In Pursuit of the Ultimate Chocolate Cake, with Helen Goh

Episode Transcript

- Hey bakers, before we get into the episode, I need to tell you something. You already know that King Arthur has a legendary baking school in Vermont and Washington State. Well, a few years ago, we launched a new way to take classes from our world class educators. You can take these classes anytime, anywhere. It's called Baking School on Demand. And guess what? Things bakers know, listeners, get a discount. Use code pod 25 for 25% off your first order. That's POD25 for 25% off. If you can believe that. It's the deal of the century, but you gotta hurry because it expires on January 1st, 2027. Pick up a class for yourself or one of your friends or your dog at kingarthurbaking.com. Okay, now let's get Jessica in here and start the episode. Is the idea that people are gonna put the cake in the casket and you're gonna be buried with all these cakes?

- From King Arthur Baking Company, this is Things Bakers Know. I'm Jessica Battalana, employee owner at King Arthur Baking.

- And I'm David Tamarkin, employee owner at King Arthur Baking. And today we're back with another season.

- I still say season three, but it's in fact season four.

- Who knows anymore?

- Like sands through the hourglass.

- And we're talking about a very special baked good chocolate cake.

- I'm glad that we're starting the season with chocolate cake because I feel like finally we have something that I can talk about with both passion and authority. You know, that's not always the case.

- You are an expert in this.

- I mean, I like to fancy myself an expert. I guess maybe I'm an expert enthusiast.

- No, I think you're an actual expert. I mean, you have a chocolate cake recipe that you develop, that you are in love with, that you stand behind.

- Well, I guess I am an expert, and here's why. Last summer, I got a call from my friend Tamar Adler. So Tamar is a cookbook author.

- Yeah, name drop. Okay. Name drop. Yeah.

- Um, she also writes a cooking column or food column for Vogue, and she was writing an article for Vogue about chocolate cake because she had been spending some time in Spain. She, I know. Name drop sounds great. And she went past some bakery that had a sign in the window that said world's best chocolate cake. So, of course, she goes in to get this world's best chocolate cake.

- This is a very common claim, by the way.

- I think it is.

- Everybody thinks that their chocolate cake is the world's best.

- Yeah. Anyway, so this bakery in Madrid has.

- I'm already angry.

- And she gets the cake and she's describing the cake to me. And she said it was layers of chocolate meringue, sandwiched with like a chocolate cream, and then the whole thing is covered in ganache. And I said, that sounds delicious, and it also does not sound like a chocolate cake.

- Agree.

- I was like, it is a cake that is chocolate-ish. But that led Tamara and I just sort of go down the rabbit hole. And that was sort of like the point of this article was like, what is the world's best chocolate cake?

- Or what even is chocolate cake?

- What is life, even?

- Anyway, extension to what is life.

- And I told her when I think about chocolate cake, I don't picture anything like the chocolate cake that she is describing from this bakery in Madrid. I think of like a two or four-layer plush crumbed cake. Cake cake.

- Yeah.

- Three, three is fine. Never three. Uh, with lots of frosting.

- Okay.

- You know, like a chocolate birthday cake is what I think of as a chocolate cake. Yeah. And that is my ideal chocolate cake. And I did publish a recipe for that style of chocolate cake in my cookbook repertoire. I didn't call it world's best, because you know, humility, Yankee humility.

- If anything you're known for, it's humility.

- Wow. So it is a creamed buttercake.

- I mean, I think I think I believe in that same chapter in your book, you're like, I don't know. I wasn't going to include chocolate chip cookies, but I decided mine are the best. So here's another chocolate chip cookie which is.

- I couldn't use it twice. Then it starts to seem a little fake. But it's a creamed buttercake. It has cocoa, it has chocolate, and then it has this chocolate frosting, which is basically a ganache. So cream and chocolate, and then you add softened butter to it. You whisk in softened butter. So you get this like really glossy, luxurious frosting. So that is what I think of when I think of chocolate cake. Side note, I recently just finished my estate plan.

- Which I mean, this is important to very important too. I have not done my. You have not? No. David. I don't have kids.

- I mean Well, just you can decide to do that. My kids are the listeners of the podcast. Because we're gonna need to double down on. So we finished our estate plan, and I will say they got into some real granular detail. Like, of course, you know, you're like, where do you want your money to go? Sure, all that stuff. But then on page like 16, they're like, what songs do you want played at your funeral?

- Oh god. No, I mean, I don't want songs. Everyone's gonna be crying. You're not gonna hear the songs.

- And I was like, um, can I fill this in later or do I need to?

- Yeah, your musical taste could completely change.

- I know.

- Yeah.

- Anyway, so I I have been thinking about that a lot, what songs? But then I I was like, well, I don't know what songs to play, but I feel like I do know what this is so depressing. But I was like, people could make this cake. Like maybe there should be a lots of chocolate cake at my funeral.

- So you're dictating in your will that at your funeral people must make this cake?

- I mean, I haven't dictated, but it just seems like if you're gonna ask about what songs, maybe you want to ask about the food. Like maybe you should write in some details about that.

- Is the idea that people are gonna put the cake in the casket and you're gonna be buried with all these cakes? Or are we gonna be feeding the Well, this is now taking a turn, really?

- This is taking a turn.

- Yes, it has. I mean, there's nothing I like more than talking about death and planning for death. I mean we don't think about it enough.

- No, we don't.

- And I actually appreciate that you're thinking about the cake part because that would bring a level of joy and would be really speak to who you are as a person. Yeah. You know, um, it would really be a celebration of who you are. So I I hope that I'm not there. I don't want to be there. You know, I want to die first, is what I'm saying. Okay. I would hate to see you perish. But if I am there, I will bring the cake. I will bring the cake. Yes, I'll see it through. Okay. And I will be happy.

- Yeah, I mean, I think so. Yeah.

- It'll be a celebratory moment.

- So, wow.

- Oh, where are welcome to season four?

- Where we tackle some of the bigger issues.

- We are I I will just warn listeners that Jessica and I are in existential moods lately. So this is gonna be an existential, this is gonna be this is midlife.

