

All of these wonderful spices.

Here I have a half a teaspoon of ground cardamom, a half a teaspoon of coriander, which we added to add a nice, bright citrusy flavor, and then a quarter teaspoon of allspice for a little bit of warmth.

Okay, I'm just going to stir this together.

Okay, now I'm going to add four tablespoons.

This is cool, room temperature salted butter.

You don't want it too, too soft, because then it's just going to get real greasy.

But you want it soft enough that it'll be pliable because I'm going to mix it in with my fingers.

I'm just going to work that in.

I don't see any dry bits of flour left, so I'm going to call that done.

Okay, last, I'm just going to add the almonds.

Just going to stir those in.

Okay, I'm going to go ahead and transfer this mixture.

I have a nine-inch pie plate here.

If you don't have that at home, you could also do anything that's safe to go ahead and put in your freezer.

And this is a really cool trick that we learned from their recipe.

And it's really no additional work, and it makes all the difference in how this cake bakes up.

And this cake is essentially sort of a cross between like a crumb cake and a coffee cake.

All right, so I'm just patting this into the pie plate.

Not too hard, just enough to kind of get it into an even layer.

And then we're going to go ahead and pop this in the freezer, where it's going to hang out and get nice and cold while we start working on the cake batter.

So I'm going to start by mixing the dry ingredients together.

I have a cup and a half of all-purpose flour.

Going to add to that one-and-a-half teaspoons of baking powder.

And a half a teaspoon of baking soda.

And then a half teaspoon of table salt.

And I'm just going to whisk that together.

And I'm going to go ahead and set this aside.

And next we have a half a cup of sour cream.

and this really gives the cake a nice, tender, and like kind of tight, velvety crumb.

It's a wonderful ingredient.

I'm going to add to this one-and-a-half teaspoons of vanilla extract.

And a quarter teaspoon of almond extract.

Which is pretty strongly flavored.

A little goes a long way.

I'm just going to mix these together.

Okay, I'm going to set this aside as well.

And now we're going to go on to creaming our butter and sugar together.

We have one-and-a-half sticks of room temperature salted butter.

And then one-and-a-quarter cup of white sugar.

Okay, I'm going to go ahead and mix this on medium speed for, like, three to four minutes.

You want to really whip air into it.

So this looks great.

It's nice, and light, and pale in color, and it's time to add our eggs.

So I'm going to reduce the speed just a little bit to medium low so that the eggs don't fly out of the bowl.

I'm going to add them one by one.

I just want to wait a few seconds after each addition to allow time for that egg to get incorporated with the butter and sugar mixture.

Okay, this looks great.

Now I'm going to increase the speed back up to medium again, and I'm going to aerate the batter for about one minute.

Okay, now I'm turning the mixture down to low because it's time to add our dry ingredients, and we don't want to overdevelop the gluten in the recipe.

Going to start by adding one third of our flour mixture.

And once that's incorporated, I'm going to go ahead and add half of the sour cream mixture.

Followed by half of what's left of the flour mixture.

I'm going to go ahead and take it off the mixer now and just finish this by hand to make sure there aren't any floury pockets hiding underneath there.

Okay, so the batter is all set, and I'm going to transfer it into our prepared pan.

Here we have a nine by 13 pan.

I prepared the pan by spraying it with baking spray, which is a combination of oil and flour.

If you don't have, that's fine, you can just butter the pan and then dust it really well with flour.

So I'm going to go ahead and scrape the batter in there.

You can see how nice and thick it is.

It looks just like frosting.

It's great.

It smells amazing.

You can smell the vanilla, and you can smell the almond extract, which is kind of incredible because we didn't add that much.

Okay, and then because it's so thick, you really do need to spread it into an even layer.

And now this is the best part.

We're going to go ahead and add our plums.

Here I have one-and-a-half pounds of plums, which is about three or four plums.

They're ripe, but not overly ripe, so that they won't mush out in the oven.

And I've cut them into eighths.

And now I'm going to arrange them into three rows on top of my batter.

All right, I'm just going to add the last few of these plums.

Okay, so now this is ready to go in the oven.

But don't worry, I didn't forget about the streusel, that's going to still hang out in the freezer.

We're going to let this bake about halfway through.

It's going to set the batter in the bottom, and it's going to help to release some of the juices in the plums and dry them out a little bit.

And then that will also help to prevent that streusel from soaking down; it'll get nice and crisp.

So this is going to go into a 350 degree oven for about 25 minutes.

Okay, so this is great.

The cake has been baking for about 25 minutes, and you can see that the batter has risen up and baked over the plums, and it's just starting to turn light golden brown around the edges.

So now it's time to add our frozen crumble.

And you just want to put this on in an even layer.

Okay, great.

This looks wonderful.

Now it's going to go back into the oven for another 20 or 25 minutes.

And we really want to look for the top of the streusel to be like a deep golden brown.

And when we test the center of the cake with a toothpick, it should come out clean.

So I'm going to go ahead and put this back in the oven.

Okay, so this looks wonderful.

This has been out of the oven now for about an hour, and it's cool enough to cut into.

I'm just going to dust it with a little bit of confectioner's sugar.

All right, I'm going to cut into it.

And you can see this will easily serve like 12 to 14 people, which is just great.

And you can see the nice, tender cake layer.

And then on top, nice layer of crumble.

I'm really excited to try this.

I'm going to add a little bit of whipped cream on top first.

Mm...

The cake is so nice and sweet.

You get a little bit of that almond extract.

The plums are super tart.

And then you get this nice spiced crumble on top with the cardamom.

It's fabulous.

