Cake: So Great. So, So Great

Cake has been around for a long time, but mostly less than great forms. It took the Industrial Revolution, the advent of plentiful sugar, and some good old American know-how to come together to make the cake we know and love today.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry. Three of
us are together, which means it's time for stuff you
should know about. Cake. Cake, cake, gake, gake, cake, gake, gake, gake, caccake, cake, cake,

(00:25):
cake cake. Uh. This made me I just frankly want
to put my face in a cake sheet. Caking. Oh man, Yeah,
I know. We had a discussion about cake or pie
quite a while ago. I don't remember exactly where you
landed on that. I'm surprised you can only think of
one one time we've done that. Yeah, cake or pie? Both? Yeah?

(00:51):
Same here? Why choose between two wonderful things that you
don't have to choose between? Agreed? As a matter of fact.
Every once a while you hit like the birthday party
Jackpot where they'll have like cake am pie and you're like,
looks like I'm in heaven. But today, today, Chuck, we're
not talking about pie. Although we can't talk about one

(01:11):
pie in particular, because we're talking about cake. It turns
out I saw this somewhere that Boston Cream pie is
actually a cake. Yeah, surprise, Boston, sorry to ruin your day.
They're probably the ones that are like that are saying that.
Oh yeah, probably maybe, I don't know. The article on

(01:32):
it was written in a thick Boston accent. Yeah it
is a cake. I'm not sure why, but I just
know it's a cake now. And I want to give
a hat tip here. Um. I mean we both worked
off of the house Stuff Works article. But I also
found a lot of good stuff on a site called
What's Cooking America? Did you run across them? They are

(01:54):
good man. They they have, you know, clearly their niches cooking, baking,
all things like ulinary. But they're They've got some really
well researched articles on their site about like the history
of cakes and things like that. Yeah, that's good stuff.
Kudos to you, remember kudos. They're gran Oli bar. Those
are great. Oh yeah, are those not around anymore? No? No, no,

(02:18):
those are gone. And then r I p also Bonkers candy,
So kudo went the way of the Dodo M. I
never heard of bonkers. They were like a fruit chew,
but like really had some chew to it, not like starburst.
You know, it's just disintegrates. These were like they were chewy.
They were good. They're about as good as it gets
really candy wise. Yeah, they need I know, you've noticed

(02:39):
they need to chill out here with the sweets at work.
Oh dude, Like they have little Debbie Star crunches and
Swiss cake rolls and stuff all over the place. I know,
we don't need that in here. There's like three or
four people who are like walking around toothless now, just
rotten right out of their heads. Well and also not you.

(03:00):
My toothlessness is for different reasons. Here's this from a Christini. Uh.
And I've also noticed that there's this weird mix in
our office now because they try to get super healthy. Yeah,
so there will be like Swiss Swiss cake rolls next
to a bag of like clam chips or something what chips?
I don't know. Clam chips sound kind of good. Seeweed uh,

(03:21):
seaweed strips. Oh yeah, yeah, I know, I know what
you mean. Or like just figs. Yeah, you know, it's
like a fig Newton without the good tasting part around.
We take figs and we mash them up, then we
wrap them in sell of fane and you eat them
for five dollars a piece and your child spits them
out because they know better, right. Uh no, today, Yes,

(03:42):
I'm with you. I do think it's gotten a little
out of hand, Like it's basically just a huge test
of willpower at the office, like every moment. You know, Yeah,
I don't, I don't indulge. I'm not getting into those
Swiss cake rolls. But it is tough to walk by
the miniature candy bar section and not be like, well,
just one of those little guys. Look how tiny it is? Right?
And then the next thing, you know, you get like

(04:03):
ten rappers laying around your desk thinking like what have
I done? I know it's post Halloween stuff too, it
so maybe it'll die down. I I don't. I don't
think that's gonna happen. But yeah, but again though, today,
I guess if if you replaced all of those candy
bars with cakes that were just sitting around, you get
zero complaints from me. Well, and at my house at Halloween,

(04:25):
we gave away two things. We gave away whole slices
of pound cake and just pigs. That's the worst house
in the block. Did you? Uh you have a a pound
cake fan? Um? Not? Typically like I would never order
a pound cake or say hey, can someone bake me
one for my birthday? You wouldn't say, like, clark me

(04:46):
a pound cake. I would never ask one to clark
me a pound cake. But occasionally, like in my life,
someone has had pound cake and said, would you like
some pound cake? And it's you know, it's good, it's good,
sugary and dent stuff. Yeah. I like it because you
can just eat it with your hand. Sure, just pick
it up and eat it. Yeah, it's like cake on
the go. Yeah. Um. I am not a fan of

(05:09):
lemon cakes. Oh really, so like a lemon pound cake
I'm not into. Well, okay, let's just get it out there.
What's your favorite cake of all time? Cheese? I'm gonna
toss it up between a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting.
That's Bill Clinton's favorite. Well, you know, as Bill goes

(05:33):
so it goes chuck, which is not true? Um that
the carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, or um, I
like a red velvet cake. Really? Yeah? Well that's the
cream or cream cheese frosting. Yeah. Yeah. Emily's favorite of

(05:56):
all time, hands down is the Waldorf Story of Red
Velvet cake, which is red velvet cake with a frosting
that is basically only like shortening, vanilla and sugar. Oh
that sounds nice. It's not a cream cheese thing. What's
what's your favorite favorite of all time? Well, everybody knows

(06:17):
that cake perfection was achieved sometime in the twentieth century
when Public's grocery stores started selling their yellow cake with
butter cream frosting. There's no better cake on the planets
like a yellow sheet cake. It's simple, but it's tasty.
It doesn't need any dress enough, but if it does,

(06:37):
we'll just put like some add some more frosting in
the shape of balloons on top. It's just it's just perfection.
It's a perfect cake. I love it. I can eat
it morning, noon, and night. I can eat stale stuff
I found in the dumpster behind Publix. I can eat
the fresh stuff right out of the oven, so hot
that it burns my mouth. I would eat it anyway

(06:57):
that it was given to me. Uh. I'm a big
frosting and icing guy too, So a corner piece of
sheet cake is pretty much heaven. Yeah, that's that is
the tops. What what is you me's favorite cake? You
mean's is actually the same as mine. We both are
junkies for Public's cake, to tell the truth, although I

(07:18):
have to say she introduced me to the wonder of
um Japanese cakes. And there's this little known fact about Japan.
It loves to take I shouldn't say it's a little
I'm probably a lot of people know this, but it
loves to take things that other cultures came up with
and then improve them ten percent. And one of the
things that they've done that with is the French bakery.

(07:39):
So if you go to Japan, you'll see all these cute,
little kind of um Provence style French bakeries everywhere. That's
still the best baked goods you've ever had in your life. Right, yes,
oh by far, by far. That's very controversial, it is,
but I'm telling you you would you would just be like,
Josh's right, this is better. I'm not kidding. They've they've

(08:02):
improved on it, and they're all they're they're very deferential still,
they're like, oh, well, this is this is crap compared
to the what the French are making. However, you would
say that in Japanese, but they're actually wrong. It actually
is better. But one of the things that they make
that's just top notches. This um what they call cheesecake.
It is not what you or I will call cheesecake
at all. Um, it's more like a yellow spongy cake.

