Hannah Ziskin Transcript
Jessie Sheehan:
Hi, peeps. You're listening to She's My Cherry Pie, the baking podcast from The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network. I'm your host, Jessie Sheehan. I'm a baker, recipe developer, and author of three baking books, including my latest, “Snackable Bakes.” Each Saturday, I'm hanging out with the sweetest bakers around and taking a deep dive into their signature bakes. We are so excited to be back for the second year of the show. Can you believe it? We launched She's My Cherry Pie around this time last year, and it's been a sweet ride ever since. I'm so excited to continue celebrating the best baked goods, and for all of us to learn from the most talented bakers and pastry chefs around.
I'm so happy to kick off our new season with today's guest, Hannah Ziskin. Hannah is a pastry chef and the co-owner of Quarter Sheets, the Los Angeles Pizza Place where folks line up for seasonal pies and for Hannah's desserts. The celebrated spot was named one of the best restaurants in Los Angeles by both the New York Times and the LA Times, and Hannah herself was named one of Food and Wine's Best New Chefs last year. Hannah joins me today to talk about her signature princess cakes. She made a princess cake for our live podcast event in L.A. last year, and I was thrilled to try a slice, as you can imagine. if you're new to the princess cake, no worries. Hannah will be here in just a minute to tell us all about them and how you can make one of those pretty, pastel layer cakes at home. Stay tuned for my chat with Hannah.
Thank you to Plugra Premium European-Style Butter for supporting today's show. As some of you know, I've been a big fan of Plugra for some time now, and was introduced to it at my very first bakery job when I was just a newbie baker. Fast forward to today, I'm a professional baker, cookbook author and recipe developer, and I continue to rely on Plugra for all my baking needs. My fridge is always stocked with Plugra sticks and solids. I especially love that Plugra contains 82% butter fat. The higher butter fat content means less moisture and more fat, and as bakers know, fat equals flavor. Plugra butter is also slow churned, making it more pliable and easy to work with. I do a lot of baking this time of year for work and for myself and my family, comfy bakes like my pistachio chocolate anytime buns and cinnamon sugar buttermilk donut holes, and I always reach for my Plugra unsalted butter. I've also been making a lot of yeasted breads lately, and I love the buttery flavor Plugra adds to my dough. Plugra Premium European-Style Butter is the perfect choice, from professional kitchens to your home kitchen. Ask for Plugra at your favorite grocery store or visit plugra.com for a store locator and recipes.
Let's check in with today's guest. Hannah, so excited to have you on She's My cherry Pie and to talk princess cakes with you and so much more.
Hannah Ziskin:
Hi. I'm so excited to be here.
Jessie Sheehan:
As one of Food and Wine's best chefs of 2023, it's pretty clear that you have a truly unique and incredibly exciting dessert style, but I think there are two spots where you landed early on in your career that greatly influenced that style, Chez Panisse in Berkeley and rip Bar Tartine in San Francisco. So first, can you tell us about that college paper that you wrote about Chez Panisse and Alice, and then I think you wrote a letter, and that was sort of your entryway into an internship there?
Hannah Ziskin:
Yes. So I was at Berkeley, I'm an English major. I finished all my college credits and just for fun took an urban agriculture class, which was literally the garden was around the corner from Chez Panisse. And I was just kind of starting to get into, I don't know, just deepening my knowledge of food, I guess. I've always been a host, a server, working in the front, and then I was like, wait a minute, this restaurant's right there, I can do this, I can write a nice letter, and I can study for this audition, which is essentially what it was. So I wrote a letter to Mia Ponce, who was the pastry chef at the time. I have no culinary experience, I'm really interested, can I come and stage for a day? I don't even know where I learned the word stage.
Jessie Sheehan:
I know, I'm very impressed. Where does it come from?
Hannah Ziskin:
I went in, but before I went in, I studied the menu for weeks, because they post their menu every day. And I was like, okay, what am I most likely to get asked to do, so I can show up and show off and be present? And it was citrus everywhere, because it was February when I tried out, so citrus. I was like, okay, they're going to make me peel the citrus. I watched YouTube video after YouTube video, practicing my supreming, and then went in and had my knife sharpened. They assigned me citrus, cut it, go to cut my first orange, and she's like, "Your knife is dull." And I was like, "Yeah." But it's okay, because she gave me her beautiful, sharp knife. My knife is still dull to this day, welcome to pastry. And I did it, I supremed a whole case of oranges.
Jessie Sheehan:
Tell us what supremed is, for those that may not know.
Hannah Ziskin:
Supreming is a fancy restaurant preparation for citrus, where essentially you cut off the top and the tail, we'll call it, the stem end and the base of a piece of citrus fruit, and then lay it on the counter and use your knife to kind of cut around, maintaining the integrity of the shape. So you still want to end up with a round orange that has no peel on it. And then from there you cut each segment individually, so perfect, no pith, no peel, little delicate segment of fruit. I always eat the bodies after. So you cut all the segments out and then you have this delicious, pulpy, juicy interior, which is a chef snack.
Jessie Sheehan:
What would you say that your experience in Chez Panisse, let's say, and in some ways it's kind of obvious, because Alice is so Alice, well, what would you say working there contributed to your style, since it was in its infancy?
Hannah Ziskin:
Yeah. I mean for me, working at Chez Panisse was essentially free culinary school. It was work trade, is what I considered it, and I literally learned the basics of every single thing. So my job was to set up, essentially, to mise out, which means to prepare kits, weigh everything out in advance, and then the pastry production cooks would come in and use my kits to make the pastries. So you kind of understand scaling, the sizes, batching, and you know that you have to measure perfectly, because someone else is making it from your weights. And it can be stressful, and I definitely messed up a few times, but I think the very most important thing I did there was sort fruit endlessly. So Chez Panisse gets, obviously, the best fruit in the world. They have first access to all of this fruit as it's in season.
And I know what an orange is, I knew what a tangerine was, but it was like the varietals that I saw and encountered there were completely new to me. I'd never seen a cara cara orange before, which is this beautiful, pink-fleshed orange that apparently is a cross between a grapefruit and an orange, my favorite. Pixie tangerines, perfect juicy dates, when all I'd been exposed to was the hard pucks from Trader Joe's, no offense Trader Joe's. And it was that going through, we'd have cases of peaches for instance, and every morning when I got there I would sort through those peach cases, picking out the ripe ones and moving those into the walk-in and then leaving the ones to ripen another day.
But you have to do it every day, it's so important, so you're hitting everything at its peak ripeness. And so now to this day, I'm a perfectionist in that way about those things. Nothing drives me crazier than seeing a case of under-ripe peaches in the walk-in. I mean, we don't have a walk-in, but in other restaurants, and I'm just like, "These need to be out." And I'm fighting with everyone. I keep taking them out, they keep putting them back in. I'm like, "No, they need time."
