Martha Stewart Makes Yellow Cake 4 Ways | Martha Bakes S1E1 "Yellow Cake"

today on martha bakes we're going to show you one recipe for a delicious cake a yellow cake and three variations on that theme wouldn't you like to serve a birthday cake that looks like this inside it's a superb cake filled with an orange curd and coated with a rich chocolate ganache this was my dad's favorite birthday cake for a very fragrant and delectable upside down cake use that same yellow cake batter and a little fresh fruit when it's inverted this upside down cake is the best you've ever tasted and this is a strawberry cupcake incorporating fresh chopped strawberries a little bit of strawberry jam and topped with a fresh strawberry swiss meringue buttercream couldn't be a better cupcake anywhere we'll show you how now on martha bakes [Music] edward casteira's favorite birthday cake is comprised of a yellow cake with chocolate frosting and orange filling so utterly delicious when we were growing up at 86 elm place every august 21st was my dad's birthday and we baked him his favorite cake the edward casteira yellow cake i'm going to show you how to make this very very old-fashioned but very good birthday cake so eight inch pans two inches high and we want to cut parchment rounds that'll fit right in the bottom of the pan to do this i just take a single sheet of parchment like this fold it in half and trace around the bottom of the pan and just cut these rounds out i've already done that so that you don't have to watch me paper cut so here's two and then you want to butter your cake pans well with softened butter and a brush my mom always used a piece of waxed paper and softened butter to butter her pans i don't remember ever seeing a pastry brush in our house when i was a when i was growing up so maybe that's why now you can just put your round right in the bottom this will enable you to get the cake out with no trouble whatsoever now butter the paper do this to both layers oh and the other thing that you do before you start your batter is turn the oven on to the correct temperature this cake calls for a 350 degree preheated oven okay so now we want to do a light flowering just put a little flower a tablespoon or so in your pan just turn and knock off the excess into your next pan there see very well buttered okay so now we start oh sift our dry ingredients so we want one and a half cups of cake flour so that's one cup and a half and we need one and a half cups of all-purpose flour one cup and a half and one tablespoon of baking powder make sure your baking powder is fresh whatever kind of leavening you use should be fresh and tested and it's a good idea to not leave your baking powder uncovered cover it as soon as you use it and one teaspoon of salt and just sift your dry ingredients now we have butter two sticks of butter that are soft room temperature and we're going to cream the butter with one and three quarters cups of sugar and to that we're going to add as soon as this is creamy we're going to add four whole eggs out of the shell of course some people with a whole egg you just drop that in no take the egg out of the shell growing up in a family of six kids with a very active kitchen we really didn't have any money to go eat out there wasn't really fast food at that time so we cooked everything we're now going to add our eggs one at a time beat well after each egg is added and two teaspoons of vanilla extract and one and a quarter cups of milk at room temperature when you're baking a cake like this just like when you're making pound cakes everything should be at room temperature including the milk okay this looks really good and now it's time to add the flour and the milk and your batter is done it's so easy to make a cake take a big spoon like that and we're just going to add the flour a little bit at a time and a little bit of the milk you want everything to be well incorporated but you do not want to mix too much a little bit more milk and the last bit of flour the elusive last bits you'll scrape the beater now fill your pans put an equal amount one way you can do that is to use a scale to measure out the batter or eyeball it so this is going straight in the oven set your timer and this cake should bake for 30 minutes now another cake that i love to make especially when fruit's in season is the upside down cake remember the pineapple upside down cake with the red cherries that mom used to make with canned pineapple and those maraschino cherries well this is actually in the same vein but so much better and the batter that we just made for the yellow cakes fills five six inch cakes and we're going to spray with a vegetable spray like that put a parchment round in the bottom spray again and that should come right out now into the bottom of these pans goes a wonderful mixture of brown sugar maple syrup dark rum and vanilla and butter and so i'll show you how to make that right now we're using nectarines here that are cut into small wedges and two kinds of plums we have red and black sugar jewel plums and into the um 16 tablespoons of butter we're going to add three tablespoons of pure maple syrup so there is something else to do with all that maple syrup other than put it on waffles and pancakes and one tablespoon of dark rum so flavorful then two cups of packed light brown sugar and a half a teaspoon of vanilla extract and don't forget a half a teaspoon of salt get that nice and smooth and we have some that we already made over here this is the mixture that you can arrange your fruit in so we're going to put a little layer in the bottom of each of the pans so just spread that evenly with your little offset spatula now a quarter of an inch is fine there just like that and in here i guess i'll put the nectarines and remember the design that you arrange in the bottom is the design that you're going to see when you turn the upside down cake right side up concentric circles of fruit whatever is pleasing to your eye and into this one some more of the maple brown sugar mix oh i want to do the dark red plum that's so pretty they've come up with a whole bunch of good mixes of fruit shoot plucots which are plum apricots nectarine plums every conceivable hybrid has been created so there's the dark red plum alternatively you can make 36 mini upside down cakes lightly spray three 12 cup muffin tins with non-stick cooking spray then add one tablespoon of this sweet buttery spread into each cup place one or more slices of fruit in each cup then top with the yellow cake batter about two ounces and now for the bigger ones the batter will fill approximately five of them the upside down cakes bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for about 35 to 40 minutes and the mini upside down cakes take 20 to 25 minutes so you can see how the individual upside down cakes turned out they're so pretty each one the dark plum the later plum they really do look very very cute and they are so tasty and the six inch well once they come out of the oven they should cool for about 25 to 30 minutes i'm loosening around the sides with the offset spatula and i'm going to turn it right onto the plate this is a serving plate and hopefully this one will loosen as nicely and as easily as those did ah it's gorgeous look at that now these six inch cakes would probably serve four generously