Rose Levy Beranbaum 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.
Today's guest is Rose Levy Beranbaum. Rose is a renowned baker and award-winning author behind 12 cookbooks, including “The Cookie Bible,” “The Bread Bible,” and “The Baking Bible,” and the 35th anniversary edition of Rose's “Cake Bible” will be out this fall. Rose is known for pioneering the reverse creaming method, a revolutionary cake-making technique. And if you're like, "What's reverse creaming?," don't worry. Rose joins me in just a minute to explain. We also walk through the recipe for her all-occasion Downy yellow butter cake with dark chocolate ganache frosting, from the first edition of the “Cake Bible,” which is one of Rose's favorite cakes, and might just become yours too. And we talk about her preferred method for making ganache, spoiler alert, in a food processor. To be honest, peeps, talking to Rose was totally a dream come true for me. She has been one of my baking heroes for such a long time, and it was wonderful to chat with her in the studio. Stay tuned for my chat with Rose.
Thank you to Plugra and Nonino for supporting this episode. 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% butterfat. The higher butterfat 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 doughnut 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.
Peeps, the new icons issue of Cherry Bombe's print magazine is here, and it features three culinary icons on the covers: Indian food superstar, Madhur Jaffrey, Dr. Jessica B. Harris, and the Chinatown champion, Grace Young. Inside, you'll find stories on more incredible women in the world of food, plus recipes like Marcella Hazan's iconic tomato sauce. You can snag a copy or subscribe at CherryBombe.com, or pick up a copy at a retailer near you, like Kitchen Arts & Letters in New York City, Now Serving in LA, Moon Palace Books in Minneapolis, and Bold Fork Books in Washington, D.C. Check out CherryBombe.com for our complete list of retailers.
Let's check in with today's guest.Rose, so excited to have you on She's My Cherry Pie, and to talk all-occasion Downy yellow butter cake with chocolate ganache frosting with you and so much more.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
I have so been looking forward to this.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yay. You grew up in a home with no sweets, due to the fact that your mother was a dentist, and when you went to college, you tasted your first from scratch cake, and you knew right away that you wanted to recreate that flavor of that homemade cake, but maybe with a texture of something store-bought like you had had at a friend's birthday party. I love, love, love this story about you because I too, whenever I am making a cake, I'm trying to replicate that texture of something from the box with making it very homemade.
And then, you started writing your cookbooks, and when you were asked by a slightly critical New York Times journalist, in 1988, when the “Cake Bible” was published, he asked, "Well, what have you done differently with cake?" And you said, "I have changed the way cakes are baked to make them faster, easier, and better." Can you tell us about that? That is so brilliant. I just love that answer.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
That is spot on that you remembered that. Well, for one thing, I did get my master's at NYU in food science and culinary arts, and I actually got an A+, which they don't usually give on a master's level because I wrote ... We were supposed to take a simple statement, because even the simplest statement can lead to 22 pages of conclusions, and my statement was to sifting effect the quality of a yellow cake mix. I didn't mean a mix, a box mix, but just, we were all told, start by sifting the flour. And the first thing I always did, and ever since when I was writing is, if there's a word I'm writing about, I look it up in the dictionary.
And in this case, sifting, everybody was assuming it mixes the ingredients together evenly. All it does is to aerate them so that they hydrate better. And I started coming up with all the different experiments that we could do to achieve what my goal had been, which was to have that wonderful, soft texture of a cake mix from a box with the flavor of a butter cake that's homemade, that was always much coarser, but with a wonderful buttery flavor that nothing, to me, is equal to. Even when I make a chocolate cake with oil, I end up saturating it with ganache that has cream and butter.
Of course, I didn't actually have to do the experiments, I just had to put them forth, but when I started teaching cake decorating and I wanted to have something that people would have, cake worthy of putting the decorations on, that was when I got to start experimenting, and I think it was something like 22 cakes later that I found the way to do it, which is called reverse creaming.
If you look at Wikipedia, I was shocked, because somebody told me, I never looked up my name, it says, the first thing and only thing is, "She invented the reverse creaming method." And I thought, well, I didn't invent it. It's much more interesting than that.
I read all these different food science books, and one of them talked about how you need high-ratio shortening in order to use the commercial method, which is also called reverse creaming. Otherwise, with butter it wouldn't emulsify, because it needs to have that high-ratio shortening. And they said, the reason is it has to be between 65 and 75 degrees. So I started thinking, well, what if I have butter at that temperature? Maybe that would work.
Now, to this day, I will not go back to the old creaming method, because you get a finer texture. I mean, it did arrive at what I wanted, so I applied it to all my cakes, including the Downy yellow all-occasion cake.
Jessie Sheehan:
I wanted to talk about your recipe writing, because recipes written by you have been described as the gold standard of recipe writing, and I've read that you have even said that your middle name could be "Precision."