Jessie Sheehan:
You also worked at Bar Tartine in San Francisco, as well as other fabulous places in San Francisco, and I had never heard this before, and maybe, well, you'll tell me if it's true, but that there was a ban on chocolate, white sugar and vanilla extract. So I have two questions. First, like a literal ban, and second, what did the band help you kind of realize about your dessert style, where your dessert trajectory might take you?
Hannah Ziskin:
Definitely. Working at Bar Tartine, I worked for Courtney Burns, who's a culinary mastermind. She's so creative, and she's a chef and then she also was the pastry chef at this restaurant, but she's a chef first. And so I've always loved working with savory chefs. I think it's a really different perspective. I find myself often raiding the pantries of the savory team at every place I've worked, because interested in what they have cooking over there, what can I use and incorporate? And so Courtney had a really interesting perspective on what pastry could be. She really was sensitive to highly sweet things, and I think she thought, and I don't always agree, but sometimes I agree, that people fall back on those flavors too often, and kind of overuse them.
Jessie Sheehan:
Like chocolate and vanilla?
Hannah Ziskin:
I mean chocolate's, listen, I use chocolate and vanilla all the time. Vanilla ice cream is my favorite flavor of ice cream, because it features the vanilla, but sort of haphazardly throwing vanilla extract into something where maybe you could use something that would emphasize the flavor profile of that dish better than vanilla or where vanilla's just going to get lost.
Jessie Sheehan:
So the ban was more Courtney's kind of loose idea about what she wanted or did she literally say I really want this kitchen to be about-
Hannah Ziskin:
It wasn't like a ban ban. We used sugar.
Jessie Sheehan:
Right. Yes, of course.
Hannah Ziskin:
We had it and we had to use it, but we didn't have chocolate really at all in there. Sometimes we would bring it in for certain projects, but she was interested in exploring carab instead, which is not my personal favorite now, but it was really interesting, and trying to rewrite recipes that rely on chocolate for the structure of the dish using carab, which doesn't have that same structure. So it was interesting, there was some science going on. And I think what was interesting about Chez Panisse and Bar Tartine, is they both have this sort of old-world style of cooking. Chez Panisse is literally old world-new world, new California cuisine, but they really stuck to that.
And Courtney, I think, was a little more willing to kind of bend the rules of this old-world cuisine. And she also taught me things like using citric acid and malic acid, which are my favorites. I use them all the time, because you can add those two powders, they're tart powders, citric is like lemon powder, essentially, but without that flavor, so you can add these powders to things to acidify the product without diluting it by adding liquid.
Jessie Sheehan:
So you've described your dessert style, which I love this so much, as intellectual comfort food desserts. Can you unpack that? I mean, we've sort of talked about the influences that led to that, but I love the idea of this it's comforting, but it's like a little brainy and nerdy at the same time.
Hannah Ziskin:
Yeah. I think that desserts inhabit a place on a menu, no matter how you try to fight with this place, they're about nostalgia and comfort and joy. And sometimes I think you can go a little too far outside the box and you kind of strip that joy, if that makes sense? People want, people I know, me, I want, when I'm eating dessert, to feel cozy. And even if that's a tart dessert, you can still feel cozy, but I think that there's this middle ground that I try to hit between going so far outside the box and also just only relying on nostalgia where it can still feel comforting and cozy and taste delicious, but make you think about it a little bit more. I feel like I owe that to Courtney, this idea of layering flavors within a dessert.
So when I'm thinking about a cake, there are times when I want a lemon cake or something, but I'm like, how can I use the lemon in every different capacity of this, a candied peel, maybe one of the layers of filling is a lemon peel-infused, dairy-based custard, and the other layer of filling is a lemon curd. So you have the juice, the infusion, the peel, all of those things, and maybe finishing it with lemon agrumato, which is a lemon-infused olive oil. And then it's not just a lemon cake, it's like every piece of the lemon cake, and it really deepens the flavor and the experience of that thing.
Jessie Sheehan:
Now I want to talk about Quarter Sheets, which is a laid back, low-key pizza and cake restaurant that you run in Los Angeles with your life and professional partner, Aaron Lindell. And it began as a popup during the pandemic from your porch, it's now a brick and mortar, and I love how you described the concept as being like a kids birthday party with pizza and cake and quarter sheet pans. Aaron makes his pizzas, and you do these brick-shaped cakes known as slabs, a menu staple with rotating seasonal fillings. Can you please describe the ideal slab?
Hannah Ziskin:
The ideal? Okay, so again, I'm very seasonally influenced, but I do have my special favorites. I've been doing this for three years now, and I've repeated this flavor three years in a row. There's this beautiful fruit, quince, that only shows up for about a month and a half in the fall. It's kind of like a mix of an apple and a pear with this insane aroma, but you have to slow roast this quince. And as you're cooking it, again, just like total sensory experience, you cook it in a spiced wine, and the color of the quince deepens and changes as it poaches. So it starts as kind of a sort of lumpy looking white-green fruit, and by the end of this poach, it's ruby red, beautiful.
So we take that quince and we puree half of it, turn it into quince butter, and then finally dice other pieces of quince, spread that between the cake layers with a tangy citric acid-enhanced, wink wink, mousse, cream cheese mousse, and then finish with pomegranate seeds. We spice the chiffon cake with sort of some unexpected spices. We use coriander, cardamom, kind of staying away from classic cinnamon ginger, not that I dislike those, just something else, and it's so good. It's like sweet, tart, the chewy texture of the quince in between the layers, it's fabulous.
Jessie Sheehan:
We'll be right back. Today's episode is presented by California Prunes, the best kind of prunes out there. I'm a big fan of California Prunes for two reasons. They're a great addition to your pantry when it comes to smart snacking and baking. California Prunes are good for your gut, your heart, and even your bones. They contain dietary fiber and other nutrients to support good gut health and vitamin K, copper, and antioxidants to support healthy bones. I've started making myself a daily smoothie, which is a great vehicle for incorporating healthy foods into your diet. One of my favorite combinations right now is blueberries and kale, with some prunes added for natural sweetness and depth of flavor. When it comes to baking, you can use California Prune puree to replace some of the sugar, eggs or fat in a recipe. It's super easy to whip up, just blend prunes and water together and voila. You can also add California Prunes to any treat that calls for dried fruit like bread, scones, cakes and cookies. Prunes pair well with ingredients like chocolate, caramel, honey, coffee, even chilies. They also add sweetness and depth to savory recipes like chicken marbella, sauces or stews. For recipe ideas and more, be sure to check out the California Prunes website at californiaprunes.org. Happy baking and happy snacking.
I've got great news, listeners. Jubilee 2024 is taking place Saturday, April 20th, at Center 415 in Manhattan and tickets are on sale now. Jubilee is the largest gathering of women and culinary creatives in the food and drink space in the U.S. It's a beautiful day of conversation and connection, and I hope to see you there. You can learn more and snag tickets at cherrybombe.com. Now back to our guest.
