Elizabeth Mayhew Transcript
Jessie Sheehan:
Hi, peeps. You are 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.
Today's guest is Elizabeth Mayhew, the talented baker and cake artist. Elizabeth is best known for her bespoke charm cakes, which you might've seen on Instagram. They feature intricate decorations that relate to the recipient's life. Think of them like edible charm bracelets. Elizabeth worked in media before venturing into baking full time. She joins me to chat about her journey and guides me through the recipe for the chocolate charm cake that she made for a Cherry Bombe event last year. We'll also talk about her super silky buttercream recipe and the cake's charm decorations. If you can't imagine what a charm cake looks like, take a peek at her Instagram before we get started. The link is in the show notes. Stay tuned for my chat with Elizabeth.
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 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.
Elizabeth, so excited to have you on She's My Cherry Pie and to talk charm cakes with you and so much more.
Elizabeth Mayhew:
Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited.
Jessie Sheehan:
So a charm cake, as you've described it is a cake that is decorated in such a way that it's almost like an edible charm bracelet. Can you unpack that for the listeners who may not have seen one of your masterpieces?
Elizabeth Mayhew:
So the idea really came from... I mean, if you're a charm bracelet lover, you collect these little charms that symbolize the things that are most important to you. It's like an outward, let's say, jewelry expression. I have always loved them. I also love miniatures and dollhouses, my whole life. And when I was trying to... Actually, it came up serendipitously. A friend asked for me to do a cake for his wife and I said, "All right, well what do you want the decoration? He goes, "I don't know. Paris, London," listed a bunch of stuff.
And so I did this little doodle illustration on top of a cake and I thought, "God, this is like a charm bracelet. This is the same reminiscent feeling I have when I collect charms for my daughter or things that my grandmother passed down to me, things that are important to them," and I just thought, "It's so charming and it's just like a charm bracelet." So I called it a charm cake and I didn't give much... I mean, it was so totally organic that it wasn't premeditated, and I think some of the best ideas are those ideas that just kind of miraculously appear.
Jessie Sheehan:
So before we dig into what goes creating one, I wanted to go back to your early love of baking and cooking. And I know that you have your own charm bracelet that was given to you when you were a little girl, and that there was a tiny whisk hanging from it, which indicates to me that you have been interested in baking since you were really little.
Elizabeth Mayhew:
First of all, I thought about wearing my charm bracelet today, and I actually didn't because it clanks around so much, and for radio, it would be a horrible thing to have. Yes, I have baked my whole life. I had a very early love. I grew up with grandmothers who baked. Kitchen has always been the heart of our house no matter whose house you're in. And we're one of those families where we wake up and we say, "What are we having for lunch?" And then at lunch, "What are we having for dinner?" So food is an integral part, and I think I gravitated toward baking because, first of all, to say I'm a control person, I am a fastidious... They used to say, "Oh, you're a perfectionist. You're going to be in trouble. You try to be too perfect.
In baking, you do kind of have to be perfect. You have to be precise, and it suits my personality in a lot of ways. And I love the creative side of baking. So from a very early age, I would decorate cookies. I would make my own forms. I actually have some of the Polaroid pictures of things that I took... And to be clear, I will very much give credit. I remember when my mother bought the “Martha Stewart Entertaining” book and I was probably in seventh grade and I decided I was going to bake every single thing in it, including the rose ice wrapped vodka bottles. I wanted to do it all.
And I was baking like crazy and my parents said, "We've got to do something with her." And I'm from Louisville, Kentucky, and we have a very close friend who had... To this day, it's my favorite restaurant in the world called 610 Magnolia. They called him up. I was probably like 12 or 13, and they said, "We got to get her out of the house. She's baking like crazy." And so I just went and worked there. That's how I learned to make buttercream. That's how I learned to make bread. That's how I learned to do everything. So worked there every single summer, and that's how I started
Jessie Sheehan:
I read about the “Martha Entertaining” book. I didn't know how old you were, but I love that. There was also the “Maida Heatter” cookie book-
Elizabeth Mayhew:
Loved “Maida Heatter.”
Jessie Sheehan:
And the James Beard bread book. Those of your first.
Elizabeth Mayhew:
Oh my God, when I discovered that you could put zucchini in bread, it was like the biggest epiphany in the world, that something could taste so delicious. So yeah, “James Beard on Bread,” one of the best bread... I always tell people, "If you want to learn how to make bread, just make everything in that," and “Maida Heatter's” cookie book, I still have my copies that have my notes in them with checks or I didn't like it or add this or add that. So yeah, I read cookbooks. That is what I did, and I wanted more than anything in the world to work for Gourmet, and that's why I moved to New York.
Jessie Sheehan:
Great segue because you've said that you've reinvented yourself many times professionally, working at House Beautiful, the Washington Post, Real Simple, “Today Show” and more, but interestingly, despite your love and experience with food as a young person and even through college, I know you catered in college, the bulk of your professional life has been more focused on design and garden and lifestyle until the pandemic. And I want to get into what happened during the pandemic and how the charm cakes were born.