(08:25):
I don't know where the cheese thing comes in. Maybe
there's a little cream cheese in there. I'm not quite sure.
But um, you and I would call it like kind
of a dense yellow sponge cake. But it is very,
very tasty. And that's a kind of a Japanese tradition
that I would guess Umi would say is one of
her favorites. And just a little shout out, there's a
place in Toronto. Uh, next time we're there, I'm going

(08:46):
to take you there. Actually, that's not true. I brought
you a cake from there from Uncle Tetsus Cheesecake Bakery.
That's a Japanese cheesecake. Oh that was good. Yeah, they're
the bomb. All I know is get out of my
face with any coconut or any pineapple. I'll take that, you'll, you'll,
I'll just slide that over to your desk. Then. Yes,

(09:08):
I don't even like German chocolate cake. Really, I love
German chocolate al right, Well, have you ever heard that
German chocolate cake and red velvet cake are the same.
It's actually not true. I haven't heard that. I had
heard that many times. It's not true. But that German
chocolate frosting is like, Man, that's good. I'm not into that. See,
I think that's what it does. That's what it is

(09:29):
that I don't like. I like sort of a tradish
butter creamy or just good old fashioned birthday cake icing
type thing. Yeah, and and surely you agree. Public is
the pinnacle of that. I don't know if I've ever
had a public's cake. I go to public three times
a week, So next time, I'm just gonna well, now
that you say that, it might be best that you

(09:51):
stay away because you're gonna start adding as They sell
it by the slice, which is dangerous. Oh they do,
because that was that's the only way I would want
to do it. They sell up by the slice, chuck,
Like I can't bring a whole cake in my house.
Be sure you look closely, because they have. Yeah, it
would be they They sell also the same kind with
like a cream cheese frosting. You want yellow cake with

(10:12):
buttercream frosting, just give it a shot and let me
know what you think? All right? The funny thing is
we really haven't even started yet. No, do you want
to take a break? No, let's let's at least give
out like three facts first. Okay, well, I think we
just give a lot of facts about what the greatest
cakes in the world are. All right, how about this?
Then I'll start you out with the word cake apparently

(10:33):
is an old Norse word, uh coca, which is kind
of funny because here I don't know where it came from,
but you're in America. Coca can mean do do yeah.
But k a k a is where the original word
supposedly came from. Right, Um, And a lot of English
words have like Germanic or Norse origin. Did you you

(10:53):
know that? Yeah? So cake, the word cake is is
of English origins. So's bread And apparently the um bread
and the cakes from back in the day, say, during
the medieval era. Um, they were very very similar. Probably
the only difference was the cake might be slightly smaller

(11:14):
and it was definitely sweeter. So cake was like a
sweeter version of bread back then. Yeah, they'd had a
little honey to it, but it's not like what we
think of his cake today. But that's not where the
first cake's originated. They actually go way, way, way further
back than that, right, Is that true? Yeah, it's true. Uh,
that may be a little too far back, Yeah, I

(11:34):
think so so. But basically around the time, um, I
believe Egypt, the Faronic Egypt, they were making cakes using
hot stones and honey and some sort of grain mashed up.
It seems like I bet the Chinese were doing it too.
Didn't say in here, right, but it seems like anytime

(11:55):
you're talking about who did stuff first, it's like Egyptians, Chinese, Greeks,
and Romans pretty much. I mean, you know, ancient civilization,
but maybe not China because it doesn't seem like a
very cakey culture. No, I'm not sure about Chinese cakes.
I don't think I've ever had one. I bet you
if someone knows, though, and I bet you there's like

(12:16):
one of the best things the world, it's probably a
Chinese cake. You know. One of the other things too
that I didn't realize that I learned from this article, Chuck,
was that, um, a lot of the cakes you see
around the world that you would mistake for you know,
customary or traditional cakes for that culture, they're actually relatively
new that the cake that we know and love and
understand is is very much a nineteenth century American invention

(12:40):
that came out of the Industrial Revolution. That's right. I
mean clearly, like in Germany, like you talked about in
the fifteenth century, they were making cakes. They were actually
even serving cakes at birthdays, and by all accounts that's
probably the first people to start the birthday cake at tradition.
But um, and I think they even put candles on top. Well,

(13:02):
none of the Greeks put candles on top, but it
wasn't like happy birthday cake. It was more like, hey,
this cake is round like the moon, and we're gonna
put candles on it to make them glow. And they're
probably huge candles now they think about it. Yeah, the
Greeks gave us the round cake and putting candles on
the cake to honor Artemis, to make the cake look

(13:23):
like the moon. And Artemis was the goddess of the moon, right,
so they were like, look, Artemus, what do you think
of this cake? She'd be like, it needs some frosting,
that's right. And then the Germans and the four hundred
started doing birthday cakes, and then the seventeen hundreds were
full on like it's a kid's birthday party, it's got candles,
it's a cake, and we'll sing some depressing German song. Right,

(13:47):
it makes you reflect on your own existence, that's right,
and it's eventually and but um there. So by the
time people were making birthday cakes in Germany, there was
a long, long, long tradition of cakes already, um, And
the word cake had started to originate in medieval Britain.
But um, there was such a thing as a cheesecake already.

(14:10):
The Romans created that and called it placenta. Yeah, Greeks
had created something that was basically a prototype of the
fruit cake, plock plock house. I believe they called it
feces right. Um. So there were all these kind of
cakes and breads and things that we're starting to to

(14:30):
be developed. And I think even that that pound cake
that you're not so hip on, um came before the
Industrial Revolution too. So there's stuff that you would kind
of recognize as cakes. But the idea of a cake
what Americans call it cake and no one loves a cake,
that came out of the Industrial Revolution. The show sponsored

(14:50):
by Cake Cake Eat Them Today, Alright, so let's take
a break. We definitely gave way more than three fags. Yeah,
we have earned our keep. Then we're going to come
back and talk about a little chemistry right after this.

(15:19):
All right, so we're back, and uh, we promised talk
of chemistry, and I think we talked about this briefly
on one show. I have tried to bake. I did
a birthday cake for Emily a couple of years ago,
Red Velvet waldor Story of Cake, and it was okay.
It wasn't pretty, though, what do you mean like it

(15:40):
like it was lopsided or there's an out of it.
It just you know, it didn't look like a cake
you would buy in a store. But it tasted really good.
I bet it was made with a lot of love too,
Oh of course. Um. But my deal is is I'm
not a great baker because baking requires you to be
very precise with your green dance, because it is chemistry.

(16:01):
I'm a much better cook because I'm a fly by
the seat of my pants and throw a little of
this in there, throw a little that in there, and
there's a much you cann't do that with. No, there's
much more forgiveness in general cooking than baking. Yeah, cookings
and art baking is a science for sure. Yeah, that's
what they say, right, Yeah, well that's what I say
to you. Know, you didn't make that up, right, I
think I did. Okay, So, uh, with a with a cake, right,

(16:25):
what you're doing is producing a chemical reaction, and I
knew that, but I had no idea um on this
granular level that this article gets into, just how much
of a chemical reaction baking a cake is the understanding
of it too to me. So you want to start
with a levening agent, right, that's right. That's how you

(16:47):
get from batter which is kind of flattened, soupy and wet,
to a nice tall cake. The reason it rises is
because of a levening agent. And way way way back
in the day, they used to use yeast. They use
yeast for everything. They would make some beer, they would
make a cake, they make some bread, um, they would
throw it into the eyes of their enemy. They would

(17:09):
in a fight, the dirty fight um. And then eventually, uh,
yeast kind of fell to the wayside a little bit
as they realized that there's other ways, um, two make
a cake rise. One of the big ways is to
actually introduce air into it. And if you say, you know,

