Claire Teaches You Cake Baking (Lesson 1) | Baking School | Bon Appétit

this is an irresponsible amount of batter for this goal set they're just people to know that if Chris maracas were here he would be horrified first of all belly you know use the right tool and everything [Music] hi everyone I'm Claire and this is episode one of EA's baking school we are showing you everything you need to know about layer cakes from the cakes themselves to the fillings to the frostings putting the whole thing together decorating in a 5 episode series and by the time you watch you should know everything there is to know about how to make a layer cake at home whether it's your very first and you're a novice Baker or your more experienced and just want to get better over the course this series we're going to be making three specific layer cakes to demonstrate these Universal techniques and here are those cakes so here I have our three individual layer cakes a layer cake is a construction of multiple layers of a sponge separated by a filling and then the whole thing is iced and decorated let me break down each of the cakes and how they're different pick number one is our birthday cake it is composed of three layers of classic yellow cake the layers are soaked in a vanilla milk the filling is a whipped chocolate ganache the frosting is chocolate Swiss meringue buttercream and the decor is rainbow sprinkles pressed around the sides but if someone made this cake for me on my birthday would be like I would like cry would be so touch for our coconut cake here's what we got six layers of white cake coconut milk soaked in between the layers coconut caramel outside on a top we piped Italian meringue torched and then toasted coconut on top it might look intimidating but you really can make this at home so you just have to watch all five episodes just get comfortable our third cake is our carrot cake it's enormous we have three layers of carrot cake with walnuts the filling is very thin layers of pineapple vanilla compote then in between the layers and around the sides and top classic cream cheese frosting the decorations are candied carrot ribbons they're not supposed to be this big I've made a mistake and then we couldn't reverse we couldn't reshoot it I did some bad math sorry episode 1 it's all about the cakes themselves how to mix the batters the different recipes all you need to know about the cakes that go inside of our final compose layer cakes so to make the layers for any kind of layered cake there are essential tools that you must have a large whiskey proofs liquid measuring cups and dry measures mixing bowls at least two light-colored identical cake pans these are nine-inch parchment paper and scissors for cutting out rounds nonstick cooking spray and a stand mixer I really don't recommend making a layer cake by hand sand mixer will make it so much easier so the first thing you have to do always before starting to build your batter is line your cake pans and that's because a layer of parchment on the bottom ensures that your cake releases when you turn it out I'm just tracing around the very bottom of the pan with a pen you can use a sharpie I'm going to trace the second one right next to it and now I have the outline of the pan pan like this rotor because this one doesn't actually fit in the bottom of things or not the same fact these two fit nice in the bottom I'm gonna use a little bit of nonstick cooking spray to coat the pans and now I line the parchment in the bottom sometimes I like to fold it in half like this so that helps to eliminate air bubbles as I place the parchment in the pan another light coating of spray on the parchment itself to really ensure that the cakes don't stick I dust everything with a layer of flour now I tap the flour while rotating the pan all the way around so that it coats not only the bottom at the sides any cake that you bacon here will slide right out if you were to skip this step it could lead to disastrous consequences it's time to find out what would happen if we didn't prep our baking pan this is just a Bachelor of our regular yellow cake so I'm gonna scrape in Noah parchment no butter no flour not even a spray of Pam it's all bake this for the regular time about a half an hour and we'll see what happens okay here is that cake layer that's cooled little worried there's no parchment so there's nothing that's creating any kind of release on the bottom it's pretty stuck alright this guy it has to come out in pieces unfortunately we can arrest development like and that's why you always prep the pan disaster otherwise so now that the pans are prepped we're ready to move on to the batter I'm going to show you three distinct cake recipes using three distinct methods for mixing each of our three cakes has a different texture and that's because of the way the different ingredients are mixed together that produces different amounts of gluten so I'm gonna show you what gluten looks like gluten is produced when the proteins in wheat flour interact with water different amounts of gluten development affects the overall texture when water comes into contact with wheat flour two proteins glutenin and gliadin produce what's called gluten and it's these long stretchy strands that give bread dough for instance they're chewy texture the more I mix this the more structure I'm giving it that's what we want in bread dough not what we want in cake batter here I have two examples of baked goods with different amounts of gluten development so I can show you what the final result is first I have it's really like a muffin I mean I'm not let's be honest I'm up in this cake just anyone that doesn't know that kind of I don't like muffins I'd rather eat cake so this is an example of lower gluten development the texture is light and fluffy unlike cake the object when you're making bread is often to develop as much gluten as possible when I press down and it springs back up that's because of all that gluten super springy very chewy I can see little flecks of the whole grain in it by changing around the order and method of mixing together the batter we can change the amount of gluten development there's more than one way to bake a cake so I'm going to show you the three different mixing methods for each of our three layer cakes pick number one is our birthday cake very classic yellow cake for our coconut cake we got six layers of white cake our third cake is our carrot cake we have three layers of carrot cake with walnuts these are the three different cakes that we're going to make we're ready to start building our first classic yellow cake and we're gonna use the traditional method for bringing the cake together which starts with creaming the butter and sugar and this internal result in a nice fluffy cake a beautiful domed lid and a very nice texture here are all the ingredients you need to make classic yellow cake using the traditional creaming method granulated sugar unsalted butter large eggs buttermilk vegetable oil vanilla