Elizabeth Mayhew:
Okay. So I was with my family. We have a house in Duchess County, and at that time my son was in college, but my daughter was out of college and it was just, for many of us who didn't have to suffer the loss of somebody, was a time when your family really came together. And we were all under a roof, which frankly, we had more dinners together during that time than we probably would have for the rest of our lives. I think about that all the time. And I was cooking. I mean, that is just my default. Other people were out walking and cleaning closets. I was 100% cooking and every day. I would just tackle something different, and we'd sit down to dinner and we'd go like... The biggest thing in my house, the biggest compliment is you can say, "It's restaurant quality."
So it was restaurant quality every night. And what also happened is people... It's pretty rural in Duchess County, and it's not like there's a bakery on every corner the way there is in New York City, and people could not get cakes to celebrate. And if you're not a baker and you want something special... Also, this idea of celebrating was super important to a lot of people, and a cake for a birthday or an anniversary, or even I did a couple weddings during the pandemic, that is important to people. And so people who knew me and knew I loved to bake... I'm one of those people that if you invite to dinner, you do not say, "Bring wine or a cheese plate.. You know I'm going to bring a dessert. I've always been that way, spent my weekends every weekend baking. So people started calling me to say, "Hey, can I pay you to make a cake?"
Started doing that. "Can I pay you to make my husband's favorite lemon meringue pie? Can you make me banana bread? We need muffins." All of a sudden I just started doing all this baking. It was Friday the 13th, March, Friday the 13th when we all moved up there, and by May, I found myself with a carload of desserts that I had to go deliver to people. And I thought, "Holy cow, this is a business. I've never been happier. I'm doing what I love to do." And that's how it started. The charm cake came a little bit later than that because-
Jessie Sheehan:
I know the bookstore, but the Merit Bookstore, there was a woman who asked you to make a plate cake?
Elizabeth Mayhew:
So exactly. So Merit Bookstore, there's this wonderful woman and Kira, and she sent me an email and said, "I've had this dream. I've always wanted a cake that looks like a Wedgwood plate." And I said, "I think I can do that." I did it.
Jessie Sheehan:
What month should we picture? Is this the beginning? Is this still beginning of pandemic-ish?
Elizabeth Mayhew:
We're still stay at home. We are not opened up at all. And then I started thinking, "Okay, I can do plates and then I can do fabrics and I can do... " I just started experimenting. It then kind of got to the point where I feel like people were heading toward maybe graduations in late May, June. So I was doing school crests for people. In fact, I was at a dinner this past weekend and my dear friend pulled up a picture of one of the very first cakes I made. Her son went to the Lysée it was like the Lysée laurel wreaths, and I was like, "Oh my God." Really, I've gotten a lot better, but it still was pretty good considering I was a neophyte.
So the charm cake came... Actually, it's a friend of ours up in Millbrook. You might know Frédéric Fekkai called and he said, "It's Sharon's birthday and I want this cake."
And I said, "Well, Frédéric, what do you want the design to be?"
And he's like, "I don't know. We're between Paris and New York, and she loves this and loves that." I just created this cake, and it's so too bad because it was pre me even taking pictures. So I have one terrible picture that has a smudge on it or something. It got smudged in transit. I didn't even have cake boxes at the time. I mean we're talking this was early days. That's what gave me the charm cake idea. And then somebody else in the beauty world had seen it who worked for L'Oreal or whatever. And I did another one, and it just started snowballing and I started calling it a charm cake, and that is probably 75 to 80% of what I do now.
Jessie Sheehan:
Do people call you and ask you for regular cakes? Or if somebody wants a cake from you, they want a charm cake at this point?
Elizabeth Mayhew:
No, not at all. I mean, I actually love when people want something different. I'm going to something this week that is a fabric launch, and so the cake is the fabric pattern. Or somebody will say, "These are the plates I'm using for Thanksgiving. Can you do a cake that looks like that?"
So because I come from this design world, a lot of decorators call me, and I've gotten pictures. That's the other thing that happened is a woman called me, a decorator, and she said, "I want a cake that looks like this room." She sent me a picture of a room, and it was this Swedish kind of Gustavian room, which is very much an aesthetic I love, and it was so fun doing that. So I pulled a design from the fire screen and the color palette, and so that kind of challenge... I will say some of the best ideas are really not my ideas. They're things that people have brought to me and said, "Hey, can you do this??
Now I've gotten good enough to know... Or let's say experienced enough, not good enough because it's never good enough. Because I look at my cakes, I'm like, "Oh my God, I should have done that differently and that differently and that looks terrible," but I'm experienced enough to know what I can and cannot do. So I will never forget somebody in Millbrook, also a designer, called me and wanted this all black cake with something else on it, and I said, "You really want it black? Can I inverse it and do everything that's black, white and white black?"
He's like, "I want it black."
And I said, "All right. I'm going to tell you. Everybody's mouth is going to be dyed from black and it's going to look terrible and yucky." I did it.
And sure enough, he's like, "You're right. Everybody's mouth looked like they had been sucking on coal. I mean, it was terrible."
