00:00Hi, I'm Jess Weiss, pastry chef for Union Square Hospitality Group.
00:03We're going to make chocolate cake today.
00:04Can someone tell me why I'm at the circus?
00:06That would be me. My name is Ahmed Tunisiani,
00:08and I am one of the Trapeze Flyers here at the Big Apple Circus.
00:11Oh my God, that's so exciting.
00:13Today you will be cooking at my house. It's an RV.
00:16Oh, okay. That's new for me.
00:17You've been there before? No, right?
00:18No, that's first for me.
00:19Well, we have a microwave oven.
00:21Okay.
00:22And we have hot and cold water.
00:25Okay. This is going to be exciting.
00:27I think all those three will work.
00:29I hope so.
00:30Yes. You ready?
00:31Yeah, let's do it.
00:32All right, let's get you there.
00:35I took a Trapeze class. Really a core workout.
00:38Hi.
00:38So nice to meet you.
00:39Nice to meet you, Stephanie. How are you?
00:40This is so great.
00:42Guys, this is not what I was expecting.
00:44They said RV and I was like...
00:46It's too small.
00:47No, it's so much better.
00:48Good luck to you.
00:49Right, I'm the one who needs the luck.
00:51All right, see you later.
00:52Bye, guys.
00:53Okay, so I need some stuff,
00:54so I'm going to take a look around.
00:56Where should we start?
00:57Voila.
00:58Mixing bowl.
00:59Ooh, fancy.
01:00They don't have a lot of stuff.
01:01Very important for baking.
01:03Something to measure.
01:04They have a shot glass that'll work really well.
01:07Has potential to soften our butter.
01:09Oh, sifter.
01:11Score.
01:11Apron.
01:12Check.
01:13Okay, so we need a cup of flour.
01:15This is two tablespoons to this line.
01:18This is really great.
01:19Which is one ounce, so technically we need eight of these by volume.
01:23Bear with me.
01:24One, two, three.
01:28Suck if I lost count.
01:30Four, five, six, seven, eight.
01:35Whew.
01:35I'd fire you if you took that long.
01:37Sugar next.
01:38Cup of this as well.
01:41Eight.
01:42Also really important for cakes to sift.
01:45So finding that sifter was definitely a win.
01:48Okay, now I'm ready for cocoa powder.
01:50We're going to do two thirds of a cup.
01:52I need about five and a half of these guys.
01:56That's pretty good.
01:56Two more things.
01:57I like to use table salt in baking.
01:59Almost like a pinch in the palm of my hand.
02:01Last but not least, baking soda.
02:03Too little.
02:03We're not going to have a nice rise in our cake.
02:05Too much.
02:07Explosion city.
02:07We need a teaspoon of this.
02:09Yeah.
02:10Feels good.
02:11And then, guess what we get to do?
02:12Sift.
02:14Oop.
02:15Oh, fail.
02:16It's okay.
02:16This is saveable.
02:21Okay, sifting is finally over.
02:23So we're going to get into measuring our wet ingredients.
02:26And we're going to need an egg for this.
02:31Some oil.
02:32Two thirds of a cup.
02:33About five and a half of these.
02:37Then we're going to add some water to this.
02:38We're going to go with cold water.
02:40And we need a cup.
02:41So we need eight of these.
02:43Eight.
02:44Final ingredient.
02:45We've got some vanilla to flavor.
02:47A little splish splash.
02:48And we're good to go.
02:49We're going to add our dry very carefully.
02:51Okay, looking good.
02:52Normally I would use a whisk to do this fork.
02:54Pretty much like a whisk.
02:55Just smaller.
02:56So we're going to go with it.
02:58It should be a little bit lumpy.
03:00It's not going to be perfectly smooth.
03:01It's looking pretty good.
03:02We're getting ready to bake.
03:03I'm a little nervous now.
03:04Yeah.
03:04In order to do this, we're going to want to give it a little bit of grease.
03:08So that hopefully our cake will come out.
03:09Because I'm not sure how much this is going to rise in here.
03:12I'm not going to fill it like a two thirds full like I normally would.
03:15Because we don't want to have an explosion in the microwave.
03:17Should take around two minutes.
03:18This is going to be very much like when you're figuring out your popcorn setting in your microwave.
03:22We're not 100% sure how powerful this is.