- I mean, I just told you before we started recording that I got my ears pierced again. So all the red flags are starting to flap in the breeze, you know. Way back in season one, we were talking about our birthday cake episode, we were talking about sort of our platonic ideal of a birthday cake. And at that point, you did invoke a chocolate cake, a flowerless chocolate cake. And so I'm wondering, is that sort of your platonic ideal when I say world's best chocolate cake?

- No, I mean that I remember talking about that cake and saying that, you know, as I get older, I kind of just want simpler single-layered cakes. But when I just hear the word chocolate cake, I think of something very much like what you described. Yeah. Because that's what I grew up with of chocolate cake, and it's, you know, it was a birthday cake. Yeah. My mom made a very classic cake that of course we all were all obsessed with as kids, and you know, and then as we grew up, we wanted to make it and thought it was like this gourmet thing, and turns out it was like ripped from the back of some box of like some Hershey's cocoa box or one of these old school classic, you know, cookbooks. It's a very simple, very classic chocolate cake. That's what I that's what I think of.

- Well, and you know, I think you speak to something that Tamara also talked about in that Vogue article. She spoke to Queen Dory Greenspan. Yes. And, you know, Dory was saying that nostalgia has a lot to do with what people consider to be their perfect chocolate cake, which I think is true. Growing up, my aunt used to make this cake, which it has a great name. It's called Tommy Torbett's mother's chocolate cake. Tommy Torbett was a kid, poor Tommy Torbett, what a name. Was a kid that my um cousins went to school with.

- Oh.

- And the recipe came from his mother. It's like a cocoa cake, and she used to do it with like a white frosting.

- That's a good thing.

- And I think of that as it is controversial, but I sort of feel like I think about that cake, and I'm like, yeah, it's just it's just a solid chocolate cake.

- Yeah. I feel like they're two different things. I feel like in this episode we gotta nail down what we're actually talking about, right? Because I think we're I think what we are talking about is our layer cakes. Because I think I'm getting the sense from you, especially that if I say, Oh, this like here's a uh chocolate souffle cake, you know, one of these cakes that's just this almost no flour or or only a little bit of flour. It's really just eggs, butter, and tons of chocolate. Yep. Very delicious. Very delicious. Not what we're talking about, and not chocolate cake, you would call that, I think, something else. Flourless chocolate cake, the chocolate death cake. Chocolate death cake. So it was like chocolate birthday cake and chocolate death cake funeral cake.

- Yeah. And I do love those, the ones that you're describing, the sort of souffle style, but I do think about it as a different thing. But you did some research about sort of the origins of like a chocolate layer cake or a chocolate cake as we are talking about it in this episode.

- I did. And and honestly, it didn't sound like chocolate cake at all. Here's where what I saw. You know, this was a cake recipe published in America in 1847 in Eliza Leslie's book, The Lady's Receipt Book. I'm gonna give you the ingredients and you tell me, is this a chocolate cake? Three ounces of unsweetened chocolate, 10 eggs, tons of butter, tons of sugar, an entire grated nutmeg? I don't how would you even do that? Especially in 1847, when microplanks didn't exist, how would you even do that? That sounds well But you know, I mean, so and that's not a lot of chocolate for all that other stuff, you know.

- And you know, it reminds me of an exp of something one of my kids once told me when they didn't want to eat something I'd made. They said, I don't have to taste it to know that it's bad.

- Right.

- Three ounces of unsweetened chocolate does not a chocolate cake make.

- You can picture this cake, right? It's light brown and it's not what I want in my chocolate cake. I want a very dark cake. I also, but I also don't want it like a black cake. Like, I don't want a cake made with our black cocoa because to me that's going too far. It's too bitter. But again, to your point, people, different people have different ideas, and whatever you grew up with is the chocolate cake that you crave.

- Well, we interestingly, so we're working on cookbook that will be out next fall. It's a great book. And we wanted to put in, you know how people have the idea of like house wine? Like they're like, oh, our house wine is I thought you said house swine. Not in my house. That's very Lena Doug of you. Yeah, house wine. House wine. And I was like, well, wouldn't it like what about this idea of like house house vanilla and house chocolate cake? Like, I think people want that. They want like the go-to recipe that it's like, it's a birthday, this is what I make. Um, and so we were sort of noodling around with this like house cake idea. And that led one of our recipe developers, Molly Marslet Kelly, to bake. I don't know, I mean, she tried like a dozen different formulas for chocolate cake, some from King Arthur Archives, some from other bakers, and she did like a lot of side-by-side-by-side comparisons. And it was very illuminating. Sorry you weren't invited.

- I never put I put in a new policy recently to always be invited, even if you don't want me there. But yeah, I imagine there were cakes that were only butter, cakes that were butter and oil, cakes made with only cocoa, cakes made with cocoa and chocolate, cakes made with coffee.

- Yeah.

- Which I think is a great move.

- Yep.

- What I found in, you know, when I've worked with Test Kitchens developing chocolate cake recipes is that the addition of coffee or even just hot water, but something about the hot liquid really does something to the batter. And maybe it's blooming the cocoa in the batter. I don't know what it's doing. I'm not the scientist here at King Arthur, but I I find that to be usually successful. So where where did we land?

- So, you know, we landed sort of um in the Switzerland of chocolate cakes, I would say. So we like the flavor of butter because it's delicious, but a chocolate cake made only with butter tends to taste drier. So we added both butter and oil. So then you get like that really like plush, almost like box cake-like crumb to it, but you get the good flavor of butter. Cocoa, I think, is a great addition to a chocolate cake, um, but it is a very, as you said, like a very drying ingredient. Like it's pulling moisture out. So that's why I think that chocolate cakes made only with cocoa sometimes can, even if they're baked correctly, give you like the impression of dryness. So this has cocoa in it, but it also has semi-sweet chocolate, melted semi-sweet chocolate, and then of course eggs, but also sour cream to add just like extra fat and therefore extra moisture.

- Yeah.

- And man, it is a really, really great cake. And I think it kind of threads the needle of pure chocolate flavor.

- You know, but you've pointed out a couple of things that speak to the biggest problem people have with chocolate cake, which is the dry factor. Yeah. So often people make chocolate cakes and they either legitimately come out dry, or there's just the perception that they're dry. Right. And sometimes they're actually not dry, sometimes they're perfectly cooked, but it's just it just tastes that way on the palate.

