- Girl bye, oh. - [Rie] No, I'm just trying to help you. Don't show your boobs on camera. - I don't... Whoa! (both laughing) (upbeat rock music) Hi guys, it's Alex. So today I'm gonna be making
a giant rain drop cake, it's really cool. It's this clear looking cake, although I don't really
know why they call it a cake 'cause it looks more like jello to me. We've actually made a couple
on our page, Tasty Japan, because rain drop cake
was invented in Japan. It's usually served with
a roasted soybean flour and the black syrup. I've never even made a regular
size rain drop cake before but there's only a couple of ingredients that actually go into it so I feel like it can make a giant one. (tense piano music) Okay. Ugh. This is too watery. (beep) this (beep) cake, (beep) (laughs) I don't know, like I don't know this cake. Alright, let's make it rain. (laughs) So before I even try to
make a giant rain drop cake, I feel like I should start small, make a regular size rain drop cake. Let's see what happens. So rain drop cake really only
takes three main ingredients. Water, sugar, and this
thing called agar agar. It's actually made from algae or sea kelp. You can buy agar agar in
most health food stores, you can order it on Amazon
or go to any Asian market. So, it's not that hard to find. You need to bring that
to a boil on high heat. Now that we're at a boil, I'm
gonna reduce the heat to low and we're gonna cook that
for two more minutes. ♪ Two minutes, two minutes, we
gotta wait for two minutes ♪ This may be the easiest
one we've done yet. Although we haven't
really done anything yet so maybe I shouldn't be saying anything. I'm already like a
little tiny bit concerned just because I feel like
this isn't completely clear, it's a little more opaque
and that will be a problem. (laughs) Where's our ice? (laughs) I just need to
get this out of here. So now we put the pan in the ice bath and we're gonna leave it
in there for three minutes. Whoa, it's thick. This doesn't seem right. Where's Rie, Rie! - Tell me what you're doing and tell me what you are
going to do with this. (both laugh) - If I knew, why would I ask you over? So it has to be a problem
with the agar because there's only three ingredients in this, sugar, water and agar. I did see that there were two kinds, so there's powder and flakes. - Yeah. - I could only find the flakes
so that's what I bought. - I think you might need to use powder 'cause they work differently. Glop. - Okay so, here is my experiment. I'm going to try to grind up this agar into a powder from the flakes version. (food processor whirring) It didn't do anything. They're still flakes. I think we gotta go get the powder. Okay, so we're taking a little field trip to the Japanese market to
go find some agar powder because the flakes just aren't cutting it. I don't know where I'm going. So they were out of stock. I guess a lot of people are
making rain drop cakes today but I'm gonna try to go to
a different Japanese market. They're out of stock too. (melancholy piano music)
It's not that hard to find. Okay, we finally have
the agar agar powder. It took me three stores to find this so I really hope that it works. I'm ready for some rain,
it's been a dry summer. (laughs) So this time I'm also gonna
use bottled spring water. The tap water kind of tasted too metallic and also this should
give us a pure rain drop. I'm just gonna do two tablespoons of the agar powder we have and hopefully it works this time. I'm just gonna pour it into this bowl and put it in the fridge to cool. It looks clearer than last time but I'm curious to see what
it looks like once it's set. Oop, how did that happen? (laughs) Oh, that's weird. (laughs) It looks like a breast implant. I do much prefer the taste of it with the bottled spring
water than the tap water. Consistency, I'm gonna
give myself about an eight, clarity, three. Hi, it's day two. I feel like I've identified
a few of the factors that have been going wrong, so I'm gonna try to remedy those today. I'm going to blend up the sugar to make it more of like
a baker's fine sugar which will make it easier to
dissolve in the hot water. They sell agar agar in
a few forms I've learnt. I'm gonna use the pure powder
with nothing added to it. This is gonna make it much
easier to measure out properly and it should also
dissolve easier into water. I used two tablespoons
of agar agar last time and that was way too much, like you only need an eighth
of a teaspoon per cup of water. I don't know how I was so
off but, uh, yeah. (laughs) so I'm gonna let that come to a simmer and then I'm gonna add in
our fine baker's sugar. I guess technically every rain drop cake is a giant rain drop cake
because raindrops are tiny. I'm feeling confident about
this one, it looks really clear. I'm just gonna pour this in here. Oops, spilling a little bit. And we're gonna put this in the fridge. Just so I don't waste an hour of my day, I'm actually gonna just make another one and change up the ratio
just to see what that does. So instead of an eighth of a teaspoon, I'm gonna try to use
a forth of a teaspoon. Whoa, okay. So this is the forth of
a teaspoon of agar agar. Definitely clearer than yesterday, still not completely transparent but it's not quite the sensation of like a raindrop bursting. If this one doesn't work
then I'm going to be crying my own raindrops from my eyes. Okay. As crazy as it sounds,
I do think we're closer. I need to fall somewhere
in between these two. Hopefully forth time is the charm. This time I'm gonna do
the same exact method but just with a quarter
teaspoon of agar agar and one and a half cups water. Hopefully this is the sweet spot. One hour. (bowl clinking) It's stuck a little. (bowl clinking and cake glooping) Oop. Okay. It just got really stuck