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
I don't know where you read that, but it's the absolute truth.
Jessie Sheehan:
You were the first to include weights in the US in your cookbooks, and charts as well, because your trailblazing editor, Maria Guarnaschelli, who edited the “Cake Bible,” understood that, when you give details like you were giving people, your readers will succeed.
And you've even said that easy recipes, they don't have all the information, necessarily, that's going to make them work. Tell us about that process of you convincing Maria to let you do the weights, of how that idea came to you.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Maria was kind of an intellectual snob, in the best sense of the word. She went to Yale for her graduate work, and she was also kind of a revolutionary. In fact, the amazing thing is that, once she saw the difference that it makes to have weights for all ingredients, because some books did have weights for one or two, like butter, but not all of them, and especially not metric, which is so much more precise too, she said she was throwing out all her other baking books, the ultimate compliment. She did do some wonderful baking books that she kept as well, but it was just she was very dramatic in her way of expressing things. And I think maybe the reason that I was, I'm precise by nature, but the reason I realized how important it was to understand what the ingredients are made up of, and also to be precise about the weight, is that my late husband was a doctor, and he couldn't imagine doing it by volume.
And then, I saw very quickly how flour, if you tried to measure it, you get three different results depending on how you do it, and one of those results is going to give you one in three quarters times the amount that's intended. The difference between bleached and unbleached flour is so significant, and I still see, to this day, people saying all-purpose flour, not specifying which they mean.
And if you're making bread and use bleached, it won't be strong enough. If you're using unbleached with cake, it will be chewy and it won't give you the same consistency. I like to give so much information, but not all editors would've appreciated that. And I remember that one, that Anne Branson had told me I should submit the “Cake Bible” to her editor, and I got a rejection back. The name of my cooking school is Cordon Rose, but it was addressed to Condom Rose, and I framed it on the wall. So you pull the reader into a frenzy of contingencies that you go over their head and tell them more than they need to know.
Well, it all began with “The Joy of Cooking,” that I so admired, and I even have a letter from Marion Rombauer when she was revising her book, because I had used her as an example in one of my college papers and how wonderful it was. And she said, "Thank you for encouraging me because I'm right now in a revision of the book," and now, I'm in the revision of the “Cake Bible.” Isn't that amazing?
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. I had read about how you were influenced by “The Joy of Cooking,” and how you appreciated all of that extra information that was included, but you were really approaching it like a user and saying, "If I myself am not turning the page to get to the information that they want me to read, then, no one's going to." And it's got to be right there on the page.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Yeah, I write for myself first. And the wonderful thing is that I knew nothing. If you know a little something, then, you don't think of what people might need to know that they don't. It was a real advantage having no baking background, what whatsoever.
Also, I think my major mentor, if people were to ask who I admire the most, it would be Julia Child, because she wrote that way. And it would be Madame Curie, because that was her approach. When I saw the movie, I cried, because I recognized myself, in the middle of the night going to the lab because she realized what the answer was, and me, in the middle of the night, mixing the cake and calling Woody in Minnesota and saying, "Oh, my God, it rose three times the height." Failure after failure, and I get the chills remembering all these things.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. I'm getting the chills just hearing it. I also understand, perhaps, that your recipe writing style has changed even more recently, with the inclusion of step-by-step photos to try to help people really see what you're doing, what all the steps are for the different recipes. Is that accurate?
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Oh, Jessie, the thing is, I wish I could have step-by-step photos in all my books, but that would make them 2,000 pages long.
The only one that I was allowed to do this in, and my husband Woody is always saying, "Well, if you called it a Bible, it would be selling. People don't even realize how special it is," is Rose's Baking Basics. And every recipe has the steps. And I refer to it, because sometimes, you forget the texture of what something is supposed to be like, and you see it there. It's invaluable.
But nowadays, people can do a lot of video, and it's not quite the same because the video goes so fast. Sure, you can stop it, but while you're baking, you don't want to do that. Your hands are grimy. Whereas, with the book, you can have it right there open, and it makes it much easier.
Jessie Sheehan:
I find it so helpful. I think so many of us are visual learners, and it is so hard to read a complicated instruction about how something's supposed to be done. I think, maybe particularly with bread or maybe a sophisticated pastry, et cetera, a puff pastry, to be able to see what they mean, a letter fold, which obviously, you and I know what a letter fold is, but it can be a little complicated when you're trying to explain it. And to be able to see that in a book makes ...
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Yeah, instructional writing is the hardest, as you know yourself, as a cookbook author. It's fun to write stories, and I love writing the head notes. I always save that for the end. And I always hope there's room for them.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes, I was just going to say that I've read that you actually love the head notes the most, where you can put your technical info in your sidebars, but your stories in your head notes.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
I'm a storyteller.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
And that's why my next book is going to be “Ma Vie En Rose.”