(17:29):
beat some eggs, um, what you're doing. You're not just
breaking the eggs down into their their kind of components
are like a mishmash of all of their components. You're
also introducing air into that mix, which will eventually, as
will see, transfers into the cake to make it rise. Yeah.
And like when you're when you're following a recipe, if
you've never baked a cake before, and it says cream

(17:50):
the butter and sugar or sift the flour, you can't
just say, like, I don't have a sifter, so I'll
just throw the flour in here, like your cake is
screwed it, yeah, because it's not just like that makes
a flour pretty Yeah. The sifting flour introduces air into
the whole mix too. Yeah, this is all very important stuff.
So you can't. You can't cheat any of these steps. No,

(18:12):
you can't. You really need to follow a cake recipe
pretty closely. I mean, I guess if you're a master
baker and you know what you're doing, you can do
something in lieu of something else. But if you're just
an ordinary, uh non professional baker at home, just follow
the recipe and do what they say. Yeah, because you
couldn't say, well, I'm going to substitute um this flour
for a bunch of salt, like not only would it

(18:34):
would it tastes radically different, like you're affecting the chemical
composition of the mixture. True, unless you're making a traditional
south toward of salt cake, right, which you can also
use on those snowy days to clear the road. That's right.
So you've got yeast as a living levening agent. You've
got introducing air through like whipping something. And I found

(18:56):
this mention of a recipe that called for four eggs
to be beaten for two hours. Holy gal. So you
can imagine that everybody was pretty psyched when chemical levening
agents were introduced in the mid nineteenth century. So that
was an old recipe, yes, yeah, And so in other words,
you couldn't just put the mixer on with your eggs

(19:16):
and leave and go get on social media. No, this
was with your arm, and yeah it was not. I mean,
I imagine if the person you were working for asked
for a cake, You're just like, this is a bad day,
this is gonna be a bad day. For three hours right.
And the whole reason again you're doing this is to
introduce some air, right. But if you could use something else,

(19:40):
say like sodium bicarbonate also known as baking soda, and
you mixed it, which is a base, and you added
another ingredient in there, which is like an acid, say
like buttermilk or yogurt or vinegar, right, like in a
vinegar cake. Um, that sodium bicarbonate, that base and the
acid are gonna mix together and form a chemical reaction

(20:02):
and release CEO two. And this is how modern cakes rise.
C O two is released through this chemical reaction and
it goes and bubbles up through the cake and makes
the cake rise with it. That's what levining agents do,
is they take air and they expand it and make
it the cake. Yeah, Like when you slice a piece

(20:24):
of cake. Um, not not so much pound cake because
it's way more dense or other non flowered cakes, but
your standard birthday cake. You slice it up and you
see those it's you know those pockets, those holes that
you know, those are air holes. Those were where the
bubbles were. And we'll we'll we'll get to that a
little more. But it's that's very important stuff. That's a

(20:45):
that's a famous chef's apron. Baker's apron asked me about
my air holes. Um, fat source very important. Uh. Fats
improve the texture of a cake, allow it to be moist, flavorful,
because we all know if that tastes great. Uh. And butter.
You know, people can use shortening, which is good, Margarine

(21:07):
is good, cooking oil, this can all be used. But
for me, just get some real butter. And and I
say that for all foods. I went on a butter
uh uh, not a kick, No, no, no, I am
on a butter kick. I went on a butter a
boycott of sorts for a while. Uh, like real butter.

(21:29):
But now I'm back on butter. Oh yeah, yeah, I
know what you mean. I tend to think butter is
healthier of all of them too. Um, although olive oil
has it beat. It's just such a radically different taste,
especially when you're baking with it. Although I have you
ever had an olive oil cake? I don't think so.
I don't remember where I had it. But man, they

(21:49):
are good, yes, surprisingly good. But it is definitely it's
a distinct thing, you know what I'm saying, Like subbing
olive oil out for butter is gonna give you a
weirdo recipe no one's going to like. But they might
pretend they do if they like you, but they don't
really like that. Uh. And all these fats sources they
can be used sometimes together um or swapped out for butter.

(22:13):
But but again, you gotta know what you're doing. You
can't just say, well, I'm not gonna use butter. I'm
gonna just use the same amount of cooking oil as
melted butter. Right, And then one of the reasons why
he's swapping something out for butter in particular too, I mean,
butter gives it its richness, it's it's it helps improve
it's moisteness and texture. Right, butter is great. But butter
also has a tendency to um incorporate air when you

(22:36):
cream butter, when you start to mash it around. That's
the whole reason. Like they're not telling you to cream
the butter just to make it look good before you
you add it to the batter. You're actually incorporating air there,
so that butter is serving both as a fat and
as a leavening agent in that that recipe. So if
you come across the recipe that calls for butter that
must be creamed. There's something else going on besides just

(22:58):
getting a buttery taste out your cake. That's right. Sweetener.
I was about to say sugar instead of sweetener might
as well, though, but let's be honest. You can use
honey and stuff, you can use agabe artificial sweetener, but
sugar is the best thing to use in my opinion.
It bonds best to water molecules. It's really gonna help.

(23:21):
That will help everything be nice and moist and soft.
And you don't want to overdo it though. You want
to use again, the right amount of sugar because not
only could it could affect the taste, but it could
make the texture it could be too tough. Yeah, and
sugar is another one too, where if you see sugar
and you stub it out for something else, you can
have an impact on that chemical reaction because it does

(23:42):
all those things you're talking about. Like one of the
things that does is that the crystalline structure of sugar
actually cuts through the batter to help release c O
two more easily. And like you said, it binds to water,
which means it does two things that locks it in
so that it keeps moist you're in. But it also
sugar also robs that water from some of the proteins

(24:05):
and the starches that give the cake its structure, um,
which means that they're not going to be able to
become tough and dense like you were saying, because sugars
already grabbed onto that water molecule, and sugar in particular,
you're not gonna get the same thing with like stevia
or honey, Like, it's not going to have the same effect.
It's it's crystalline sugar, and it doesn't have to be

(24:27):
white refined sugar. You have the same effect I think
with like turbinado cane sugar too. Yeah, and you can uh.
I mean, if you don't want to use sugar and
you want to use honey, look up a recipe that
is specific to honey, and they will help account for that,
uh in certain ways, but it's still to me. You know,
white sugar do it right? Um. And then they sugar

(24:48):
also gives it that nice golden brown color through the
mayard reaction that in the eggs for sure. Yeah, well
we're at eggs. Sugar and eggs are big. Yeah, especially
they're ostrich eggs, eggs. I know, eggs have proteins in them, right,

(25:08):
and there's a couple of things in there. Um, those
proteins help give structure to the cake. I believe, yes, absolutely,
the most fires in the yolk. They help. It's also
kind of serves as a binding agent. There are a
lot of things, including flour that helped bind things together,
but those eggs and those yolks very much do because

(25:29):
there are certain things in cake. Sometimes it don't want
to mix the water, yeah, and the egg comes together
and says, well, you know, can we all just kind
of stick together here? Literally? Yes, that wasn't meant to
be Upunhi meant that. And I think the two big
emostifiers are actually in the egg yolk. Um, cholesterol and
less a thin are found in egg yolk, and they're like, hey, everybody,

(25:52):
come on, let's let's hang out. That's right. And there's
also fats and egg and we also we already mentioned
that fats are are some and taste delicious. Plus also,
if you're using whole eggs, most of the egg white
is water. The vast majority is water. And as we'll see,
water and liquids play a big role in the cake too.
So it's all like the the idea of people figuring

(26:14):
all this out through millennia of little contributions here there.
It's just it's just a blessing on humanity. It is.
It's a really neat accomplishment that everyone had came together
to figure this out over the span of time and
wonderful kitchens on cold winter days that we're like, you know,

(26:35):
you've got like a nice cake baking in the oven,
and you're contributing to humanity's knowledge of being great. Yeah,
a lot of bad the carcasses of a lot of
bad cakes have been left in its wake, sure to
get where we are today, a lot of unhappy families
and a lot of unpleasant conversations about those cakes. But
still in a bed in the olden days when times
are a little tougher, they probably still ate those cakes.