onto the bottom of the bowl. Yeah, I feel like it's raindrop-y. I just gotta figure out how to
keep it in a raindrop shape. Should I just try to do the giant one? Sometimes in life, you
just gotta go for things. Also I just wanna be done with this. So I bought this metal cake bowl, because it has no line at the bottom, I felt it would be like the perfect mold. I'm already anticipating
that I'm gonna have to tweak the amount of agar
to water for the giant one just because it's gonna need to be a little bit stronger
to hold it's shape. So now I just have to figure out how much water this actually is, so I'm gonna pour it back
into our measuring cup. Oh, okay, that was full. So let's just make this
an even eight cups. Eight cups divided by one
and a quarter cups is... (crew member laughs) (laughs) Anybody? So I'm doing two
teaspoons of our agar agar and four teaspoons of
our fine baker's sugar. So because this mold
doesn't have a bottom edge, I'm putting it in this
bowl to stabilize it when I pour in the mixture. Should I put in a flower or two? We're gonna make a little
bouquet at the bottom. Wow, I wonder if this is gonna
work, that would be amazing. Yeah, they just move. (laughs) I don't know how you're supposed to make them sit at the bottom. So the flowers not only
don't stay at the bottom, they've colored my raindrop
to a weird swamp green. I don't know about this. Hopefully I did my math
correctly, probably didn't. I heard it. (laughs) Dang it. It literally dyed the bowl. So it's day three, hopefully
third time is the charm. So this was the giant bowl we used. I went out and got two smaller sizes because I feel as though this
was just a little too big and also it's still technically
a giant rain drop cake so I'm not cheating. I've realized we really need to compensate for the giant size of this and it will just take a little more agar than a normal sized rain drop cake would. So I guess we'll just start boiling. You know the drill. (laughs) So I tried to dissolve
this as much as possible but I'm still gonna strain it just as an added measure of precaution to make sure we don't have
any floaters in our raindrop. It is set, probably a little too set. It's not flipping. Ugh, I'm so over this. Rie did tell me to do some trick that like works with unmolding and that is to spin,
let's see if that worked. (bowl clinking) Rie, you've lied to me. I'm really dizzy, oh my God. (gasps) (laughs) Alright, it's day four. I specifically wore this shirt because I'm desperately
trying to keep my cool vibes. So last night I decided to
make three test batches, each with different ratios. I also decided to use different bowls because the other ones
just weren't coming out. I guess now it's time to flip
them all and see which one, if any of them, work. ♪ Gotta put my thing down,
flip it and reverse it ♪ ♪ Ti esrever dna ti
pilf, nwod gniht ym tup ♪ So we're staring with this one, one tablespoon of agar agar
powder to eight cups of water and one tablespoon of sugar. Ooh! Oh, okay. That was really satisfying actually, just like kind of fell out of the bowl. It's super delicate but
it's holding it's shape which is really good. These both have less agar to water. I'm still gonna flip them
but I'm pretty positive that they are going to fall apart. I don't know how to do this. (water splashing)
Okay. Oh, yeah, shit. I just really wanted to
see what would happen. Honestly, I'm pretty happy. I think we still have
one that's promising. If we up this ratio just a little bit, we'll have our rain drop cake. Just gonna clean this up a little bit. Okay. This is it. This is it. I hope this is it 'cause I
don't wanna do this again. It's important to actually
dissolve your agar powder in cold water first which is something I wish I knew before. (laughs) Now we're gonna be dissolving our agar in cold water with the sugar and then we're going
to transfer it to heat and bring that to a simmer, not for too long, just
a couple of minutes. If you boil it or leave it
on the heat for too long, it will deactivate the agent. ♪ Bring it to a simmer ♪ ♪ We're gonna get a simmer ♪ Okay, stop, two minutes,
taking this off the heat. Whoom. I wish I had made a
different noise than that but I couldn't think of
anything to say. (laughs) (whistles) That was a better noise. Oh God, that was a little messy. I'm going to very carefully
try to get this to the fridge. Why do we do this so far from the fridge? This is like the opposite
of track and field. Woo! (laughs) That was honestly the hardest
part of this whole thing. Actually, no it wasn't. (laughs) Is this day five? - [Crew Member] This is day five. - Hmm, how did we get here? (laughs) So, I've let my rain drop
cake chill overnight, but before I even flip it,
which I am terrified to do, I'm gonna make my brown sugar syrup. So all it takes is two cups of brown sugar and one cup of water. We're doing a lot of
dissolving in this process. All it is is dissolving. Now I'm just gonna let it cool
down and it will thicken up which is the beauty of a syrup. Okay, we've made it, it is
time to flip this thing. I am really, really, really,
really, really, really, really nervous. I should've gone to pee before this. It literally looks like water in here. Just, you know, go for it. God, get my hand out of there, (beep) (triumphant classical music) (laughs) Oh my God, I did it! Okay, here we go. Woo. Oh my God, I'm shaking, okay. We've got some rain. I'm gonna put this soybean
flour around the edge. Looks super good, it's like rustic. I did it! ♪ I did it, I did it, I did ♪ I have to say the toppings
really do make this. You get the sweetness
from the syrup we made and then the roasted soybean flour kind of gives it a nuttiness, and it's also super refreshing
so a great summer dessert. Wet. (Alex and crew member laugh) (classical music) (camera shutters)