So I'm experienced enough to say, "I'm not doing a ton of black," or, "I'm not going down that route. I'm telling you this is going to be a better way of doing it."
Jessie Sheehan:
And it's fair to say that there's no... I think this is true because I think I tried to Google it. There's really no website. It's all Instagram?
Elizabeth Mayhew:
It's all Instagram, and part of that is because I still feel like I'm working through what I'm doing, and it's also time. I'm so busy baking that I don't have the time to do that. And also, I'm still trying to figure out who and what I am and what this is going to be. This sounds a little crazy, but I like... People who come to me really, really, really want the cake because they've worked hard to find me or to get to me.
I also cannot ship them. They're very fragile. So it kind of limits my scope a little bit. I'd love to figure out... Hello GoldBelly. I'd love to figure out a way to do it, but I think it would be really expensive and dry ice and a bunch of stuff that I'm not equipped to deal with right now. But I definitely... I will have a website will certainly be helpful to answer a lot of questions.
But I like interacting with people, too. So people DM me. I mean, I get back to everybody and my first question is always, "Where are you?" It's such a personal experience that if you just click into a website and ask a bunch of questions, then I don't ever get to know you. Or maybe we can figure out something else. I have actually mapped out things and sent them to bakers and other places because people have started copying it now, and I get that a lot. They'll send a picture and say, "This looks like it's you, but we know it's not you." So I don't know. I'll get to the website one day. I just have to figure out what it is I'm really doing.
Jessie Sheehan:
Well, I also feel like we're in such a strange, and I guess in some ways glorious time, but also sad because Instagram seems to be taking over, but where you don't even need it. I mean, you could have a place on the web that led to your Instagram account and that's all people really need.
Elizabeth Mayhew:
Right, right, right. Yeah, yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
It's like it's not even-
Elizabeth Mayhew:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
I just feel like-
Elizabeth Mayhew:
But they're finding it anyway. And it's funny, the charm cakes are... Somebody once said to me, "Did you ever think that the charm cakes that you do are sort of a networking thing?"
And I said, "What do you mean?"
And she said, "Well, you can see a charm cake, and it's got the Georgetown Hoya thing on it. And so you're like, "Oh my God, that girl went to Georgetown. Wait, I know her. And she knows that." It's like weird sort of... It's almost like a hinge, but it's like a cake hinge or something."
So it connects people, too. People look at those cakes and they study them. It becomes a self-fulfilling group of people who want them. I also think, frankly, in this Instagram world, everybody wants something to post, and my cakes are infinitely postable, and it's a way of saying, announcing to the world, "This is who I am. It's my birthday. These are the things that are important to me. This is how I've chosen to celebrate," and it's almost a powerful marketing tool for people.
Jessie Sheehan:
I thought it would be fun for you to walk us through the assembly of the cake that you made for Cherry Bombe. I know Kerry had called you to ask you about making a cake for a party, celebrating a collaboration between Alex Mill and Cherry Bombe, and I was at the party and got to taste your delicious cake. So I thought it would be fun to walk the listeners through that. So the client, in this case Kerry, I assume... Was she sending you lots of different ideas and things about Cherry Bombe and about Alex Mill that she wanted you to doodle on this cake? Was that sort of the first step?
Elizabeth Mayhew:
That's usually what people do is the most important thing is let's talk about flavor and then, after flavor, size. So that was quite a large cake. That was the biggest kind of charm cake I do, which is a sheet cake. And then the words. Again, the words were the most part. So I think it was Alex Mill times Cherry Bombe. It was a little bit of the logo, and then she sent me a link to the Alex Mill catalog or whatever. I happened to have gone by the store as we were brainstorming about what went on the cake. It didn't originally start as a charm cake. It just started as like, "Hey, can you do something?" And I went by the store and they had this cool graphic, and I sent that to her and she's like, "No, you know what? Let's do a charm cake."
I do a lot of research. I use Google image as much as possible, and then I take screenshots and I kind of just look at them on my phone so I can get the sense of a color palette. That was a Christmas party, too. The one thing she said is, "I want stockings on it that had Mickey on... Kerry and Mickey, because they were the two hosts, Mickey Drexler and, of course, Kerry.
And then I'm trying to think what else. I added in Christmas elements. So a lot of times people will give me the base of what they wanted, like, "Hey, can you put a sweater for Alex Mill and cherries for Cherry Bombe," or whatever It was my interpretation. I sort of did the cover of the magazine very loosely. I always say to people, "These aren't exact representations. They're going to symbolize." So a lot of times if you read Cherry Bombe when it's teeny, teeny, teeny, tiny, maybe you can recognize the C and the Y, but the middle letters might be not quite as clear because we're talking they're so tiny, and I'm doing it with this little pastry tip. It's hard to achieve.
I sort of have this giant list of things. And then because it was Christmas, I had in my head, "I'm going to fill it in with candy canes and presents," and just things that made it look festive. So for the cake, I think we decided on chocolate. Maybe she said chocolate or... I think, also, because my chocolate cake is very moist. It holds up really well, and I know that I could make it a few days before and it's going to taste phenomenal no matter what. So I did that, and then I, just because... I don't think I told her this, but I ended up doing a homemade cherry jam between the layers. I do make a lot of jams over the summer. I have a huge thing because that's what I use. So I did cherry jam between the layers and then my buttercream on the outside.