- Yeah.

- So there's a philosophical question there. Is it dry if it tastes dry? Or is it not dry? But you know, uh, but that is a real problem. And uh you spoke to some of the solutions, but as you were talking about that, I was thinking about how important it is to serve chocolate cake at room temperature. Yes. Because the butter, that's it's true for all butter cakes, but it's especially true if you have a cake made with chocolate too, because just like butter, chocolate is gonna solidify if it's cold, and that's gonna taste dry, and it's gonna and and it's gonna taste um just worse. So you have to set those cakes out and eat them at room temperature so that they're perfectly plush and you get all it's also gonna taste better too. You can taste more if it's if a cake's not cold.

- Also, I think you know, one of the things obviously that contributes to dry cake is over baking it, right? And I think it can be more challenging with a chocolate cake to know when it's perfectly baked than with a vanilla cake, where you can sort of see what's happening color-wise.

- Yeah.

- With a chocolate cake, you can't see, so you have to like use your other baker's spidey senses. So, you know, like you're looking sort of for the way that it like pulls away from the sides of the pan. And like, you know, you can't just go by you can't go by color. So pitfalls, so many pitfalls, so many pitfalls, so many different formulas out there for chocolate cake. And, you know, we were on this topic of world's best, right? Like world's best, world's best, which I think is sort of absurd, but like, okay, I'm I'll play along. And many years ago, the New York Times wrote an article about Helen Ghowe. So Helen Ghough is a London-based baker. She has collaborated with Odolange on his book Sweet. Um, she now has uh her own book, which just won a James Beard Award called Baking and the Meaning of Life. Um, and I called her up to talk to her about cake because the New York Times, when they wrote this article about this cake, called it, you guessed it, the world's best chocolate cake. So I wanted to talk to her about that formula. And spoiler, her family hates it.

- Oh, really? That's that's hilarious. I can't wait to hear this conversation because you were ecstatic about it after you talked to her, Rossi, our producer, was like, oh my gosh, that conversation was so good.

- I think if Helen is my best friend now, I don't know if she considers me the same, but yeah, we really had a great time. So um we'll tee that up in a bit.

- Often when I end my interviews for the podcast, I'm like, they hated me. They hate me. Anyway, can't wait to hear this.

- Helen, thank you so much for joining us on Things Bakers Know. It made perfect sense to have you for our chocolate cake episode because many years ago you owned a cafe in Melbourne, Australia, where you grew up, and you served a chocolate cake at this cafe, and it got named as the world's best chocolate cake by a newspaper reporter. So I was like, all right, obviously we're gonna have the inventor of the world's best chocolate cake on the chocolate cake episode.

- Well, you know, I was very uncomfortable with that headline. It was literally the front page of the Sunday paper. And I was very uncomfortable because I thought disappointment is guaranteed, you know, but we have a title like that. There's only one way to go, it's down. Yeah, it's interesting because I I think of chocolate cake as not one category, but a kind of major category from which there are loads of other cat, you know, uh other types of chocolate cake. I don't see chocolate cake as one cake. Right. And in fact, for a long time, because my I wouldn't say it was my introduction, but because I was sort of known for this particular chocolate cake, because it was so popular. And it it does, I mean, 25 years later, it's still, you know, the most commonly um requested cake of, you know, from my repertoire, whether from friends or people from for you know wanting a cake for a catering or even a wedding. I've done many of them, you know, many of those cakes for wedding. And um, you know, so for a long time I just sort of associated that with chocolate cake. And to be honest, uh I don't particularly love that cake. Because I find it altogether too rich. Oh interesting, too heavy and too rich. But I thought, yeah, that's the quintessential chocolate cake. And recently, um, well, I tried when my children were little and I would make them, you know, cakes for their birthdays, they then, you know, they're they wouldn't be discerning. They're just, you know, I it's really all for me to sort of decorate, and they were only interested in the icing and the decoration. Sure. When they became older and they're now 15 and 11, so a few years ago, they started to voice that they didn't really like that chocolate cake either.

- Well, that's kids for you, you know, right? You know, you had this cafe in Melbourne, Australia, where you grew up, and then you moved to London for love, I think, correct? Yes. Moved to London for love. Yes. Um, and you were baking with Oda Lange's team, but also um working as a psychologist by day, correct? That's right. You um co-authored the book Sweet with Yotam, and then of course, Baking and the Meaning of Life, your latest book, which just won a James Beard Award, which we were so thrilled to see because it is such a beautiful book. Yes. So I was looking at chocolate cake recipes that you've published over the years, you know, in Sweet and then in Baking in the Meaning of Life. And one of the things that I noticed is like, okay, world's best chocolate cake, as you say, is a creamed butter cake. It's got lots of melted chocolate in it, a little bit of cocoa. And then by contrast, in your latest book, you have the chocolate cake for everyone, which is a cocoa cake, cocoa and oil. And it's vegan. And it's vegan. And I thought that was really interesting. And so I would love to hear you talk about sort of like texture-wise and flavor-wise for people that don't know when they're sort of evaluating a chocolate cake recipe. Like if you see a recipe that has melted chocolate and butter, what can you sort of expect from it flavor-wise, texture-wise, versus, you know, an oil and cocoa cake?

- Right. So the the world's best chocolate cake, as you said, has a lot of you know, chocolate and it also has a lot of coffee and a lot of butter and sugar, all the good stuff, really. When you add oil, it it gives a different texture. It's just lighter, moister. And of course, you miss the dairy flavor of the of the butter, but when you add the buttermilk, that then rounds it out. You know, so yeah, like kind of thinking through what it is we do and don't like, I can not reverse engineer, but I can engineer a cake using those ingredients in different proportions. So I bloom the cocoa, you know, it just hydrates the cocoa. I use Dutch process, it's rich. I feel like I get all the compounds. I can really taste cocoa. It feels more pure to me without just being rich.