Jessie Sheehan:
Love that. The memoir.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
I cannot wait.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
It's not exactly a tell all, though. I'm only going to tell, well, mostly, the good stuff.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, I want to read it all. I want you to put all of it in.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Well ... And then, I'll have to go and hibernate somewhere.
Jessie Sheehan:
I know you're working on the new edition of “The Cake Bible.” Can you tell us a teeny bit about what's different about it, and when we'll be seeing that book?
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Well, thank you. The pub date is October 22nd. And I've been avoiding doing this, and my late husband said, "It's a classic, why would you touch it?" But my husband Woody has been pushing me, because he keeps saying, "Well, so much has changed. The size of the pans. They're not one and a half inches high anymore. They're two inches. And now, there's something called unbleached cake flour, which isn't cake flour really at all, and you have to explain all this new stuff." I thought, okay, I would not do that if not for him, because my first thought was I'd have to change all the photos, because they don't have the plates anymore. And I did every single cake and brought it across Houston Street to the studio when the guy was available to take the photograph, and it was so much work and I didn't want to have to do it.
But the fact that I knew somebody who'd worked with me for all these years, it's now 20 years, understands exactly what my thinking is, and it's really written by both of us. It's really done by both of us. Plus, I no longer want to have things like the rose lattice cake, where you pipe meringue into little panels. And I remember holding it as I was about to cross Houston Street, and a truck went by and the panels all cracked in the back. It was like, "Who does that anymore?" And we had enough panels we could show it. It's beautiful. But I'm more now into just sheer deliciousness and simplicity.
Jessie Sheehan:
Mm-hmm. I love that.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
My recipes are complicated enough, maybe, but actually, there's plenty of ones that are pretty easy to do. It's not because they're long and informational that they make it difficult. On the contrary, they're long because they have all the information so that people can follow it and succeed.
Jessie Sheehan:
We'll be right back.
Kerry Diamond:
Hi, everybody. This is Kerry Diamond, founder of Cherry Bombe magazine, and host of Radio Cherry Bombe. Today's episode of She's My Cherry Pie is presented by Nonino, the legendary family-owned company from Friuli-Venezia Giulia, founded in 1897, and known for its award-winning grappa. Since 1940, Nonino has been led by six generations of incredible women, starting with the matriarch, Silvia Nonino, who was Italy's very first female master distiller, and the first woman in the country to manage a distillery. L'Aperitivo, Nonino's botanical aperitif, is based on an original recipe of Silvia's. In 1973, her daughter-in-law, Giannola Nonino, helped introduce the world to the first single varietal grappa. Giannola's three daughters, Elisabetta, who is the CEO today, Antonella, and Christina, run the distillery. They revisited their family recipes to create Amaro Nonino, the bittersweet, herbaceous liqueur that is beloved by the world's top mixologists, and an essential ingredient in the famous Paper Plane cocktail. And then, there's Francesca Nonino, Giannola's granddaughter who is Nonino's global brand ambassador, and helps out in the distillery. That is an incredible family tree. Visit grappanonino.it for recipes and information on Nonino's grappa varieties. That link is in our show notes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Now, back to our guest.
Now, I want to talk about all-occasion Downy yellow butter cake. And you have said that this cake and frosting recipes that we're about to discuss exemplify the secret to your success, which is, if anyone says something can't be done, your immediate response is, "Why not?"
And in fact, your grandmother used to say that you had a face like a question mark, which I just loved. And were there these questions behind the creation of this cake, when you were wondering maybe about that reverse creaming, is that what you meant when you described this cake that way?
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Yeah, what my grandmother, all these years, I thought she meant because I have a big forehead and a pointy chin, and suddenly, when people have been accusing me of asking questions, I thought, but knowing the right questions to ask is the key to life. More and more, I see that.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
And not just for the cake, but also for the ganache. Because when I went to Switzerland years ago, in this country, nobody had ever heard of ganache. They thought of, well, it's the ultimate nosh, nosherai. It's a Yiddish word, but it's actually a German word and it's pronounced ganache, which I didn't know. And they said, "You cannot do it, except by putting it in a double boiler or by cooking it really slowly directly on the heat." And most of the time, if you're not really careful, the cream would separate out and the fat would be at the top, and you couldn't get it back in.
And I thought, I wonder if the food processor would work. But I was at this lecture where Lora Brody, who wrote “Growing Up on the Chocolate Diet,” said somebody said, "Can you do it in the food processor?" And she said, "No, you can't, but ask Rose. I only pretend to know the answers." She was always so out there, out front. So I asked Rose myself, thinking, why can't it be? Let me try it. And it was infallible. You never had it separate. The only time it will separate is if you stir it when it's at 90 degrees. You have to let it cool to below 90, and then, you can stir it. I found out so much about chocolate.
