(upbeat music) - Greetings, my beautiful lovelies. It's Emmy. How are you? It's great to see you and welcome back. Today I am going to be tasting some cake. This cake I ordered two months ago. There is a long waiting list because it is the "Tom Cruise White Chocolate Coconut Cake." Now, why is it called the Tom Cruise cake? Well, apparently for years now, Tom Cruise has gifted this
particular coconut cake around the holidays to
people that he's worked with, people that he just wants
to say thank you to. And if you receive a cake from Tom Cruise, I guess you're an official A-lister or somebody that Tom Cruise cares about which is pretty stinking great, I guess, because you're receiving cake and Tom Cruise is thinking about you. So I first heard about this
cake back in January when, in an interview, Tom Hanks
said that he would want a slice of this cake as part of his last meal. Now, if that's not an
endorsement, I don't know what is. So I went and researched it and you can purchase this
coconut cake from Doan's Bakery. I purchased it from GoldBelly but there was a two month waiting list because apparently lots of
other people were curious about this cake as well. So I ordered it and the cake has arrived. This is the cake. Doan's Bakery apparently
has been making cakes for a very long time. They are located in
Woodland Hills, California and this is the cake. So other Hollywood stars including Rosie O'Donnell, James Corden, have received this cake
who also love it as well. And apparently James Corden, when he spoke to Tom and thanked him
for the cake, Tom said he's never tasted this cake. He's heard of...wonderful things about it but has never actually had
it himself because, you know, Tom's got movies to film and stuff. Yeah, Tom Cruise, my goodness. Did you see Maverick? I loved that movie. If you liked Top Gun back
when you were a little pup like me, Maverick was just, just wonderful. Loved it! Loved a classic
Hollywood summer blockbuster. Really, really enjoyed
that. Okay, confession. This is gonna be so
cringey, and I can't believe I'm sharing this, but I'm going to. When I was in middle school, I had a poster of Cocktail in my locker. Back to the cake. This arrived packed in
dry ice, nice and chilled and they said, before you serve it, it should be taken outta the
fridge and allowed to warm up to room temperature, which I have done. So sadly, since I will
never receive a coconut cake from Tom Cruise, I had
to order one myself. So let's go ahead and open
it and see what is inside. Here we go. Blo,lo,lo,lo... Well look at that. "Doan's Bakery is a
family-owned-and-operated bakery since 1983." Love that. Here they are. As I said earlier, there
was a two month waiting list for this cake. Hm. I don't know -- this
seems kind of sketch. Okay, here we go. Ooooh, hoo, hooo! Me and the cake. Oh my goodness, yes!! Look
at all of that coconut. Apparently when Tom sends
it, it has a card from Tom and it's decorated for the holidays. But this is pretty sweet. A little green bow,
perfect for springtime, and coconut cake somehow
always remind me of spring and Easter in particular because that's when you
start seeing like lamb cakes and bunny cakes, and shredded
coconut is a great way to kind of get that coat, you know? So, here is the beautiful
cake all wrapped up. All righty. Let's get our cake out of its
nice little satin ribbon.... Smells coconutty. Coconutty, coconutty. Yeah. Hello, friend. Can you see that frosting underneath? Woo. Right on my, not
technically cake stand, but we're gonna be using it as such. There is the gigantic coconut cake. Yes, I would imagine most
people are not curious enough about this cake to spend the $100 for it to appear
refrigerated at my doorstep. But I would imagine many, many, many people are curious
about the taste of this cake and might want to attempt to
make it at home for themselves. So, dun, nun, nah, nah!! I also made a dupe of Tom Cruise's white chocolate
coconut. (Emmy chuckles.) It looks so cute! So this is the first time
I've seen the Tom Cruise cake next to the one that I just made. Look, it's so fluffy. It's like a chrysanthemum
and....met a bunny's tail. I'm gonna do this with
conviction and belief. Yes, that's a bit redundant, but, oh, my cake stand's a little
bit small for that cake. Ooh, impressive. Look at the two cakes side-by-side. This one is a little bit elevated. Does not mean you're better. Two cakes. Two coconut cakes. We're gonna have a lot of cake to
share around here. (Emmy laughs.) Alrighty, before we do the taste test let me walk you through the steps of what I did to make this beautiful cake. Going to get my recipe.... So I adapted this recipe
from a recipe I found on All Recipes, and I'll put
the original link down below. The first thing I did was
sift my dry ingredients: I added the flour, the
baking powder, salt, and I grated some fresh nutmeg. Sifted that through to make
sure there are no lumps. And if you don't have cake flour there are recipes to make it at home: you add a little bit of corn
starch to lighten the flour and that gives you a really
nice tender crumb for your cake. Next, you're gonna take