Now I want to talk about princess cakes. So I know you're not a huge dessert person, you almost never order dessert, but you do hold the space for a princess cake. And you've been a princess cake lover since you were little, always had it on your birthdays, and even I think Aaron buys it for you on your birthday now?
Hannah Ziskin:
He does, yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, I love him. For those that don't know, can you describe what a princess cake is?
Hannah Ziskin:
Yes, a princess cake, country of origin, Sweden, classic Swedish dessert. Essentially, it's three layers of light chiffon cake. The fillings are raspberry jam, a vanilla pastry cream, a custard, and whipped cream. And then the whole thing is covered in traditionally green marzipan, which is an almond paste that people sometimes mistake as fondant, but is not fondant, very important.
Jessie Sheehan:
And you've said it's the perfect cake, because it's just in balance.
Hannah Ziskin:
Just in balance. It's tart, it's sweet, it's light, you can finish the whole slice without feeling weighed down. And when I started building cakes, I hadn't built the princess cake. That was not the first one I did, even though it's my favorite cake and the only cake I ever ask for. I started building some other custard-based cakes and then happened upon a slice of princess cake in my life, and I was eating it, and I realized that I'd kind of been making that anyway, because that's the way I build my cakes now, with creamy fillings, not a lot of buttercream, if any at all, whipped cream, tart flavors. And I was like, oh, I'm just making different versions of princess cake, and now I know how to make cake, I'm going to make the princess cake.
Jessie Sheehan:
So this cake takes a couple of days. So on day one, we're going to make our cake, we're going to make our pastry cream, which will also become our diplomat cream, and we're going to make our sweet milk soaker, which is such a cute name, I love soaker, and jam. So we're going to make an olive oil chiffon cake. I'm going to just flag, just for the listeners, how each element in this cake has the Hannah kind of like touch. For instance, this olive oil chiffon is made with olive oil because it reads a tad more savory than if it was a chiffon without olive oil, so I love that.
Hannah Ziskin:
Yeah, it's a nice little grassy note in the back.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. So we're going to whisk together some all-purpose flour, some baking powder and salt. And are we talking kosher salt?
Hannah Ziskin:
Always kosher salt. I just never use anything else.
Jessie Sheehan:
Same.
Hannah Ziskin:
Go to my mom's house, she has the iodized salt. I'm like, no, no, I don't know how to use this. We use a balloon whisk for chiffon cakes. I find it's easier to fold gently with a whisk, actually, than with a spatula, and you can kind use that same balloon whisk throughout the whole thing. Also, if I'm just making one cake, sometimes I literally use the whisk attachment, which essentially is a balloon whisk.
Jessie Sheehan:
From your-
Hannah Ziskin:
That's right.
Jessie Sheehan:
Stand mixer?
Hannah Ziskin:
I have my meringue, and as I'm folding it in, I'm using that whisk attachment., ad then I don't have to make something else dirty. When I'm feeling bougie, I'll buy like a matte fur whisk, which is expensive and not necessary, but it is really nice. Right now we use central milling. The flour that they make as their all-purpose flour is called Beehive, and it has a lower protein content than some other flours. I think that it's at like 10.5%, whereas King Arthur flour has a rather high. King Arthur AP has a rather high protein content, so for me, that's a little closer to a bread flour almost, when I want something a little sturdier. The nice thing about chiffon cake is it's hugely malleable. I'll sometimes even use whole wheat flour. You can sub in cornmeal, you can sub in almond flour. It works.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's good to know. So we've whisked those dry ingredients, and now we're going to whisk some light brown sugar, our olive oil, water, egg yolks in another bowl.
Hannah Ziskin:
There's some olive oil that's a little grassier, lighter. Some black pepper notes are usually what I look for. We use Corteau at the restaurant.
Jessie Sheehan:
So now we're going to sift our dry ingredients, and then we're going to whisk our dry and wet together. And I loved, I mean you mentioned this just now, but I love using a whisk all the way through a recipe.
Hannah Ziskin:
It's nice.
Jessie Sheehan:
I just love at-
Hannah Ziskin:
You're going to need a spatula at the end.
Jessie Sheehan:
At the end? That's why, it's funny, when I develop recipes for cookbooks and things, I have a recipe tester who works with me, and I'm always like, "Let's just call for a whisk." And she says, "You can, but the home baker is, in the end, going to need a spatula to scrape out. So you're going to end up using it."
Hannah Ziskin:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Sorry listeners, but it's true. So we're going to whisk the dry and wet together, making sure the mixture doesn't have any lumps, grab our stand mixer. Is it a KitchenAid or you, yes, great, with its whisk attachment. And on medium-ish speed, number six, we're going to whip our egg whites and some cream of tartar until the whites are tripled in volume. Two questions. Will you remind us what cream of tartar does with egg whites? And will you also, is the tripled in volume, are we waiting, is it before soft peaks, is it after soft peaks? What are we, because sometimes it's hard. I feel like people don't know. Is that triple, is that not triple? What's the peak?
Hannah Ziskin:
To me, when I start adding the sugar, maybe this is slightly different than the recipe, I'm looking for, so when you put the egg whites in the bowl, they're going to have kind of a greenish-yellowish hue. And then as they whisk and balloon up, they turn foamy for a second, they still have that hue to them a little, and I'm looking for the moment that it just looks white.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love that. That's a great tip.
Hannah Ziskin:
So it's kind of before soft peaks, but you can't see that green anymore is a great time to start adding your sugar.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. And can you remind us what cream of tartar will helpful? I think it helps stabilize?
Hannah Ziskin:
Yeah, it helps stabilize the egg foam, is my understanding.
Jessie Sheehan:
Now we're going to begin adding granulated sugar in a slow and steady stream. Once the sugar's in, we'll whisk until stiff peaks, shiny, firm.
Hannah Ziskin:
I feel like a note about stiff peaks too-
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes, please-
Hannah Ziskin:
I wonder if I consider my stiff peaks are what others might consider a medium.
Jessie Sheehan:
Tell us-
Hannah Ziskin:
But essentially you're taking, you want the whisk attachment out of the bowl and turn it upside down. I look for the meringue to hold in a peak, but have a floppy nose slightly.
Jessie Sheehan:
Good to know. I think some-
Hannah Ziskin:
If it's straight, you've probably gone a little too far and you'll probably be fine, but if you think about it, you're taking your egg whites almost all the way, but you still want to give them a little more expansion room in the oven. And sometimes if you take them too far, your cake will not have anywhere to go.
Jessie Sheehan:
I feel like that's so smart. And do you do that across the board, not just when you're princessing?
Hannah Ziskin:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
It's a verb, princessing.