But this is probably the ultimate chocolate frosting. It is. It's just the best chocolate and cream. The tricky thing is, though, that people are into high ratio, high cacao chocolates, because they want it to be less sweet. Say, I remember the producer of my PBS show wanted to impress me when I came to San Francisco, and she'd made a cake, and her husband said, "You're going to need a hacksaw to cut through the frosting." I said, "Well, what did you do? Didn't you follow the recipe?" She said, "Yes, but I wanted to use the best chocolate, so I'll use 72%."
That's why, now, in my books, I say, "If you use 72%, this is how much cream you'll need. If you use 80%, this is how much more." There's just so much to know, and it's so disappointing when you have a ganache, even if that's nice and soft enough to cut, but it lifts right off the cake. These are the kinds of things that I try to address.
Jessie Sheehan:
All right. First things first. We're going to preheat our oven to 350 degrees for at least 20 minutes, which I think is such a great note just to remind people that it takes ovens a long time to preheat.
And you have to use your oven thermometer if you have it. And we're going to place our oven rack in the lower third of the oven. We're going to coat the bottom of two 9" by 2" round pans. Do you have a favorite brand of pan?
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
I love the USA Pans.
Jessie Sheehan:
The USA, I like those too.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
But I still like to use a spray with Baker's Joy.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, yeah. No, I have that. What I had is, actually, that you like to first coat the bottom with shortening, then, line with parchment paper rounds, and then, coat the paper and sides with the baking spray with flour; is that correct?
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Mm-hmm. Yeah. With the genoise, I don't coat the parchment because, that way, it can peel off the crust, which is great, because you're going to saturate it with syrup, but I want to keep every part of the basic yellow.
Jessie Sheehan:
Why the shortening? Why wouldn't you maybe do the spray, then, do the paper, then spray again? Why the shortening?
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Because it slips when you put it in? Woody chooses to do it that way, because he thinks it's more efficient, but then, you have to be careful when you're spreading the dough with the butter.
Jessie Sheehan:
But you're so right that, sometimes, that piece of parchment is-
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Swimming.
Jessie Sheehan:
... swimming a little, skating a little over that, over the spray. Oh, that's so interesting.
And then, we're going to encircle the outer sides of our pans with cake strips, First, can you tell, for those listeners that don't know what a cake strip is, what it is and why we like them? And also, is there a favorite brand?
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Yeah, mine.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes, yes, yes.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Yeah. Well, the whole thing is a very interesting concept because cakes, so often, no matter how you adjust the ratio of ingredients, they rise more at the side. They set at the side, and then, the center continues baking, because the sides are against the metal and it gets the heat first. So it's set, it can't rise anymore. The middle of the cake domes, so you don't get a nice flat surface. And sometimes, you want a slight dome, but you really don't want a huge dome.
I didn't invent this initially. There were a material that's used for ironing boards, sort of a metallic and cotton, and you soak them, so that it kept the outside of the pan cool before it sets, so that the center caught up with the sides. And they got pretty ratty looking pretty quickly.
And I was a representative in Barcelona for Lekue silicone, and they had a silicone cake pan. And I said to Woody, one day, "I have an idea. Silicone is, having worked with it, is a very poor conductor. Let's make that, put it to an advantage. Let's cut out the bottom of the cake pan and just wrap the metal pan with the silicone that remains." And Eureka, it just worked perfectly.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, my gosh.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
It's on Amazon, by the way.
Jessie Sheehan:
Amazing.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Yeah, and it really does work.
Jessie Sheehan:
Amazing. I love the idea of using the things that are not good about silicone to your advantage. So we're going to whisk room temperature, egg yolks. And do you separate your egg yolks by hand? Do you like to use the shell?
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Oh, that's another big issue. I learned at James Beard. He uses the hand, because there's the least chance of losing or cracking the yolk.
Jessie Sheehan:
I used the hand.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Oh, good. I knew where kindred spirits.
Jessie Sheehan:
I'm pro hand.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
The only problem is that when the eggs are a little old, no matter how you do it, the yolks tend to break.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're going to whisk our room temp egg yolks, that we've separated by hand, or not. We're going to add milk, which is room temperature or not. Does it matter if ... ?
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
I don't think it really cares, because you basically want the finished temperature of the batter to be around 70 degrees. And I don't take that temperature, but I'm just saying you'll get that if everything else is room temperature.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay. Perfect.
And I love this, that you can actually substitute buttermilk, if you want, in this cake, but I wondered, will that change the texture of the cake? Will it give it a slight tang? I just wondered about your offer of buttermilk, and why you're offering it to us.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
I actually love the flavor it gives. And it may be slightly finer textured, though, I can imagine it being any finer than it is already.