03:25So I'm going to set the cook time for one minute and 45 seconds.
03:29I think from a power level perspective, we're just going to let it ride at full power and see what
03:33happens.
03:34Oh, it's rising.
03:35I could see it rising.
03:36Uh-oh.
03:37We might have gone too full.
03:39But it hasn't exploded.
03:46That actually looks and feels pretty good.
03:49It's springy.
03:50It's not like super soft.
03:51And it's not really hard.
03:52So it's looking pretty money.
03:54For this icing, we need a cup of butter.
03:56So that's two sticks.
03:57If you forgot to take it out, like I did, because I was very distracted, I'm going to cut it
04:01up into smaller pieces.
04:02So it's going to get to room temperature and softer a little faster.
04:05Then we need four cups of powdered sugar.
04:07I'm tougher than the bag.
04:12We're going to do a hack.
04:13I'm going to measure eight into here.
04:15And then I'm going to look at where it hits in this cup.
04:19And then I'm just going to measure this four times as opposed to having to do all of those individual
04:24little glasses.
04:25This is much faster.
04:27Four.
04:27There we go.
04:28I'm going to use the trusty potato masher.
04:30And that is going to help us smush our butter.
04:34Some people might be saying, you have a microwave right there.
04:37For me, that's a scary proposition.
04:39It changes the texture of the icing.
04:41Keep that cold butter consistency.
04:43This is pretty much nothing.
04:45Try having to whip, you know, 12 or 15 egg whites to sift peak by hand without a mixer.
04:51Now you're talking tough.
04:53We're going to add the powdered sugar a little bit at a time.
04:55We're not going to sift this guy.
04:56You should be able to work out those lumps relatively easily.
05:02Okay, we're so close.
05:03I want to add a little bit of salt to this vanilla.
05:07The hazelnut spread a little bit of milk to get it to a nice frosting consistency.
05:11Who knew that baking was like going to the gym?
05:13It's a nice arm workout.
05:14So this holds.
05:16It tells me that it's spreadable, but it's stiff enough so that it won't slide off of it.
05:22That's going to be great.
05:23This is the moment of truth whether or not they come out.
05:26I'm going to take the knife and I'm going to kind of push a little bit up on the bottom.
05:30Make sure that the cake isn't stuck at the top of the mug.
05:33Let's cross our fingers.
05:41I have a cake.
05:42Yay!
05:42I saw a chocolate bar that I'm going to steal.
05:44And I also saw bananas in the corner.
05:47Great flavor.
05:48Oh, is this a plantain?
05:51I thought it was a banana.
05:52Thanks for looking out, guys.
05:53We're going to have some fun.
05:54I'm going to smash this with a little bit of sugar and cook it in the microwave.
05:59I get curve balls in the kitchen all the time.
06:01While that's cooking, I'm going to chop some chocolate.
06:08I'm going to add a little vanilla, dessert backbone.
06:11I'm also going to add the very last of this paste.
06:19It's going to work.
06:20I want to use a little bit of a seesaw motion and keep the knife as flat as possible.
06:24So I'm going to put the plantain chocolate bun in the middle.
06:28So when I ice, I want to kind of go top down.
06:32This crumb coat is going to be basically a base layer.
06:35We're so close.
06:38Okay.
06:39I feel really good about that.
06:40So I'm going to put finishing touches.
06:42Start at the top.
06:43It gives me a little bit better control and understanding what's going on.
06:47Always looking at my knife when I'm putting it back in the icing to make sure there's not any crumbs
06:52on it.
06:52The icing goes way back to baking at home with my mom when I was a little kid
06:57and her making our birthday cakes.
06:59I've got this chopped up chocolate.
07:01Sprinkle it around the bottom.
07:03There we go.
07:04I feel relieved.
07:06Wow, wow, wow.
07:08I made you guys some cake.
07:10It looked good.
07:11It looks so good.
07:17It is actually good.
07:20You won't stop eating, huh?
07:22It's already half gone.
07:23I loved it.
07:25Thank you so much.
07:25I'm happy.
07:26I came into this needing to make chocolate cake.
07:29No real oven.
07:31No way to measure except for this tiny shot glass.
07:34I'm really excited.
07:35I think you did a pretty good job.
07:36Now I'm going to taste.
