Claire Bakes Birthday Cake

Everything, cake is my favorite food [laughs].

Actually, I have a lot of things that are my favorite food

but cake is really up there.

[rock music]

Okay, I love this recipe for easy sheet cake.

It's a really straight forward yellow cake

with a very streamline method.

And then a really wonderful chocolate cream cheese frosting.

I think it might become like the only sheet cake

you ever wanna make, so simple, and the result is

extremely light and tender.

We're gonna make it in a stand mixer

and it's a method called reverse-creaming

so it doesn't start with that normal step where you take

the butter and sugar and beat it until it's light.

So, we really kind of eliminate a lot of steps.

Okay, so here I have a nine by 13 pan,

this is a metal pan.

If you're baking in glass,

you wanna just drop the oven temperature 25 degrees

because you'll get a little bit more browning

around the edges in glass.

Just take, maybe like a half tablespoon or so.

It's room temperature

and just use my fingers to smear all around the bottom

and sides and then I'm going to flour it.

So in this recipe, we ice it directly in the pan,

and that's really convienent because if you're taking it

to a party or you just need to transport it,

you can just take it right in the pan in which it's baked.

And then we flour it too because the flour helps the cake

to release so you can unmold it more easily.

So this recipe uses all purpose flour so I'm gonna use

just a little extra here on the side

to dust the inside of the pan.

So I'm just tapping around the flour to coat.

Alright, so everythings well coated,

I'm just gonna tap out the excess.

I always start with preparing my pan because I've definitely

had that happen where I get to,

I've mixed up a recipe and I'm ready to bake it and then

I have to like take a pause and do the pan 'cause I forgot.

Alright, so I'm using a stand mixer for this recipe.

You could do this at home with a hand mixer you'll just have

to basically take a little bit longer for each step

to reach that end point.

So it has the paddle attachment on it

and the first thing I wanna do is mix up all of

my dry ingredients plus my sugar.

So again, this method is referred to as reverse-creaming.

So we're not starting with the butter and sugar first,

we're actually gonna start with all the dry ingredients

so we have here all purpose flour.

So, kosher salt, baking soda,

baking powder.

I found that the combination of powder and soda is really

important when you have sort of acidic ingredients

and this recipe uses buttermilk.

So, buttermilk is a great tenderizer,

I think it really contributes to a really beautiful texture.

So that's our leavening.

Okay so it all goes into the bowl, the mixer,

plus two cups of just plain, granulated sugar.

And I'm gonna turn this on very low just to mix

all all these ingredients,

make sure those are all well blended.

So now I'm gonna mix my wet ingredients all together.

So technically sugar in baking is a wet ingredient

but I added that here first mostly

just to get it all distributed.

So now I have my buttermilk.

Five yolks, again it's a yellow cake

so there's high higher proportion of yolk,

giving it that sort of nice bright color.

Then two whole eggs.

Okay, now I'm adding oil, just vegetable oil

or any other neutral oil and even though it's a butter based

cake I always add a couple of tablespoons of oil

to every cake recipe because it really keeps the cake

extremely moist and pliable.

Sometimes butter cakes have a tendency to dry out,

especially if they've been sitting on the counter

for a couple of days and then I have a

tablespoon of vanilla extract.

It'll all get mixed again in the stand mixer as well.

With this reverse-creaming method the first thing

we wanna do is work the butter into the flour mixture.

This butter is room temperature.

Now the idea here is that we're trying to coat the flour

or most of the flour in fat.

So that is gonna prevent gluten formation,

this is another reason why we don't have to use

cake flour in this recipe.

So gluten is like what makes bread chewy,

it adds, can add sort of a tough texture to cake

if you work the flour too much within the presence of liquid

so the first thing we're doing is adding fat to kind of

coat the flour so when I do start adding the liquid,

there's less gluten formation.

It's important that the butters room temperature,

otherwise it won't work very easily into the flour

but you can just add it all at once

and just hopefully prevent too much flour from

spilling out of your mixture.