extract baking powder kosher salt baking soda and cake flour okay so the first thing I want to do is combine all my dry ingredients that I am using a whisk to combine dry and this is also going to eliminate any lumps that could form flat pockets of flour in the batter so I'm just combining all these wet together in with the buttermilk yellow cake is so named because it has a really large amount of egg yolks in it and the yolks contribute a nice sort of golden hue to the cake so yellow cake equals egg yolks so I'm using eleven yolks and just one whole egg so this is my eleventh yolk and then the last egg is just a whole how did I screw up cracking the whole egg okay the general order of operations is butter and sugar going first we want to work a lot of air into that and then we add eggs followed by wet ingredients and dry ingredients alternating beginning and ending with dry all right I tried that mixer off as soon as those last streaks of flour disappeared because if I kept mixing I would be at risk of overdose in the gluten which would be very very bad for our cake what would happen if there is the problem of overworking your batter I have that same yellow cake batter that I'm gonna just continue to beat in the mixer I think that's enough I can tell that it's over mixed because the texture of the batter is droopy you can see how stretchy the batter is which is an indication of gluten okay so I'm gonna put this into the pan into the oven thirty minutes and see what happens all right it has dramatically shrunk away from the edges as the cake bakes the gluten strands kind of like snap together and contract so you get that shrinking well the crumb almost has sort of like a bready consistency and I can tell that it has sort of a tough texture but it's definitely chewy not what we're going for in a layer cake on the other end of the spectrum what happens if you under mix your batter I have yellow cake batter with just the very last bit of flour added you can see there's a little bit of flour still visible hardly any gluten has been developed at all but we're gonna bake it for 30 minutes and see what happens here is that cake layer right away big dip in the center so it's sung quite a bit that is because there isn't enough gluten structure to support the weight of the cake oh wow so you can see much more open crumb super super crumbly it almost like turns back into batter when you eat it the key to mixing your batter when you're making cake is make sure all the flour is in there mixed by hand at the end is really useful to make sure it's well mixed and everything is incorporated but don't go any further than that that will give you the best result in the final texture of the cake so now I want to work it a couple times with a spatula by hand to just make sure that the stuff that's at the bottom mix it evenly with the stuff that's at the top I have my kitchen scale here I'm going to use it to weigh I'll be better to ensure that I have exact amounts equal between the three so each one is 750 grams and now we have a small offset spatula a tool that you will find indispensable for layer cake making and I'm going to use this to level out the batter and also work it into the side so there's no air pockets around those corners we're gonna bake these cakes at 350 so I'm gonna start with 2 in the upper position far to the sides and then one in the middle and the idea is to prevent the two on the top from blocking heat to the bottom I'm also going to rotate them a little more than halfway through baking so here's what we did for the mixing cake batter using the traditional creaming method we started by beating together the butter and sugar until very light fluffy then we beat in the eggs followed by the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients that we added alternating starting and ending with Drive then we scraped the batter into the prepared cake pans dividing evenly and wings to guarantee over the even layers I slew them with an offset spatula and we put them in the racks of the oven preheated to 350 on the upper third and lower third to bake it so now I'm going to put together the white cake batter and I'm going to show you the technique of cold reverse creaming it produces a cake with a very fine crumb and also a really flat top and here's what you need before classic white cake cake flour granulated sugar baking powder kosher salt baking soda unsalted butter buttermilk vegetable oil large eggs vanilla extract and almond extract so the color verse for me because you don't start with the butter and sugar you actually start with all the dry ingredients in the bowl first and then you work in the fat so I'm combining all the dry ingredients in the stand mixer bowl plus my sugar I'm gonna plug my dry ingredients into the mixer and now I have room-temperature butter here in the traditional creaming method for the yellow cake we didn't add a flower until the very end and now we're starting with all the dry ingredients here and adding the butter directly to it so this will seem really counterintuitive for a lot of cake makers out there but it's a wonderful method it works really well what I'm doing here is I am working the butter into the dry mixture so that the fat and the butter is coating the flour and that is going to inhibit gluten formation when I add the liquid ingredients a little bit of vegetable oils I like to add almond extract to white cake because it's sort of a classic touch and also some vanilla extract just gonna whisk these together okay add about half of the buttermilk this is going to start to build a little bit of structure in the cake so I'm going to let this mix pretty well so now I'm ready to add my egg mixture and I'm going to do it in two editions [Music] now the batter is fully mixed all the ingredients are added because there's so little gluten that we've formed so far we actually do work the batter quite a bit and this is our chance to work some air into it because we don't have that part where we cream the butter and sugar so I'm gonna let it go on medium high for a good two minutes and this also will help incorporate some Arrington batter to lighten it okay now I'm ready to divide my batter into my pans these go into the same 350 oven same orientation of the pans so here's how we put together the white cake batter using the reverse creaming method we started by combining all the dry ingredients plus sugar in the bowl of the mixer whisk fat to combine then I added all the butter and worked that in with the paddle added all the buttermilk and a little bit of vegetable oil we're committed to a batter then added the eggs to whisk together with the extracts until liquid I added that into additions and beat very well afterwards until I had a light fluffy batter divided that into the three prepared cake pans and into the 350 oven care gave an oil-based case there's a different method for putting together the batter and here are all the ingredients and there are a lot of them large eggs granulated