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.
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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 US. 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.
So let's talk about the assembly of the cake. And the cake that we had for the Cherry Bombe cake was a chocolate cake. So we'll talk about your chocolate one. Yeah, so in a large bowl you're going to whisk together your sugar, your flour, your salt, baking soda, baking powder, and Dutch processed cocoa, which is Valrhona, which I love. That's my fave too. Is there a certain kind of bowl you're working with you like a metal bowl? Do you like a glass?
Elizabeth Mayhew:
Big metal bowl.
Jessie Sheehan:
Big metal bowl.
Elizabeth Mayhew:
Big metal bowl.
Jessie Sheehan:
And is there a kind of whisk you like?
Elizabeth Mayhew:
The one thing I learned from a chef once is your whisk always has to be in proportion to your bowl. So the bigger the bowl, the bigger the whisk, the smaller the bowl, the smaller the whisk. So I just use like a standard whisk.
Jessie Sheehan:
I know we have some salt. Do you like to use kosher salt?
Elizabeth Mayhew:
I use kosher salt only. That's from my food days. I remember from the food editor, it's always kosher salt.
Jessie Sheehan:
Diamond Crystal?
Elizabeth Mayhew:
Diamond Crystal.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to add our baking soda. We're going to add baking powder, our Valrhona cocoa powder. Then, and I love this cake because it's literally one bowl, we're going to be whisking in some vegetable or canola oil, grape seed oil or coconut?
Elizabeth Mayhew:
Grape seed oil. Yeah, just always smell your oil before you add it because oil can go rancid very quickly.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to add some buttermilk.
Elizabeth Mayhew:
So buttermilk, you could easily add almond milk with some apple cider vinegar just to give it some acidity. It's a very malleable recipe in that it can be vegan, if use almond milk, very easily.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. And then we're going to add some vanilla, which is homemade vanilla. You make your own?
Elizabeth Mayhew:
I'm from Louisville, Kentucky and I come from a bourbon family. That's why we live there. My family had a distillery, so it's bourbon. I don't drink bourbon, but I do use a ton of it. And so it's expensive. You might think it's expensive to go buy all those vanilla beans and stick in, but A, it lasts forever. Best present you can give to somebody, and totally like my buttercream would not taste the way it does without that. It's 100%,
Jessie Sheehan:
Can you run us through just quickly, is it a big bottle of bourbon and you're just shoving it-
Elizabeth Mayhew:
I go to the liquor store. You buy the cheapest bourbon. This does not have to be expensive. A lot of people will do it with vodka or you can do it with brandy. I just use a bourbon, and I have just a glass bottle you can get at the Container Store or order an Amazon, and then stuff like, I don't know, 10, 15, 20 or 15, I would say, vanilla beans that I've split a little bit and just stick it in there. You have to wait six months or whatever for it to actually start. And then over time you just keep adding more alcohol on top of it. And every once in a while put more beans on. And when I tell you last, I don't know. I've had mine for I don't even know how many years, actually, I've started making it for friends and I write, "Established 2025 or 2020." Yeah, so that's the vanilla, and that is what I use for my buttercream as well.
Jessie Sheehan:
Now this is cool. You can add eggs to this cake, like in a traditional cake, but you can also, for two eggs, you can substitute two thirds of a cup of applesauce.
Elizabeth Mayhew:
I mean, there's many substitutes for egg. My goddaughter is allergic to eggs, which is why I started doing a lot of things without eggs. So yes, the applesauce is really what makes it very moist, too. The cake will last longer.
Jessie Sheehan:
If a client doesn't have a preference. Do you always make it with applesauce?
Elizabeth Mayhew:
Pretty much. Pretty much.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. And you can't tell the difference in the taste.
Elizabeth Mayhew:
Absolutely not.
Jessie Sheehan:
And I assume it's like an unflavored-
Elizabeth Mayhew:
Absolutely unflavored, no sweetening, none, absolutely no sugar. If I can cut back on sugar, that sounds crazy, but I'm telling you, if you were to cut a quarter of a cup to a half a cup of sugar in a lot of recipes, you wouldn't really notice the difference. I actually think you'd like it more.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, well, the other flavors can pop more if you're not getting caught up in the sweetness.
Elizabeth Mayhew:
Experience if you use that really good cocoa.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. A good ratio for people to keep in mind if they want to try this is one egg, one third of cup of applesauce?
Elizabeth Mayhew:
One third, yeah. And then the other thing you can use is you can use flaxseed mixed with some water we'll give you, also, the same equivalent of an egg. So I do those kinds of things a lot.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. We've whisked into the dry ingredients, our oil, our buttermilk or our non-dairy milk, if we want, with a little bit of vinegar. We've whisked in our homemade vanilla, our eggs or our apple sauce. And then finally we're going to whisk in some boiling water.
Elizabeth Mayhew:
Right.
