Martha Stewart Makes 2 Beautiful Cakes & Shares Top Decorating Tips | Martha Bakes Classic Episodes

today i'm going to show you how to make two beautiful celebration cakes an orange almond cake that looks like an italian wedding cake with an italian meringue buttercream piped all over it and this four layer je noise cake with passion fruit buttercream of superb and flavorful cake both of these are not too difficult to make and i'm going to show you how today on martha bakes i'm going to show you now how to make a genoise cake it's very similar to a sponge cake but there are some subtle differences and i'll talk about those differences as i get into the recipe first prepare your cake pan one nine by three inch cake pan and use this special pam baking spray this has flour in the pan fit it with a parchment round and then very lightly spray the bottom your pan is ready and you can put that right on a baking sheet on a rack and now five large eggs into the bowl of your mixer add a half a cup plus two tablespoons of caster sugar this is super fine sugar or extra fine sugar so a half a cup of sugar plus two tablespoons and you're going to heat these eggs and the sugar over some simmering water right in the bowl of the mixer you want the sugar to melt and just warm the eggs we're not trying to cook the eggs [Music] there i think that is warm enough and you can put this right on the stand mixer and then start beating the warm eggs and sugar they will get very voluminous this is your leavening this is what's making this cake rise there is no baking powder no yeast no baking soda we have 6 tablespoons of melted butter add to that 1 teaspoon of pure vanilla extract to the melted butter and stir that up leave that here because i'm going to lighten this with a little bit of the batter before we add the butter to the mixture so see how voluminous this is already becoming it is very exciting you can now sift your dry ingredients half a cup of cornstarch to two-thirds of a cup of cake flour and just to be sure that this is all incorporated whisk it around that's your dry ingredients dry ingredients butter eggs and sugar now genoise is unique because you warmed the egg and the sugar a sponge cake does not use the whole egg as we did here but rather you separate the yolks from the whites and you beat them separately and the egg whites are really the leavening agent but the warming helps with the leavening agent for the whole eggs this whips for five minutes until it's really light and fluffy now let's see if we have some ribbons you can see that the cake batter is falling back on itself in nice golden ribbons now to lighten the butter mixture just put a little bit of the batter right into the butter and fold this in this lightens that butter instead of having it fall all to the bottom of the cake batter that's good okay so now a little bit of the flour just sprinkle it over the top fold it in with your whisk attachment you don't want to deflate the cake batter and now i think it is time to use your rubber scraper you can add this butter mixture now oh nice smells very good this is a delicious vanilla e batter add the rest of the dry ingredients i remember mrs bridges making her genoise cakes that's what she called the genoise she was constantly baking genoese cakes and now pour this into your prepared pan and it comes up about halfway this will ultimately be turned into a four layer cake this one layer will be big enough to cut into four half inch layers and there this goes right into your prepared preheated oven 350 degrees for approximately 20 to 30 minutes just watch it the layer is baked it's out of the pan so i want to cut this cake into half inch pieces crosswise put the cake on a board and if you want perfect layers you can make a contraption like we figured out this is a half inch piece of wood and we stuck some dowels into our breadboard this has little holes underneath and that is affixed right there and so if you use this big knife and lay it flat on these pieces of wood you will get your first half inch layer this is not yet a product but it could be and it should be there so you have your first layer and it is a very very nice cake and then just keep proceeding so much fun if you have a handyman husband or your hand to yourself in this shop make one of these so we have our four layers bottom middle middle top and the cake for decorating should go on one of these lazy susan cake stands and for me this is a little bit low this wonderful lazy susan so again i improvise and i just turn a cake pan and that raises it just to the right height for me and here is our bottom layer you're going to keep the whole cake on this white cake round and now i do do this i put little pieces of parchment paper underneath the cake because you keep the lazy susan clean of all frosting you can just pull these out when you're finished very handy so there and we have the frosting almost done this is a very rich swiss meringue frosting and i'm going to be adding now the passion fruit fur that's made with a puree of passion fruit tastes just like fresh passion fruit so get all of this into your icing and your icing is ready to spread dollop on some this will be the filling and you just spread this half an inch thick it's a very nice firm frosting and it does spread very nicely and add your next layer if it oozes out on the sides a little bit that's okay that will become part of the crumb coat what that means is you are actually eliminating the possibility of crumbs in your final icing and now for the top just put that on lovely and now this final coating well next to the final coating is the crumb coat and once you get this on and evened out chill the cake and then do whatever decoration you're going to want to do with your frosting in a pastry bag and for the side you just run it around like this so here we have our crumb coated layer get this right into the refrigerator to chill a little bit before you proceed with your final coat and final decoration just takes a couple minutes like 20 minutes or 15 minutes in the refrigerator to firm up you can do beautiful stars all the way around the edge i'm gliding with my left hand squeezing with my right hand now you can go all over the top with this star tip and you can just do dots all over the top like dotted swiss a steady hand notice that i'm really almost on top of the cake it really helps when you're decorating not to be bending over hurting your back making yourself tired put on some good music and have fun and then take your pretty tip and go around the edge [Music] so now when this is done get it right into the refrigerator let it set and take it out about oh maybe 20 minutes before serving just so that the icing all becomes the same temperature passion fruit icing on a beautiful genoise cake the orange almond wedding cake it is perfect for birthdays perfect for weddings it's