- Hi, my name is Bill Yosses and I was lucky enough
to be the pastry chef for two presidents, George
W. Bush and Barack Obama. And today we're gonna be
making a coconut cake. That was one of Mrs.
Bush's, favorite cakes. (soft music) I was chosen first by Mrs. Laura Bush, who hired me in 2007
and what a great honor and privilege it was to walk
into that house every day, this historic mansion,
this symbol of democracy. Mrs. Bush, as you probably
know, is the very embodiment of Southern hospitality,
kindness, generosity. She didn't want the White House
to seem like an institution. This August location that
their guests were coming to. She wanted it to feel like a home. And for that reason she would introduce very
kind of homey style desserts. So you start out with like most good
cakes, butter and sugar. You're gonna put the butter
into your electric mixer. But before I do that, I'm
gonna heat it up a little bit in the microwave, not to melt
it, but just to make it soft. Mrs. Bush gave me the recipe. When she was giving me this recipe she turned to an aid and
said, this is Weise's cake. Mrs. Weise was a friend of the Bush's and she had Mrs. Weise had
given this recipe to him. So I understood her to
say, this is Weisie's cake which I thought was like one
of the seven dwarves stories. I don't know what I thought, but you know you're always a little bit
nervous in the presence of the first lady. I kept calling it Weisie's cake until much later when I saw
it, when I met Mrs. Weise and learned that this
was actually her cake. Here we go. Butter goes into the mixer and the sugar. Now we're gonna put it
onto the electric mixer. This will run for about 10 minutes. So you can really introduce a lot of air and mix for a very fluffy cake. The sugar acts actually like
little knives that are cutting through the butter and
introducing air into the recipe. It's one of the secrets of this
kind of a cake chiffon cake. We're looking for this
butter to become fluffier and fluffier, which also means
the color is gonna change. It becomes wider and wider. French bakers would call
that blanching the butter. The next thing we're gonna do is we're gonna add eggs one by one because we want the
eggs to be incorporated into this mixture and
emulsify, as they go along you can see how fluffy
this batter is right now. And this is, I think one of the reasons that this is my absolute favorite cake. I worked in France, I've
worked all over the world. This is still my favorite cake. You'll notice that I have
the really cool Eagle emblem on this jacket. I'm very proud to wear these jackets because they were actually
provided for us by the Navy. So when you work at the White House you're actually an employee
of the Department of Defense. And you have a lot of interaction
with the armed services which I gained much new
admiration for from working with all five branches,
including the coast guard. The thing that made it
easy working there was if you had a really big
event say the next day and you didn't have much time from a pair you were able to call on
Navy chefs to come help you. So you were actually calling
the U.S Navy to come help you cook a dinner for 400 or
whatever it came about. One of the tricks about chiffon cakes is that when you get to this point, you add dry and wet ultimately,
you want to build up the structure of the
cake, little by little. So here I've measured the flour, the salt and the baking powder. And we're gonna sift
them together to be sure it's distributed evenly throughout. This cake was served throughout the year, but it's real sort of star
turn was at the Christmas time where at the White House we serve about 20,000
people in three weeks. And so this cake was the
centerpiece of the buffet for the Bush's, Christmas parties. The Christmas buffet was a
really extraordinary display of every kind of dessert. All of this spread out on a beautiful red tablecloth celebrating Christmas. This is John, my assistant, he's gonna help me make this cake. Normally in a bakery, it takes two hands, one to pour in the flour the
other to mix, go a little fast. So this is a key part of the recipe. Once the flour is in,
you don't wanna over mix the point is you don't
wanna develop the gluten which makes the cake tough. So the next step is we take the batter out of the bowl and we
put it into our cake pan. (soft music) Making this cake reminds me of Mrs. Bush and her incredible attention to detail. And an example of that was
so I'm a professional baker. I'm used to putting my cakes
on cardboard or on some kind of a platter that is used
for moving cakes around in a bakery. The first thing she said was
"Don't use those cardboards. "I want the cake to be on
a plate or a platter itself "The way they would see it in their home," that shows you to what
extent she was thinking about making people feel at home. So once this is all evened out, I'm gonna bake it at 350
degrees for about 30 minutes. (soft music) And now we're gonna wait for this to cool. President Bush really loved desserts. I had kind of a special
