How to Make the Ultimate Comfort Foods: Wellesley Fudge Cake & Chicken and Pastry

[Music] Oh [Music] home today on Cook's Country Julianne Bridgette revived a traditional recipe for Wellesley fudge cake Adam reveals his top pick for immersion blenders and Bryan makes Bridgette a southern specialty chicken and pastry that's all right here on Cook's Country about a hundred years ago at Wellesley at the Women's College in Massachusetts chocolate fudge was considered serious contraband on campus the college's founder Henry fel Durant held strict dietary beliefs and the students were expected to stick to plain food and avoid sweets in fact he claimed that pies lies and doughnuts should never have a place in Wellesley College and the students well they reacted as students do and they rebelled by holding secret fudge making parties in their dorm rooms that wasn't long before local tea rooms began aiding the rebellion by making cakes for the students with a fudge based frosting it's called a Wellesley fudge cake and today we're gonna show you how to make it so I live in the town right next to Wellesley and even today you can still find the Wellesley fudge cake on menus around town can I love recipes like this are you doing a little bit of digging out there you do a little bit of research and you find all the recipes that really need to be brought back and spotlighted plus it feels a little rebellious and that's fun there's such a rebel rebel cake rebel cake yes that's what we should call it now one of the things when you look for recipes as you find ingredients that maybe aren't as prevalent today and the first one that we found was thick soured milk gesundheit well they had to do something with milk that went off really quickly it was called soured milk well today we have buttermilk mm-hmm this is a very soft cake and the acid and the buttermilk is gonna help with that texture thank you now another ingredient that we looked at and we changed was pastry flour now that's still around today but it's a very low gluten flour doesn't give it a lot of structure one of the problems that we have with this cake was frosting it writes off fudge frosting hmm so it would tear the cakes so this is two and a half cups of all-purpose flour we're gonna mix together our dry ingredients we're using two leaveners here this is one teaspoon of baking powder and then two teaspoons of baking soda and this is going to react with the acidic buttermilk to help provide lift this is a half teaspoon of salt mix this together standard operating procedure so far let's get to the chocolate this is a half a cup of Dutch process cocoa now we want to draw out its flavor so we're going to bloom it with 3/4 cup of hot water that's a good idea to do it whenever you're working with Coco bloomin in hot water and you'll get more flavor out of it we're also gonna mix in a little bit of vanilla here this is two teaspoons of vanilla extract and I'll stir this with my wisp until the cocoa is dissolved let's get mixing okay we're gonna start with creaming the butter and sugar this is two sticks or 16 tablespoons of unsalted butter we've softened it just a little bit we're gonna mix in two cups of granulated sugar this is an old fashioned recipe it's supposed to be on the sweeter side start it on low and then move it on up to medium-high until it gets fluffy and creamy that's gonna take about three minutes left feet butter and sugar can't get much better than that and this is a really important step when making a cake you don't want to skimp on the time or else you'll ruin the texture of the cake and now we're gonna work in two eggs I'm going to add them one at a time on off there we go start it on low and then work it back up to medium-high just to incorporate all right that one's mostly worked in let's get the other one in there all right that looks good so now we're going to start adding the flour in three additions and the buttermilk into don't want to dump it all in there you end up with big pockets of unmixed flour and lumps and lumps it's Armageddon so I'm gonna start with the mixer off with about 1/3 of this flour mixture let's start this on low just until it's incorporated in alright that looks good it's just mixed and I'm going to add half of the buttermilk and that would be a half cup mix this on low just until incorporated all right half of the remaining flour and you're being very careful not to overwork that batter yes you don't want to deflate it too much I don't want to activate the gluten in the flour too much so now their meaning buttermilk and this final addition of flour and now I just want to get it till it's all brought together and that's about it I do want to scrape down the sides of that bowl and then we're gonna add the cocoa gradually and then we'll mix it until it's combined that's only gonna take about a minute that is coming together nicely alright and I like to give it a final stir really just to make sure that any of those hidden pockets and some of those live on the bottom divot on the bottom always catches a little batter alright so now let's go ahead and portion this into our hands mmm which are not circular they are not round now and as you know Wellesley fudge cake is made in square pans and who is traditional these are 8-inch square pants that we've gone ahead and greased with a little bit of the vegetable oil cooking spray that has flour in it but if you don't have that you can grease it and then flour the pants that will work out fine little final wrap that's just to get any air bubbles out from the underneath at the bottom of the batter exactly so these are gonna bake at 350 and I'm going to keep them in there for about a half an hour but what I'm gonna look for its a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean [Music] right mmm smells amazing sure does all right one cake - all right let's check these for doneness take my toothpick stick it right in the center and a few