(26:57):
Oh yeah, I would guess. So, you know, you probably
just toss it out to the mules. No, you gave
them the sailors who are glad to have them. All right.
That brings us to flour, very very important ingredient in
most baked goods, and flour is what is going to
really be the binding agent it's really good. It's gonna
hold everything together, give it its structure. Yeah, a lot

(27:19):
of structure and strength. And uh, this is when when
you mix these proteins with water, it's gonna form gluten
and gluten. I know a lot of people hate gluten,
my wife being one of them, but gluten is a
pretty key ingredient here. Although I will say they've come
a long way now with gluten free cakes they have.
It doesn't make you quite as sad to eat one. No,

(27:42):
they're pretty good now. If you get a good gluten
free cake, it's um. Well the cheesecake is gluten free,
So that's I mean, you know, your standard substitute flour. Uh,
they've they've just gotten a lot better, I think. Ye.
So in a standard glutenous cake, um that that gluten
from the um from the flour mixing with the water

(28:03):
forms of gel and it gives it that structure, It
gives it that um consistency, the texture that you're looking for.
But again, the sugar is robbing the the um, the
proteins and the starches from getting too much water. Because
the more water it gets, the more um, the tougher

(28:23):
the cake is going to be. The more gluten, so
you actually want to make sure that your sugar is
taking away some of the liquids. But also the type
of flour you use UM has a lot to do
with how tough your cake is gonna turn out. So like,
there is such a thing as cake flour that's something
like seven percent seven and a half percent protein, which

(28:44):
is going to translate into less gluten when you mix
it with water, right, so it's gonna be a lighter,
fluffy your cake. Um. And then there's all purpose flowers
ten and a half percent bread flowers. And depending on
what kind of consistency you want in your cake, you
would use these different kinds of flour, And all of
it comes down to the um the amount of gluten

(29:05):
that's going to be produced when it interacts with the liquids,
that's right. And finally that brings us to the liquids.
The liquids are obviously gonna help keep things moist, they
hydrate those proteins, they allow all those chemical changes to
take place. But that liquid does when you actually bake
the cake, when it comes time to put in the oven,
which we're gonna get through here in a sec uh,

(29:27):
that creates a steam like that liquid cooks out and vaporizes,
so that steam expands the air cells and that volume,
and uh, it really lends itself to the light, airy
structure and texture that you're gonna get. Yeah, it blows
up the CEO two bubbles in it even further, which
helps make the cake rise. Plus it also chuck fosters

(29:49):
that chemical reaction between the acids in the bases that
act as leavening agents that release CEO two in the
first place. The presence of liquids in the presence or
water specific I think in heat really make that CEO
to go berserk. All right, well we should talk about ovens. Yeah.
I was about to say you can't bake a cake

(30:11):
without an oven, but apparently you can. You can in Egypt,
ancient Egypt. All right, so let's say we're not in
ancient Egypt. Um, let's say we're in in in regular
North America and Europe. In the eighteenth century is basically
when the semi closed oven came around. And before this,

(30:31):
if you were baking cakes, well you were probably a
professional baker, because these ovens weren't in every household, right,
and even in the eighteenth century they were in every
household either, but they tried to become a lot more
prevalent around that time. That was a big first step
towards people baking at home. Um, not his cakes, but

(30:54):
anything you know in cake history. That was a huge
monumental moment when enclosed of and became kind of ubiquitous
among the households for sure, because what you get there
is um consistency. You get a consistent even temperature, and
of course that just got better and better over the
years with advances and ove in technology. Uh and more
than anything, you get a reliable temperature ideally, right, And

(31:18):
if you have those things, you can make a cake
after cake after cake that your family won't be mad about.
The sailors will stop coming by and being like, you've
got any more of them terrible cakes you made, sailors? Yeah,
that's who you give the terrible cakes to us, sailors? Sure,
all right. Um, So with the oven in particular, I

(31:40):
didn't realize this, but you know how the the liquid
and the heat and the sodium bicarbonate and the acids
are mixing together to make the cake rise. That is
actually a really fragile state of affairs. While the cake
is baking and the structure, the proteins and the starches
and the gluten are actually solidifying and making this this cake. Um,

(32:03):
And if you mess with the oven, meaning like you
open and close the door too often, or you slam
it shut too hard, you're gonna the change in temperature
on the one hand, can cool those gases and make
your cake fall, and it makes you want want sound
as it does, as everyone knows. And then um, the
air pressure from slamming the door can burst those c

(32:25):
O two bubbles and again you're the proteins haven't had
a chance to like solidify and make the cake structure,
so the cake can fall from that as well. And
if you'll notice, um, once the cake gets to a
certain point, if it falls, it falls in the middle.
The outside usually stays up because that part has solidified already.
The stuff in the middle hasn't quite cooked through, so
that would be the part that falls. And that also

(32:47):
proves my point, that's right, you also want to put
your cake in the middle. Where you place your cake
in the oven can even cause problems. It's very finicky
cakes are sure. Well again it's a science experiment. Yeah, basically,
like do do this right? Jerk or I might just
take a nap here in the in the middle of
the in the middle of the cake. Maybe he'll burn.

(33:07):
Maybe I'll stick up your whole house. But like you
said about opening the door, like, ideally you know the
temperature your oven, you know how long it takes, and
maybe don't wait till literally you think I can pull
it out, although if you're a good baker, you're not
sweating it. You pull it out and you know it's
pretty much ready. But definitely don't keep opening it. Try
at least wait till the end. And if you have,

(33:31):
they're not quite as in fashion now, I don't think.
But ovens with a window and a light, um, you
can obviously take a little peak that way. Sure those
are kind of out of fashion, right or are they?
I don't not that I know. I feel like I
don't see those a lot. Do you have a window
in your rubbing? Sure? Of course? What am I a communist?
Do you yes? With a light? Man? What do you

(33:52):
have just a stainless steel door that's a dishwash shirt? Man?
Oh that's my problem. Yeah, like my cakes always come
out wet and soapy. Wait a minute, do I have
a window? Sure? You do. I think everyone does. I'm
literally cannot picture my kitchen right now. Jerry, he's got
a window, right, I've been baking in the dishwasher, Jerry,

(34:14):
and I say, yes, you have a window, and you're up. Yeah,
that might be. I might have just said something very dumb.
So so it's staying in. Well, I do know, you
know what, I think. I do have a window, but
I don't have a working light. That's why I think.
I don't know. You need to replace the light bulb. Yeah,
but an he wants a bottom of that. For all.
You can go to like any any big box hardware store,

(34:35):
hardware store off the internet. I don't replace light bulbs
at my house. A matter of fact, I think they
probably sell them at the grocery store. Even you go
find yourself some golf wax, and you're probably near the
refrigerator oven light bulbs, alright. The heat of the oven
is very important. So depending on how good your oven is,

(34:56):
it maybe a little off, maybe a little hotter or cooler.
So you might want to you purchase an oven thermometer
just to give it a double check. Because baking a science,
and when you think that that cake is done, take
a little peek your window that everyone has, or open it.
If you really think it's done, give a little tap
in the center. If it springs back, then it's probably done.