Jessie Sheehan:
Combine our dry and wet-
Elizabeth Mayhew:
Boiling water, add it slowly. I kind of do maybe a quarter of a cup at a time because if you just pour it all on there, you're going to have this layer of water. It's harder to mix and it splashes around. So just I add it sort of slowly
Jessie Sheehan:
And I have a question. Are you trying to make 12 cakes at a time? Or do you put together batter for just one cake at a time?
Elizabeth Mayhew:
Because I am not like this giant scale bakery, I really do bake one cake at a time. My cakes take way too long to decorate, and I don't store them. I don't have a backlog of... And people ask me that all the time, "Can't you just throw it together?"
I'm like, "No, I can't. This is baked to order." Although for the Cherry Bomb... So the Cherry Bombe cake was three times my normal recipe because it was three layers and each layer was a full cake. That being said, a lot of times I'll make two or three cakes at a time, but we're not talking me making 20 cakes where I have a dump truck size vat of a mixer. So my standard cake is an eight-inch cake.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then when you're making sheet cakes... I feel like the Cherry Bombe cake was huge. That wasn't a nine by 13 inch cake, was it?
Elizabeth Mayhew:
That was a half sheet,
Jessie Sheehan:
Half sheet pan.
Elizabeth Mayhew:
The other thing about it, I had a friend this weekend say to me... I was making a cake or something, and she's like, "Actually, we had 20 people, but now we have 85 people, so I need cake."
And I was like, "Wait, what?"
She goes, "Just make a sheet cake."
And I said, "Mia, you don't understand. My sheet cakes are not lunch lady cakes. This isn't like slab with a bunch of stuff on it. They're three layers. They take much more time to do and many more ingredients." So that Cherry Bombe cake... Let me just think. In terms of buttercream was probably... One, two... It was at least three pounds of butter just for the buttercream.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we've whisked together our dry and our wet. We're going to transfer it to our three eight inch pans. Do you grease with cooking spray or butter?
Elizabeth Mayhew:
I use cooking spray. So I've not had a good... The butter's just... It's messy. It doesn't work. By the way, I think it's called Vegalene is the spray I use. I've tried all of them. It's orange and red. I order it by the case. Best one out there. Nothing ever sticks.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then do you also do a round of parchment or you're just-
Elizabeth Mayhew:
I don't do a round parchment. I don't need to.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. Now I got to look Vegalene. Now we're going to bake at 350 for about 20 minutes or so.
Elizabeth Mayhew:
Well, so depending on which pans I use.
Jessie Sheehan:
If we did the eight inch.
Elizabeth Mayhew:
Eight inch, it's about 20. So this is the thing. I meant to test this for you. I am a former recipe tester. I know how to do this. This sounds crazy. I bake very intuitively and I bake by smell so I can smell when a cake. I said that to a chef once and he said, yeah, you can hear too. You can hear when something's done. But for my cakes, I a hundred percent can smell. I just have an intuitive sense of when to take it out. So I'd say it's about 20 minutes. You want it to spring back you, you'll know you'll look at it. Chocolate cakes obviously can burn them very easily and not know, but I'd say 20, 25 minutes. Also depends on your oven. I have a definite hotspot in my oven, so I have to rotate my cakes.
Jessie Sheehan:
But you don't use, you're not going to be sticking a wooden skewer in your cake?
Elizabeth Mayhew:
Honestly, you don't need to stick a wooden screw. You can touch the top of it with your finger and you can tell if it's done.
Jessie Sheehan:
Right, and you want to kind of press and then have it spring back?
Elizabeth Mayhew:
Have it spring back, yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then you know. So your buttercream is a French buttercream. Tell us what makes it so silky and how you get those decorations to stay on it. Is that sort of why you chose French?
Elizabeth Mayhew:
It's a 100% why I use it. I used to have people request... In the early days I was doing carrot cakes and they wanted a cream cheese frosting, and there's just a density to cream cheese frosting that does not work at all. And French buttercream I had learned to make when I was working in that restaurant years ago. So it's just very classic. It's all egg yolk. So I have a freezer full of egg whites, but it's all egg yolk and you start by separating the eggs, beating the egg yolks. Before I do anything else, I just separate the eggs and I start beating the eggs because you want them to be very pale in color. My friend who I get my eggs from, they're all natural, really, really free-range. And her yolks are so dense that I really need to whip them a long time for them to become pale in color.
Jessie Sheehan:
I know we're doing that on high. Are we talking like 10 minutes? Are we talking like five minutes?
Elizabeth Mayhew:
Oh no, we're talking however long it takes me to put together the simple syrup. So I basically start that. I would say let's say five to seven minutes.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then in a medium sauce pan. And is there a type of sauce pan you like or you-
Elizabeth Mayhew:
You know what? I actually like my old Calphalon.
Jessie Sheehan:
In our medium sauce pan, we're going to stir together some sugar and some water. Is there a particular tool that we're stirring?