Uhhhhhhhhh

Because butter is almost entirely fat,

there's not, I'm not really at risk of overworking it,

there's no moisture in here or water that's going to

like sort of activate the gluten.

And I wanna go until the butter is worked into the mixture

and the mixture kind of looks like coarse meal.

It'll kind of take on a little bit of a yellow hue as well.

It's funny that we use coarse meal as an indicator

it's like what is that?

[Cameraman] What person like knows that. How porous is--

Like what is, what meal?

I don't know what I was talking about,

but somehow it makes sense.

Again if you're using a hand mixer

this stuff will just take a little bit longer.

Can see what it looks like right there.

So we need some gluten formation,

you don't want zero gluten formation otherwise

there will be no structure to the cake.

So, I'm gonna add my liquid now, about half of it.

So at this stage I'm just gonna mix on low

and try to hydrate all the flour

and then I can add the rest.

So this reverse-creaming method

is particularly useful for layer cake making

because it is known to produce a very flat top

like it prevents sort of that doming so when you're

stacking layers it's really useful

and in a sheet cake, you get like a very beautiful

flat surface for icing!

And now I can add the rest of the liquid.

So this is a great method because you can measure

everything directly into the mixer,

besides your liquid ingredients.

It really is sort of a quicker method of mixing up a batter

and to me the result is just as good if not better

than using the traditional method.

So now I just want everything to smooth out

and at this point I wanna work some air into it so I'm gonna

turn up the speed a bit.

So you can see the batter has already in that,

just in maybe 15 seconds, lightened quite a bit,

it's much more airier and it's paled a couple shades too.

So this is just working air into it

and also I have to let it beat for up to two minutes because

now I need to develop gluten so that

the cake has some structure!

So this is looking great,

you can see how sort of smooth and silky it looks.

The batter really does gain so much volume

with this method at the end so it really,

it sort of was surprising to me the first time

I tried this method how fluffy and light the cake is.

So, I'm just folding it a couple of times with the spatula

before I put it in our prepared pan because there's still

maybe some areas that haven't quite mixed in.

Alright now into our sheet pan.

And now I love to use just a little offset to

smooth the batter out and work it into the corners.

Tryin' to get one fairly even layer.

So, often for cakes you'll find that the directions say

preheat the oven to 350.

This one is baked at 325 which helps to just

again, make a very even, flat surface.

So, it's another good trick if you're doing layers

in round pans, drop the temperature 25 degrees

if you're trying to get something that's like less domed.

So this'll go for the better part of an hour.

Okay, so this baked for about 55 minutes.

You can see it has a beautiful, even, golden-brown color.

When I took it out I tested it by just sort of tapping

on the surface, it should feel firm to the

touch and spring back.

And you can also do a cake tester right in the center.

So you'll notice as the cake is baking,

it'll start to look sort of matte around the edges

and then if the center is still shiny and jiggly,

you have to let it go longer.

So wait for that even golden-brown color,

could do sort of the touch test,

and this cake is completely cooled,

so there's no heat on the bottom at all

because if that cake is even a little bit warm,

it will melt the icing.

So, try to be patient when it comes to letting it cool.

And now I'm gonna mix up the frosting.

I don't love American buttercream

which is sort of just a fancy way of saying icing

made from just butter and powdered sugar.

For me it tends to be kind of overly sweet,

but the advantage of an American buttercream is it's so

easy to make, you really just mix the ingredients together.

So I wanted to have something with the same ease

but with maybe a little better balance so I'm adding

cream cheese, I have six ounces here,

and I stick and a half of butter.

The cream cheese adds a little bit of tang

which I think balances everything out nicely.

So the important thing here is that the cream cheese

is very room temperature and the butter

is very room temperature because if either one of them is

colder or if they're different temperatures,

they won't mix together very easily.

So, you'll find sometimes just little bits of white

in the butter, and that's 'cause the cream

cheese was still cold.

So these go into stand mixer and I have the paddle still.