(35:16):
If you're an experienced baker, you just know by looking
at it. Or you can always do the old toothpick trick,
which is sticking that toothpick woulden toothpick in the center
of the cake and pull it out. And if there's
no cake on it, then it's pretty much done. Right
if it's if it's covered in goo, that means it's
not done. Uh, that is correct, chuck. But then you

(35:40):
can also lick that goo off that toothpick. That's not bad, No,
you can, but you're it's just never quite as good.
And I think it's it always tastes like disappointment, you
know what I mean, because you all you want it
to come out clean. Anytime you're doing that, you're never
really putting it in expecting it to come out battery.
So even though you do get to lick it, that's

(36:01):
like the one plus side of that that experience. I
think that's true. Uh. And if your cake is done,
you're not finished baking it yet, even you need to
let it cool in the pan. Yeah, that's a big one.
You don't just pull the cake out and and turn
it upside down in your sink and eat it with
your hands while it's still hot, Right, that's not the
way to do it. No, No, you want to let

(36:22):
it finish in the pan, cooling, because it's still doing
a little bit of baking, and it's getting used to
its new room in the kitchen and saying, all right,
this is a different temperature in here. I can I
think I can hang with you guys. Yeah, I'm alive.
Ten or fifteen minutes later, get out that wire rack,
flip it over and ideally it comes out all in
one nice thing. And the other good thing about letting

(36:46):
it cool in the pan first two is when you
cool it on the wire rack, it won't get those
wire indent indentations in the cake because it is stable enough.
I never thought about that. Nobody likes us. Sure you
can fill it in with a little extra frousting. Actually,
now I think about that's great. Those those invitations are
just fine. The frosting grooves. In other words, yeah, should

(37:09):
we take a break, Yes, all right, we're gonna talk, um, well,
just about other Kiki stuff. Right after this. Okay, Chuck,

(37:34):
you remember I was talking about baking soda and how
that changed everything. That was a big one that was
from the forties. Baking soda sodium bicarbonate. UM, just good
old fashioned, regular old baking soda. Sorry to be added
to it, but at the time you needed to, um
also add another ingredient that was an acid, so that
the two would react and form C O two or

(37:54):
produce C O two. Right, somebody about twenty years after
baking soda was developed said, oh, I got this, Um,
We're gonna come up with something called baking powder. And
I never knew this, but this is the difference between
baking soda and baking powder. Baking soda is just sodium bicarbonate.
Baking powder is sodium bicarbonate and two other dry acidic

(38:15):
minerals that when dry, they don't do anything. You can
mix them together all day long and they just sit
there like what. Um, But in the presence of water
and heat, then they start to react chemically with one another.
So you can add just a little baking powder and
you don't need an extra ingredient like yogurt or vinegar
or some other acid. It's got the base and the

(38:36):
acid that's going to produce the CO two in there.
That was a huge, huge advancement for cakes, but it
actually came, um, kind of towards the end of cake
advancements prior to that. Um, just the the mass production
of the Industrial Revolution had a big impact on cakes,
among many many other things, but definitely had an impact

(38:59):
on the spread of cake baking, especially in the United States. Yeah.
And then so just you know, leave that baking soda
in your fridge to soak up the stink. Sure, that's
all that's good for. Well that now you can use
a baking soda for a lot of stuff. Yeah. It
also gets stink out of like clothes too. Oh yeah, um,
you can use it to uh well that's it. You know,

(39:22):
like school science projects. You want to make a volcano. Yeah,
vinegar and baking soda and tried with your parents help. Yeah. Uh.
Pre packaged cake mix was a very big deal when
it came out in the nineteen thirties. But it was
it was a company named p. Duff and Sons. And
they said, here, we got a problem here, we got

(39:43):
too much molasses on our hands. So and then this
is kind of how a lot of great things have
been invented. They had too much of something. They said, well,
what can we use this for? So they got to
work and they said Mr John duff the owner, said,
you know what, the little weie flour in there with
this molasses, little shortening. Some spy says, we got a
gingerbread mix that we can sell to the public. All
you gotta do is add water, dumb, dumb, and you

(40:05):
can bake yourself some gingerbread cookies. Yeah. And the public
went hooray because remember they had um ovens now in
their houses, um, and they had this. The idea that
you could just get a mix from the store and
just add water was huge. It was a huge change.

(40:27):
And what's interesting is this this whole like p. Duffin
Son's story there out of Pittsburgh by the way, from
them coming up, because I think they quickly went from
just gingerbread mixes to cake mixes themselves as well. But
that busts uh several myths actually, some some like longstanding
food myths. One of them is that UM cake mix

(40:48):
came out of a surplus of flour in from World
War Two. That's where the cake mix came from. Yeah,
I mean cake. Pre made cake mixes did get way
more popular after World Wars. But it wasn't because there
was so much flour. No, it was because that a
lot of the food companies started getting into pre mixed
foods that that you could make pretty easily in your kitchen. Um.

(41:11):
But then the other one, I'd love this one. There's
this longstanding myth or this story about a guy named
Ernest Dichter who back in the nineteen fifties, Ernest dictor,
he was a psychologist. I believe he came up with
the term focus group. He came up with the whole
idea of focus groups, um, to help companies figure out
why their new product wasn't doing so well, or how

(41:34):
to make a product that they hadn't launched yet even
more appealing. Um, this guy came up with that whole
idea of focus groups. Right. So he's also credited with
being the man who saved cake mixes because cake mixes
came out, everybody kind of loved him, and then supposedly
sales went flat, and Ernest Dichter got a focus group

(41:58):
together and found out that women who made cakes using
these cake mixes felt guilty, but they weren't contributing anything
to their families. They were just adding water and making
a cake and then quietly sobbing while their family ate it.
Talked about the patriarchal brainwashing. Right, So dickter Um realized

(42:19):
that the best thing that these cake mix companies could
do is to remove the dried egg ingredients from the
mix and tell the consumer to add her own eggs,
so then that way she was contributing. Well, it was
a huge success, and cake mixes took off and became
part of the American pantheon from that point on. Right.

(42:41):
Not true? No, yeah, that is a total urban myth. Uh.
Most of these pre made mixes for years had said
to add your own eggs because it just was better
to add fresh eggs. It tastes better and perform better.
So I don't know how that get started up the myth.

(43:03):
I'm not sure either. I don't know, but it is
a long standing food myth that you can find, like
some very credible sources who say like, oh, this is
this happened, Um, it's just everywhere, But it turns out
that's not true. But I think the reason why it
has had legs for so long is because Ernest Dickter
is actually rightfully credited with saving the cake mix market

(43:25):
UM through a focus group, and he did find that, UM,
women were kind of not they didn't feel guilty about
it about you know, not contributing more to the cake mix.
They think they were more bored by it. So he
advised companies to um figure out a way to make
cake baking about way more than just baking the cake.