sugar dark brown sugar vanilla extract vegetable oil all-purpose flour cinnamon ground ginger freshly grated nutmeg baking powder kosher salt baking soda buttermilk carrots and walnuts so our third cake today is a carrot cake which is an oil-based cake so very different from the yellow cake and white cake because no butter at all and it starts with beating air into the eggs along with the sugar so an oil-based came tends to be a little bit denser but also because of all the oil in there it's also much more moist I do like walnuts in my carrot cake so we're gonna add them today so these will toast it like a 350 oven for 10 minutes or so until they're dark in a little bit and toasty smelling so what I'm gonna do is grate the carrots on the large holes and put them in this bowl and then combine them with the buttermilk because the buttermilk will start to tenderize the carrots now I want to mix together on my dry ingredients again okay now I'm gonna start building everything in the mixer I'm using whole eggs and now I'm gonna beat the eggs with my sugars I have dark brown sugar and white sugar because I'm not creaming together butter and sugar my chance of incorporating air into the dough is really in this stage you can see that this mixture is already lightening quite a bit and now I'm ready to do a crucial step an oil-based cake which is emulsifying the oil into the eggs and sugar so this just means that I am combining the eggs and oil so that they thicken basically the oil will disappear into the eggs so I'm going to turn this on medium and stream in the oil very slowly I don't want to overwhelm the eggs or the oil so I'm just gonna take it pretty slow so you'll notice that there's no oil that's like sitting on top or that's separated it's all incorporated into the eggs now I want to switch to the paddle so I'm going to add about a third of my dry with the mixer on very very low half of the carrot mixture this bowl is definitely good overflow I'm really nervous okay you know what I had to do at this point I had to switch to doing it by hand this is an irresponsible amount of batter for this bowl sighs I just want people to know that I usually forget at this stage chat aloneness but I'm not gonna forget so I'm gonna do that I think mixing my hand at the end is always a good idea gonna be able I mean this thing weighs a ton it's gonna be a lot of batter go into the same oven these will take a little while also because denser batter a lot more moisture longer to bake so for our oil-based cake we started by withing the eggs and sugar in the stand mixer with the whisk attachment until very light and foamy and I am multiplied in the oil adding it very slowly so that I didn't overwhelm the egg mixture then we added our dry ingredients alternating with our wet including our carrots starting and ending with dry and then I told you in the walnuts divided in Japan's baked in the oven I want to talk now about doneness indicator so how to know when your cake is ready to come out of the oven here I have three examples of cakes all at various stages of baking so I have one that's perfectly done one that's underdone and one that's overdone for this yellow cake that's under done when I put in my cake tester and pull it out you can see that it still has batter that's clinging to it the cake is basically still raw or semi raw in the center you'll notice that as it cools it's going to sink because there the eggs have not fully cooked in the cake and there hasn't been that like soup flying action and when I cut into it they'll still be some raw and cooked batter in there this cake on the other hand gets over baked you can see it's quite a bit darker on the surface it's very hard and the interior is gonna be completely try this cake is just right so nice even golden color a cake tester inserted into the very center comes out clean this cake should be nice and tender in the middle but fully baked okay so to recap take a look at it it should have a nice even golden color all across the surface including the center touch it should spring back when you poke at the center kay tester will come out clean and also smell it'll smell like incredible birthday cake scent in your kitchen when the cake is approaching doneness a cake that's properly baked should taste good without any frosting at all oh my god are you rolling oh okay alright these are done one of them sunk a little bit cuz I took it out too early so even even even I make mistakes all the time this is a layer from the carrot cake that we made I'm gonna show you how to unmold a layer from the pan provided that you've lined your cake pan properly always do to unmold the layer is cut around the sides with a thin blade or an offset spatula invert the rack onto the pan flip the whole thing over give it a nice sharp tap on that counter remove the pan and feel back to Parchman alright now it's time to do some tasting I have all the K side by side carrot white and yellow we're gonna take a look at what the interior is look like and the difference isn't sort of the crumb and texture overall based on the different mixing methods and ingredients so first I want to talk about the obvious visual differences yellow cake versus white cake this is a much more golden hue to it because of all the yolks this one was just egg whites both the yellow and white cakes have sort of more openness as opposed to the carrot cake which is weighed down not only by the oil but by all the stuff that's folded into it as well the texture of the white cake the slightest pressure kind of dissolves into crumbs so it's really really tender reverse screaming means that you develop overall I think less gluten so less bounciness more tenderness as opposed to the yellow cake which has a little bit more structure to it but still a really tender crumb this care cake definitely is a little like heftier really moist much less prone to sort of crumbling all of them are good for layer cakes because they resist drying out pretty well if you want to try these I want to walk you through each one hold on I just need you to pretend like they're not dry they're dry flavor sitting on for a little while so yellow cake white cake carrot cake are three different kinds yeah to me it's like birthday cake yeah yeah nice and its lightness yeah definitely actually almond flavor mm-hmm I mean liver hmm I wish you love cake we locate I doubled the better in the bowl how much carrot is in this I don't remember the thought being that you're gonna have cream cheese frosting on top yeah has to be cream cheese frosting the goal with these in terms of flavor was like not to overwhelm with sugar because you always become in a balance out yeah thanks Molly I think the main takeaway about cake today is that it's a lot of work but as long as you follow the rules you get such a wonderful verse no result keep watching so you can see how we not only put together all the other components but then also build our final layer tapes in the end so don't go anywhere you

