Pastry Chef Attempts To Make a Gourmet Twinkie

(upbeat jazz music)

Before we can make our own Twinkie,

we have to know what a Twinkie really is.

In essence, a Twinkie is a snack cake

that is filled with cream,

that's baked at a temperature where

you get that Maillard reaction.

And if I break into it, the crumb looks very even

and pretty tight, so there's not large holes in it.

It has to be pretty dry cake, so that it

doesn't fall apart once you add the cream.

And it looks like the cream has been injected

into the center of this cake

in three different places, so that's good to know.

Oh, so it has just a little bit of a stretch to it

when I do like that, sort of a marshmallowy.

(sniffs)

No, I'm gonna try to not replicate that smell.

Yeah, that, yeah.

This is going to go in here like all the rest of 'em.

Will you eat one with me

in solidarity? Okay.

So like the first few seconds I feel like

are pretty good.

I mean, I think a Twinkie is a golden sponge cake.

The shape is really important, I think.

It needs to be bad for you.

Other than that I mean, fair game, man.

It's really metallic and chemically.

Perhaps its the disodium phosphate.

That's exactly what it is. (laughs)

Ingredient-wise, we have:

The end.

A lot of the things in here I recognize as stabilizers.

Immediately we eliminate a lot of these ingredients.

(laughs) All right.

Time to get baking.

One place to start is\

two separate tests: one is just like a classic yellow cake.

This is really inside the test kitchen.

Then I might also try another style

of sponge called Genoise.

Ah, okay, flour. Here we go.

Based on all my pastry detective work,

I think that's step number one.

We need, here we go.

Cornstarch.

Oh, you're a broken egg.

Oh my god, I didn't pre-heat my oven.

Terrible. That really should've been step number one.

Uh-oh. (laughs)

This cake doesn't have any chemical leaveners,

so no baking powder, no baking soda.

All of the lift that it gets comes from the air

that I already worked into the eggs.

(electronic beeping)

Okay. Okay, so I overcooked the sponge.

And they shrunk a lot,

which was not something I was anticipating.

They look like corndogs. (laughs)

Think it needs a little more time,

and I overfilled them.

Oy. Okay, this is harder than I thought it was gonna be.

But honestly, in terms of overall shape and color

and texture, could be worse.

Now I'm just getting together the ingredients

for the seven-minute frosting.

It's a very stiff merengue, so it's egg-white based.

I just switched to a electric mixer,

otherwise I'll be here for the next 45 minutes.

Oh you guys. We need an extension cord.

So, it has that little bit of stretch

that I felt like the cream inside the Twinkie had,

which is very good.

I think the sign to stop squeezing

is when it starts to kind of flow out.

And I'm hoping that the cream is getting in there.

Okay. Here we, we have a little bit of a problem here.

Way, way underfilled.

Like, not enough cream at all.

Because I think what was important about the original

Twinkie is that those pockets of cream kinda ran together.

I know now for next time.

I have a yellow cake recipe,

and I wanna see how it compares

to the Genoise from yesterday.

I think it'll be maybe a little more tender,

have a little more richness from the added butter.

Also one slight difference is that it uses

a little bit of oil in the cake,

so that actually, to me, is something

that feels more Twinkie-like.

(electronic beeping)

Oh. Thank you.

Yeah, those look good, nice and golden.

Give it a tap.

Bigger tap.

God. Okay.

Oh, all right, there we go.

Not so bad.

I am feeling like these look really good.

Really nice, even color,

like little beautiful gold bars.

Brad, what do you think?

Whoa. Pretty good, right?

Looks like a Twinkie, right?

Classic yellow cake.

This is Genoise; that's standard yellow cake.

Mm, these seem proper. They look way better, right?

Way better. Yeah.

Riddle me this: when you fill them,

and then they hang out, inevitably some hydrating

is going on on the inside?

Yeah, well we have a test right here.

These are Twinkies that I hydrated overnight

and let them sit out at room temperature,

to see what happens.

Oh my god, the cream disappeared.

It's absorbed. Oh my god,

the cream absorbed. (laughs)

There's no more cream in the Twinkie, it's gone!

Maybe it can't be merengue.

'Cause merengue is mostly air, and like,

is it just gonna deflate and absorb into nothing over time?

Apparently, yes.

Instead of a seven-minute frosting,

I'm gonna use a Swiss merengue buttercream.

We're basically creating a cold emulsion.

You're just trying to eliminate the temperature differential

between the outside air, the eggs, and the butter.

It's looking really good,

really, really smooth, very glossy.

And I feel like I'm getting a lot in there,

but I don't know, I wanna see.

(upbeat jazz music)

Oh my god, no, pathetic, okay.

I'm gonna try an alternate technique for filling them,

where I basically hollow out a piece,

fill it, and then stick the bottom back on.

Another idea to get that same three-dot pattern

with the cream is to try even another filling technique,

where I bore out in three different places.