Elizabeth Mayhew:
Actually, that's a really good question. I love, very specifically, the silicon spatulas from Sur La Table that have a tiny bit... They're not totally flat. They have a tiny bit of a scoop thing. And I love the silicon ones. I used to use the wood ones with the rubber top that you could separate to clean, but it gets all gunky and disgusting. The silicon is just slick and so easy to clean. And especially when you're making simple sugar that can harden really quickly, I just use the silicon. And it can deal with the high heat, which is super important. So then I just put the sugar in the water, I stir it until the sugar's dissolved and then stop.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to continue to boil without stirring until a candy thermometer... What-
Elizabeth Mayhew:
About 150, like a soft ball stage?
Jessie Sheehan:
Great.
Elizabeth Mayhew:
And then I quickly take it off. If you leave it, you could get caramelized sugar very, very quickly. Pretty quickly. And I've done that before where I've forgotten when I was doing it, and I go back. I'm like, "Oh my God, I made peanut brittle." And then I quickly go over, and this is done... I'm doing this in a KitchenAid industrial KitchenAid mixer. But you could do it a regular KitchenAid mixer. Turn off the beater. Make sure that the beater is on the far side of where you're pouring in because you don't want the syrup to land on the beaters. It's going to whip into a sugar, sponge sugar, very quickly. So I add it. I quickly turn it on for five seconds.
Jessie Sheehan:
You're adding it to those egg yolks.
Elizabeth Mayhew:
I add it to the egg yolks, sorry, add the simple syrup, the hot syrup, which also be careful. I have burned myself. And that is a very, very, very painful burn, to get hot sugar syrup all over your hand. Turn it on. Whip it for like five seconds. Turn it off. Add the remaining, and then just let it go.
Now, I used to beat it at a very high speed, like the highest speed. I found that it puts too many bubbles into the mixture, if that makes sense. So I've taken it down one notch. So I beat it until it's fairly cool. Now this is the trick. One of the most important things about baking, it's not just measuring. Its temperature. Temperature of ingredients is super, super important. So those eggs are 100% room temperature. I leave my eggs out. If I'm going to be baking the next day, I take everything out at least the day before. I use so many eggs that I have them on my counter all the time. I don't even bother refrigerating them. And frankly, because I'm getting my eggs from my friend where they've never been refrigerated, I don't have to refrigerate them.
Butter I leave out all the time too. Butter absolutely has to be at room temperature. Now that being said, if I've forgotten and the butter is a little bit too cold, I will add it to that egg sugar mixture when it's warmer because that'll help-
Jessie Sheehan:
Emulsify it.
Elizabeth Mayhew:
Emulsify it, yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're going to beat on high until the mixture cools down. About how long is that? Five minutes?
Elizabeth Mayhew:
It's like five to seven minutes, I would say.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay. And then-
Elizabeth Mayhew:
I would say five, five to six minutes.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then we're going to start to add butter to this egg mixture.
Elizabeth Mayhew:
I used to beat it on high. Now I take it down a little bit.
Jessie Sheehan:
Maybe medium.
Elizabeth Mayhew:
Sort of medium high, because what I found is that I was beating too much air into it and I getting these air pockets.
Jessie Sheehan:
That are then probably not great to draw on or to-
Elizabeth Mayhew:
Well, no, you just, when you go to spread it on the cake, you want it to be super silky.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. We're going to add the butter to the egg mixture, beat on sort of a medium high-ish until the mixture is smooth and creamy. Then we're going to add our homemade vanilla?
Elizabeth Mayhew:
Or frankly you can add... I mean, sometimes I'll add Kahlua or I can add coffee. I can also turn this into a chocolate buttercream by adding about six ounces of melted chocolate.
Jessie Sheehan:
And would you add them at this point?
Elizabeth Mayhew:
I would add it at the end, yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay, perfect. And you say to use it immediately? Is that because it won't keep?
Elizabeth Mayhew:
It's temperature. It's the perfect temperature. So I use it immediately. If not, I put it in a storage container and I refrigerate it. But when you refrigerate it, in my experience, you can't just take it out and have it come to room temperature and be the perfect consistency. I inevitably have to re-beat it or I'll put the container in some warm water to bring it back to the proper temperature and then I'll beat it again. So my preference when I'm making a cake is always I'll make the cake... Like this morning, I woke up. I've made a couple cakes. They're cooling. When I get back to my kitchen, I am going to make the buttercream and frost both of them together because that buttercream will be exactly the temperature that I want it to be, rather than make one cake today, kind of ice that one. It's a much better idea to use that buttercream right away.
Jessie Sheehan:
And are you doing a crumb coat?
Elizabeth Mayhew:
I do a crumb coat. I do. Usually there's three or four coats. I'm creating a clear canvas. It's just like an art when you're prepping a canvas. That's what my cakes are. So I have a cake turntable and I use a spatula. I use two spatulas.
Jessie Sheehan:
Do you like the long?
Elizabeth Mayhew:
A long flat.
Jessie Sheehan:
Offset?
Elizabeth Mayhew:
The only time I use an offset, frankly, is for the sheet cake because I can't turn it. A sheet cake, it's very hard to turn, so you're doing it flat. So I use an offset for that. So when I'm icing my cakes, I use a regular flat spatula, and then I use a small offset just for the edges. So I do a crumb coat. I stick it in the refrigerator. Once it's hardened, I take it back out. I do another coat, put it back in the refrigerator. It's usually three layers for a white cake and four layers for a chocolate cake.