crumbs should stick to that toothpick and that looks great these have to cool in their pants completely that's gonna take at least an hour if you want to be sure leave more time but you can actually make these a couple days in advance if you want you they're pretty moist and they will stay nice and fresh oh okay so let's move on down to the frosting mm-hmm frosting fudge frosting and we're making real fudge frosting fudge making with evaporated milk became popular in 1950s for a good reason because it doesn't split it's already been processed and heated a lot of the liquid is already gone so we don't have to cook it as long so this is a half a cup the vibrated milk won't have cups of light brown sugar now it's already a little bit moist so it's not going to crystallize the way granulated sugar can and also it's gonna give a deeper flavor to our frosting almost butterscotchy almost butterscotchy this is four tablespoons of unsalted butter and a little bit of salt 1/2 a teaspoon now we're gonna cook this over medium there we go I'm gonna keep an eye on it and stir it the magic temperature for this is going to be between 235 to 238 now it's been about 4 or 5 minutes and you can see that beautiful color but I do want to check the temp because again we're looking for around 235 up to 238 will be great anything within there's gonna give us exactly what we need in terms of 10 236 mm-hmm so now we want to stop that cooking as soon as possible so I'll transfer it to a stand mixer so this cold bowl will help cool down the mixture that's right but you don't want to chill a glass bowl and then pour it into there so just room-temperature Bowl is perfect we're gonna chill it down even more with 4 tablespoons more of our unsalted butter and another 1/2 cup of evaporated milk let's move this over to our stand mixer we're gonna let this go on low for about 30 seconds until the butter and the milk is fully incorporated let's turn that off now we're gonna let it cool down for about 10 maybe 15 minutes we're looking for a temperature around 130 all right it's been about 15 minutes I want to check the temp because we cannot move on until it's 130 mm that's good all right good because again it was too hot the chocolate would start to separate speaking of well let me tilt this up we're gonna add our chocolate and this is 8 ounces of bittersweet chocolate not it's real I've tasted it that goes at a little vanilla it's a teaspoon of vanilla extract and now we're gonna mix this on low just until the chocolate is fully melted it's gonna take about a minute so that is like I'm beautiful all mixed in all right so now we want to turn this into a frosting and this is 3 cups of confectioner's sugar good old 10x as we call it it was right in there all at once all at once you see why I didn't add it while it was attached to the machine I still managed I think to get some minimal amount on it oh good good all right so we're gonna mix this on low for about 3 minutes we want all of that sugar to be incorporated and so I'll probably have to scrape down the bowl a couple of times but once all the sugars mixed in there we're gonna let this cool down even more so we're gonna wait until it's 80 degrees that's going to take a good hour all right Julia now after an hour you know look at what the frosting looks wow it really got a crust on it dad you could touch it it's okay it's hard it's real fudge yeah it actually it poured this into a pan cut it into squares and given it to me for Christmas but we're gonna turn this into a frosting so let me a fix the beater back on now over medium-high for just a minute until it's aerated and it comes back together gulia that looks whippy enough it went from fudge to frosting so you remember those cakes right going to frost it right on this pedestal I want to protect it mm-hmm have these little parchment strips yeah this is a really great tip to help keep your cake platter clean all right so now I do want to scoop out a cup of this frosting mmm to put right on that first layer let's scoop it right in the middle and I'll start working this to the sides of the cake hmm that frosting looks nice to work with it's beautiful you want to give it a swirl yeah enjoying watching you do it all right yeah this is my Zen yeah some people have yoga mm-hmm I frost cakes now we don't need this to be too neat but we want it to be even second layer goes on top and I'm gonna take this top part and flip it down so that this nice flat top is right on top of our cake and that's what we're gonna see all right so I like to start plop a whole bunch on there so you start on the top of the cake I do and that doesn't mean I'm not going to finish on the top too I will but I always like to make sure this is what everybody sees so I like to make sure that I have allotted enough for the top now that I have the top mostly covered I'm gonna start slapping some on the sides there I'm gonna start taking that frosting out just a little bit more see how I let it go over the edge just a little bit so now is it false I'm just catching it right on the coroners just like that and with each pass of a corner it gets a little bit more covered now here's that big blurb of chocolate frosting there we go now it's fully loaded with frosting we're gonna do a nice design right on the top just a little swirly back and forth so I'm gonna continue to work on this a little bit more and then we do want to refrigerate it for at least an hour to make sure that fudge frosting is good and set [Music] hard work pays off mm-hmm I like we got the square cake you have the square cake platter and I have square plates at the ready because we're a couple of squares this is what an hour in the fridge does you can actually touch it oh that's some good fudge right there it's fudge butter frosting I love it so I'm gonna take a long slicing knife and go right halfway through and now we start slicing this way because you get all these little