- Yes, I can I can appreciate that. And I think that note about blooming cocoa is an important one because that's a step that is not always written into recipes, but cocoa is a very drying ingredient. Yes. And so by prehydrating it, and also by using oil, I think you get a cake that at least on the tongue tastes more moist. And I also think of oil cakes as having that almost, and I don't mean this as a negative, I mean as a positive, like almost having that box cake quality. Like it's that very fine, even crumb. That's right.

- There's something nostalgic about it that I love. And the other one is kind of much more sophisticated. It has all the right things that chocolate loves: vanilla and coffee and butter, all of that.

- You know, I think that there is that, you know, nostalgia. I mean, and and here we can get into your, you know, your psychology training. Like nostalgia is such a strong force in cooking and baking.

- Absolutely, because it's also that anticipatory reward. You know, when you think of chocolate cake or chocolate, people talk about the compounds in chocolate having sort of serotonin-like effects, that it can light up the pleasure centers. And maybe that's so, but it's unconscious. But what we do think of is that there's something pleasurable. I think we anticipate something pleasurable. And that in itself sort of gets you, you know, your appetite is is wet for that.

- Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I do think people tend to, I mean, particularly with cakes, maybe it's not the first cake that you ever had that you come back to, but I think your sort of childhood birthday cake, if you were fortunate enough to have a sort of house birthday cake made for you, like it imprints on your brain in a way.

- We just associate it with all good things, having attention because it's your birthday, being given something, being spoiled, all of those things. Go together.

- Well, and I what I love, I mean, so many things that I love about Baking and the Meaning of Life, but it's interesting how that book is organized. Rather than sort of do traditional chapters of like cookies, pies, whatever, you sort of impose a different chapter structure. So let's talk about that because chocolate cake for everyone falls into the chapter that's called nurturing, which I think sort of perfectly sums up what we're talking about here. Yes.

- Yes. For many years, publishers had contacted me when they found out that I was a psychologist. That what about combining the two? And I didn't, the penny didn't drop for me. And finally, after we wrapped up comfort and I had some time, I thought actually, what I really wanted to get back to was the recipes that I really loved. Because I think when you're a product developer for an organization like Otolengia, you're so focused on creativity, originality. And having a break from that, I returned to the recipes that I knew and loved. And when I thought about these recipes, the thing that jumped up for me is the context of the recipe, whether I made it for somebody or whether it's because it's a favorite recipe from my aunt, or that context was as important to me as the recipe was good. I mean, obviously, if the recipe's not good, it's not going to stand the test of time. But I felt that I wanted to say something about why we bake. And then as soon as I had that idea, the chapter headings, you know, nurturing, celebration, rituals and tradition, giving, receiving, and sharing, learning, growth, and achievement, they sort of welled up from within me all the reasons why I bake. And then I thought, well, maybe that's the reason why a lot of us bake, that it wasn't just to put something on the table, because as I say in the book, nobody needs to eat cake. And somehow, well, we're told, right, yeah, even when we're told, you know, you need to not have so much cake or you need to cut on to cut off sugar, the tradition of making cake persists, and it persists because it serves another reason. And for all the reasons that I sort of outline in the book.

- You know, something that struck me and really resonated, you know, sort of with the greater King Arthur, you know, environment here. You you write, baking helps create meaning in our lives. And I just think it's such a lovely sentiment. It is more than just it's more than just the chocolate cake, you know, it's more than just the the buns that, you know, it gives us this ritual and tradition and this sort of like the love of process that I think is really valuable.

- There, there is definitely that process too. And you know, for a long time people said, well, what what what is it about psychology and baking that has you so enthralled with both of them? Because I've never been able to give up one the other. And I used to say, Oh no, they're just like two parallel train tracks that they'll never meet. They're just two things that I love. And actually, recently, through speaking with people like you, I've thought more about that. And I've thought it's this idea of the process, being in really immersed in that process, that patience and this sense of uh the presence of, you know, when you're baking, you do have, I mean, I, you know, some people say baking makes them nervous because they you have to sort of focus. But actually, I see it as such a such an invitation to forget about everything else. And you know, when some people say baking is therapeutic, and I think it's that that they feel, but they feel is that this sort of focus on things. It you're not so it's not brain surgery, so it's not that stressful. It shouldn't be anyway, right? But it but it does require a focus. You know, you're not stirring onions and talking to your mum on the phone. You are you are measuring something, you know, precisely. And that takes you away from all that white noise about what you did yesterday or what's going to happen tomorrow. So I think in that sense, that presence, which is like when I'm with my patients, you know, that you're you're being present, you're focused on that process of communication, and then this and and also the trust of the process, you know, that is something about that I guess is is quite enthralling for me.

- Yes, I think so too. And I think, you know, for listeners out there who are, you know, looking for sort of a gateway cake, you know, I would point them to any of your, I would point them to world's best if you like that super, you know, rich.

- Um, I can definitely say my family and I are in the minority, yeah. Not in that not being our favorite cake. It seems to be everyone else's.

- Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. It's such a treat. And um, you know, I'm just so glad that the creator of the world's best chocolate cake deigned to speak with us on the It's King Arthur, my goodness. It's me who's on it. So, David, this whole episode is basically about how everyone loves cake. And that's something that I've embraced recently because I just became the ambassador for a new Vermont chapter of Cake for Kids.

- Oh, I thought you were gonna say ambassador for Cake Kids to the United Nations. I don't know. I mean, you can do anything.

- So, Cake for Kids is an organization that provides birthday and other celebration cakes to underserved youth in our communities. They have chapters across the country, and so together with other employee owners and Vermont bakers, we have been partnering with local agencies to bake these cakes for these kids. And honestly, I mean, everyone's bringing their A game. There's Paw Patrol cakes, there's truck cakes, every color, decorated. Um, and it's just such a great organization to give, you know, cakes to kids who may not have ever had a home-baked birthday cake in their life. That is so sweet. It's amazing. And they Cake for Kids just delivered their 100,000th cake this year, which is incredible.

- And you baked how many thousands of those?

- Not yet. Um, but the partnership is new. We're still looking for bakers in Vermont. Um, and you can also find local chapters near you. You can join. You can bake cakes for kids in your community. You can go to cakeforkids.org to learn more.

- This episode is brought to you by Supernatural. Supernatural makes sprinkles, food colors, and flavors that are completely colored by plants, fully traceable, and totally free from anything artificial or synthetic.