Channel: Bon Appétit

Views: 2,631,811

Rating: 4.9575815 out of 5

Keywords: baking, claire saffitz, baking school, claire, claire makes, claire 2019, claire bon appetit, claire baking, claire baking school, claire makes cake, claire makes layer cake, layer cake, how to make layer cake, layer cake recipe, make layer cake, making layer cake, carrot layer cake, carrot cake, coconut cake, layer cake bon appetit, baking school claire, claire bakes, how to make cake, how to bake cake, baking cake, claire saffitz 2019, food, bon appetit

Id: 8-5yLt1gqIo

Length: 21min 2sec (1262 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 09 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/riley_france]

can always do with some more claire in my life.

[u/CraftyPancake]

I'm massively attracted to this woman

[u/[deleted]]

Do they not uses springforms in the US for cakes? This seems like a lot of unnecessary hustle.

[u/shakeyjake]

I thought Claire had left Bon Appetit?

[u/MrGreg]

I felt like the pacing on this was off from the rest of their stuff. Way too repetitive.

[u/purpleWheelChair]

Oh Clare.

[u/falafelwife]

I can't watch the video yet, what's it cover?

[u/Gurrier]

I'm a bit disappointed that it's not Mr. T presenting a baking show as the title led me to believe.

"Mix that batter, sucka! Stay in school!"