ridges right across there we go mmm look at that look at that I love it it tastes like an old-fashioned chocolate cake and you can taste some of that brown sugar a little bit of caramel note in there that cocoa a chocolate some smart ladies there at Wellesley College so if you want to make a chocolate contraband cake start by blooming cocoa in hot water for the cake use a standard mixing method where you cream butter and sugar then add the eggs and finally the dry and wet ingredients in alternating batches bake the cake in square pans and while they cool make a foolproof fudge frosting and whip it just before serving from Cook's Country it's no longer a secret Wellesley fudge cake I'd go back to school for eight years here at cooks country we love immersion blenders because it's the easiest way to puree a soup or a sauce right in the pot without making a mess and Adams here to tell us which stick blender is worth the money you know another reason that we love immersion blenders is that they're great for small jobs like asking a little pesto making a little bit of whipped cream making mayonnaise something like that let me just show you what's going on with immersion blenders in general there are two parts the wand with the business end at the bottom which is where the blade is and there's a little cover over the blade that allows the food to move around and go back into the blade and then the top is where the motor is and the handle is usually the controls are there too we had an initial lineup of 12 different immersion blenders the price range was fifteen dollars up to 130 dollars and the very first test was to make a potato soup this turned into an illumination was like a comedy of errors yes some of these the wands fell right off into the other ones the ones wouldn't come off at all so they were horrible to clean the controls were really uncomfortable so four of them got eliminated in that round with the remaining eight testers went on to make pesto make mayonnaise make smoothies and two pureed tomatoes they were looking for a good mixing performance that we're looking for them to be comfortable and easy to hold that was really important because when you're using an immersion blender you're usually holding it up and some of those like the one you just picked up what do you think of that sort of awkward I mean I can't really grasp it hard enough because it's so big testers with smaller hands had a really hard time with that one also it's pretty heavy yeah yeah why don't you try this one this one oh that's nice no I get a good grip on it partly because the surface is nice and grippy and it's not too heavy exactly to handle a slimmer you have that nice non-slip material on the outside and that one's about a pound and a half so it was 25% lighter than that heavy one that you just bent you know another feature of the testers disliked was something like that once you show that one see the speed dial it's right at the top oh that's awkward it would be much better if it was right here where my pointer finger is yeah if it's at the top you need two hands to operate it if it's right on the handle you just switch from speed to speed with one finger it's a lot more streamlined now a lot of these have features like a turbo button Oh fifteen different speeds testers actually looked at the speeds with a tachometer which measures rpms or revolutions per minute and they found actually that the RPM difference is between a lot of speeds were just minimal all of that stuff is superfluous you really don't need it in the end this is the one that testers liked the best this is the Braun multi quick five hand blender it's $59.99 it's one of those that has a really comfortable handle the buttons are right where you want them to be it's got two well calibrated speeds and it is our new top choice for immersion blenders and there you have it for the ultimate immersion blender choose the Braun multi quick five hand blender at $59.99 with a good handle in just two speeds I grew up south of the mason-dixon line so few cookbooks shaped the way I think about food more than Edna Lewis's the taste of country cooking now some of Edna Lewis's dishes well they were popular all over the south such as chicken and pastry and Brian's here to tell us more about that dish that's right I actually traveled down to Alabama to a little town about 30 miles outside of Montgomery called Grady Alabama and I visited a restaurant called Reds little schoolhouse was actually a little one-room schoolhouse from 1910 to 1960s that all the same kind of character as it did in 1910 white pine floors checkered tablecloths all the way down to the chalkboard menu and this is where I first had chicken and pastry you're familiar with chicken and dumplings and chicken and slicks well this is kind of in-between these are puffy delicate noodles I guess fat noodles fat noodles we're gonna start off by making the pastry I have one and a half cups of all-purpose flour here to that we're going to add two teaspoons of baking powder you did say they're gonna be puffy it's gonna be the culprit right there 1/2 teaspoon of salt and this dish has a little bit of a kick of black pepper so we're gonna add 1/2 teaspoon to our pastry okay then we're going to combine 2 tablespoons of melted butter with half a cup of milk we just mix that up and we're just gonna add that to our flour mixture and just stir it until it comes together it's a very rustic homey dish it's one of those dishes in the Test Kitchen where after we've been eating all day long this is the one thing that the cooks still crave yes I know I have stirred leftover chicken and pastry okay so you see the dough is just starting to come together and we could turn it out onto a lightly floured counter and just give it a couple of turns until it comes together into a cohesive ball we wanted to have enough structure to roll out to a nice thin eighth of an inch sheet but thanks to that baking