Hannah Ziskin:
Yes, princessing.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, okay. That's a really good tip, I think, because you're right, plus there's going to be a little more action happening as you're combining those whites anyway.
Hannah Ziskin:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
I think that's a great tip. So we are going to fold with a, do you have a rubber spatula at this point that you're folding with?
Hannah Ziskin:
Really I fold with the whisk.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love you. We're still folding with the, yeah.
Hannah Ziskin:
I fold with the whisk. I whisk in a third of the whites just to lighten the yolk and dry mixture. And then I add all the rest of the whites. You can add them, if you're new to folding, it might be a little bit easier to add it in thirds, a third of the whites. Whisk hardily in to lighten the mixture, add a third, fold that through, add the final third, fold that through, but I find that it works just as well to do one third into two thirds.
Jessie Sheehan:
I think sometimes people are afraid of when they're folding in egg whites to use the whisk because they're worried that they're-
Hannah Ziskin:
They're whisking.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes. Yes.
Hannah Ziskin:
Yes. I kind of think of it as, I don't know if this is right, but I think of it as many little spatulas all folding together at once.
Jessie Sheehan:
Honey, I love it.
Hannah Ziskin:
And it's cute.
Jessie Sheehan:
And I think there might be a princess there who's in charge of them all. That sounds like a fairytale. You make this note, which I love, there's always this nipple in the bottom of your stand mixer bowl. I'm just being very careful to get everything down there and everything mixed in. So we're going to transfer the batter gently to an unlined, unsprayed springform pan. Just two questions there. Just remind us why we're not lining, why we're not spraying.
Hannah Ziskin:
So chiffon cakes are super light and they rise, but then when you take them out of the oven, they want to shrink. This is the same for angel food cakes. It has to do with steam condensing inside of the cake after you take it out of the oven. And so for an angel food cake and for a chiffon cake, you need to invert the pan when it comes out of the oven. But essentially, if you were to line the bottom of your pan, and I made this mistake, the parchment doesn't stick. And so when you invert your pan, the parchment pulls away from the bottom of the pan and makes a dent in the bottom of the cake as it's cooling. So you actually want your cake to be stuck to the sides of the pan and the bottom of the pan when you invert it, and then it will hold, and then later you have to just pry it gently off. It's less scary than it sounds.
Jessie Sheehan:
So now we're going to bake the cake at 325 for about 50 minutes to an hour, until golden brown and springs back when you gently touch it. So no testers, you're going by eye, by vision and then color, and then touching it with your finger?
Hannah Ziskin:
Yes. And it's like it doesn't have to boing-y spring back, because chiffon cake won't really do that, but just you need to be able to push in and see that it comes back out a little bit. And I find that if your cake starts to contract at all in the oven, you've gone too far, and it'll probably still be okay, but it might shrink in from the sides a little as it cools. So you want to catch it at the peak of its doming and take it out right away.
Jessie Sheehan:
And is that true for you with all different kinds of cakes? Would you never use a cake tester?
Hannah Ziskin:
No, I do, I do. I just don't with chiffon cakes, because maybe it's a superstition I have, but I'd feel they don't like to be really touched or looked at, they're private But a carrot cake, I'm cake testing that all day. And also carrot cakes are a little, they're wet, so you need to be sure that the interior is cooked, where a chiffon is like all the visual cue's on the outside that's telling you everything you need to know.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, that's so interesting. So now we take it out of the oven, and this is a great tip, but we're going to drop it onto the counter from about six inches up to set the structure of the cake so it won't sink as it cools. And you say that it feels counterintuitive, but it totally works, and you say it's good for chiffons baked in sheet trays, which would be your slabs. Tell us how you discovered this, what would happen if we didn't do it, and could we do it for all cakes?
Hannah Ziskin:
I haven't tried on a cake that's not egg foam based. So the first time I heard about this was actually also during the pandemic. I had been baking my chiffon cakes in rounds for whole cake orders and just inverting them, which for the most part works fine, but sometimes you get a real finicky one who wants to suck in even though you've done everything right, or I guess you probably haven't done everything right, but it felt like you did. And then I started building the slab cakes. So for the chiffons in the pans, because they're small and you can get them off the bottom, you don't need to line them, but for a sheet cake, you have to line the pan.
And so the first time I did it, I lined the pan, got the cake in the oven, everything looked normal. And then I was going to take it out and I was like, oh, I can't invert this. I can't do it. It's going to fall out of the pan. And so it sunk a bunch and I had to mess with my batter ratios, knowing that it was going to sink, to get the final volume that I wanted. So I was kind of looking for a solution to this. And I happened to be subscribing to a newsletter from Nicola Lamb, who writes a newsletter, she's British, a wonderful newsletter, lots of deep dives into different baking projects, and she had interviewed a Japanese pastry chef who is known for super light chiffon cakes. And she said she drops this cake pan and it shocks the cell walls, keeps it from sinking. And I read that and I was not so worried about my round cakes, which were working out, but I was like, oh, this is the solution. It's going to work.
So I took my sheet out of the oven, smacked it on the counter, which you've worked so hard to get there, and you are sure it's going to destroy it. And it didn't sink. It just stays exactly where you left it. You don't have to invert it. It's amazing.
Jessie Sheehan:
Wow.
Hannah Ziskin:
And so for chiffons baked in sheet trays, that is the secret, in my opinion. And it's funny, whenever I hire someone new, they're like, "What do you want me to do?" And I'm like, "Just do it, do it." They're like, "No, I can't do that." I'm like, "Do it."
Jessie Sheehan:
And you're not talking like a 9x13, you're talking like a half sheet or a quarter sheet?
Hannah Ziskin:
Half sheet or a quarter sheet pan.
Jessie Sheehan:
Or quarter sheet.
Hannah Ziskin:
Yep.
Jessie Sheehan:
But with the short, two-inch sides, because you're making a chiffon?
Hannah Ziskin:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, I think it's two inch or-
Hannah Ziskin:
So there's three layers in the cake, and so the perfect bake for those is if it, I mean listen, it will sink still a tiny bit, but it's a dramatic difference between slamming it and not slamming it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Incredible.
Hannah Ziskin:
And now it's like a whole thing at the restaurant. We scare everyone every day, because we pull all our cake layers out and you have to make a lot of noise.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, I love. Back to our springform. We're banging it, then we're inverting it and leaving it there. We're not removing the springform pan?
Hannah Ziskin:
No, just let it cool totally in the pan.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're just letting it chill?
Hannah Ziskin:
Mm-hmm.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love, love, love. So when the cake is cool, we're going to release it from its pan by running our offset size, are we talking about a small?
Hannah Ziskin:
I need the handle to be like the size of my hand. So sometimes the handle's only three inches, but the handle is the most important part to me, so it needs to be a four or five inch handle and then a four inch blade, I think.