- And it's just a proven fact. It is just a proven fact that sprinkles make everything more fun. So you can add them to your pancake batter, you can sprinkle them on your ice cream, and of course, you can use them to top a frosted cake.

- Yeah, or a brownie. Or a brownie. There's a very popular brownie out there that has sprinkles on it. I don't mess with that, but I will mess with this.

- Supernatural sprinkles, food colors, flavors, and more at kingarthurbaking.com. And the full line is available at supernaturalkitchen.com.

- It's time for our next segment, Ask the Bakers. For Ask the Bakers, we want to hear from you. If you have a baking question for us, head to KingArthurbaking.com slash podcast to record a voice message, and we may end up using it on the show. That's kingarthurbaking.com slash podcast.

- You know, it's great because we have been on break for so long that the virtual mailbags were full. Tons of great questions. But I'm sure that people, you know, that maybe you don't want to record a question and then wait, you know, six months to have an answer. No one has patience anymore. So if you have a baking question that simply cannot wait, you can always reach out to our bakers hotline via phone, email, or online chat. You can go to kingarthurbaking.com slash bakers dash hotline. That's kingarthurbaking.com slash bakers dash hotline, or call us at 855-371-2253. That's 2253 as in bake.

- You know, I'm just thinking like we are the anti-AI.

- We are.

- AI gives you the answer so quickly, and we give it to you three months later.

- Well, and there's actually humans, you know.

- Yes, so yes, we are actually humans. We're actually humans. I mean, you know.

- Yeah.

- Anyway, let's hear our first question.

- Hi. I've been baking for a while now, and I'm usually very pleased with my results. But that said, there is one thing I've always wondered. Some cake recipes say to add the flour and wet ingredients alternately, starting and ending with the flour, while other cake recipes don't bother with that at all. What's the point of doing it that way? And how does it affect the batter or the final cake? And why is it always flour first and last? Thanks for taking my question.

- I like this question because, like we said, this is the existential season of our and she's asking some existential questions. She's like, Yeah, I'm doing, but why?

- But why? Why? But why, why? I mean, I think it's a good question because I also think, you know, sometimes you just do things because you're told to do them without questioning, you know, like a sh like a sheep just right to the cliff. Making money. You know, then there's invariably this like this takes extra time. Like, is it really worth it? Right. Which is actually, I mean, I think that's an interesting thing about our recipe development process here at King Arthur because we're always asking that question like, is it actually worth it? Does it make a difference? Do people have to do this? And sort of like eliminating the chaff from a recipe, right? So that like if it's in the recipe that we've published, like there's a reason for it.

- Yeah. And the test kitchen loves it when I go in there and they explain how the recipe's done. And I'm like, well, did you have to do it this way or this way? How about we just skip this step? They love that.

- Yeah, they love that after a dozen tests, just have you come in and just um so I think there's a there's uh quite a few reasons. I think that this alternating of the wet and dry ingredients does a few things. So most cake recipes are pretty high in fat, whether that's butter or oil or a combination. Um and when you start to add the wet ingredients to that mixture, like the batter can separate. Like it physically looks like a little clumpy and separated. Looks curdled. It looks curdled, which is kind of gross. Um, and you know, maybe doesn't affect the final outcome of your cake, but it's not great to start with like a broken emulsion, right? So by alternating the flour first, you know, you're sort of stabilizing that fat, and then you're adding the liquid, flour, liquid, flour. And it'll preserve that nice emulsion so your cake won't look all curdled, your batter won't look all curdled. So that's part of it. I also think it does prevent like over mixing, you know, like you're not adding all the flour at once and just like hammering away in the mixer, so developing the gluten, which can lead to like a tougher cake. This is less of a concern, although I mentioned it because I think it's you know another sort of best practice. Like if you dump in all the flour at once, you can get like clumps of drying greens. Yeah. And that is disgusting when you're like cutting. This has happened to me before. You like you get like a little pocket of like soda and flour.

- It's particularly bad in chocolate cake, right? Because it's so hydro shape. Right, yeah.

- Exactly. And you know, sometimes I have seen recipes that call for like adding it in like five editions, which I just feel like is like a little bit of overkill. Just calm down. Yeah. I mean, I don't think like you have to do that, but I think you know, two or three additions is good practice. You get it evenly mixed, you avoid the curdling, um, and then you have like an you know a nice smooth batter when it goes into the pans.

- So it's not something to freak out about. And to your point, and actually, you can probably get a great cake from a curdled batter anyway, but why not go for gold?

- Yeah, go for a gold.

- Why not go for smooth and beautiful?

- Yeah, I think so.

- You know, let's hear the next question.

- Let's hear the next question. Sometimes I make a lot of cake and can't eat everything at once. What's the best way to free slices of cake? I sort of think like a cake by you know, by design feeds a lot of people.

- Yeah, this is a real problem. Yes. You know, if you're especially if you're a household of two or even four. Even four. Like a lot of these cakes serve eight, ten, twelve people, especially if you have a lot of layers of a really tall cake. And the first rule of cake, never throw any cake away. No, don't compost that cake. No, no, no, no, no. Always save your cake. Cake freezes really well.

- Yeah, yeah, it does it. Well, and I also think the uh the second rule of cake is like don't do what I it like there's sort of like there's a point at which the cake is gonna get less delicious. Yes, it's gonna take a few days, but like when you're soldiering forth on like day four of a cake, like trying to finish it off, it's getting drier. It's not gonna be delicious.

- It's getting bad. No, I don't like that at all, right? Better to like maybe two dates and then cut your losses. Yes. Or is it really cutting your losses? Do it, preserve the great cake by cutting it into slices and freezing it and then pulling it out, you know, when you want one. I used to think it was a myth that baked goods expired in the freezer. I thought you could keep them in there forever. That's not true. I do think after a few months they start to degrade a little bit.

- Well, that really flies in the face of people saving the top layer of their wedding cake. Oh, it sure does. You know?

- Yeah, it does. I think it's not gonna be great. It's not. I don't think it's gonna be great. So, what we're recommending here is that after a few days, a couple days, slice your cake, and we're gonna talk about how in a second, put it in the freezer, pull it out. The other great thing about slices of frozen cake is they thaw so quickly.