relationship because of that. And he used to tell me you're the reason that I
have to exercise so much which I took as a compliment. The next step is to cut off
the surface of this cake. We take these crumbs and dry them out and it makes nice decoration
for the outside of a cake. Making this cake reminds me
of a very endearing story about the couple George and Laura Bush. This was a moment during her
majesty Queen Elizabeth's state dinner in 2007. So at the introductory
ceremony, which takes place on the South Lawn, there's
like a 21 gun salute. There's some military parade. And president Bush was
introducing her majesty and he slipped and said, her
last visit here was in 1776. She didn't say a word being her majesty. She just gave him a look. He stopped, looked at her and said "That's a look that only
a mother could give." And she referenced that
little fo paw in her speech at the state dinner. And you can imagine
that, you know, not only is this the President of the United States and the Head of State of Great Britain, but these are people, these
are people who, you know a couple who wants to invite
people into their home and make a wonderful experience for them not only for the principal but for their friends,
their associates, et cetera. So everything had to be perfect. The final moment when the president and first lady say goodbye to the Monarch takes place on the North Portico, I happened to be in a small office to the side of that grand foyer. And all of a sudden the door
opens and Mrs. Bush enters, she had this beautiful
Oscar de la Renta gown blue gown with a little bit of a trail. But in that moment, because
it was a small space the president stepped on the
train of Mrs. Bush's straps, and I saw they both burst out
laughing with so much relief in their voice and such a
feeling of, you know, we did it. We're a team. It's okay if you step on
the dress, it's over now. Anyway, to me, that was
just such a wonderful moment showing their love for one another and their ability to
laugh off these little sort of mistakes that happen. The next step is we cut
horizontal layers of the cake. And from each we're gonna cut two circles. Should give us a nice tall cake. So we're going to take each
layer of the coconut cake and then I soak it with this
mixture of coconut milk. So it's gonna really deepen that flavor. We're gonna put a scoop of
this pastry cream over here. It's basically vanilla pudding,
so nice creamy filling. And then the next layer and the next and the next it's done. Once all the layers are completed then we'll put in the
refrigerator for 10 to 20 minutes. My favorite part of the
coconut cake is the frosting. It's called seven minute frosting. And basically it's egg whites and sugar heated over a double boiler. The reason you heat it is the egg whites have to be semi cooked,
or they won't really hold. The important thing is to remember you wanna hit 131 degrees Fahrenheit. That way the egg whites
won't melt off your cake after you get started. So here we go, we have our egg whites. Now we're gonna add our powdered sugar. It seems like a lot,
but you need that much. And it's all gonna dissolve
into these egg whites. So we let the water go down to a simmer. You don't wanna make an omelet, we just wanna warm it up and away we go. This recipe for this
frosting is a perfect example of homeyness at the White House. It's really a home type recipe. Even the name seven minute frosting. That's not very precise
for a baker to know, well seven minutes at what
temperature, what does that mean? We prefer to have the temperature knowing it's 131 Fahrenheit. Once we have the temperature that we want we're gonna pour it
into our electric mixer. And here it's important to
turn the machine on quickly so that it doesn't sit with that heat because then the eggs
can cook on their own. You can see how hot
they are from the steam, but now we're gonna just let
this cool down in the mixer and you'll see a
miraculous transformation. So after it cools down in the mixer, you have this beautiful consistency. When you bite into it, it
kind of gives a little bit it's a meringue, but it's almost chewy. That's the secret of
making sure that you have heated the egg whites to
the right temperature. One thing to remember is
it's extremely sticky. If it gets anywhere near
you, it's gonna stick to you. So that's why I'd like
to use the pastry bag. It kind of keeps your hands
clean and you can apply it. We'll start with the side maybe
that's a good way to begin. So making this cake reminds me of working for Mrs. Bush and her
husband, the president. Just reminds me of what
genuine natural kind people they were, and truly the embodiment of Southern hospitality. And one of the ways, you
know, that people are genuine in that way, is that all the
people that work for them to fit into that mold,
it was a pleasure to work with them and their entire team. Everybody was very kind to one another and I'm happy to remember that. (soft music) This is the pastry
version of that feeling. (soft music)