(43:48):
And so companies decided that um, they were going to
start promoting cakes as just the beginning part. That the
real point of baking cakes was to make these elaborate,
amazing cakes that you decorated and and it took you
hours and hours to make these things and it was
like a scene of like Humpty Dumpty on a brick wall,

(44:08):
but the whole thing was made out of cake. UM.
And that was fostered by the introduction of frosting, and
that came from Ernest Dictor and that actually is what
saved the cake mix industry. That's right. You want to
know something about my mom? Yeah, champion cake decorator, is
that right? Not literal champion, like she never want to

(44:29):
contest because that is out there. But yeah, I mean
as far as the home the home cake baker goes
like she she couldn't go on one of these uh
shows now where they make like the British Bake offf
like giant submarines and stuff how to fond it. But
um just for like mom making special cakes every year

(44:50):
for the birthday. Every year she would say what kind
of cake you want this year? I'd be like, I
want a Star Wars cake. I want to Atlanta Falcons cake,
and lo and behold, I would get my Atlanta Falcons cake.
That awesome, very cool stuff, you know. Um. I had
an older sister who she died actually when I was sixteen, uh,
in a car accident. But she um used to be

(45:11):
the equivalent of your mom at making cakes. But she
didn't even need to ask. She would just she just
make something up, right. And there was this one year
I'll never forget this cake. Um. We were all big
time into Howard Jones. So it must have been seen it,
but yeah, it must have been like my ninth or
tenth birthday. My whole like, both my sisters and me

(45:32):
were totally into Howard Jones. And Karen, my sister, my
oldest sister, made a Howard Jones keyboard cake. And it
was a couple of cheat cakes put together frosted so
it looked like one big thing that like the black
keys were kick cats, like the the knobs on the
synthesizer were rollos, And I was I just looked around

(45:52):
at all my friends, like, does everyone see my cake?
This is the greatest cake anyone's ever had? And no
one couldn't have any but me. No, I shared, of
course I wanted to everyone did partake in the bounty?
Was it a key tar or a keyboard? It was
a keyboard, okay, yeah, you never know. Strap a yeah,
trap a guitar strap on it. You might could have
held it. I would not have put it past her

(46:13):
to make it a key tar. Man. That is very
sweet story. Yeah, literally and figuratively. Thank you. Hojo fans Huh, Yes,
isn't that his nickname? I don't think so. Did I
make that up? Yeah? I think that's the hotel chain.
I think you're totally right. Um, all right, Well another
tip here for baking a cake. If you were looking

(46:34):
at recipes and it says use this kind of pan,
and you think, wow, I don't have that kind of pan.
I've got this kind of pan. It's aluminum and square
and they're calling for a round dark pan. Uh, It's
it makes a big difference, like it can literally ruin
your cake. Yeah, you supposedly want to reduce the heat.

(46:55):
I think not the heat or the cook time, one
of the two. Yeah. It says a dark non stick
pan cars reduction and temperature, so you want to knock
that heat down. Yeah, but also like google that stuff.
Don't just say Josh and Chuck said this should work,
you know, like, you have to have this the right
pan for that recipe and they will tell you in

(47:16):
the recipe and if you don't have it, just look
up the cheat for it. Basically, Yeah, two things you
don't want to take our advice blindly on medical stuff
and baking stuff. Yeah. Everything else is fine. I don't
know about that, but those are the two leading ways
that we will miss your life up. Um. All right, well,
I guess we need to talk about the different methods

(47:39):
we're getting super wonky into cakes here. Well, I mean
that's what we do, all right. Well, let's talk about
creaming then, because that is one kind of method of
making a cake, and creaming is what we talked about.
You may not have known exactly what you meant. But
when you combine like the butter and sugar, and it
says cream it with an electric beater, that's what you're doing.
And it's it's really tough at first to get it going,

(48:01):
but just hang in there because that butter will start
to break apart mixing it with that sugar, and you
you've got a nice, a nice creamed um mix of
ingredients starter mix of ingredients on your hand there, right,
But you don't skimp on that that that first step. No,
and that's like that. I think the creaming method, um,

(48:22):
that's that's that's the one that best gets across this
point that this is like, this is there. It's a
chemical reaction. I know we've kind of been beating that horse,
but it's really true. Like if you if you don't
follow the steps correctly, the chemical reaction is not going
to come out correctly. And when you step back, you're like,
but I'm making a cake. That's true, but do you

(48:44):
want your cake to to be good or do you
want to just waste your time? Yeah? So in the
creaming method, when it says then mix ingredients in this
order wet then dry, do that right to say just
throw it all in there, right, Yep, it makes a difference.
And uh it says that pound cakes are like a
variation on the theme. I looked in the pound cakes. Man.

(49:05):
Do you know so that the idea that pound cakes
called for a pound of each ingredient. That's actually true. Yeah,
I know. But the reason why it called for a
pound of each ingredient was because a lot of the
British people at the time, in the early seventeen hundreds, um,
couldn't read, so it was just an easy way to
remember the recipe. Interesting, yeah, all right, I'll buy that

(49:28):
they'd be like what's the tips? And also pound cakes
to the reason, um, why you're not going to find
a pound cake with a big butter cream frosting is
because that will that will send you into sugar shock
in a second pound cake is already really dense and sugary.
Like that's why you just have it like a little
glaze on top. I do like that glaze. Actually, I'll

(49:51):
eat a pound cake. I think that glazes. What's it
called something icing? Imperializing? Oh, I don't know, I can't remember. Okay,
So the next one is the not the no aeration
method to where you're not really you're not whipping anything up. Um. Yeah,
you probably don't even have flour in this in this

(50:12):
this is probably a flower less cake, right, So this,
this is the kind of thing that you use to
um make like a cheesecake or a flowerless chocolate cake. Yeah,
this can be very good. Sure, um. And you are
probably going to need to add some sort of moisture
because cakes like this tend to crack while they're baking,
which is why a lot of them, cheesecakes in particular,

(50:33):
you cook in a water bath in the oven because
that water vaporizes and steams around it and helps keep
that moisture in. Yeah. I never knew that the reason
for the water bath. I didn't know that you use
a water bath. That was news to me. Made a cheesecake, yeah,
they can be quite good. Oh. I love cheesecake. I
don't think I've ever had any bad cheesecake. That's always good.

(50:55):
That's another thing too. Um Public cheesecake is incredible and
they need to sponsor us, and they sell it by
the double slice for those like you get two slices
and they have a key lime one to chuck. That's
just man. Although if you don't like lemon stuff. You
might not like that. Oh no, I love key lime
in Okay, try their key lime cheesecake. Yeah, they really

(51:16):
should send us some stuff. Frankly, at uh Al of
Palms for my vacation that I've spoken about, they had
one of the I can't remember which one, but one
of the seafood joints where I would get all the
fresh seafood had a homemade key lime pie and I
bought an ate one of them with my friends that week,
and I bought two to go home with. Did they

(51:39):
make it home? Huh? Did they make it all the
way home? No? Yeah, I stopped in, stopped at the border,
just put my face in it. No, they made it home.
I think there's still one in the freezer actually, And
then one of them was consumed, nice good key lime pie.
And finally, with a non aeration method, you are you

(51:59):
are not doing the the beating, you're not creaming that stuff.
You're folding the batter. And we could describe it here,
but if you don't know what folding is and making,
just just look it up on the YouTube for a
proper folding technique. Generally done with a like a rubber spatula. Um,
there's a foaming method to where you are basically using

(52:20):
just egg whites usually and you're aerating it by whipping
them up, which makes a merangue. You can just stop
there and incorporate sugar and you've got marangue, which would
make a Pavlova cake, which apparently Australia and New Zealand
have been fighting over the origin of for close to
a hundred years now. But doesn't New Zealand win supposedly,

(52:40):
although I saw another um article from some researchers who
said no, it came even earlier, a decade earlier out
of America via Germany, so who knows, but yes, out
of Australia New Zealand. New Zealand's apparently won that fight.
But that's merangue, and Pavlova cake is like a marangue
cake with um like fruit in the middle of it.