your butter and place it into a large bowl and beat it with an electric mixer until it's nicely softened and whipped. And we're going to slowly
incorporate our sugar. Next, you're gonna add two eggs and add them one at a time,
beating well with each addition. You can also use four
tablespoons of liquid egg whites which I happen to have on hand
so that's what I am using. Beat this mixture really
well For three minutes. You want it nice and
light, yellow in color and nice and fluffy. Next we're gonna add our
vanilla extract, almond extract, and coconut milk. You want to use THICK coconut
milk that comes in a can. You don't want to be using the
stuff that's a milk substitute. You really want the really
fatty, rich stuff -- the stuff that you would
use in a curry or a dessert. So now we have our liquids mixed, we're going to add half of our flour and just mix this until
it's well combined. Don't overmix it. Next we're gonna add
our sour cream -- again, until it's just combined. Then add our remaining
flour and work that in. Fold in our shredded coconut
and our white chocolate and I'm using white chocolate chips. Next, we're going to
prepare our Bundt pan. Now, Bundt pans are notorious for sticking and I am not excluded from that. I still have not found a
perfect way to unmold a cake out of a Bundt pan. I've also used Nancy Birtwhistle's recipe for a baking paste which is equal parts oil,
shortening, and flour, and that worked all right,
but I did have some sticking. So I thought I'd try a new technique which I found on King Arthur Flour. And I took liquid shortening, shortening that I melted in the microwave, painted the inside of
the Bundt pan, liberally, and then took granulated
sugar and added that to the pan and swirled it
around till it was well coated. So after I prepared my pan,
I poured my batter into it. Tap it a few times to
release any air bubbles then place in a preheated
350 degree oven and cook for 60 to 70 minutes, or until
when you put a toothpick in you have a few wet crumbs. Don't overbake it. For unmolding the cake, I also followed King Arthur's suggestions by allowing the cake to cool
right-side-up for five minutes then turning it over onto
a rack and letting it cool for additional five minutes
before removing the pan itself. And after the five minutes the cake had already
released from the pan. And then when I lifted it up I saw that there was still sticking. The cake did not come out perfectly clean but it did come out and
it looked beautiful. It smelled incredible -- lovely
vanilla, slightly almond, but lots of coconut
smell. Smelled fantastic! But it didn't smell like Malibu rum, which I really appreciated. So let the cake cool completely
before we make the frosting. So now we're going to make
the cream cheese frosting. So in a large bowl, we're
gonna have one brick or eight ounces of cream
cheese that has been softened. And to that, we're going to add a quarter
cup of softened butter. Use an electric mixer to
blend that nice and smooth. Next we're going to add our vanilla, and then our powdered sugar
in about three batches. We're going to do this slowly
so that we can incorporate it without getting too many lumps. And then we're gonna add two tablespoons of heavy cream. That will
loosen it a little bit. And then we're going to
beat it for two minutes and then get this lovely white, fluffy, airy cream cheese frosting. Then we're gonna take the frosting and dollop it on our
completely cooled cake. And then we're gonna take our
shredded sweetened coconut and sprinkle and gently pat that into the wet frosting so that it sticks. Then the recipe recommends
to chill the cake for at least 30 minutes
so that the frosting can set up a little bit. And my lovelies, here we are. All right my lovelies,
let's do the taste test. Let's taste the original first and we can imagine that
Tom Cruise is our friend. Okay, I have to say, this looks great. Okay. Slicing down. Ooh, slices very nicely! Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo doo. Ooh, slices beautifully. Look at that. Can you,
okay. You can't see it. Let me put it here. That is the slice. Looks grrr-eat! We see the icing, the coconut on top, the interior of the cake. Okay. Looks moist. I'm gonna get a bite with the frosting. Frosting. Cake. Alrighty, here we go -- as I drop coconut
everywhere -- Itadakimasu! Mmm. It's a delicious cake. Very moist. Frosting is sweet. There's a nice texture
of the shredded coconut on the outside, but it is not cloyingly Malibu rummy fake coconut flavor. I really am not a fan of that. It's one of the reasons why
I don't like Pina Coladas or Malibu rum. It's because it, that flavor or scent to me smells like suntan lotion. But this cake does not have that at all. It has a great coconutty flavor
without being overpoweringly and cloyingly artificial tasting. Let's try a bite without the frosting. Mmm. I got a bite of white
chocolate in that bite. A nice, pleasant kind of crunch. And the white chocolate
flavor blended really nicely with the cake itself. I like that little textural addition. The texture of the cake and the style of cake itself is kind of
