- I love the story of Easiest
Chocolate Birthday Cake
because it is so personal to me
and even though I didn't--
[vacuum running]
What are you guys up to?
- We're already eating that's why we--
- Get it baby, get it.
- [Chris] Brad, do you
want some chocolate cake?
- Oh I want chocolate cake
- No
- Here's what was happening,
you can get in on this, okay?
So, Amber kept making
me cakes on my birthday.
I'd come home on my
birthday and it was like
[bleep] everywhere
[Brad laughing]
nobody had had dinner, okay,
kids are like--
- But you got your cake.
Just food bar or what?
- Little food bar, okay?
So, we developed this,
remember when I did this
with Kat B, all right?
So that this can be the one!
- Oh!
- Every birthday from now on,
that's the cake.
- All right, happy birthday!
- Thanks bud!
["Happy Birthday"]
My favorite dessert,
whether it's my birthday
or not my birthday,
is just simple chocolate cake.
Give me the chocolate cake
with some chocolate frosting,
and I'm so happy
You know what?
I'm gonna make you a
recipe that you can make me
every year on my birthday
and this is the one.
It's really lovely,
lusciously, chocolatey,
birthday cake that is very simple to make,
the cake itself is even
easier than the frosting.
So, go figure.
This is just the most standard cake pan,
a great way to make this as
easy as possible to work with,
is to brush it very lightly with oil.
Really gotta get myself like,
go all the way and get myself
a pocket protector, you know?
Just trace the bottom of the pan.
So this is gonna mean that
the bottom of the cake
is gonna release very easily from the pan.
So, pen side down.
- [Cameraman] But Chris!
- Pen side down!
- [Cameraman] What if
the pen gets in the food?
- No, it's not gonna 'cause
it's the pen side down, man.
You guys with me?
Wasn't sure what else I was gonna do
to explain it any differently.
Pen side down!
With a butter-based cake,
normally what you would do
is you would cream your
butter with your sugar,
add in your eggs, you
build structure, volume,
incorporate air, you know,
that's how the cake gets
a lot of its structure,
this is an oil-based cake
so you don't really have to do any of that
which is part of what makes
it kind of the easiest
possible cake you could
make, birthday or otherwise.
So, I've got one and a
third cup all purpose flour.
One and a quarter cup granulated sugar.
One and three quarter
teaspoon baking powder.
I've got one and a quarter
teaspoon kosher salt.
And then I've got a quarter
of a teaspoon of baking soda.
Give it a little whisk, all right.
Now, next, this is like one of
my least favorite kitchen tasks,
which you might remember such things
as stripping thyme leaves,
chopping chocolate.
This is [bleep] great.
This is up there for me.
Do you have to sift your cocoa?
Yeah, you don't have to, okay.
But cocoa ends up being
lumpy and kind of fighting
against you in that batter,
so whatever you can do to
kind of break it up now,
you'll thank yourself later.
Hell, you might even thank me.
Gonna whisk this in so this
is now gonna incorporate
beautifully with the rest of
the dry ingredients, no lumps!
Make sure you get all the
little bits at the bottom.
So, now for our wet ingredients
we have two large eggs,
still have not learned how
to crack an egg one handed.
I'm on record as saying
this is gonna be the year
that I cracked that one!
Three quarters of a cup veg oil.
A teaspoon of vanilla.
So at this point,
we're gonna put the wet ingredients
into the dry ingredients
with a spatula 'cause this
is gonna get really thick.
Just wanna incorporate everything,
smooth out the lumps and
then I'm going to take this
milk here, this cup of
milk, I'm gonna heat it up.
The fact of it being hot,
is going to bloom the flavor of the cocoa,
and really just opens
up that cocoa flavor.
So, anyway, this is very
very thick cake batter,
looks completely wrong but
hopefully in a couple of minutes,
it'll look a whole lot better.
I'm not trying to boil the milk,
but I wanna get it just the the point
right before it boils.
So that's just gonna be a minute here,
I'm not gonna wonder off,
not gonna check my Instagram, okay?
Just right here, focused on this
'cause I really don't
want it to boil over.
I'm not necessarily looking
for bubbles to form,
I wanna see that moment where
you're about to get bubbles,
where you see those like
little wisps of steam
kinda come in, I wanna see a wisp!
Give me a wisp, come on!
All right, wisp!
So, now is where we're
gonna go back to the whisk.
So at first it's not really
gonna wanna cooperate.
You wanna whisk it completely
but not kinda over mix.
But honestly, doing it by hand,
there's way less of a risk of that.
So that's done, so that's
why you wanna have your pan,
prepared, ready to go when you are.
I just tamped out a few of
those bigger bubbles here
and we are taking this right to the oven.
And here we go, there it is, all right?
Cakes ready, done, looking beautiful.
So, if you have a cake tester,
by all means you can use it
I just feel like these,
they lie, cake testers lie.
They'll tell you whatever you wanna hear.
So, go with this, wooden little skewer,
so if you have any underdone
cake, it's way more likely
to show up on one of these guys,
this is looking great.
Let's frost it!
All right so this is four
ounces of semi-sweet chocolate.
Try not to exceed 64% cacao,
the reason being that certain
chocolates can get a little
bit funky when melted
and used in a ganache.
So, anyway, bear with me,
let's go over to the stove.