- Yes.

- I've done this you know, I've in between meetings, you know, in between Zoom meetings, I go and I take a you know, piece of cake out, put it on the counter, have my meeting, come back, the cake's perfect. Wow, I love that for you.

- That's a good well, and I do think the the slices, I feel this about all baked goods, actually, that you're freezing, like, you know, don't freeze unless you're sure that you're gonna pull out like the whole pan of it and eat it. It's way better to like portion it and freeze, because then you can just pull out what you want or what you need. Right. And so when you're talking about freezing it, so you're cutting the cake into slices, and then what do you do?

- Well, here's what you're supposed to what do I do, or what what should I do? What I should do is I should like cut each slice and put some like wax paper or parchment paper against the slice on the cut side. On the cut side. Um, so you imagine a sheet tray, and you know, each slice is laying on the sheet tray, and then there's a piece of wax paper or parchment paper on the cut side of each slice. Um basically to avoid it getting freezer burned, when you put that tray in the freezer, uncovered for about an hour or two to just get it frozen. Yeah, at which point then you can transfer it to a plastic bag because it's already frozen and it's not gonna get all mushed together. Um, that's the way you're supposed to do it. I often don't mess with the parchment paper. That's to my peril. You know, don't do as I say, not as I do.

- I put parchment and then I wrap each slice in plastic wrap. Yeah, that's an I mean and then I put them into a ziplock bag.

- Again, I think that's probably the best practice. Yeah. I don't I hate plastic wrap. It feels so wasteful to me. And I'm willing to kind of pry slices of frozen cake apart. I get some of my anger out.

- Yeah. It is great though. I have some of my son's birthday cake. His birthday is at the end of June. You know, it's just in there.

- When you are like craving something sweet and it seems like there's nothing in the house, and then you remember that there's a slice of cake in your fridge, that is a great moment.

- That's a great moment. Yeah. Um, well, those that's a good tip. And I think it prevents the crime of wasted cake. Yeah. No wasted cake. No wasted cake. I would not do this. I just want to offer as an aside. I would not do this with like a cake that has like a whipped cream filling or whipped cream frosting. I don't think those survive so well.

- No, no.

- I would be nervous about ones that have like a fruit filling because the fruit filling is gonna get ice, you know, a little icy. I mean, I would still do it probably because you know.

- The whipped cream, I agree with you. I mean, this is why I don't, I personally don't understand or mess with whipped cream frostings. Because I'm like, that's it's so the longevity question. Yeah, I mean, it it just goes bad so quickly.

- The other thing that I want to say before we get off this topic is that we do have on the King Arthur site a recipe for like a small birthday cake.

- Oh, yeah. It's like a little six and I think the name of the recipe is cute and small chocolate cake.

- And it is a cute and small chocolate cake. So if you really, you know, if you know that you're not gonna get through a whole layer cake, but you still want like a cake that feels, you know, like a little celebration, that is a great recipe. And that can be polished off like in a sitting. I mean, or maybe two.

- Yes. I mean, it's basically an individual cake.

- Yeah, it's a personal pancake. Anyway, I hope that helps. And um, I look forward to the callback when you tell us that you have resurrected your slices from the freezer. Yeah. Let's go to our next question.

- So I have learned to use my instant read thermometer when baking bread to the proper temperature, but I'm wondering, can we do the same thing with cakes and cupcakes? So we don't have soggy, droopy middles like I sometimes get. Thank you.

- I mean, look, my solution for a soggy, droopy middle is I just work with my trainer twice a week. You know, I watch what I eat.

- Yeah, you know, do that cardio.

- It takes a while, it takes commitment, you know. So my reason's not gonna help me then.

- On many of our recipes, including all of the recipes in the big book of bread, we do put an internal temperature. It's like one tool in the toolbox, right? Because I think it's a little misleading because a bread or any baked good can sort of hit that internal temperature and then stay at that internal temperature for, you know, a a little while. So it's like, do you are you pulling it when it first hits that temperature? Are you pulling, you know, it's a fine thing to use as a benchmark in addition to like your other senses.

- It it really depends on what is in the bread or in the baked good and the more enrichment and the more like kind of stuff that's in the baked good or the bread, it's gonna impact what what internal temperature you need to bake it to.

- I mean, and I think we could say, generally speaking, for you know, buttercakes, for pound cakes, for you know, chocolate and vanilla like birthday cake style cakes, they should register about 210 degrees Fahrenheit on an instant read thermometer when they are fully baked. However, I would say that that is just one of the ways, and maybe even the last way I would use to assess the duness of my cake.

- Yeah.

- And, you know, we spoke a little bit about this at the top of the show, but I would and again, it's harder with chocolate cakes than it is with vanilla cake because you don't have the color cues. But the things I look forward to see if my cake is done are um like that is it pulling away from the sides of the pan, because that's the sort of telltale sign of duness. Is it nicely domed? And then you like to do the touch test, which I like to do the touch test.

- I also like the the toothpick test. I mean, oh yeah, let's not forget about that. You know, I mean, I'm not looking for the toothpick to come out completely clean. I want it, I want to see some crumbs on there, but I don't, you know, if I see any bat or anything really wet, then I know. Yeah, I think the key for particularly chocolate cakes is to check early and often because I don't want to overcook my chocolate cake. I want to kind of hit it right when it when it's perfectly baked and it's got crumbs there. Um, yes, I love also the the the touch. I love to touch my cakes, it you know, the hot cake. Um it's a little dicey because it is hot, but basically uh that method is you're carefully reaching into the oven um to kind of pat the top of the cake and feel if it's firm. Yeah. And you know, with time you kind of learn, oh, this this cake is baked. You know, it's when it's not baked, it's gonna have more give. It's gonna feel like you could kind of push in deeper or that there's just something kind of lurking. You know, swampy. I was gonna say under there, which is not the best term, but that there's still battered there that that something's not right. But when it's done, you can just kind of feel that okay, this is this is set, this has structure.

- Yeah, and your fingers aren't your fingertips aren't gonna sink into it, that it's sort of like you know, bouncing back. Well, bouncing back is a strong word, but you know, it's not leaving an indent in there.