(53:02):
Um and then uh and then um. A listener sent
us pavlova once we made it, it was pretty good.
It is pretty good, yeah, um and then um. You
can also take that egg foam and turn it into
it like a sponge cake, like an angel food cake
or something like me. You don't like those either. No,
not big into the angel food cake. Although you can

(53:24):
use sponge cake for strawberry shortcake that I will have. Okay,
So those spongey cakes, that's that uses the egg foaming method.
But if you're making a true strawberry shortcake, you're going
to use an actual shortcake. Yeah. Those are really good.
And the reason they're called shortcake or shortbread is called
short bread is short is apparently a British term for crumbly. Okay,

(53:46):
so that's where that came from. Not not has nothing
to do with the size. Yeah, Emily makes a really
good gluten free shortbread. She's kind of gotten into baking
a bit in the last five or six years and
getting pretty good at it. Um, So she makes a
good gluten free shortbread that we've had, a shortcake with
homemade whip topping and good fresh strawberries. Those are good.
But my one complaint with her baking is it literally

(54:10):
looks like she came in there and just started throwing
ingredients everywhere with her bare hands like a three year old,
and then baked right and then said I'm done, Yeah,
good night. It is a It is a mess, a big,
big mess. And she always just says, get out of here.
I'll clean it up afterward, don't worry about it. Yeah yeah, yeah,
it's funny. The kitchen can be a place of real

(54:31):
tension sometimes high oh for sure. Yeah, especially if both
of you, uh do different things in the kitchen, right,
like ones hovering like are you going to clean that up? Well,
I'm the kitchen cleaner. So that's why she's just like,
just stay out of here, dude, right, just wait until
the end. Yeah, and you show up, You're like, it's
Marge's time to shine. Well I'll do this. And this

(54:51):
is such a passive aggressive move for me, which is
my style. Um, not endorsing that, I'm just saying it's
one of my downfalls. I need to porcan. But I'll
just go in there and just like groan or something
like God, and she'll just say no out right. Again,

(55:12):
that's life at the Briant House. Um, that's that's a
pretty nice that's always with love though. Yeah, it always
comes out. There's always a cake out the on the
other end, right yeah yeah, yeah, I mean it's not
gonna get in serious fights over the kitchen stuff, right. Um,
So what's the last thing here? Uh? Something called the
all in one method. Yeah, that's just like a cake

(55:33):
makes you put it all all together at once. Yeah, well,
we should talk a little bit about frosting and icing. Um,
the earliest versions of frosting was just sort of an
almond and sugar paste. Uh, not so big on that,
but really, I mean it could be okay, but almond
croistants are like one of my great joys in life. Like, oh, yeah,

(55:54):
they're so good. I suppose that's kind of what a
bear claw is too, right, yeah, alright, yeah, but that
all that's sweet almond paste inside is man, I know
it's it is good, but I'm like, don't put that
on top of a cake. From sure, I understand, stuff
it in a pastry. Um, a friend chief that was
the first person they think that created like the first

(56:15):
legit iced layer cake in the fifteenth century, and then
about the middle of the seventeenth century is when the
first frosting recipe started spreading around on the internet. And
fondante is gross. Yeah, I'm not into it. I mean,
you can make a neat looking cake, but it's gross tasting,
I think. Yeah, I'm then into a buttercream or cream

(56:38):
cheese or even Emily's Waldorf History of frosting. Believe it
or not. I mean it has a bit of a
mouth feel because of the shortening, but um, like a
residue on the palate. Yeah, on the roof of your mouth. Yeah,
but it's still good. Well, let's talk about cakes, like
like the well, no specific cake. It's like the red

(57:01):
velvet cake, right, yea delicious. Do you know why it's red?
Well food coloring that they use that to make it
a little richer, but it actually naturally turns red. It's
a chemical reaction between the cocoa, the vinegar in that
and the buttermilk. I believe, really, yes, that turns it red.

(57:22):
All right, I don't know about that. No, it's true. Okay,
I read it on What's cook in America. I'll try
it because i'm making Emily. It's her birthdays in a
couple of weeks and I'm making another. I'm taking another
stab at it. Try the try go find like an
original like like recipe. Well, I mean, what do you
mean like one if you if you see one that

(57:44):
actually uses buttermilk, being like, okay, this one, this is
one of the ones. I'm gonna try. No, no no, no,
I have to use the recipe she tells me to use.
Oh I got which isn't the waldor the gluten free Waldorf?
The story of version Oh gotcha? I see, But you
have cocoa? Does it have like vinegar and buttermilk in it?
I can't remember. It's been a couple of year since
I tried it. Okay, well, it should turn red on
its own, but I don't think there's any harm in

(58:04):
adding some more synthetic chemical red dye. Well, and the
thing is, to a lot of people that don't try
red velvet cake don't try it because they think it
doesn't like it tastes like chocolate cake pretty much. Yeah,
it just is red. It tastes red. No, that'd be weird.
It's not catchup cake. There's uh yeah, that's Canadian, isn't it.

(58:24):
There's a hummingbird cakes. Uh well, what do you mean
by the hummingbird? What? Hummingbird cake has like some nuts
and some fruit in it, lots of frosting. I think
it's a Southern cake. Yeah, like we called my grandmother
Bryant called one of the great all time Southern cooks
and bakers, like you know, banana nutbread. Yeah, she called
that hummingbird, and I don't know if that was specific

(58:46):
to her or if they are interchangeable. I don't know.
I'm not actually a Southern native, so I would not
say one way or the other. All my experience with
hummingbird cake is it's more like a charity cake with
with say like pineapple in it and some other fruits
in it, and a thick layer of frosting. And supposedly

(59:07):
the reason it's called a hummingbird cake is because it's
so sweet it could attract hummingbirds. See maybe, I mean
that's sort of like banana upbread. So I don't know
if they're interchangeable for variation. But give me some banana nutbread,
which is not a cake but it sort of is,
and slice it up and flut some butter on it
toasted in the oven. Now I'm with you. Our freezer

(59:30):
is always chuck full of black bananas blackened with age
um because you makes a killer banana nutbread from scratch
using I mean, you just can't look at the bananas
when she's incorporating them. What does that do? Why? Why
is that the key? Do you know? They just are
supposed to be mushy? Okay, Okay, gotcha, and and like it.
The best way to make banana's mushy is to let

(59:53):
them age, let him age freeze age them. All right,
Let's talk about Indian pound cake. Apparently that's a thing
that has corn meal in it and I can't imagine
that taste, but I'd like to try it. Well. Yeah,
and that was one of the earliest cakes in the US.
And I think what the author Leah Hoyt's pointing out
is that like cakes came from all over the place

(01:00:14):
through time and and geography, and that the mass immigration
tore into America over say like the seventeen eight nineteenth
centuries in twenty to all these people from all these
different lands brought their ideas or ingredients of cake and
they kind of went through this americanized grinder to where

(01:00:36):
eggs were added, butter was added, and like you've got
these ingredients. So it bears a resemblance to its original one.
But it's been like cake afide in the American way. Um,
and that that started basically right as as um European
settlers got to um North America. Yeah, apparently the the
good old fashioned chocolate layer cake came out of Boston

(01:00:59):
because there were chocolate companies there. Even the German chocolate
cake is not German, it's American. It's after a man
whose last name was German. Oh interesting, well that means
he's German. German American could be maybe they should call
it the German American Chocolate Cake or just German chocolate cake.
But it's really American, everybody, is what the real title

(01:01:20):
should be. Strawberry shortcake that you mentioned, that does come
from the old world. I'm not much of a jingo
list either, I think you might say, but I've never
felt more national pride than in talking about cakes. Yeah. Yeah,
this is where cakes were born. Really. Uh the pineapple
upside down cake. Heaven help you if you eat that stuff.