Jessie Sheehan:
And we use that. We use our offset to go around the outside of the cake tin, release the sides, and then use the offset to gently peel or remove the bottom of the spring form, which sounds scary to me, I don't know why. I'm just-
Hannah Ziskin:
What I often do is I'll kind of hold the cake upside down. I feel like I just have learned that I can manhandle the cakes and they're for the most part okay. It's like pie dough, I feel like, where it can sense your fear.
Jessie Sheehan:
You have to be the boss of it.
Hannah Ziskin:
You have to be the boss.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes, 100%.
Hannah Ziskin:
Show the cake who is boss.
Jessie Sheehan:
100%.
Hannah Ziskin:
And so I kind of will hold it upside down. And if you can release one edge of the cake, then usually you can literally just pull it off.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love. So now we wrap in plastic wrap, keep it room temp to use later the same day or the next day. We're going to make our vanilla bean pastry cream, and this is another little Hannah tweak. You make it as salty as you want. You want it to have flavor, which I love. I'm a salt-
Hannah Ziskin:
Salt is my favorite pastry ingredient.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're going to hydrate our gelatin. We're going to put a little water in a small bowl, add our powder gelatin, stir with a little whisk. I love that you want a little whisk here, or your fingers, which I love even more.
Hannah Ziskin:
Me too.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love fingers as tools.
Hannah Ziskin:
Actually, yeah, salt is my favorite pastry ingredient and my hands are my favorite pastry tools.
Jessie Sheehan:
Does pastry cream always have gelatin?
Hannah Ziskin:
No, I use it in cakes specifically, because I don't use buttercream on the outside. So often you'll see a pastry cream filling on a cake, but it has we call it a buttercream dam around the outside. And so it has the structure, but it still needs to be kind of held into the cake by the buttercream, but I don't like that for me. And so instead, I just added just enough gelatin so that the custard layer can hold. And then if you are adding buttercream, it's just on the outside.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. We're going to heat some whole milk. We're going to heat the vanilla bean. The seeds have been scraped, and we're going to add the pod.
Hannah Ziskin:
I'm not quite sure how to pronounce it, but Heilalla vanilla is really nice. And I also use vanilla beans from Slow Food Group. I'm kind of open.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Yeah. So we have our whole milk, we have our vanilla bean, we have Carr kosher salt. In a pot, bring two steam points, so the mixture's steaming, stirring occasionally with a spatula. And then in another bowl we're going to whisk some corn starch and some granulated sugar, we're going to splash some warm milk into that corn starch mixture to make a little slurry. And when the milk goes from steam to simmer, we're going to add egg yolks into the cornstarch mix, and then temper that with the warm milk. So a little bit of warm milk into our egg and back and forth, and then put it all back into the pot. We whisk constantly, bring everything to a boil, whisk for about 20 to 30 seconds until mixture thickens, is smooth, is shiny, remove from the heat, and this is when we add our Bloom gelatin?
Hannah Ziskin:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay, perfect. Now we're going to add unsalted butter at this point or salted?
Hannah Ziskin:
Unsalted butter, yeah. I do like salt, but I like to control it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep. You're the boss of the butter. We're going to add unsalted butter, and you say you want it to melt for a second before you begin to whisk?
Hannah Ziskin:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
How come?
Hannah Ziskin:
But you can just start whisking, to be honest. I think that I used to cool the pastry cream down sort of like a curd. Essentially, you want your custard to be lower than 130 degrees Fahrenheit, so you're making an emulsion instead of melting it in, which when I make a lemon curd, I usually turn it into a lemon cream, and there's so much butter in it, but for pastry cream, it's so little butter, I found that it didn't really affect the structure. Plus I hate washing dishes, so I didn't want to transfer it back into the KitchenAid bowl. I already have six bowls. This way, it's just added in, whisk it in. It adds a little bit of body. It's not going to affect the structure.
Jessie Sheehan:
Now we're going to transfer it to a bowl, press some plastic wrap directly on top to avoid a skin and chill it until firm. And we turn this pastry cream into diplomat cream, which is like a vanilla bean diplomat cream for the cake. Can you tell peeps what diplomat cream is, in case they don't know?
Hannah Ziskin:
Yeah, I guess technically this is a Bavarian cream, but since we have gelatin in it, but diplomat cream is often used to fill cream puffs. It's pastry cream or cream puffs, eclairs, pastry cream that's lightened with some whipped cream.
Jessie Sheehan:
I also, besides salt, I love whipped cream, just love it, like eat with a spoon whipped cream.
Hannah Ziskin:
Me too.
Jessie Sheehan:
So before constructing our cake, we're going to whip some heavy cream to stiff peaks, stir our pastry cream with a spatula. And I love you say you're whisking your pastry cream to loosen, then adding into your whipped cream, and you're saying it makes a lot, so eat the extra with fruit.
Hannah Ziskin:
Eat it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yum. I would even say eat it straight from the fridge with a spoon.
Hannah Ziskin:
It's like vanilla pudding. It's great.
Jessie Sheehan:
Now we're going to make our sweet milk soaker, and I assume that's just to give more moisture to our chiffon layers?
Hannah Ziskin:
Yeah. Chiffon's really nice. You can eat it by itself, but it's another way to layer in flavor, I find. So the quince cake, I didn't talk about this, but we don't use a milk soak on that, we use the quince poaching liquid, because what else are you going to do with it, and it's there and it's seasoned properly already, so you soak it into the cake and then you get more quince throughout the whole thing. When you soak chiffon cakes, you definitely can go too far, which is still delicious, you're just in tres leches territory, is that the cakes holds in the fridge for a week, a long time.
Jessie Sheehan:
I also just love, just as a great kind of tip, if you over bake your cake a bit-
Hannah Ziskin:
Oh yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
A milk soaker or any kind of soaker can be-
Hannah Ziskin:
Definitely-
Jessie Sheehan:
A huge life saver and bring things back to life. For those of us that love moist cake. To make our milk soaker, we're going to whisk whole milk again. I wonder, does it have to be worn?
Hannah Ziskin:
No.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay. It's milk, granulated, sugar, kosher salt, vanilla.
Hannah Ziskin:
So you can use sugar or you can use condensed milk, but I believe the reason why I did sugar, and this is because there's no reason to open a whole can of condensed milk and use a teaspoon of it. So either one works, and it's delicious.
Jessie Sheehan:
But that's a nice idea, because sweetened condensed milk is my other favorite ingredient.
Hannah Ziskin:
Yes. And on a citrus cake for instance, you can do the soak is like lemon juice, condensed milk and salt essentially, and a little bit of water. It's so good.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. So soaker, milk, sugar, salt, vanilla, just until you dissolve the sugar, and then you chill until you're ready to use it. We'll make the raspberry jam, which has the Hannah signature, which is you make yours kind of extra acidic. Love. So we're going to combine fresh or frozen raspberries, granulated sugar, salt, lemon juice, in a medium pot, toss to coat the fruit in sugar, let kind of it macerate for 30 minutes, then bring everything to a boil over medium high heat until the jam reaches 220, 225, stirring frequently. I love your note like jam loves to stick to the bottom of the pot and burn.