- Right.

- Personally, my um pain point, I tend to underbake. I'm always fearful of overbaking.

- Yeah.

- And then I have had that situation where like you take it out of the oven and it's like puffed and nice, and then it like deflates. Yeah. And that is a huge bummer.

- But do you still eat it?

- Of course I still eat it.

- Yeah, I'm still gonna be really.

- I'm like, oh, it's extra moist.

- Extra room for frosting, right?

- Well, and I I will say it, this isn't a somewhat related tip. Is it a tip? Is it just like a way to cover your failures, maybe? But if you have a cake that's slightly underbaked and you pop it in the freezer for a little bit. I mean, I think it's great to freeze cakes for layer cakes anyway. If you want to get ahead, they freeze beautifully. You know, you let them cool, wrap them tightly in your hated plastic wrap, put them in the freezer. But especially if it's an underbaked cake, I feel like the freezer sort of like it gives it like a fudginess, perhaps that maybe you didn't intend, but is not unpleasant. Oh. Interesting.

- It changes the structure of the cake. Even when it's comes out of the freezer.

- Yeah, I mean, I think it's better just to nail the bake than to do what I'm describing. But you know, if you blow it, sometimes you blow it.

- Sometimes you blow it.

- Um anyway, I hope that's helpful. So we as we like to remind people, like baking is a sensory experience. Like you gotta use all all of the senses, not just the old thermometer.

- Right. I love the language we use in the pizza book about how to determine when a pizza is done. Because we basically give some like time range, but then we're like, every oven's different. Look, look at the color, look at the top, look at the bottom, look at the rim. Is the cheese mud? I mean, you got yeah, use your common sense, people.

- Use your common sense, use all your common senses.

- Right, right.

- Yeah, so I hope that's helpful. Keep calling in with your questions, people.

- Yeah, keep calling in. I mean, as Jessica said, the inbox is full, but don't let that stop you. No. If you're good, you'll rise to the top and we'll pick you. So now we've arrived at the first Jess Opinion of the season. Every episode we'd like to check in with Jessica to see what wildly surprising and full-throated ideas are in our head. A segment we lovingly call Jess Opinions. Can't wait to hear what your chocolate cake just opinion is.

- Well, we cycled through a few possible opinions, and then we decided they were too inflammatory, too hot for YouTube.

- Too hot for YouTube. Yeah, thanks for mentioning YouTube, which we haven't mentioned yet. I hope you're watching us there, people.

- Yeah, we're on YouTube.

- Or watching us on Spotify or watching us on Apple Podcasts. Because you know what? I have makeup on and I have three outfit changes. Yeah. I mean, I I got out of bed and put myself together for this.

- So I did my hair and caused you and our producers to say, like, what's different about you? I was like, I tried today. That's what's different. I tried for YouTube. Anyway, after rejecting some of the more inflammatory opinions, which perhaps I'll publish in my memoir someday. Yes. I am here to defend a somewhat controversial combination of chocolate and fruit.

- Actually, this is inflammatory. I mean, yes, you're on the other side. You're def this is not an anti, this is a pro. Yeah. But it's still inflammatory because people hate chocolate and fruit. So you're talking about chocolate and orange.

- I like chocolate and orange. Yes.

- Here's the real test: chocolate and lemon. Love it. Love it.

- Love it.

- Really? I'm so glad you brought this up. How do you in what ways do you eat chocolate and lemon?

- Well, I had been trying to shoehorn some sort of chocolate lemon thing into this book that's coming out next fall. I was not successful. Although our test kitchen director was on board with it. Like we were messing around with like a lemon cookie with a chocolate footer. Oh. It was all inspired by Suzanne Gowen's book, Sunday Suppers at Luke, which I feel like I've mentioned on this podcast before. If I haven't, I have thought that I mentioned it because I love that book so much. And she has a recipe in that cookbook called, I think it's called Jessica's Lemon Tart. So obviously it was written for me. It was written for Suzanne's sister, Jessica, who is a lemon, loves lemon, also loves chocolate. And it's a like a Pat brise crust with a very thin layer of chocolate poured into the bottom of the crust where it sets, and then the lemon curd filling on top of it. And I just I made that, you know, I admittedly I read the recipe and I thought that sounds weird. Sounds so weird. But sometimes the weirder recipes are the ones that really get my attention because I just sort of think like, well, if the cookbook author is like going out on a limb here, like this has to be good. And so I tried it and it was extraordinary. And now I just think I'm just like always looking for other opportunities.

- Wow. Yeah. Well, I'm not a hater of chocolate and fruit. I'm a little iffy on the chocolate and lemon thing, but as I have gotten older, I've come to appreciate it more because I like that acidity there that kind of offsets the chocolate. Yeah.

- It's polarizing though. We tried to do a chocolate orange thing in the test kitchen last holiday season. People got absurd.

- Marine has those babka buns. Actually, I made those recently for a gay pride brunch. I was like, this does not seem very gay pride-y, but that's what the boys wanted. And let me tell you something. Gays love babka. Who knew? Who knew? And it's brushed with an orange simple syrup. You know, so it just gives you that aroma. Yeah. It doesn't necessarily does it taste like orange? Yeah, I guess a little bit, but it just gives it really more of that essence. It's great.

- I don't think I'm gonna change anyone's mind here. I mean, maybe I'll change people's mind about lemon and chocolate because that I do think is a combination worth trying.

- Why do you think people hate it so much?

- I don't know.

- Their minds are so close. Well, people call in people.

- Call in why do you think tell us why? Why do you hate lemon and chocolate? Why do you if you do?

- Why are you not dipping your lemons and chocolate? Yeah. Um why do you hate fruit and chocolate? Tell us, tell us your sob stories, and maybe we'll get to the bottom of this by the end of the season or next season. Okay. Or on Substack, we'll get into it.

- Yeah, that's a good idea. Yeah. Um, but I love it. I'm here to defend it. Great.

- I gotta say, like these like kind of tamer Jess opinions.

- I don't know.

- Not quite as fun. I know. So we gotta next episode, you gotta bump it up. See when you defend it. Yeah. But no, no, I'm putting the fangs back. This is what you get. This is what you get. Let's see if we can get a little more controversial with what you're baking this week.