powder is gonna cook up nice and fluffy so we try to roll it out right now there's so much gluten developed that it would spring back on us so we want to give this dough a little chance to rest okay so we'll set it aside and cover it you could do this up to a day in advance if you'd like now we could talk about chicken we've got bone-in chicken thighs so we want to start off by adding the chicken Drive and then we're just gonna season it with pepper the thing I like about dark meat chicken is that they hold up really well to a long simmer there's a lot of nice fat and connective tissue that I'll give this to some body and I have a flavor okay we have a tablespoon of butter we're melting over medium-high heat we're just gonna go ahead and add the chicken skin side down we're gonna let that go until it's nicely Brown to both sides that's about five minutes per side okay Bridget it's been ten minutes you can see that we've got the chicken nicely Brown to both sides see all that spon that's developed all that browning on that skin that's gonna equal a lot of flavor in the stew I love it so now we're going to add four cups of chicken broth 1 cup of water and 1/2 rib of celery and 1/2 onion so we're just gonna bring this up to a boil put a lid on it reduce the heat to low and let it go for about 25 minutes until the chicken is nice and tender and that broth is really fortified with chicken flavor sounds great it's been 25 minutes and that chicken is just cooked through you can smell how chickeny that broth is it's pure chicken so now we can cut the heat on it and first we can discard the onion and the celery cuz they've done their part they've given us all they've got and we could transfer the chicken to a plate oh the flavor gets off it's all about the broth really absolutely yeah we'll let that chicken cool down for a few minutes and now we could turn our attention to the pastry all right we're gonna roll this pastry out into a perfect 12-inch square so I'd like to put pressure from the middle of the dough out and rotate the dough start in the middle sort of pressing down and push it up and come back and put pressure on the middle push down every now and then I'll just come back with a bench scraper and square it up a little bit alright we're gonna cut the pastry into little diamonds and this is something we learn from the Edna Lewis book diamonds tend to taste better ok so I'm just gonna mark this dough at 1 inch intervals then use my ruler as a guide and I like to use a pizza cutter for this because it nice and easy and goes pretty quickly and it's less likely to scratch up your counter or your cutting board so we're gonna turn the ruler about 45 degrees it will space them about one inch apart so of course the edge pieces aren't going to be perfect diamonds those are beautiful thanks Bridget I'm impressed all right so I'm just gonna put a little flour down and scrape them up ok we brought that broth back to a boil and we can go ahead and add the pastry now give it a little stir to distribute the pastry nice and evenly you can see they've already begun to start puffing up a little bit sure half it's only gonna get better from there we're gonna put a lid on this and reduce the heat to low and let they go for 15 minutes to cook that pastry all the way through all right well that's going on we can come over here and shred our chicken take the skin off and discard it and then we're just going to peel the chicken off the bone all right and shred it into bite-sized pieces [Music] all right Bridget it's been 15 minutes and you can see that that pastry is nice and puffed we're just going to stir our shredded chicken in there to heat through and during that time the stew will thicken up just a touch okay Bridget the chicken let's hear it through for just a minute or so I'm gonna taste it for seasoning and add a touch of black pepper a little pinch of salt stir that in and we're ready to eat it that's it no garnish the garnish is the diamond I don't know how much how many times we have to go over this like this it's just it is what it is it's chicken and pastry that's what you said that's what you called it and that's what's in the bowls super chickeny huh and you get a little bit of that onion and the celery like it tastes like a broth that you spent all day making but it really came together quickly and the pastry I just have to say pastries everything yeah this thing will feed your belly and feed your soul and it starts with browning chicken on the stovetop then simmer the chicken with onion celery and some broth set that aside to shred a little bit later on then make a quick dough by stirring milk and butter into a mix of flour and baking powder then roll out cut into fancy diamonds I'll simmer the pastry until tender at the chicken back to the pot and you have huge satisfying dinner so from Cook's Country a soul warming and belly filling chicken and pastries and you can get this recipe and all the recipes from this season along with tastings testings and select episodes on our website it's cookscountry.com backslash Dimond thanks for watching cooks country from America's Test Kitchen so what'd you think leave a comment and let us know which recipes you're excited to make or just say I now you can find links to today's recipes and reviews in the video description and don't forget to subscribe to our Channel see you later alligator [Laughter]

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 230,921

Keywords: wellesley fudge cake, wellesley fudge cake recipe cook's country, wellesley fudge cake recipe, fudge cake, fudge, cake, cake recipes, cooks country, cook's country, americas test kitchen, america's test kitchen, chocolate fudge cake, baking recipes, baking videos, chicken and pastry, chicken and pastry recipes, recipe, comfort food, chicken and pastry north carolina

Id: SuW8eu2VUP0

Length: 23min 41sec (1421 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 04 2019