But with buttermilk, I worked at Procter & Gamble once years ago, and I got to speak to the head scientist and he explained to me that buttermilk, when you put it in a mixture, it's not acidic. If the mixture is acidic, it will moderate it more toward base. And if it's base, it'll make it more toward acidic. And here are all these recipes saying when you use buttermilk, you have to use baking soda to neutralize it. Not, because it takes away the flavor. This is a real mind blowing experience.
Jessie Sheehan:
Rose, you are blowing my mind right now. That was going to be my next question, because you're saying we can use buttermilk, but you're not saying we have to use soda.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
No, it's better not to.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, my gosh.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Isn't that thrilling?
Jessie Sheehan:
Listeners, listen up. Rose is dropping science. That's amazing.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
This is how science, the lessons in chemistry, this is how science enables you to produce and create the most amazing things.
And that was asking questions. When I was at Procter, &, Gamble, I said, "Is there somebody you can explain to me about how to get the most flavor out of cocoa?" And they said, "That would be our head scientist. He's up in a castle in the sky there. Nobody ever wants to talk to him. He's an old man. He'll love that you come and talk to him."
So I went and I asked my question, and that's when I found out, also, that cocoa has little a cell around each little powder of the cocoa. And if you put boiling water in it, it ruptures that outside cell, which you can't see, of course, and the flavors come out. That's why I now always add boiling water, when I can, in a recipe.
It's just so moving to think about how it's an ongoing chain of helping people and knowledge and all the things that can make your baking life better. And when you make your baking life better, your life is better, because I'm convinced that people who bake are happier.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're whisking our yolks, our milk, or buttermilk, and we're adding a generous tablespoon of vanilla. I wondered if you had a favorite brand, or if you make your own.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
I don't make my own because I've tried, and I find that the brands that exist are really superior.
Jessie Sheehan:
Nice. Do you have a favorite?
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Several. I loved Heilala, the Vanilla Queen. Pure vanilla extract is the key.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love it. So we're lightly whisking all of this in a four-cup glass measuring cup with a spout. Now, we're going to do something called reverse creaming, which is a technique you pioneered, whereby we're going to add our butter, and in this recipe, a little bit of milk, to our dry ingredients. And for those that don't know, can you explain reverse creaming?
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
It's combining the dry ingredients first, so that way, you don't have to sift, and the sifting doesn't uniformly incorporate them. That's where it all started. The sugar, the leavening, the salt, and the flour. And you mix it together, and that way, they are evenly mixed. And then, you add part of the milk, or buttermilk or whatever you're adding, and you beat it until it's well incorporated. And then, you add the remaining egg, which is beaten with the -
Jessie Sheehan:
And we also add the butter, yes, along with the milk?
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Oh.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Yes, of course. That's the whole point, because after you mix together the dry ingredients and you add the butter, then, the butter gets coated with some of the flour, so it doesn't develop as much gluten. It protects it from getting chewy. So you could beat it longer without risking that it's going to get too tough.
Jessie Sheehan:
In reverse creaming, do you always add a teeny bit of the liquid for the cake recipe along with the butter?
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay. I wasn't sure. For some reason, I had it in my head that it was just the butter and the dry ingredients, but it's a tiny bit of liquid as well, at that point.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Yeah, just maybe a quarter of the liquid, which I don't weigh, I just do by out of the bowl.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
And then, you add the egg and the rest of the liquid and the vanilla in two parts, or three parts, depending on how long.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Just a quick question about that. Does reverse creaming work in traditional cakes calling for butter or shortening? Would you do it with an oil-based cake? Or do you just do it with butter?
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Well, I don't use shortening in a cake.
Jessie Sheehan:
Let's say someone wanted to.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
It would work just fine with shortening. That's the thing. Oil cakes are totally different.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Okay. Good to know.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Although I do like a bit of oil in some of my butter cakes now because it keep the moisture.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes, to add a little bit ... Yeah. And longer shelf ... It can sit on the counter and still remain moist.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
But it doesn't work for everything. The proof is in the pudding. You have to try things. Theory is one thing, but when you actually make the recipe, you see there may be a benefit, but also a detriment.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a flat beater, we're going to mix cake flour, superfine sugar. Tell us why you love superfine as opposed to granulated.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Well, you get a slightly finer texture, but the truth is that granulated is pretty fine too. I don't think most people would know the difference.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay, great. And then, we're going to add baking powder. And this particular recipe calls for a lot. It's five and a third teaspoons of baking powder. And this is where I wrote, "and even when you use buttermilk, you're still using, you add even a little bit more baking powder, up to eight teaspoons of baking powder."
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Is that what it said?