Jessie Sheehan:
I'm so interested in the different tools and the different kinds of food coloring that you are leaning into or choosing. Is it like a gel food coloring? Is it a liquid?
Elizabeth Mayhew:
I use different companies, but they come in bottles. You squeeze them out. So it's not what you buy the grocery store. It's not a watery liquid. I guess It's a gel of sorts. And I basically... Let's think about it. I don't actually have that many colors because I have a base. I have red, just a red red, a green, which is a kelly green, a black. I have a purple. I have a blue, which I use sky blue. It's basically like the rainbow. And then every other color I make off of that. So for example, if I'm making that Wedgwood blue, that blue is like I'll use sky blue and then I'll add black to it. For the darker greens, I add black and purple. So this is the other thing. Because the buttercream has a pale yellow tint, I have to correct for that. If I want a cleaner blue, I have to add purple to it. Purple takes out that yellowy color because a lot of times if I add just blue to it's going to look too green, so I correct it with purple.
Jessie Sheehan:
Did you ever consider a Swiss meringue buttercream just because it's white? Or maybe the yellow... Maybe the butter actually will tint even that.
Elizabeth Mayhew:
I'm sure I could make it whiter. I also like the silkiness vanilla-y-ness of this, and I think the white white almost looks too bakery-ish for me, if that makes sense. It's almost too clean. I also used what I knew because I don't consider myself... I mean I am, I guess, a professional baker, but it's not like I ever went to cooking school. I learned by doing. I learned in a restaurant by doing. I learned by reading. I learned by practicing. And so from a chemistry standpoint, yeah, I guess I probably could do a Swiss meringue. But I love the taste of this. I love the consistency of it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Also with your experience in art and design, it's like you know how to color correct for that, so it works for you.
Elizabeth Mayhew:
And you figure it out. Do you know many times I make the wrong blue and I'm like, "Oh my God." So too many times a messed up thing just becomes black. At the end of the day, it all ends up becoming black.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then re you carefully scraping it off? If you make a mistake and something-
Elizabeth Mayhew:
Oh, I just wipe it off. When I have a mistake, I refrigerate it and then just take it off. It's very easy to take it off. But if you take it off when it's like... You're going to make a mess. Baking is about patience. So there's two things that I've learned about baking. I hate to exercise. I hate it. I hate it. I do not know what a runner's high is. I've never had it except to tell you that when I'm baking and I'm so lost in my design and so lost in my cake, that, I think, is a runner's high. I 100% can get so focused on it. But what I realized is it takes an infinite amount of being present and patient, and you have to have those two things. People who say they can't bake, they can't do it because they don't have the discipline to say, "I have to pay attention."
It's everything that we're learning about in terms of being present. For me, baking sums it all up. And so if you rush anything, if I make a mistake and I swipe it off and I don't take the time to refrigerate it's going to be so much more of a mess. So for me, make a mistake, stick it in the refrigerator, let it harden, and then you just take... I have a tiny, tiny, tiny, it's probably like an inch length, little offset pallet knife, and I'll just scrape it off with that.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that.
Elizabeth Mayhew:
And I also use... There's these styluses. A lot of cookie decorators use them. They're just a metal pin with a plastic handle, and I use those. I always have those present, always.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's a great segue into all of the tools. Are there teeny tiny piping bags.
Elizabeth Mayhew:
So this is the thing. I only use a number one tip. I've tried-
Jessie Sheehan:
How big? I just can't visualize it. What's a-
Elizabeth Mayhew:
One tip is like the tip... Think the tip of a number two pencil.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, so not-
Elizabeth Mayhew:
It's not tiny, tiny, tiny. Another thing about the buttercream that you have to be very careful with, if you use too small of a tip, like a 00, one sugar granule, if it hasn't completely emulsified, or one little... will stop the whole thing up. When you're making this buttercream, I always have a little pick near me too, and you have to watch it because sometime you can get strands of egg yolk or there's things that maybe don't mix totally properly that you have to pick out.
Jessie Sheehan:
What is it? What should I picture with a pick?
Elizabeth Mayhew:
So it's this metal... It's like what a lot of cookie decorators like. You can order them on Amazon in a pack of four. It's like a long metal, thin-
Jessie Sheehan:
Pointy edged?
Elizabeth Mayhew:
It's tiny. It's almost like-
Jessie Sheehan:
A pin or a needle?
Elizabeth Mayhew:
Bigger than a needle, more like a nail, long nail sort of, very thin with a plastic head. The tips I use are Ateco.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, yeah.
Elizabeth Mayhew:
Number one, for sure. That's all I use except I use a pedal. So around the base of all my cakes is just like a ribbon edge. So I pipe that, and I think it might be like a 105 or something like that. It's almost like what you would use to make a rose petal. And so I do like a ribbon around the bottom of my cake.