Hannah Ziskin:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
So please be stirring frequently.
Hannah Ziskin:
And if that ever does happen, I find the best solution is just to quickly transfer it to a new pot because that burnt flavor can actually infuse into the jam.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to pour our jam into a pint container and have it hang out in the fridge to cool and set up. Now it's day two, and we're going to assemble the cake at least structurally, not altogether. Oh, this was interesting. So you say to use your fingers to gently peel the skin off the top of the cake. Can you explain our skin?
Hannah Ziskin:
Yes. And this is also, we do this on all the sheet cakes too, but the way chiffon bakes is usually your indicator of done-ness, the brown skin on top of the cake, if you're building a cake and leaving that on, two things happen. One is that the soaks have a harder time penetrating between. And then I've also learned this the hard way is that the skin's going to come off whether you take it off before you build your cake or after. So if you build it and everything's all set up, sometimes if you go to cut it, the skin will detach from the cake and stick to the custard layer, and then those two layers are no longer attached to one another, which is sad.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. So good to know.
Hannah Ziskin:
So I just skin the cake. It's a delicious snack. People will come and snack on it while you're doing it and just get it out of there.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love. And now we're going to slice, although the verb you used is to tort, but we're slicing or torting our cake into three even layers. Now that is something, I know for me, can sometimes be scary and tricky. I wondered if you had any tricks? Is it a serrated knife, is it dental floss? How do we do this?
Hannah Ziskin:
Yes. I always use a serrated knife. And then I think it's much easier if your cake is a day old, even two days old, when you have the fresh chiffon cake. I'd make these every day. I still struggle. It just wants to be a little marshmallow and he doesn't want to cut. A day-old cake is ideal. And then-
Jessie Sheehan:
Cold? Is cold ideal?
Hannah Ziskin:
Sometimes I'll have the cakes frozen, and I do find that that's a little easier, unless it's too frozen in the center and then it's hard to get through and you've got an uneven cut. So it requires some experimenting, but I do use my turntable when I'm doing this. So I set my cake on my turntable, and then I visually divide the cake into three. And instead of cutting straight through, I actually spin the turntable and kind of keep my knife where it is, and I'm just lightly cutting as I'm spinning around. It's easier to follow a line. So you essentially mark a third of the cake all the way around, and then you've made a track for yourself. So once you have that mark, then you go through and cut deeper and deeper in still spinning the cake, following your little track across the cake, and you can get a nice even cut that way.
Jessie Sheehan:
Then we're going to line a clean springform with plastic wrap with some hanging over the sides. And we're going to place one of our three layers into the pan and brush with our milk soaker. A favorite brush?
Hannah Ziskin:
I go through them so quickly. They get weird, so just have a lot of them.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're going to brush our milk soaker evenly over the layer. We're going to top with a raspberry jam, and then spread that with a small offset, add our vanilla bean diplomat cream, and then repeat with the next cake layer and then top with the last layer. So the last layer is just cake-
Hannah Ziskin:
Cake-
Jessie Sheehan:
At this point, right?
Hannah Ziskin:
Mm-hmm.
Jessie Sheehan:
No raspberry, no diplomat cream. Fold our plastic wrap over and refrigerate overnight. And then on our last day-
Hannah Ziskin:
This is so crazy to hear you talk through the recipe. I'm just like, what psycho is going to make this? And I'm like me, all the time.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, can I just tell you? I think a lot of psychos. This is really cool, because you know what's cool about the recipe? None of it's hard.
Hannah Ziskin:
No, it's just that's-
Jessie Sheehan:
Like your jam is not tricky, your diplomat, not that people are scared of pastry cream, but if they are, that's not tricky. None is tricky. It just, in the end, with all these kinds of cakes, like talking to Natasha about the cakes she makes, or talking up to Caroline Schiff about her baked Alaska, these cakes take a long time because there are a lot of components, and we need to stick, I want to use a curse word, peeps, but I promise I won't, we have to stick our stuff into the fridge constantly.
Hannah Ziskin:
Definitely. And it's like, yeah, you just have your mis and plus ready. It's kind of like cooking an elaborate dinner. You have everything cut and ready to go, and then you just cook it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Also, it's not my jam, because I'm not really a project baker, but people love a project. And this is an easy project, it's just one that takes a couple of days.
Hannah Ziskin:
That's right.
Jessie Sheehan:
So day three, we're going to make some whipped mascarpone. We're going to combine mascarpone, heavy cream, powdered sugar, kosher salt. I wonder, does the mascarpone need to be room temp?
Hannah Ziskin:
I use it cold.
Jessie Sheehan:
You use it cold?
Hannah Ziskin:
Mm-hmm.
Jessie Sheehan:
And it doesn't get, like you know when you make a cream cheese frosting or you do something with cream cheese and it gets lumpy? Mascarpone-
Hannah Ziskin:
Not the one we use. So we are making giant batches of this, but what I'll usually do is add half the cream first, half the cream and all the mascarpone, and that loosens the mascarpone a little, and then you add the second half of the cream once your chunks are all out. But if you put the mascarpone into the KitchenAid with all the mascarpone and all the cream, it flings it around and makes a really big mess. So that's the secret detail I didn't include.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. And also, I hate cleaning up.
Hannah Ziskin:
I hate cleaning up.
Jessie Sheehan:
So I don't want to make a mess.
Hannah Ziskin:
No, no.
Jessie Sheehan:
So mascarpone, heavy cream, sugar, salt, whipped to stiff peaks. Now we're going to make marzipan, which is so cool. And again, the kind of Hannah tweak is to make it a little saltier than maybe other folks.
Hannah Ziskin:
I'm a one-trick pony, what can I say?
Jessie Sheehan:
I know.
Hannah Ziskin:
I just think that baking, I like season the way I season everything else. It's just better.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to make some marzipan a little bit on the salty side. We're going to buzz super fine almond flour in our food processor with powdered sugar and kosher salt. I think I know the answer to this, but so the super fine, we're buzzing it, but it came super fine, you're buying it as a super, like I guess there's more of a grittier-
Hannah Ziskin:
There is. And something I learned the hard way is that the brand does matter.
Jessie Sheehan:
So what do you suggest?
Hannah Ziskin:
I use Bob's Superfine when I'm doing this at home, and when I am at work, we use the Mandolin brand super fine almond flour. But I don't know, I picked up something from generic brand Whole Foods almond flour, and I didn't really think about it. I was like, why is my marzipan ripping over and over? I wanted to cry. And Erin's like, "Maybe it's because you bought this other type." And I'm like, "Oh, that's why. Yeah, that's why."