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, which I love.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Thank you for reminding me.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love. And I also had this question. I'm so wedded to this idea that one cup of flour is leavened by one teaspoon of baking powder or one quarter teaspoon of soda. And it's like you're knocking all this on its head and using extra baking powder in this recipe to get the lift that you want.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
It also depends on the kind of flour you use, but my basic ratio is, for 100 grams of cake flour, which would be a cup, sifted into the cup, I use one in a third teaspoons of baking powder.
But I've been giving you the weights now for baking powder, only for people who have a skill that's at super sensitive, because baking powder is the only ingredient I have that changes every single time you do. And I worked with somebody to produce perfectly even and reliable measuring spoons, and still it's different.
Jessie Sheehan:
I know.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
It's crazy making. Salt is always the same, six grams per teaspoon. I finally took the weight of baking powder over a period of a year, and it averages at 4.5 grams. And I tested everything that way, and I'm just hoping that ... But what I tell people in the book two is, go by the results. If you find you're getting a big dome even with the strips, then, add more baking powder. If it's dipping a bit and you're using bleached flour, then, use less. You have to adjust it according to your measuring spoons.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Cake flour is always bleached or always unbleached, or it can be either?
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
No. The trouble now that is becoming available as unbleached, and it does not perform the same way at all. It dips in the center. It's coarser. I've tested it. No. Bleached cake flour.
Jessie Sheehan:
All right. We've got our flour, we've got our baking powder, we've got some fine sea salt. Do you not use kosher?
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Well, I now am starting to use kosher because it's less expensive, but I have to use double the amount, and you have to use Diamond Krystal, but I don't think it's better in any way. I think most people probably are using kosher, and therefore, I wanted to educate people about it, because there are two different kinds of kosher salt. The Diamond Krystal is the one that's about half the weight of sea salt.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. You don't want to want to use Morton.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
No, because Morton is ... Well, Diamond is actually produced in a way that's hollow. It's fluffed up. Morton would be much too salty.
Jessie Sheehan:
All right. Now, we're going to mix our salt, our baking powder, our flour, on low speed for 30 seconds. We're going to add some room temp unsalted butter and some milk. We're going to mix on low speed until the dry ingredients are moistened. We're going to raise the speed to medium and beat for one, one and a half minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Are we scraping? Do you like a silicone spatula?
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're starting on low speed. We're going to gradually add that egg yolk mixture that we made to the batter, in three parts, beating on medium speed for 20 seconds after each addition to incorporate the ingredients.
I loved this. I found a video of you making the Downy yellow cake from many years ago, and you do this thing where you put plastic wrap on top of the stand mixer to stop flour and whatever it is.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Yeah, because if you put a towel on top, it sticks to the towel.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
And with the plastic wrap, you see what's going on. Plus, it comes right off.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're on medium speed for about 20 seconds after each addition. Once everything's been incorporated, do we mix everything together to strengthen and get the structure at the end of the final mixing?
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
No, because the final mixing.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay. The final mixing is just that-
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
That the important thing is to scrape the sizes, because it does jump up.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay, great.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
And to reach down to the bottom.
Jessie Sheehan:
Right. Yeah, because of that lip or that nipple at the bottom of the stand mixer bowl.
Now, we're going to scrape the batter into our prepared pans. We're going to smooth the surface evenly with a small offset. I assume you probably have a large offset collection. And each pan will be about halfway full. We'll bake for 30 to 40 minutes or until golden brown. It says, "A wire cake tester inserted in the center will come out clean. The cakes spring back when pressed lightly in the center. And the cakes may rise a little above the side of the pan, but will sink even to the sides, with a slight dome once cooled."
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
I just remember that this kind of validates the reverse creaming method. I hadn't thought of it for a long time, but most cake recipes say two thirds full, and then, it rises to the top. Most of my cakes, basic cakes like this, half full, and they rise to the top, and yet, they have an even texture. Because it may seem like it's rising higher when it rises above the pan, but if it domes, what value is that? You have to cut off the dome.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. So smart. Is there a brand of wire cake tester that you love? What should we be picturing? Just a long, skinny ... ?
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Yeah, skinny.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then, it has-
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
I have gotten mine for, and it's a miracle I have not lost them, about 30 years ago or more. But you see, it's different from a toothpick. Some of my cake recipes are so moist that you need to use a wooden toothpick, because a metal one would slide in and out and still not be done. And I even like to sometimes tell people, the first time they're baking something, to take the temperature.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Around 190 is basically ...
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. I don't even like toothpicks because they're too short. I actually love those long wooden skewers.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Oh, yeah, skewers.
Jessie Sheehan:
And I like the texture, because I like to pull cakes when there's still crumbs. I don't like it to be clean.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Especially chocolate ones.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes, exactly.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
I like slightly underbaked, but I don't like underbaked yellow cake.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, I get it. I love this note too. "The cakes will only start sort of shrinking a little from the sides of the pan after you remove them."