- Oh, yeah, this is really gonna break.

- No, I don't what are you baking this week?

- I'm gonna make our recipe for French onion rolls. What? Yeah, I can't believe this! Onion rolls in this economy? I don't know. Um, they are a newer recipe on the King Arthur site. It's a Japanese milk bread, caramelized onions, grated gruyere. And it's like a real way to like dress up like a soup a soup dinner because we're getting into that season, you know? Yes. And I think it's nice to have like just like a little something extra.

- French onion anything. The French onion pizza in the pizza book is so good. Beyond.

- We have French onion scones now, which I tried in the test kitchen. Very good. I'm not normally like a savory scone person, but I mean, French onion soup is one of the top soups.

- Yeah. And when we do our soup episode, which we'll never do like a little chocolate in your French onion soup, because there's apparently like chocolate in any vegetable or fruit, you know?

- Um, yeah, so those French onion rolls, and they're they have like a little they're twisted in a way that looks quite elegant and like you spend a lot of time on it, but it's actually quite easy. Um and it makes like a nice, like a polite pan that you can eat, you know, for a dinner party. Polite pan. Like not so many that you're like eating them forever and ever. But um, so I'm gonna make those. What are you gonna bake?

- Well, Jessica, if if if you really want to know, I mean, this it's kind of like it's it's kind of like couples counseling, you know. I'm I'm gonna try to wrestle back the bread making in my household. I think I've talked about I talked about this on the podcast before.

- Yes. Well, I yeah, I don't know if you talked about the podcast, how your husband is now the bread maker.

- Right. So, quick recap for listeners. I have a husband, he's great, didn't care about making bread at all, didn't care about bread at all.

- Yeah.

- That was kind of my thing because I work here.

- Yeah.

- Big book of bread comes out, this beautiful beard-nominated book that you wrote with some other folks, and it just converts him. It converts him into a bread baker, and now he makes all the bread. And he's it's annoying because he's better at it, right? I don't know if he's better at the actual bacon, but he's much better at maintaining the starter. Yeah. You know, because I just didn't care. You know, I had all sorts of we people know, listeners, longtime listeners know that I was very lax with my starter maintenance. Your starter named choices. Didn't matter. My yeah, my choices, right? Choices. Oh, choices. I haven't seen her in so long. Oh because he has some other, which I don't even think he's named his starter. Oh, wow, okay. So anyway, I'm bringing choices out. Yep. And we're going back.

- You're gonna give her a hundred feedings, right?

- By the way, I didn't know choices even had a gender until this moment, but it just came out, it feels right. Yeah. Anyway, I'm starting, you know, I really feel like this is sourdough season.

- Yeah.

- I'm very into whole grain baking. Sure. And so I'm starting with the high hydration whole wheat sourdough bread that Martin developed for the site a couple years ago. Yeah, that's a good recipe. As the name suggests, it's has a lot of water. It's a kind of it's it's it's a tough bread for beginners because um the dough is, you know.

- Well, it's like an amoeba. You pour that out and it's like oh boisey.

- Because it's a 100% whole wheat, and so whole wheat flour is thirstier, so it you need a lot of water to make it, you know, a delicious bread. So I'm gonna see how I do with that. And I'm gonna, if my husband even gets within five feet of the kitchen, yeah. I'm just gonna scream, get out, get out.

- This is my time. I just I think you're right, it is bread baking season. I just resurrected my starter after a long hiatus. Oh wait, and what is your starter's name? My starter doesn't have a name.

- No, we just no, we did. It's Jessica's Jazzy.

- Well, yeah, that's right. That was named by somebody else. Yeah, Jessica. It says Jessica's Jazzy New Starter, which is not fair because it's no longer new or that Jazzy. It is now, but I had to give it like quite a few feeds.

- Yeah.

- I was like, uh oh.

- Well, choices on life support.

- I mean, like I didn't know. I think she'll come back, but I I did, I was so far down that I thought, like, do I need to go to the test kitchen and get just start over? Yeah. But then I just stuck with it and Jazzy's back, baby. Nice.

- Yeah.

- I think we should have a little play date for our starters.

- Maybe we should see Jazzy.

- And choices should should meet Jassy Choices.

- That's a new name of our podcast.

- That's a chassis choices. I'm Jessica Battalani here with Jazzy Choices. I don't know. I think this could be the start of something.

- I'm glad to be back. I'm glad to be back talking about baking with you. Thank you for tuning in and joining us here on Things Bakers Know.

- Remember to like and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts so you know when the next episode drops, which is going to be just in one week. Spoiler alert.

- Or, you know, you can also wherever you watch podcasts, because people are doing that now. And we're there for you. Leave us a review when you're there, or share this episode with a friend. Yeah.

- And people, in the meantime, I know you haven't heard me say this in a while. So if you've forgotten, here we go. Don't forget. Follow the recipe. Follow the recipe. Things Bakers Know is hosted and executive produced by me, David Tamarkin.

- And me, Jessica Batalana.

- Rossi Anestapulo is our senior producer, and Chad Shine is our producer and editor. Adam Baffa is our associate editor.

- Devin Shepard is our production coordinator. Engineering by Matt Boynton of Ultraviolet Audio. Original music by Megan and Marcus Bogala. Big thanks to Helen Go for appearing on today's episode, my new best friend Helen. You can learn more about her, her world famous, world's best chocolate cake, and her James Beard Award-winning cookbook, Baking and the Meaning of Life, on Instagram at Helen underscore go. That's G-O-H underscore Bakes.

- Things Bakers Know is a King Arthur Baking Company podcast. Hey Bakers, before you go, one last thing. You already know that King Arthur has a legendary baking school in Vermont and Washington State. Well, a few years ago, we launched a new way to take classes from our world-class educators. You can take these classes anytime, anywhere. It's called Baking School on Demand. And guess what? Things bakers know, listeners, get a discount. Use code pod 25 for 25% off your first order. That's POD25 for 25% off. If you can believe that. It's the deal of the century, but you gotta hurry because it expires on January 1st, 2027. Pick up a class for yourself or one of your friends or your dog at kingarthurbaking.com.