So I think we should cut open the three different styles

and see what worked best.

This was just piping with the nozzle.

I need to insert the nozzle further

into the cake, but not bad.

So this is the one where we cut out the bottom.

I guess what's not great about this one

is the bottom kinda wants to come off.

This is the one where we bored with the apple corer:

it's pretty even, it's pretty centered.

Overall, really not bad.

I'm pretty excited to try it.

It's really good.

What do you think it needs?

This has a little, a little chewiness to it.

Like you want it to be chewier?

Yeah, I want yours to be chewier.

Really? (laughs)

Cake isn't really supposed to be chewy.

I don't like cake.

Brad, just told me I should not make a good yellow cake,

I should make a bad yellow cake.

Yeah. Spongier.

And it really needs to be-- Spongier?

you know, like, lighter.

How do you get a spongier--

Do you ever make a chiffon cake?

Oh my god, a chiffon cake, that's a good idea.

'Cause it has oil in it. 'Cause that's

an oil-based cake.

Oh my god, this is really

throwing a wrench into the-- Sorry.

Can we edit that out?

I don't wanna make a chiffon cake.

(laughs)

Oh, that's such a good idea, Judy!

Sorry. Oh, chiffon cake,

god damn it.

Start over! Start over, oh.

Thanks a lot, Brad. Sorry.

Today, I'm back to try one more type of cake,

and that is a chiffon cake.

It's still a sponge, but it has oil instead of butter.

It might work well for a Twinkie because as we know

from reading the ingredient list

there is no butter in a Twinkie.

So I need vegetable oil, like a neutral oil,

because I don't wanna actually flavor the cake.

There's a weird shape going on, I think.

Like, you see kind of where the bubbles were in the egg.

I don't feel that good about it.

I don't think it looks as good as the yellow cake.

Oh man, it's like so sad looking.

I don't. No.

My favorite ones yet.

(laughs) Great.

What are you gonna go back to now?

I think just the yellow cake.

What if it was like a happy mixture of both?

Is that doable?

(sighs)

To like, Frankenstein them?

Yeah, Twinkies are a Frankenstein, in my opinion.

The only thing I can think of that I could try doing

is taking the yellow cake recipe

and making it just like this, by separating out the whites

from the whole eggs, and whipping them

and folding them in at the end.

Maybe. It's not a bad idea.

Feeling this one.

There's a moistness, like you kind of get

a little bit of a buttery residue on your hands.

Very happy about that.

I'm gonna break it open and see inside.

Voila, it looks really good.

The base of it is butter, rather than merengue,

so it didn't just dissolve into air.

They're really, really delicious.

(laughs)

Nice shape, nice color, I think it might be

your best batch yet.

Well good, because I'm not making 'em again.

(laughs)

So I'm glad that I went the chiffon route,

'cause I don't think I would've added in beaten egg white.

Something about the texture clued me in to that final step.

I mean, I think this is how I would want

a Twinkie to taste.

Like, if someone just described to me what it was supposed

to be, this is how I would imagine it to be.

Well, thanks, I feel like we--

You did it! Yeah, I feel like we

accomplished what we set out to do.

After many, many attempts. (laughs)

Here's what you'll need

if you want to make the Twinkies at home.

For the cake:

Three and 1/3 cups cake flour,

two cups sugar,

one tablespoon baking powder,

one teaspoon Kosher salt,

half a teaspoon baking soda,

two sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature,

one cup buttermilk, at room temperature,

two tablespoons vegetable oil,

five large egg yolks, plus three large egg whites,

and one tablespoon vanilla extract.

So, whisk together all of your dry ingredients

in the bowl of an electric mixer,

add the butter, buttermilk and oil,

and beat on medium speed until it's smooth.

Add your egg yolks and vanilla, and beat again until

smooth and light, whip your egg whites to stiff peaks,

and fold into the batter.

Use a piping bag to fill the molds about 2/3 of the way,

and then bake in the oven until they're risen

and golden brown around the edges, about 20 minutes.

So for the frosting you'll need:

two large egg whites, a half a cup of sugar,

a quarter of a teaspoon cream of tartar,

two sticks unsalted butter that are very room-temperature,

and one tablespoon vanilla extract.

Combine the egg whites and the 1/2 cup sugar

in the bowl of an electric mixer.

Beat over a double-boiler until

the mixture is thick and white, and it registers 160

on an instant-read thermometer.

Whip the egg-white mixture until

the sides of the bowl are room temperature.

A tablespoon at a time, add your butter, beating on high,

until the mixture is super thick and light,

then add your vanilla.

Transfer the buttercream to a piping bag

that has an injector tip fitted on the end.

Flip the Twinkies over and insert the tip of the injector

about 1/2 inch down into the cake, and squeeze evenly

until you can see the sides

of the Twinkie expand, and enjoy!

All right there's only one thing left to do.

(sighs) Bye, Twinkie.