and five or six these are individual servings served with whipped cream whipped cream fresh vanilla ice cream even plum ice cream would that be good try them you're going to love them and now for the filling for my father's birthday cake we're making an orange curd it's so delicious it's nice and thick it's made with fresh juices and lots of fresh egg yolks 12 egg yolks and right into the same pan we're going to add the sugar one and a half cups of sugar the zest of two oranges and so the zest goes right into the bowl and we have a quarter of a cup plus two tablespoons of freshly squeezed orange juice and we have a half a cup plus one tablespoon of freshly squeezed lemon juice stir this together and it already looks orangy and delicious you're going to cook over a medium low heat stirring constantly with a wooden spoon do not walk away from the curd you never leave the egg yolks on the stove to curdle get this started i have a flame right here medium low the orange goes very nicely with the chocolate it's kind of a traditional pairing and my dad loved it okay these have thickened you can see how the wooden spoon is getting coated look and now it's time to take this off the heat and add the butter little by little so here you have this rich orange curd about to be the butter because it's cold it's starting to cool down the curd if you want a really smooth curd you can strain this my dad loved the orange peel we never strained it this will stay in the refrigerator for oh up to a week or a week and a half and we have one that's already so now the cake layers are finished they look very very good and i want to show you how i slice these in half i've come up with a method that works very very well using a quarter sheet for this size cake i would like to first take off that uneven little crown of the cake there that looks good and now watch this is so great see the blade is resting on both sides of the pan and you have a very nice layer of cake here and a very nice layer of cake here so good and do the same thing with the other layer here is our orange curd and you want about a half a cup of orange curd between each layer so you're going to have a leftover curd oh doesn't that look good very luscious and leave about an inch because the weight of the cake is definitely going to push this curd to the edge so easy and then put one of your layers right on top of that another half a cup of curd i'm going to use the other layer like this added bonus and now this one goes right on top there we have it now to make sure that this stays secure in the refrigerator while it chills insert three bamboo skewers into the cake like this these of course will be removed after the cake is chilled so it's very easy and very neat and you will have a delicious birthday cake now this is an old-fashioned chocolate frosting in fact my mom made recipes like this you need one pound of semi-sweet chocolate and i found that the serrated knife is by far the easiest way to break the chocolate into small pieces for melting and we need one pound and now we're going to add little by little two and two-thirds cups of whipping cream that's been brought to a boil the finer that it is chopped the quicker it melts and to keep it a little bit soft add one teaspoon of corn syrup just a teaspoon and i'm going to now switch over to a whisk because we don't want any lumps whatsoever you can see it's shiny it's glossy let this cool for about 10 minutes you can then set it over a bowl of iced water and we have one that's already chilled and i'll show you what that looks like so here's our ganache once it's chilled it's thin and lustrous and we're going to just spoon a little bit on top of the cake and we're going to do a crumb coating what a crumb coating does is cover the crumbs cover any nooks and crannies and we have one cake that's already been crumb coated and chilled and it's on a stand that was just like the stand that we used for my father's cakes to not get your final cake stand messy you use these little strips of parchment paper underneath your cake when you're done you just pull those out and no mess oh it looks so good you don't have to do too much in fact the less you do the better there i'm going to leave it just like that so pretty and now chill this then pull out the papers and you have your cake ready to serve right on the final pedestal there you have it edward castile's birthday cake it's delectable and now for the third variation of our yellow cake recipe cupcakes everybody wants a good recipe for cupcakes and these are delicious when strawberries are in season so we've cut up enough strawberries to make one cup of finely diced strawberry and we're folding it into one batch of the yellow cake batter and that is your cupcake preheat your oven to 350 degrees so there it is beautifully see it already starts to turn a little bit pink use a two ounce ice cream scoop and fill your cupcake papers we're using very cute pink paper i love these and this recipe makes 30 cupcakes get your cupcakes into a preheated oven and bake for 20 minutes until they're a light golden brown like this take them out of the oven and cool them on racks and now for the swiss meringue buttercream swiss meringue icing or frosting differs from all other frostings and that the egg whites and in this case eight large egg whites and the sugar two and a half cups of granulated sugar that's one two and a half and put this right on top of some simmering water you can simulate your own bain-marie or double boiler by doing it this way whisk until they are warm after about six minutes it's time to move it back to the mixer it'll take about six minutes for the egg whites to completely cool down in the meantime we'll prepare the butter for our swiss meringue buttercream put six sticks of unsalted butter into the bowl of a stand mixer the butter should be room temperature and not too soft beat the butter until it's light and fluffy when the egg whites are fluffy and cool add the butter in small batches make sure you beat well after each addition then add two teaspoons of vanilla extract add a half a cup of strawberry preserves and then stir into the meringue buttercream two cups of strawberries that have been hulled and finely diced now you're ready to frost your cupcakes you can just start in the center and go around i like these individual stars that's a pretty one they don't all have to look the same but if you want to make a consistent pattern do it oh and by the way look what i found in my garden these are called fres de bois and these are tiny little woodland strawberries these look so pretty just one on top of each cupcake [Music] so beautiful fresh strawberry cupcakes are fantastic from martha bakes

Channel: Martha Stewart

Views: 194,616

Keywords: martha, stewart, martha stewart, recipe, recipes, how to, how to make, full episode, martha bakes full episode, martha stewart recipe, martha bakes recipe, cooking, food, yellow cake, cake, cake recipe, yellow cake recipe, chocolate frosting, strawberry cupcakes, easy, quick, easy strawberry cupcakes, cupcakes, orange curd, orange curd cake filling, cake filling, birthday cake, upside down cake, how to make an upside down cake, easy birthday cake, yellow cake 4 ways

Id: rN16ogi8N20

Length: 20min 25sec (1225 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 13 2021