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Yeah, because if they shrink before, it may be a little bit dry, but it'll be still good the first day. It won't have as long a shelf life.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Now, we're going to let the cakes cool in the pans on a wire rack for 10 minutes. We'll run a small metal spatula between the sides of the pans and the cakes. This is a note: "Pressing firmly against the pans." Is that so that your spatula doesn't cut into the cake?
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Exactly.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. I loved that note. I'm always mistakenly carving out the side of my cake because I'm like ...
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
I do that when I'm in a rush.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, exactly.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
But actually, we're using Baker's Joy, or you couldn't even use Crisco and flour and knock it out, but whatever you do, you shouldn't have to really scrape against the sides of the pan.
Jessie Sheehan:
Now, we're going to invert the cakes onto wire racks, which are lightly coated with nonstick cooking spray. And that's just because you've had the experience of popping them out, and then, they stick to the cooling rack.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
They can, but if you use your racks often enough, even when you wash them, generally, you don't have-
Jessie Sheehan:
It stays on it a little bit.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
I get lazy about doing that.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to peel off the parchment. And to prevent splitting, we're going to re-invert the cakes so the tops are up. How does that preclude splitting?
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Because there's always a slight dome in most baked cakes, and if it's staying on its top side when you invert it, then, the pressure makes it split.
Jessie Sheehan:
Now, we're going to make our ganache frosting. And we talked about this a little bit, but your choice of chocolate, percentage-wise, it's about 62%, because any higher is going to be a little too bitter and would require more cream, as we talked about.
The best ratio is about 12 ounces of chocolate, about to about two cups of cream, but if it's a higher cacao percentage, you're going to need more cream, which is, I hope listeners are understanding how brilliant all the science is that Rose is dropping here.
Your favorite ganache for this yellow cake is a milk chocolate one.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Mm-hmm.
Jessie Sheehan:
And it occurred to you, one day, that milk chocolate is simply a blend of dark and milk solids, so why not create your own custom blend, combining white chocolate because is white chocolate the equivalent of those milk solids?
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Exactly.
Jessie Sheehan:
With dark chocolate.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
It's one-third milk solids, one-third sugar, and one-third cocoa butter.
Jessie Sheehan:
Right. So you say that this means that there's less sugar and more cocoa butter, so in the end it's going to require a little less cream, and it would be the most, to quote you, "luscious of all ganache. Perfectly balanced, rich and creamy."
So we're going to process some white chocolate containing cocoa butter. Is there a brand of chocolate that you like to use?
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
There are many wonderful ones out there, especially commercially, but the ones that are most available to the consumer that I really love are Valrhona and Guittard. And even within that, they have different varieties of white chocolate.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. So we're going to process our white chocolate and our 60% to 62% dark chocolate in a food processor until very fine. In a two-cup microwavable glass measuring cup with a spout or a small saucepan over medium heat, stirring often, we'll heat our cream just to a boil. Do we want to see bubbles?
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Yeah. I used to say, just scald it and have bubbles around the edge, but I've discovered that you can see bubbles around the edge and it's still not hot enough and that it doesn't melt all the chocolate. So now, I just say, boil it.
I was worried about denaturing this flavor of the cream by boiling it, but let's face it, the cream we get now is so denatured it won't hurt. Imagine making it with unpasteurized, or at least not ultra-pasteurized cream. You'd get even more flavor. Then, you would bring it to a boil.
In France, they bring it to a boil, at least when I studied at Lenotre, they brought to the cream to a boil three times to make sure that it wouldn't make anybody sick that doesn't pasteurize it, sterilize it. And now, I see no point in bringing anything to a boil. It's already been boiled through ultra-pasteurization, but you bring it to a boil just so that you can make sure it's hot enough, and I don't think it will change the flavor, since it's already been so denatured by the boiling.
Jessie Sheehan:
So with the motor running, we're going to pour our cream through the feed tube in a steady stream, process for a few seconds until smooth. Is there a rest at this point, or no? Do we pour the cream in and let it rest on top-
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
There's enough cream so that you don't ... For a glaze, there's less cream, and therefore, you have to let it sit.
Jessie Sheehan:
But for this, because it's a frosting ...
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
It'll just emulsify. It'll be a perfect, beautiful texture.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're going to pour in a steady stream, process for a few seconds until smooth, scraping the sides of the bowl as needed. Then, we're going to press our ganache through a fine mesh strainer.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Surprisingly, it makes a difference in the sheen.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, explain.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
I don't know, chemically, why that works, but there's something with the chocolate and everything getting more finely emulsified, I suppose. I've seen the difference.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Wow.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Otherwise, it's a perfect texture as it is. You wouldn't know the difference, but when it sets, it's shinier.