similar to a pound cake. It's denser and rich and sweet, rather than being really fluffy and light like a sheet cake or a roll cake. You know those chiffon cakes
that are a little bit lighter? This one definitely has some heft to it. It's dense and it's rich and lovely. The white chocolate seems
to be a layer in this, rather than being like chips, it seems like there's like a kind of swirl of it. So you get a little
bit of white chocolate, rather than having it be
all dispersed in the batter like I did. But it's a nice addition to it and the frosting goes really well too. The frosting definitely
is cream cheese based. I taste that nice tangy
richness from the cream cheese. I think it's a nice foil to the sweetness of the cake itself. We get a little bit of tang,
but it too is very sweet. But that little flavor
component of the acidity goes really well with
the richness of the cake. Very nice. Alrighty. Let's
try the homemade version and see how that compares. Oh, I almost don't wanna cut into it. It's so lovely and
fluffy, but cut we must. Boo boo boo. Ooh, this too is very dense. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Ooh, look at that. Beautiful. It looks a little
underbaked, doesn't it? Hmm. The recipe said to
pull out the cake when the toothpick came out with a
few wet crumbs, which I did, but it looks like I could
have gone a little bit more. Let's taste it and see. Let's see how dense this cake is. Wow. That's a lot of
frosting on that bite. Let's go with this bite. All right. Oh, this is what I get
for showing you the bite. All right. Frosting cake. Here we go. Itadakimasu! Hm, mm. That's a delicious
cake. Very rich as well. Like a pound cake. Mhm. Right away I noticed a big
difference in the flavors of the cake. First of all, I notice that
the cake is not as sweet as the original. Still kind of a pound cake
style of cake, but it's not as very sweet as this one. The second thing I notice
is the almond flavor. Almond extract is very, very, very strong. And even though we only
used a half teaspoon I definitely taste it in
here, and I don't taste it in the original. So you may wanna omit it if
you're really trying to go for that coconut cake. Having said that, this
is a delicious cake. Mm-hm. I appreciate the fact that this one -- the interior is not as sweet. Let's try it with the frosting. Mm mm, I prefer the texture of this frosting to this frosting. This frosting, of course,
has been with the cake longer and has time to set up
and kind of crust up so it's got a little bit thicker This is just freshly whipped so I really love that whipped
feeling/texture in my mouth. Well, this one again, feels
much sweeter than this one. The texture is denser than this cake which has more of a fluffier
pound cake like texture even though it does have
a density to it as well. Let's get a bite with the white chocolate. Mm. The dispersal of the white chocolate is very different than this one. This one has, the original has a kind of a swirl or like a
belt in the entire cake so you get a very specific
white chocolate bite. Well, this one is kind of
just sprinkled all about and you don't get one with every bite but when you do, it's pretty subtle. I have to say, the combination of flavors of this cake is quite nice. I have to say, when I think of coconut I have this bias towards Malibu rum. This cake also does not
have that artificial Malibu rum suntan lotion flavor at all. If anything, it's more almondy. But you do get a nice coconut flavor from the shredded coconut, both on the outside and
in the batter, but also from the coconut milk that's
infused in the cake as well. I have to say the texture of
this cake is very different from the texture of this cake. This cake is much more like a pound cake while this one's a little bit different but that could have been user error. Perhaps I under baked it a little bit. It's much more denser and it has kind of a a really different crumb,
but still a good cake. Alrighty my lovelies, of the two cakes, which cake reigns supreme? I have to say the original Doan's cake. It's a lovely coconut cake,
white chocolate as well. It's very rich. But I think what's most important I think what is makes this
cake ultimately so special is that it comes from someone
that was thinking of you. And I think that's such a wonderful thing. You know, we don't all have
to be friends with Tom Cruise but we can be friends with
our friends and loved ones and we can send them a text and say, "Hey, I was thinking of you." Send them a card just
out of the blue random. It brightens anyone's day. Bring them a little
something, a little treat even if they're not home,
just leave it at their door. Just that little note or reminder of "I'm thinking of you" and
"I love you," goes a long way. All righty my lovelies,
thanks so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed that one.
I hope you learned something. Please share this video with your friends. Consider subscribing, like this video and I shall see you in the next one. Toodaloo! Take care! Bye! (upbeat music) Alrighty, I've got two coconut cakes. Okay. It's time to share.