perfect for any celebration the pan should be prepared before you start the cake the recipe fits an 8 inch cake pan as well as a six inch cake pan butter with soft butter at room temperature not melted and line the bottom with the parchment round and butter the parchment [Music] and now just a little bit of flour in the bottom of each and shake it around like that and go all the way around and it will coat the sides of the pan nicely and then bang out the excess there you have a very nicely buttered pan you want just a dusting of flour on the whole thing and now for the cake itself we have six egg yolks in this with the wire whisk and to that we're going to add one cup of sugar add it slowly now this is really a sponge cake because the egg yolks and the egg whites are beaten separately as opposed to the genoise cake for the genoese cake or the ginovasa cake as some people call it which has heated eggs and sugar which then become extremely frothy so let this beat and in this mixer we're going to beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt and three tablespoons of sugar if you're going to turn this cake into a wedding cake i have to make lots and lots of layers you can do that about three days before the wedding or even longer and you can freeze the layers once baked but make sure you wrap them really really well so this is beating this is beating now you can add your strained fresh orange juice to the egg yolks and sugar oh it's really good fresh orange juice is an absolute must do not try to make this cake with carton orange juice or frozen orange juice it does not taste the same and we also have the zest of two bright skinned oranges [Applause] now i'm going to scrape down this bowl and i think i will turn that down [Music] and now add a half a teaspoon of almond extract just a half don't put too much and now you can add your almonds one and a half cups of finely ground almonds get them well incorporated but don't over beat at this point and now this is how i add the cake flour for this kind of cake i turn my mixer on and add one and a half cups sifted cake flour and the half cup i look serious it's because i am you don't want to make any mistakes with all these fantastic ingredients [Applause] and we are going to stir in our melted butter the butter is melted it is one cup of melted butter cooled little by little add the butter [Applause] there you can take your bowl off the stand now and i think our egg whites are ready stiff peaks perfect but not dry and with a large rubber scraper fold a little bit of the egg cakey mixture into the egg whites the egg whites are the leavening this is what's going to allow the cake to rise and get the rest of it in mmm this is so beautiful and don't start licking the spatula because you're never going to stop it really is tasty so there and we have an eight inch and a six inch pan prepared pour appropriate amounts into each about three quarters of the way up it helps to have those fabulous farm eggs makes the cake look even more orange so there you have it two very nice layers get those into your 350 degree oven set your timer for 25 minutes these will probably take oh closer to 35 but check at 25. and now our layers are baked they are cooled they are ready to frost we're going to make this a two layer cake and if you'd like so that you have a prettier straighter layer you can take off that bump on the cake and this should be put into a waste bowl for somebody to snack on because it is delicious and you can do the same to this one just take off that little bit of brown and do the same to the bigger layer so here we have our cakes and now we can fill them and crumb coat them put the layer on an appropriate sized cardboard and we have our italian meringue buttercream as opposed to a swiss meringue italian meringue is made by boiling sugar and water together and then beating that sugar syrup into the egg whites and then adding the butter that's an italian meringue a swiss meringue buttercream is where you heat the egg whites and sugar and then beat them into the meringue and add the butter so two different techniques this is such good frosting that you'll want to put quite a bit in between the layers and this makes a plump pretty layer this could be the top knot of a giant wedding cake or it can be just as i said an individual small wedding cake beautifully decorated and what i'm going to do now is apply a crumb coating which really basically is an undercoating for a final decoration and you get this as smooth and as perfect as you can so here we have a very nicely crumb coated cake that can go right into the fridge do the same thing to the larger layer so you can see i've been starting to decorate using a round tip to criss-cross the entire top of the small layer and i've done vertical rounds on the side of the cake and then i think i will basket weave the sides i think that will look very pretty and what you do is go over skip every other one and go all the way around and so on but that's what a basket weave looks like and then you can do a pretty edge all the way around the bottom and get that into the icebox to chill i'm doing a very simple basket weave on the top of this cake using the number 48 tip for both the under part of the basket as well as the over part and it's all fun and it's fun to experiment with the tips a little bit and some left over frosting before you start actually decorating a cake make a pattern this is going to be a very rustic main basket how's that you can make excuses too if your work is not quite up to sylvia weinstock the great cake maker in new york so this looks very pretty and you can do a pretty edge of dots if you like on this one and you can make cakes for your friends one of the best wedding presents you can give a friend is to make a wedding cake and i've done that many times and you can dot all the way down the side like this maybe every other row but this frosting is so delicious that the more you layer on the better the cake they're almost finished so you see you can make a cake that looks really pretty very simply and you just need the right cake the right frosting a couple great tips and lazy susan which really simplifies the job so today's show two great cakes two great flavors on martha bakes

Channel: Martha Stewart

Views: 128,381

Rating: 4.8797812 out of 5

Keywords: martha stewart, martha stewart bakes, cakes, how to bake a cake, how to decorate a cake, passionfruit, passionfruit buttercream, four-layer cake, genoise cake, orange-almond, wedding cake, how to make a wedding cake, how to make a genoise cake, how to make frosting, recipe, recipes, how to bake, pbs, baking, bake, Recipe, how to, how to make, food, quick, easy, martha bakes, classic episodes, original episodes, martha stewart living

Id: W2UTg5w2SVQ

Length: 20min 27sec (1227 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 08 2021