Jessie Sheehan:
Well, it's so interesting, because I was going to ask you why you do that. What we were worried about that was in there that we needed to strain, but it's a textural thing. It's so interesting.
And we're going to scrape any mixture clinging to the underside of the sieve into the bowl, and then, we'll let it sit for one hour. Then, we're going to cover with plastic wrap and let cool on the counter, right? We're not refrigerating this.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Not yet.
Jessie Sheehan:
For about two to three hours until the mixture reaches this soft frosting consistency.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
And sometimes, it can be a lot sooner. I find that, in the past, I've been using frosting cakes with ganache, after it gets firm, it's harder to get beautiful swoops. So as soon as you're able to do it, go for it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Go for it. And now, we frost our cake. In the same YouTube video where I saw you wrap your mixer in plastic wrap, in the YouTube video, you show us how you hold the cake in one hand, and you do dollops of frosting all around the side, spreading each dollop individually to avoid your spatula hitting the cake at all, because you don't want to bring in any crumbs. And this technique allows you to skip a crumb coat.
I had two questions. Do you still hold the cake when you frost, A. And B, do you still tell people that they don't need to crumb coat if they use a technique like this?
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
I think it's probably not a good idea to hold it in your hand like that. And it's probably safer to do a crumb coat than try to avoid.
The only way to avoid doing the crumb coat is by putting an excess amount in, and then, wiping it off. And that way, you're not lifting off your crust. And if you do get crumbs in the frosting of whatever, you can just coat the frosting with nuts, chopped nuts, and nobody sees it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yum. Yum, yum, yum. Once you frost it, do you let it set, or do you serve it right away?
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
I let it set. It's amazing, after several hours, the difference it makes. But if you haven't used enough cream, it lifts off the cake, and that's when you want to serve it right away before that happens.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. I wanted to just talk about any additional cake recipes from the new edition of “The Cake Bible” that might be your favorite. I know you have a special place in your heart for your Downy yellow cake, but is there another favorite in the new book? Or in the original?
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Yeah, I would say the chocolate cake, the Chocolate Domingo.
Jessie Sheehan:
Can you tell us about it?
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Well, it has the most butter of any chocolate cake that I can work into it. And in the new edition, the difference is that this is made with sour cream. And my protege, David, said to me, "Using sour cream in a butter cake the way you do it is so wonderful. Couldn't you do it in a chocolate cake?" And I said, "I'm not sure it would work." Well, it did, but I always had this little dark line at the bottom. I could never get it 100% perfect.
But two years ago, it suddenly occurred to me, actually, Woody was the one who said, "Why don't you eliminate some of the sour cream and replace it with the water?" "Oh, no, I want the full flavor of the sour cream." And then, I realized it was a half a cup plus one tablespoon of sour cream. Why don't I just take out the one tablespoon, it won't matter, bring it to a boil, it'll be enough to hydrate the cocoa.
And then, what I do, whenever I hydrate cocoa as I add any oil, in this case, there's no oil, but that's just an extra tip, I put the oil in it so that it floats to the top and keeps it from evaporating. Because cocoa, when it's hydrated, evaporates so easily. You have to either cover it immediately with plastic wrap, or if there's oil in the recipe, in a chiffon, cover it right away.
But in this Domingo, it not only makes it a better texture, but you don't get that line anymore, and it still has the most full flavor of any chocolate cake in the book. And it's dedicated to Placido Domingo.
Jessie Sheehan:
I was going to ask what the name is. Does it also have a chocolate frosting?
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
It doesn't actually need a frosting at all because it has that much butter, but that doesn't stop me. My favorite frosting is what I call Wicked Good Ganache.
I was listening to “The Today Show” one morning while doing my back exercises, and they were talking about the show “Wicked,” and I thought, oh, my God, that's the perfect name for my ganache because I use chili pepper in it. And what it does is, it gives a long finish, like a wine. When you're done eating, you still taste it longer. And it's not, for people who don't like hot chili, you wouldn't know, it's not unpleasant. You wouldn't know this chili. Just, it gives you a sensation of more fullness of the chocolate flavor.
Jessie Sheehan:
Thank you so much for chatting with me today, Rose. And I just want to tell you that you are my cherry pie.
Rose Levy Beranbaum:
Thank you. And cherry pie is my favorite.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's it for today's show. Thank you to Plugra Premium European Style Butter and Nonino 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 pals about us. She's my Cherry Pie as a production of the Cherry Bombe Podcast Network, and is recorded at CityVox Studio in Manhattan. Our producers are Kerry Diamond, Catherine Baker, and Elizabeth Vogt. Our associate producer is Jenna Sadhu, and our content operations manager is Londyn Crenshaw. Thank you so much for listening to She's My Cherry Pie, and happy baking.