Chris Makes Easy Chocolate Cake

I love the story of Easiest Chocolate Birthday Cake

because it is so personal to me

and even though I didn't--

[vacuum running]

What are you guys up to?

We're already eating that's why we--

Get it baby, get it.

[Chris] Brad, do you want some chocolate cake?

Oh I want chocolate cake No

Here's what was happening,

you can get in on this, okay?

So, Amber kept making me cakes on my birthday.

I'd come home on my birthday and it was like

[bleep] everywhere [Brad laughing]

nobody had had dinner, okay,

kids are like-- But you got your cake.

Just food bar or what?

Little food bar, okay?

So, we developed this,

remember when I did this with Kat B, all right?

So that this can be the one!

Oh! Every birthday from now on,

that's the cake.

All right, happy birthday!

Thanks bud!

[Happy Birthday]

My favorite dessert,

whether it's my birthday or not my birthday,

is just simple chocolate cake.

Give me the chocolate cake with some chocolate frosting,

and I'm so happy

You know what?

I'm gonna make you a recipe that you can make me

every year on my birthday

and this is the one.

It's really lovely, lusciously, chocolatey,

birthday cake that is very simple to make,

the cake itself is even easier than the frosting.

So, go figure.

This is just the most standard cake pan,

a great way to make this as easy as possible to work with,

is to brush it very lightly with oil.

Really gotta get myself like,

go all the way and get myself a pocket protector, you know?

Just trace the bottom of the pan.

So this is gonna mean that the bottom of the cake

is gonna release very easily from the pan.

So, pen side down.

[Cameraman] But Chris!

Pen side down!

[Cameraman] What if the pen gets in the food?

No, it's not gonna 'cause it's the pen side down, man.

You guys with me?

Wasn't sure what else I was gonna do

to explain it any differently.

Pen side down!

With a butter-based cake, normally what you would do

is you would cream your butter with your sugar,

add in your eggs, you build structure, volume,

incorporate air, you know, that's how the cake gets

a lot of its structure, this is an oil-based cake

so you don't really have to do any of that

which is part of what makes it kind of the easiest

possible cake you could make, birthday or otherwise.

So, I've got one and a third cup all purpose flour.

One and a quarter cup granulated sugar.

One and three quarter teaspoon baking powder.

I've got one and a quarter teaspoon kosher salt.

And then I've got a quarter of a teaspoon of baking soda.

Give it a little whisk, all right.

Now, next, this is like one of

my least favorite kitchen tasks,

which you might remember such things

as stripping thyme leaves,

chopping chocolate.

This is [bleep] great.

This is up there for me.

Do you have to sift your cocoa?

Yeah, you don't have to, okay.

But cocoa ends up being lumpy and kind of fighting

against you in that batter,

so whatever you can do to kind of break it up now,

you'll thank yourself later.

Hell, you might even thank me.

Gonna whisk this in so this is now gonna incorporate

beautifully with the rest of the dry ingredients, no lumps!

Make sure you get all the little bits at the bottom.

So, now for our wet ingredients

we have two large eggs,

still have not learned how to crack an egg one handed.

I'm on record as saying this is gonna be the year

that I cracked that one!

Three quarters of a cup veg oil.

A teaspoon of vanilla.

So at this point,

we're gonna put the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients

with a spatula 'cause this is gonna get really thick.

Just wanna incorporate everything,

smooth out the lumps and then I'm going to take this

milk here, this cup of milk, I'm gonna heat it up.

The fact of it being hot,

is going to bloom the flavor of the cocoa,

and really just opens up that cocoa flavor.

So, anyway, this is very very thick cake batter,

looks completely wrong but hopefully in a couple of minutes,

it'll look a whole lot better.

I'm not trying to boil the milk,

but I wanna get it just the the point

right before it boils.

So that's just gonna be a minute here,

I'm not gonna wonder off,

not gonna check my Instagram, okay?

Just right here, focused on this

'cause I really don't want it to boil over.

I'm not necessarily looking for bubbles to form,

I wanna see that moment where you're about to get bubbles,

where you see those like little wisps of steam

kinda come in, I wanna see a wisp!

Give me a wisp, come on!

All right, wisp!

So, now is where we're gonna go back to the whisk.

So at first it's not really gonna wanna cooperate.

You wanna whisk it completely

but not kinda over mix.

But honestly, doing it by hand,

there's way less of a risk of that.

So that's done, so that's why you wanna have your pan,

prepared, ready to go when you are.

I just tamped out a few of those bigger bubbles here

and we are taking this right to the oven.

And here we go, there it is, all right?

Cakes ready, done, looking beautiful.

So, if you have a cake tester, by all means you can use it

I just feel like these, they lie, cake testers lie.

They'll tell you whatever you wanna hear.

So, go with this, wooden little skewer,

so if you have any underdone cake, it's way more likely

to show up on one of these guys,

this is looking great.

Let's frost it!

All right so this is four ounces of semi-sweet chocolate.

Try not to exceed 64% cacao, the reason being that certain

chocolates can get a little bit funky when melted

and used in a ganache.