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, you're like, and that's why I hang out with you. We're buzzing super fine almond flour.
Hannah Ziskin:
It's more just a way to incorporate it. You're not really trying to break it down anymore, but just so you have the cohesive mixture of powdered sugar, salt.
Jessie Sheehan:
At this point in the food processor?
Hannah Ziskin:
Yeah, I just do everything in the food processor.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Yep. So we're in the food processor. We're bringing all of these ingredients together. And you also said you can do it by hand in a metal bowl.
Hannah Ziskin:
You can.
Jessie Sheehan:
If you are doing that, are you whisking it?
Hannah Ziskin:
You're like kneading it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Kneading it, oh.
Hannah Ziskin:
You're probably whisking it together, the dries, and then adding in the egg white, almond extract, food coloring, please wear gloves, because-
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep, hello.
Hannah Ziskin:
Because it's really hard to get out of your cuticles.
Jessie Sheehan:
So now we're going to add that egg white, almond extract, food coloring. I know you love Color Mill.
Hannah Ziskin:
Yes. They're wonderful, oil-based food colorings, and the colors are just really vibrant, beautiful.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. And I know yours is always pale green. I actually didn't know that a traditional princess cake is pale green.
Hannah Ziskin:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we have our pale green, which I imagine is just a couple of drops of, if that?
Hannah Ziskin:
Yes. I'd say less is more.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes.
Hannah Ziskin:
I think that food coloring becomes the slime green monster faster than you think it will.
Jessie Sheehan:
Totally. We're going to process our marzipan until it comes together in a cohesive mass, turn it out onto our countertop dusted with powdered sugar and knead a few times to bring together, and we're going to build our cake. So we're going to re-whip our mascarpone, in case we're not still at stiff peaks. And while the cream whips, we're going to remove the cake from the fridge, invert the cake onto a serving platter cake board. When you say cake board, are you talking just like a cardboard round?
Hannah Ziskin:
So this is your final presentation.
Jessie Sheehan:
Right. So basically you want to put it on your serving plate.
Hannah Ziskin:
Yes, on your serving plate or on one of those gold, ruffelated boards.
Jessie Sheehan:
Exactly. That's what I was thinking, so then you could transfer it.
Hannah Ziskin:
So I buy my cake boards from Cake Boards N More, owned by a woman named Sue Bloom, who lives in Mississippi. And I order all my cake boards from her, and they're essentially a food safe foam core.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, love.
Hannah Ziskin:
Plain white.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Sue? Hi Sue.
Hannah Ziskin:
Hey, Sue. Thank you.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, right? Sue for the cake board win. So now we're going to unlatch our spring form, remove our cake pan, remove our plastic wrap, and this is interesting. We're going to make a dome shape by lightly pressing down on the edge of the top layer of the cake, so it has more of a half moon appearance versus a flat top. And you said this will make the frosting of the cake easier. So does that mean the cake is almost super malleable at this point so that we can almost, like clay?
Hannah Ziskin:
It's soaked, and you can definitely mush it a little, so I've done it in a few different ways. I've built the cake, when you're building the springform originally, I just thought this was a little harder for the recipe, but I will divulge. But when you add that top layer of cake after your second layer of diplomat, when I put it in, I'll kind of push it down on the edges so it's already in that dome shape. And then when I'm unmolding the cake the next day, I flip it out and then flip it back, so the bottom stays the bottom.
Jessie Sheehan:
I got you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Hannah Ziskin:
But if you don't want to do that, or it feels dangerous and risky, then yes, you can either just kind of push down on the edges and it'll hold, you could also take a little sharp cerated knife and just carve away a little, or you could do none of those things.
Jessie Sheehan:
And keep it flat?
Hannah Ziskin:
I mean, you're going to build a dome with your cream anyway. So I just sometimes, if the cake is too pokie-outie, it can show in your marzipan, and that bothers my brain.
Jessie Sheehan:
You're a perfectionist.
Hannah Ziskin:
Yeah, I don't like that.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay, that's great. Yeah, because I actually kind of love the idea of there's tons of cream on the top of it, just make sure you have a top piece.
Hannah Ziskin:
And you will. And no matter what you're doing with the cake, there's always going to be a bunch of cream on top, so when you cut in, you see that dome.
Jessie Sheehan:
So then we're going to dollop our whipped mascarpone cream on top of the cake using an offset spatula to make that dome shape on top, kind of piling it up, building the dome with the cream. And then we're going to push some cream down onto the sides of the cake. Are we almost crumb coating it in cream?
Hannah Ziskin:
A little heavier than that. Because the cake is soaked and held by all those things, you're really not going to have very many crumbs, plus this whole thing is covered by marzipan anyway, so I don't like a super thick layer of cream on the sides, but it should be-
Jessie Sheehan:
A little bit.
Hannah Ziskin:
A little bit.
Jessie Sheehan:
So that you don't want your marzi-
Hannah Ziskin:
It's not translucent, but it's also it's something your marzipan to stick to.
Jessie Sheehan:
Exactly. You can't put your marzipan straight on the cake.
Hannah Ziskin:
Yes, but it looks weird if you cut it and there's no cream in between, so you want to see it, like a sixteenth of an inch.
Jessie Sheehan:
But most of the cream is going to stay on the top to create that dome shape. We're going to place the cake in the fridge, and we're going to prepare the marzipan by dusting our work surface and the marzipan with powdered sugar, rolling the marzipan into an eighth of an inch circle. Do you have a style of rolling pin?
Hannah Ziskin:
I use a French rolling pin.
Jessie Sheehan:
Which is tapered?
Hannah Ziskin:
Yeah, no-
It's tapered on the ends, or one that's just totally straight.
Jessie Sheehan:
Totally straight.
Hannah Ziskin:
I don't like the handles, I have no control.
Jessie Sheehan:
It's funny, a lot of folks that I've talked to, surprisingly, because I always thought kind of tapered ends was like the gold standard. A lot of people like straight.
Hannah Ziskin:
The straight. So I guess that's not French. French is tapered. What's the straight one called?
Jessie Sheehan:
I don't even know. I've got to find out.
Hannah Ziskin:
Straight?
Jessie Sheehan:
Straight. Yeah. So we're going to dust with powdered sugar as we're working and rotate the marzipan, just like we do kind of when we're making pie dough.
Hannah Ziskin:
That's right.
Jessie Sheehan:
And rotating between each roll so it doesn't stick to our work surface. This part is scary, but also fun. We're going to lift our marzipan with our rolling pin, unroll it directly onto our frosted cake, center our marzipan circle so it evenly overhangs on all sides, and then working quickly, using our hands to kind of flatten the marzipan around the cake. But this is a really good tip. We're lifting the pleats outward, not down.