(01:01:42):
I love it, do you really, man? It's so good. Yeah.
I just don't like fruit anywhere near my cake. Yeah,
that's a strawberry shortcake. You definitely win like a hummingbird
cake then even Yeah, maybe that's the difference between that
uh hummingbird and uh banana bread. Right, although bananas in there, right,
that's a well, that's not a fruit cake to me. No,

(01:02:05):
you just don't like the juicy fruits in your cake.
It sounds like no, or coconut, which is in the
German chocolate cake in the coconut in the icing. Yeah yeah,
see that. So I don't want coconut anywhere near my cakes.
But that pineapple upside down cake apparently that stuff sort
of sprang out of a contest. Uh Doll had the

(01:02:28):
Doll Company in the in the mid nineteen twenties. They said, hey,
bake some cakes with fruit, and so thousands of pineapple
upside out cakes came out. So I don't think they
were invented for that, but maybe that's just what made
them so popular. I don't know. And then there's other Again,
there's cakes around the world that look like cakes, kind
of like tearmy sou um. Is it quintessential Italian cake?

(01:02:51):
But it was invented in the nineteen sixties. Black forest
cake actually is from Germany. It was invented in nineteen
five teen. So what happened was again, cake explosion happened
here in the good old US of A, and its
spread back out to the world. There was an influx
of cake ideas into America. America perfected the cake and

(01:03:13):
it went back out to the world. That's what happened.
What else, what what about the chase that's great too,
kinds of milk evaporated, condensed, and whole. It's tough to
go wrong with that. Talk about moist and I've like,
I've had good and bad Tracey Late chase, but I've
never had an actual Tracey Late sus like, this is

(01:03:33):
so bad, I'm not going to finish it, right, have
you know? And then there's Doda yucky, which is like, um,
have you ever had this? I don't think so. Uh.
One of the big things that that people in Japan
love is like sweet and red bean paste. You can

(01:03:54):
find it here there in like sweets. But this dory
YACKI um, in particular is like between two pancakes. It's
like a filling. Sometimes it's not even two pancakes. It's
like a hole with like a red bean paste inside.
It's like this light, kind of fluffy cake like thing
with red bean paste inside. It's good. Um, you can
they're best like hot off of the street from somebody

(01:04:16):
who just made it. That's when it's absolutely best. But
it's like the kind of thing you can also find
in a seven eleven or something to like in cellophane. Yeah,
it's good. It's no cheesecake. No Japanese cheesecake, I'll tell
you that. Nope, but it's still pretty good. Man. That
was a good one. I think cakes. All right, are
you done? I'm done? Okay. If you want to know

(01:04:38):
more about cakes, go eat something. You're gonna love them.
There's a cake out there for you. Uh. And since
I said that, it's time for listener man. All right,
I'm gonna call this um a special one man administrative
details shout, because we got a box today from a

(01:04:59):
man named Nick Pegan from San Jose Bay area and
he sent us just a blotted stuff like good stuff.
It wasn't a box full of garbage he sent. He
said that anyone ever has sent us a box full
of garbage. He sent us, uh, framed things, sent me

(01:05:20):
a framed pavement poster, which is great, and sent us
CDs of music. He sent bottles of liquid stuff, most
notably wine for Jerry, and then bourbon and Scotch for us.
And he is a whiskey enthusiast that lives in the
Bay area, like a big time and just a good dude.

(01:05:41):
And beyond that, he uh, he added this, he added,
he's a he's a list maker, an amateur list maker,
and he sent us a list, and Nick, if you're listening,
please send us the word document digital version of this
print out that you sent because he said every time
you said we should to do a podcast on that,

(01:06:01):
he made a list alphabetically of that stuff. And the
list is so comprehensive and awesome that we need it
to work from. Yes, he made he made a list
of films that each of us said we need to see,
which is pretty good. And then finally he sent us
a list and and encouraged us to play a little

(01:06:22):
game here which will do very quickly of see if
Chuck can see if Josh can guess how many times
we've done the following things. Are you ready well, because
I have the list in my hand and you're sitting
across from me, and you can't can't do this paper,
I don't think so. How many c o A s
and for people who don't know it means cover our butts?

(01:06:42):
How many c oas have we issued over a thousand shows?
I'm going to say seven? Wow, Wow, we are really
good at that. How many times have we admitted on
the air that it is a take two? Yeah, you're
not gonna get anything, or maybe you might it will

(01:07:05):
be totally luck if I do eight seven, Oh so
close rare listener mail shout outs, Oh, I don't know
what that means, like where we say, hey, can you
say hello to my boyfriend? Three st What that's pretty
rare though out of a thousand. Yeah, but still it

(01:07:25):
seems like I thought it was even rarer than that did.
We used to do it more than we do now,
and I think so. I think that's what It was
a little more generous in earlier days. Trips in the
way back machine. Oh, there's a lot of those, I'm
gonna say, out of a thousand episodes three and twenty,
he says, fifty nine. So I don't know about this. Nick,
think he missed a few. Nick. You're just making up numbers,

(01:07:47):
aren't you. How many can scotch at home and making
up numbers? How many paper lists have you eaten? Me? Yeah?
One that I know of. Yep, you nailed it. I
remember the episode two It was um, how geniuses work?
Or what makes a genius? And I said that if
this list, if the list of geniuses, if the number

(01:08:08):
one genius was Einstein, I would eat the list. Turned
out it was Einstein. How many Glenn Danzig or Misfits references?
Those would be all you four. You need to step
it up. How many times has Chuck was How many
times have I done this? Wow? I think it's literally countless.

(01:08:28):
If he came up with a number, it's a lot.
He says two eight. That's got to be more than that.
Simpsons references. I'll just go ahead and tell you a
hundred ninety seven. Apparently we have high include the two
episodes on the Simpsons. No, no no, no, I think um,
apparently we have high fived once. Okay, I'm surprised we
even did that a number of times. Josh has done

(01:08:50):
this a lot? Uh, I don't know. I think a
lot just just works for that. Four hundred and twenty
six time, almost half our episodes. That's great, um, And
then bonus, name all of Josh's nicknames for Chuck. I'll
just go ahead and read those. You have called me Chuckers,

(01:09:11):
you've called me beautiful, I don't remember that one. The
famous Chuck tran Cheach, Rusty Zonkers, and the flash nick
is my new favorite listener. This this is all gold plus.
Thanks for for buttering us up with the care package

(01:09:32):
to Nick, that was nice of you. Yeah, so, Nick Pagan,
you are now on the guest list for the San
Francisco Sketch Fest show. Just hit me up with an email,
send that list of shows that we need to do
via digital document and you are in, like Flynn. Cool.
Thanks a lot, Nick, Well, if you want to be
like Nick, you can tweet to us at Josh I'm

(01:09:52):
Clark or s y s K podcast, hang out on
Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know, or slash
Charles W. Chuck Bryant you. You can send us an
email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot com
and has always joined us at our home on the web,
Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this

(01:10:12):
and thousands of other topics. Is that how stuff Works
dot com. H