So, anyway, bear with me, let's go over to the stove.

Part of the base of this frosting is a ganache,

which is just a mixture of heavy cream and chocolate.

I'm gonna put these together,

this is a half cup of heavy cream,

four ounces of chocolate.

We're doing it over a double boiler,

you'll notice you know it's a non-reactive bowl

and the water is not touching the bottom of the bowl here.

So, chocolates starting to melt here,

I could lower the heat if you see a lot of steam escaping,

means it's kind of bubbling away under there,

just lower the heat,

calm it down, check your feed, all right.

And yeah, we'll be right back in a sec!

[video game theme music]

Damn.

Okay!

So, it's smooth, it's well incorporated,

I'm just gonna set this aside, let it cool,

about 25 minutes or so, until it firms up

and then we're gonna incorporate it into our frosting.

So, ganache has chilled.

I've got room temperature cream cheese.

We need four ounces of this which is half of this bar.

So, our extra quarter teaspoon of kosher salt

is going in here into the frosting,

it's gonna help you bring out that chocolate flavor,

it's gonna make everything taste so much better.

Three quarters of a teaspoon of pure vanilla extract

and then a quarter of a cup of confectioners sugar.

You know, any electric mixer really

makes very short work of this.

So I just want all of this stuff to be nice and smooth,

that's gonna ensure that it incorporates very well

with the cooled ganache.

So this ganache has not fully set,

it's gonna continue to set as it gets even cooler

but it's a great temperature for incorporating

with the cream cheese, both of them are kind of matched

in terms of fluidity and density at this point.

So you can see that relative to where we started,

it's already starting to hold its shape a little bit more.

I'm just gonna go a little bit further and then we're there.

[blender mixing]

All right.

Clean release, the parchment round!

Okay!

Boom.

How do ya like the apples?

Here's the thing, I don't even--

Oh my God!

[Kat] You're making my cake?

We're, oh my--

I know, I'm sorry I'm making your cake.

No, I'm so happy. How do you think I did?

I think you did great, this looks awesome!

At this point you've done the work,

you just wanna eat the cake,

so why are you gonna do something that like

takes forever and stresses you out.

Yeah. No offense, Claire,

you know? Too much time!

Yeah Just easy

and looks great!

So, show them the spoon technique!

All right.

Everybody is so used to having like crappy,

you know, grocery store cakes. Uh-huh!

That like, if you actually give people a cake

that you make yourself. Mhm.

They sort of freak out Yeah!

In a good way It's super easy.

And you could finish here,

this could be it,

you could be done. Yeah this looks--

I would've like called it, all right,

we'd be eating by now but that's fine,

take it a step further.

So do we wanna do the swirls?

Yeah yeah yeah Or do we wanna do the lines?

I wanna do like your-- The swoopies.

[Chris] Yeah, the swoops.

So, just kind of-- Oh!

Press into it with the side of the spoon.

And you get these like lovely little

you know, kinda tails. Yeah!

And you can do this for hours or just two seconds

Yep! And it's still

gonna look great! Turned out so,

fabulously well!

Did you see how I did that?

Oh my God.

I was like sitting there like sweating like

I'm gonna have to do it, on camera,

and I'm just gonna have to do it

and pretend like I know what I'm doing

and then like Kat like angel,

swoops in out of nowhere

and totally does it for me.

Anyway, let's cut into this thing, right?

You guys ready for cake?

This is a sneak preview of my 40th birthday.

Things are like suddenly looking a little darker up here.

Like, can I just draw your attention to how [bleep] amazing

that looks there's no bells, there's no whistles,

like it's just chocolate cake, it tastes awesome.

Cake!

Yes, hold on! Brad!

Look alive! Get your coffee, let's go!

[Happy Birthday]

[Gaby] Cake!

And you get some cake

Oh yay my cake!

And you get a cake. Everyone's birthday!

Where's a fork?

Yeah, thank you Chris!

Just a sliver for Hunzy.

It's delicious, Chris!

My only non-cake liking critique.

I could use a third less cake.

You want less cake? You don't like cake, period.

That's it. Okay, you're done.

You're done. I'm taking mine.

[crew laughing]

You're all set. No cake for you!

We're all set with you, okay.

Wait she-- Give it to the cake lovers.

You guys are sharing? Good job, Moracco!

All right, thank you.

[Happy Birthday]

Isn't it the best cake?

It's tangy, it's bright!

It's chocolatey, it's deep, it's rich, it's moist.

It's true. It's just good cake.

All right, with the exception of Brad,

everybody friggen loved it, even Gaby choked it down.

Yeah Brad, Brad like apparently doesn't even like cake.

I'm back here to show you that

I almost had the whole thing.

All right, maybe Gaby--

This is as good as my grandmother's cake.

Choke it down! Yes, thank you.

Cool

This is really good, Chris.

[Chris] It's remarkably delicious.

Mhm It really does not

take that much effort. Yeah.

You did a great job. No, you did a great job!

We did a great job. We did!

[light music]

I think we forgot to make the coffee.

Are we good?

Seriously, I'll go make coffee.