Hannah Ziskin:
Yeah. I find that it wants to tear. You just have to be gentle. You lift out and sort of stretch, you don't stretch it, but you lift it out so that the pleats flatten and you can kind of go back in and flatten them more with your fingers just really gently.
Jessie Sheehan:
Right. Because in the end, the marzipan circle is kind of hanging off now on our counter, so we're kind of working to smooth things out, and we have a little leeway because there's a-
Hannah Ziskin:
Yes, it sort of looks like a silly hat for a while. It's tough though. I won't lie. That's definitely the most difficult stage. What I will say is that you have cream underneath, and if your marzipan tears or it goes horribly wrong, you can lift it off, remold your cream and try again.
Jessie Sheehan:
Try again. Are there any tricks if the marzipan tears are really, you kind of probably want to-
Hannah Ziskin:
You can put a flour on it, a little buttercream flower. Yeah, that's the back of the cake, if you don't want to do it again, is always like, can I just present it the other way?
Jessie Sheehan:
Love.
Hannah Ziskin:
Or I've sometimes used, like if you have tearing at the bottom, I'll roll an extra strip of marzipan from my off hang and cut it into sort of a wiggly line, and then just put that around as a border on the very bottom, which is where it's more likely to tear or look a little ragged.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're flattening as you go. We're making sure there are no bubbles, working our way around the cake and down to the bottom. And now we're going to use a sharp knife, paring knife at this point?
Hannah Ziskin:
Mm-hmm.
Jessie Sheehan:
To cut the excess marzipan as close to the cake as possible. We'll garnish with fresh flowers, piped buttercream flowers, a simple dusting of powdered sugar, and we're going to keep the cake chilled until ready to serve. So do you eat it cold?
Hannah Ziskin:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Ah, princess cake is cold cake.
Hannah Ziskin:
It's a cold cake.
Jessie Sheehan:
Interesting.
Hannah Ziskin:
There's nothing that gets hard in the fridge. It's all soft, uncuous, delicious.
Jessie Sheehan:
Right, because there isn't really a lot of, there's just a tiny bit of butter in that pastry cream, and that's it, because I'm so against cold cake.
Hannah Ziskin:
I know.
Jessie Sheehan:
Really upset if someone, unless it's ice cream cake, which I love.
Hannah Ziskin:
Unless it's ice cream cake. This one, I think-
Jessie Sheehan:
That's so interesting-
Hannah Ziskin:
Is meant to be cold. And like the slab cakes that we build at the restaurant, we serve them, depending on what the filling is, sometimes I'll pull them out to temper for 15 minutes before we serve them, just to take a little of the chill off, but the chiffon cake just works, especially with the soak on it, it's delicious, moist, out of the fridge.
Jessie Sheehan:
I've read, I can't remember who was writing about you and the cakes that I read online, but they were saying how they like to go, order the cake-
Hannah Ziskin:
It's Bill.
Jessie Sheehan:
Addison?
Hannah Ziskin:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Bill says he, this is like-
Hannah Ziskin:
You know when he's there.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. You want to know how to go to Quarter Sheets? Listen to this. You go, you order your cake and your pizza, you eat your pizza there, then you bring your cake home, and by the time you get home it's room temp-
Hannah Ziskin:
Tempered, mm-hmm.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yum. Although I have no self-control or discipline, so I would have to eat it.
Hannah Ziskin:
I know, I can't, you can't wait.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, I can't-
Hannah Ziskin:
I just want my meal now.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, me too. I wouldn't be like, oh yeah, I'll eat it in an hour, not me. Sorry, bill. All right, one kind of cool thing that I want you to tell us about is how you will assemble princess cake slices for the bakery, because this is also a cool way to do it that might be a tiny bit easier for some peeps. Will you tell us?
Hannah Ziskin:
Yes. So you would bake your chiffon layer in a half sheet tray.
Jessie Sheehan:
Which is like a standard sized cookie sheet.
Hannah Ziskin:
Standard sized cookie sheet. You want 780 grams of batter for that. You're going to line the bottom. When it comes out of the oven, you're going to do a scary thing and smack it on the counter. That's going to set the structure of your cake. And then essentially, I guess if I was building, we bake three half sheets and build a full half sheet cake and then cut those into individual cakes. I suppose if I was building one very big princess cake that I wanted for slicing, I would take a half sheet and orient it, your half sheet of cake, you'd orient it short side towards you, and then cut that into three long strips. Then you have your three cake layers, and you're just going to build straight up from there.
I've actually never written this. I'm thinking it through in real time as we're going. What I would do is line a loaf pan or a Pullman pan with the beautiful straight sides and build your cake up in that three layers exactly the same way, invert it out, and then when you're doing your whipped cream, you're going to create a dome. So if you're looking at the cake like it's a hot dog, I always use hot dog, hamburger.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love.
Hannah Ziskin:
And I just think it makes sense, short or long, whatever. Anyway, hot dog cake, you're going to dome the cream over, so it's one long tube. It almost looks like a Buche de Noel, and that's a pretty easy action. So you pile your cream lengthwise up on the cake and then just kind of drag it down onto the sides. I find it helps to move your body a little bit, as I'm doing right now. And then when you roll your marzipan to cover it, you're essentially just rolling a square, which is much easier. It requires no pulling, teasing out of crinkles. You roll a square of marzipan, cut it to the length of your tube, and then just flop it over the top, push the sides on and trim the edges. It's really easy.
Jessie Sheehan:
And you mentioned it's nice you can keep the ends open, raw, whatever the expression would be, not covered, just like with a Buche.
Hannah Ziskin:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
And that's just a brilliant way, folks, like if you love the idea of princess cake, but maybe you're a little bit scared of the shape that Hannah and I discussed, and also just a beautiful way to do it if you wanted to just slice it up and give it to people, and it's not so much the presentation of, oh my God, look at this big, round, gorgeous dome.
Hannah Ziskin:
Yes. And when we serve them as whole cakes out of the pizza shop, we'll usually trim the two end pieces off and use those as slices, because the very end, when you're building, isn't the most beautiful, but when you cut in, even just like an inch on each side, you have those beautiful, perfect, even layers are exposed, and it's almost like more showstop-y, I think, to be able to see those layers on the outside.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. Thank you so much for chatting with me today, Hannah, and I just want to say that you are my cherry pie.
Hannah Ziskin:
Oh, thanks. I had so much fun.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's it for today's show. Thank you to Plugra Premium European-Style Butter and California Prunes for their support. Don't forget to subscribe to She's My Cherry Pie on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen, and tell your baking buddies about us. She's My Cherry Pie is a production of The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network and is recorded at CityVox Studio in Manhattan. Our producers are Kerry Diamond and Catherine Baker, our associate producer is Jenna Sadhu, and our editorial assistant is Londyn Crenshaw. Thank you so much for listening to She's My Cherry Pie and happy baking.