- Our mini almond cakes with spiced chocolate were inspired by the classic French financier, which are tiny almond cakes rich with butter, baked in small rectangular molds.

So when those little cakes were popped out of their molds with their golden crusts facing up, they were said to resemble gold ingots, representing the wealth of financiers.

Our much more exciting version livens the batter with cocoa, cinnamon, and spicy chili powder.

We'll start by getting the butter going and melting it.

So to this pot, we'll add eight tablespoons of butter and let it melt over a medium heat.

And then let it sit there and simmer and give it a swirl every now and then until the bottom becomes nutty brown.

What's happening here is the milk solids separate from the fat in the butter.

The fat rises to the top, the milk solids to the bottom, and it's those milk solids that become brown and toasty from the heat of the pan.

So we're going to take that off the heat and let it cool for just a few minutes while we mix together the two flours.

We have all-purpose flour and, of course, the almond flour.

Almond flour is simply finely ground almonds without their skins.

And to that we'll add a little bit of salt.

Now to the brown butter we're going to mix in the cocoa powder, the chili, and the cinnamon, as well as a little touch of rum or bourbon, whichever you have around.

The reason we're mixing these into the butter instead of the dry ingredients is to hydrate them a little bit.

And we're also blooming the spices in the hot butter a little bit as well.

Okay, and very last is a little bit of rum here.

Now, if you ever had Mexican hot chocolate, you'll probably recognize this flavor combination.

The cocoa powder is the chocolate, of course, then the cinnamon and the chili powder combination are classic flavors in Mexican hot chocolate, as well as a lot of Mexican desserts as well that feature chocolate.

This gives our cakes an incredibly spiced up flavor.

It's really, really delicious.

Now that our butter mixture is completed and cooling down, our flours are mixed together, we will start by whipping the egg whites.

Remember, I said this was traditional.

So you want to start with a very clean bowl and egg whites.

Any little bit of fat that might be in the bowl will cause the egg whites to deflate, and you won't get the aeration that you need.

The egg whites are the only leavening this cake has.

The air that is incorporated into the egg whites are what keeps the batter light.

So we'll start these off on like a medium-low, medium; more like medium.

And we'll wait until they get foamy.

So you're not going to see any heavy egg white in the bottom of the bowl at this point.

You want to see a complete foaminess.

And then we will slowly start adding the sugar.

The sugar serves to stabilize the egg whites.

It also allows them to take on more air.

There we go, you can see a nice white foaminess.

We'll turn this down just to touch and start slowly streaming in the sugar.

You want the aeration to occur as the sugar is being added.

Okay, these are looking pretty much ready.

They're shiny, satiny on the surface.

Ooh, yes.

Perfect.

See how that peak is drooping and it's shakable?

That's what you want.

You want the peak to hold, but for it not to be standing straight up.

If the egg whites get overwhipped, they won't blend.

They'll just clump up in your batter and you'll lose the air by trying to get them incorporated.

And all that work will be for nothing.

See how shiny that is?

It almost looks like a marshmallow fluffer.

I'm going to turn the machine back on and keep it on low speed.

We'll add the dry ingredients followed by the butter, all on low, because we want to incorporate those gently and not deflate all the air we put into the egg whites.

So we'll finish blending this by hand.

You can see there's still some streaks of egg white in there.

Just want to get that completely incorporated.

There we go.

Now you have an option here on the pan to use.

If you're using mini muffin tins, you will get a tin that has 24 little mini muffin cups in it and you'll get 24 little cakes.

Or you can use a regular size muffin tin with 12 cups in it and you'll get 12 cakes slightly larger.

The only thing that changes there, other than the quantity, is the baking time.

So these have been pre-sprayed with a little bit of baking spray.

And I'll use a spoon and a spatula to distribute this evenly.

Probably about three-quarters full each.

So we'll bake these in a 375 degree oven for about ten to 12 minutes.

They don't take very long.

They're very tiny and they're very aerated, so they'll bake pretty quickly.

And don't forget that the cakes on the outside bake faster than the ones on the inside.

So make sure you test those inner ones as well.

But when these come out of the oven, they cool in the pan for only five minutes, and then you take them out of the pan and let them cool completely on a wire rack.

And that takes about 30 minutes.

Now you're ready to dust them with your choice of cocoa powder or confectioner's sugar.

Or, you can do a little bit of both, like I like to do.

Here's the thing, if you're not serving them right away, save the dusting until right before you are serving them.

Just so it doesn't get messed up.

Just a light little dusting on each one.

These cakes are lightly sweet with all those deep, dark spices.

So the cocoa powder complements that really nicely.

Okay, so that's the cocoa powder.

Now they're good to go just like this.

But if you have both cocoa powder and confectioner's sugar, the contrast of the dark and the light is really wonderful if you just do a tiny little dusting of sugar right on top, and then you get a speckled effect.

And I have to admit something, our recipe describes these (chuckling): as three-bite mini cakes.

I'm thinking, hm... two, two at the most bites.

They're actually a little bit addictive, because once you taste one with the cocoa, and the cinnamon, and that little bit of heat from the chili powder, it kind of keeps you coming back for more.

These are Milk Street's adaptation of the French financier, our mini almond cakes with spiced chocolate.

You can get this recipe and all the recipes from this season at MilkStreetTV.com.

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The Milk Street Cookbook offers bolder, fresher, simpler recipes.

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Call 855-MILK-177 or order online.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following.

- That meal.

You sauted, you seared, and you served, cooking with All-Clad, bonded cookware designed, engineered, and assembled in the U.S.A. for over 50 years.

All-Clad: for all your kitchen adventures.