So because those were very room temperature,

they blended together very easily,

I just wanna scrape down the sides of the bowl

and then increase the speed a little bit to get

some air into the mixer.

Start to whip it a little bit.

Okay, it is possible to over beat this.

So I'm just stopping after a couple of minutes,

the mixture is light and fluffy.

Now I have a couple of cups of confectioners' sugar

or powdered sugar

and I'm adding all of this at once.

If I added it with the mixture going,

it would turn into like a big dust cloud,

and then my cocoa powder,

so this is the chocolate frosting,

I'm adding cocoa powder rather than like melted chocolate

for a couple reasons, so there's no added sugar or fat

in here, there's plenty of sugar and fat that I'm adding

and I need that sugar and fat in the bowl for texture.

So I don't really wanna add addition sugar in the form

of chocolate so this is just plain cocoa powder,

and you can use like a raw cocoa powder or a dutch processed

depending on what you prefer,

something good quality.

And kosher salt, kosher salt is really important in

buttercream because it really helps balance out

really intense sweetness and buttery flavor.

And I'm gonna start on very low so that I don't

create a big cloud burst of cocoa and powered sugar.

So you can kinda pulse this, just to incorporate.

Okay, so now everything is incorporated,

and I'm gonna turn on the mixer a little bit higher.

At this point, I'm gonna whip it.

Everythings well mixed now, there's no more like dry spots

but I want to just scrape down the sides to make sure

everything is evenly incorporated and then I'm gonna

whip it a little bit more.

You'll notice the color will really change

once we get some air into it.

And now I'm gonna add my vanilla.

I've reserved this because all of the dry ingredients

need to work in first.

So you can see this has already

lightened in texture and color quite a bit

and I wanna just keep going until it has like

a nice, fluffy, frosting consistency

and then not any further because

it is possible to over whip it.

So I'm just putting the frosting directly

on the surface of the cake.

Okay, so now time to ice.

Again, the cake is completely cooled.

If it were even a little bit warm it would

start to melt that butter,

and the frosting would start to kind of slide around.

So I'm using just a small offset spatula,

you can use the back of a spoon or even a butter knife.

And I'd say this makes a pretty generous layer of frosting

but the cake itself is a couple inches tall so

I think it's actually a nice proportion of cake to frosting.

And I'm just working it kind of first into the corners.

Once it's all, once I have full coverage,

it makes some nice little swooshes and swirls.

I like when you see like the texture of icing,

I don't want like a totally smooth surface

you know, I wanna do like a wedding cake.

So I like, when you have this fluffy frosting

and I like that you can see what the texture is.

This is a great celebration cake because it feeds a lot

of people and you don't have to deal with kind of like

the stacking, filling of the layers,

and then the crumb coating and everything,

it's really just two simple operations,

mixing the cake and then the icing.

So I have some sprinkles here for decorating.

Now I can kinda go in with my little spatula and make

some nice texture in the icing.

Now, use any sprinkles that you want,

or no sprinkles.

The more you want them to spread out

the higher up you can kind of sprinkle them.

You want them to be a little more concentrated in an area,

just hold your hand a little closer to the cake.

So, that's it, I really think it's the easiest

possible sheet cake with frosting that you can make

without it coming from a box.

And you know, it tastes like it's way more effort than

it really is so perfect celebration cake,

great for like kid's birthday parties,

adult's birthday parties, or just 'cause

you feel like baking

you don't really need a reason.

The first piece is always a little hard to get out

so to make it easier, and that's also why you floured

the bottom, to make it easier,

you can cut two slices actually,

might make it a little easier to lift out the first.

So I'm gonna taste it.

It's really nice to have a chocolate frosting that's not

overly sweet, good balance.

Not that you know there's cream cheese in there

but it is just sort of

I think a little bit better balanced than like

your classic chocolate American buttercream.

And the cake is really wonderful.

Beautiful, light texture, nice crumb as they say

in the cake world.

Oh the time I made my nephew a birthday cake he hated it.

For his first birthday, but I was like more for me!