The other thing is I don't do my cakes on cardboard. I buy these bamboo plates, these fluted bamboo plates from a company called Bambu, B-A-M-B-U, mostly because I can't imagine having such a nice cake and so much work has gone into it, and then I'm going to give it to you on cardboard. That just doesn't make sense to me. So there's something about having it on this plate. And I also have a huge collection of antique plates, too, that people sometimes will say, "Can you put it on that as well?" So in terms of equipment, I start with the plate, obviously. I use those number one things, and then I use tips. And then I use these plastic, disposable... Again, you get 100 of them. They're are these very thin plastic disposable pastry bags.
Jessie Sheehan:
Are they small?
Elizabeth Mayhew:
They're small. It's a very little amount of frosting that... It's so unbelievable how tiny we're talking, how little actually goes into one of those charms. We're talking a couple of squirts. They're very small. With baking, the littlest thing can make a big... Like a drop of water in something can absolutely ruin something or... It's just small. Everything's small. The whole world is small.
Jessie Sheehan:
And it's not like every little doodle has an outline in a specific color. So you have different colors for every doodle.
Elizabeth Mayhew:
Oh my god. So that's what I'm saying. If you just factor in purely how long it takes me to mix all the colors, we're talking over an hour just to mix the colors. And I use little Pyrex, glass Pyrex bowls, and I have little spatulas. Again, your equipment always is in relation to whatever you're doing. So for a little bowl I have a little spatula, and for a big bowl I have a big spatula. So I have all these little bowls and... I mean, I took a picture the other day because I was making... Maybe it was like a flower or something, and I had four different colors with the tiniest, tiniest gradients of blues that you could imagine, but they were four colors just to go into that one charm. So again, dogs take... Animals, take quite a number. Water takes a number or flowers. It's funny. I sit on the subway. I go through the world now and I'm like, "Look at all those colors in that leaf."
Jessie Sheehan:
So because you're not sketching, does it mean that you might make a dog with five colors and then you have to put those colors away and then you're going to make a flower? So you are trying to set up... I'm just imagining how your mind works. Are you trying to mis en place all the colors before you sit down to draw? Or are you stopping and starting and stopping-
Elizabeth Mayhew:
It depends. So when I have... A lot of times I do charm cakes where people ask for a restricted color palette. They say, "I don't like all the bright colors. I don't care if the apple is pink instead of red." When I have a restricted color palette, let's say seven colors, I will make all of those. I definitely stop and start because I also try to be conservative in my usage. So for example, if I mix yellow, then I can leave that bowl, not wash it, and that yellow can become orange very easily if I add red to it. So I think there's an economy of practice that I try to put into place. There's so much concentration that has to go into each of these things. And sometimes I don't see it until I'm there, until I'm at the moment or there's a looseness about the process.
So if I start in the bottom right with the animal and then I go do a crest at the top and that crest is on the top left... I wish you guys could see me doing this right now. And that's red and blue. I know that I'm going to want red somewhere near the dogs because I want to balance out that color from the... Let's say I want the top left to be balanced by the bottom right.
I also know that if I'm going to do a tennis racket, I want it angling down toward the center of the cake so it brings your eye to top left, so it angles down, so it points to where it says happy birthday. So there is an art historical composition method to this where I'm thinking about balance of color, balance of line, balance of shape, and that color, as I'm mixing them, might change and morph depending on where it is or what I need. So I have to be a little bit more nimble. It's a waste of time for me to go ahead and do it all unless, again, it's that restricted color palette.
Jessie Sheehan:
You said that you're starting with your scalloped border, your sort of connected smiley faces, and they sort of frame the words and the message that you put in the center. And then, of course, you're doing your doodles, starting bottom right. And then you say that the last step is either adding bows or tassels or some kind of little flourish at the end. Do you ever doodle on the sides?
Elizabeth Mayhew:
I do. I do. It's very, very, very hard to do. Gravity works against you. So decorating on the sides, that's why a lot of people, when you see them doing cakes where they decorate on the sides, they do like a pointillism, like little dots or little points. It's much easier to control. What I'm doing, I'm not using the big... You know, the Victorian style cakes are very in right now. Those tips are very different from what I'm using. If you're using a very thin one tip, it's like a string that can just fall very easily. So I started doing... I always say people fall into two categories. You're either a bow or you're a tassel. And so on the sides... And I don't do them at every point. So I have every one of my cakes, essentially, by the base of my scallops, has seven little bows or tassels that hang off the side just because it looked very naked.
I used to not do that. And that's again about experience. It looked wrong to me. So I started adding that in. I'll do flowers. Anything that's organic is fine, like flowers or leaves on the sides. So there's two things about the last part of it. Once the charms are in place on the top, I often fill in the white space with flowers, leaves, again things that are more organic. Also about color, if you look at a lot of my cakes, the frame color is often green, and that's because green is the color of nature. Think about it. Green goes with everything. Green is a leaf. Green is grass. It doesn't compete with anything. It's a neutral. So a lot of times it'll be green.
Jessie Sheehan:
Well, thank you so much for chatting with me today, Elizabeth. And I just want to say that you are my cherry pie.
Elizabeth Mayhew:
Thank you so much.
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.