Part of the base of this
frosting is a ganache,
which is just a mixture of
heavy cream and chocolate.
I'm gonna put these together,
this is a half cup of heavy cream,
four ounces of chocolate.
We're doing it over a double boiler,
you'll notice you know
it's a non-reactive bowl
and the water is not touching
the bottom of the bowl here.
So, chocolates starting to melt here,
I could lower the heat if you
see a lot of steam escaping,
means it's kind of
bubbling away under there,
just lower the heat,
calm it down, check your feed, all right.
And yeah, we'll be right back in a sec!
[video game theme music]
Damn.
Okay!
So, it's smooth, it's well incorporated,
I'm just gonna set this
aside, let it cool,
about 25 minutes or so, until it firms up
and then we're gonna incorporate
it into our frosting.
So, ganache has chilled.
I've got room temperature cream cheese.
We need four ounces of this
which is half of this bar.
So, our extra quarter
teaspoon of kosher salt
is going in here into the frosting,
it's gonna help you bring
out that chocolate flavor,
it's gonna make everything
taste so much better.
Three quarters of a teaspoon
of pure vanilla extract
and then a quarter of a
cup of confectioners sugar.
You know, any electric mixer really
makes very short work of this.
So I just want all of this
stuff to be nice and smooth,
that's gonna ensure that
it incorporates very well
with the cooled ganache.
So this ganache has not fully set,
it's gonna continue to
set as it gets even cooler
but it's a great temperature
for incorporating
with the cream cheese, both
of them are kind of matched
in terms of fluidity and
density at this point.
So you can see that relative
to where we started,
it's already starting to hold
its shape a little bit more.
I'm just gonna go a little bit
further and then we're there.
[blender mixing]
All right.
Clean release, the parchment round!
Okay!
Boom.
How do ya like the apples?
Here's the thing, I don't even--
Oh my God!
- [Kat] You're making my cake?
- We're, oh my--
I know, I'm sorry I'm making your cake.
- No, I'm so happy.
- How do you think I did?
- I think you did great,
this looks awesome!
- At this point you've done the work,
you just wanna eat the cake,
so why are you gonna
do something that like
takes forever and stresses you out.
- Yeah.
- No offense, Claire,
you know?
- Too much time!
- Yeah
- Just easy
and looks great!
- So, show them the spoon technique!
- All right.
- Everybody is so used
to having like crappy,
you know, grocery store cakes.
- Uh-huh!
- That like, if you
actually give people a cake
that you make yourself.
- Mhm.
- They sort of freak out
- Yeah!
- In a good way
- It's super easy.
- And you could finish here,
this could be it,
you could be done.
- Yeah this looks--
- I would've like called it, all right,
we'd be eating by now but that's fine,
take it a step further.
- So do we wanna do the swirls?
- Yeah yeah yeah
- Or do we wanna do the lines?
- I wanna do like your--
- The swoopies.
- [Chris] Yeah, the swoops.
- So, just kind of--
- Oh!
- Press into it with
the side of the spoon.
- And you get these like lovely little
you know, kinda tails.
- Yeah!
And you can do this for
hours or just two seconds
- Yep!
- And it's still
gonna look great!
- Turned out so,
fabulously well!
Did you see how I did that?
Oh my God.
I was like sitting
there like sweating like
I'm gonna have to do it, on camera,
and I'm just gonna have to do it
and pretend like I know what I'm doing
and then like Kat like angel,
swoops in out of nowhere
and totally does it for me.
Anyway, let's cut into this thing, right?
You guys ready for cake?
This is a sneak preview
of my 40th birthday.
Things are like suddenly
looking a little darker up here.
Like, can I just draw your
attention to how [bleep] amazing
that looks there's no
bells, there's no whistles,
like it's just chocolate
cake, it tastes awesome.
Cake!
- Yes, hold on!
- Brad!
- Look alive!
- Get your coffee, let's go!
["Happy Birthday"]
- [Gaby] Cake!
- And you get some cake
- Oh yay my cake!
- And you get a cake.
- Everyone's birthday!
- Where's a fork?
- Yeah, thank you Chris!
- Just a sliver for Hunzy.
- It's delicious, Chris!
My only non-cake liking critique.
I could use a third less cake.
- You want less cake?
- You don't like cake, period.
That's it.
- Okay, you're done.
You're done.
- I'm taking mine.
[crew laughing]
- You're all set.
- No cake for you!
- We're all set with you, okay.
Wait she--
- Give it to the cake lovers.
- You guys are sharing?
- Good job, Moracco!
- All right, thank you.
["Happy Birthday"]
- Isn't it the best cake?
- It's tangy, it's bright!
It's chocolatey, it's deep,
it's rich, it's moist.
- It's true.
- It's just good cake.
All right, with the exception of Brad,
everybody friggen loved it,
even Gaby choked it down.
Yeah Brad, Brad like apparently
doesn't even like cake.
- I'm back here to show you that
I almost had the whole thing.
- All right, maybe Gaby--
- This is as good as
my grandmother's cake.
- Choke it down!
- Yes, thank you.
- Cool
- This is really good, Chris.
- [Chris] It's remarkably delicious.
- Mhm
- It really does not
take that much effort.
- Yeah.
You did a great job.
- No, you did a great job!
We did a great job.
- We did!
[light music]
- I think we forgot to make the coffee.
Are we good?
Seriously, I'll go make coffee.
