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CreativityTranscript
00:00 Welcome to French Baking with Nadia. Today we will be making a chocolate sponge cake.
00:07 This chocolate sponge cake has no oil or butter in it, yet it is surprisingly moist and delicious.
00:15 [Intro Music]
00:20 [Music]
00:45 [Music]
00:51 The equipment we will use to make this chocolate sponge cake is an 8 inch round cake pan,
00:58 which I have already used some butter or margarine you can line it with.
01:03 You also need a half sheet tray, an 8 inch parchment paper, and a spatula.
01:13 And then we will need our stand mixer and a whipping head.
01:17 We're going to mix our cake flour, our cocoa powder, and our baking powder all together.
01:23 I have already sifted all of them individually.
01:26 So we'll pour the cake flour in here.
01:31 We'll pour the cocoa powder on top.
01:39 And then our baking powder.
01:43 And then I'm just going to mix it all together.
01:51 So what we're going to do is we're going to first pour our eggs into the stand mixer,
01:58 to the mixing bowl.
02:00 And then we're going to pour the sugar on top.
02:05 And then we're going to allow this to beat for maybe about 10 to 15 minutes,
02:11 maybe close to 15 minutes, until the eggs and the sugar become dissolved in each other
02:17 and the mixture becomes fluffy and creamy in texture.
02:21 So let's begin.
02:22 And we always start with a low speed and then we increase the speed as we go on.
02:29 [Whirring]
02:50 So now we've gotten our eggs and sugar beaten so much that the mixture has become fluffy
02:58 and it has risen up our mixing bowl at least halfway, a little bit more.
03:03 And this is the time where we're going to slowly put in our chocolate, our cocoa powder,
03:08 our baking powder, and our cake flour mixture.
03:11 And we'll slowly, maybe a tablespoon at a time, put it in and allow it to mix.
03:19 And then put another tablespoon and allow it to mix.
03:22 So I'll start doing that.
03:24 [Whirring]
03:43 And I just pour along the outside edges first.
03:49 And we've already heated our oven.
03:51 We've heated it to 400 degrees, so it's right now at that temperature.
04:01 Our chocolate batter is all ready for our chocolate sponge cake.
04:04 We've already heated our oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
04:08 Once we put the cake in carefully, we're going to reduce our heat to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.
04:14 And we're going to allow it to cook for approximately 25 minutes or so,
04:19 and we'll check it with a toothpick to see if it's cooked or not.
04:24 Also, when we poured our batter into the cake pan,
04:28 we allow it to just sit still for a little bit so it evens out.
04:32 Now we're going to go ahead and put it in the oven.
04:35 Here is our chocolate cake that we made.
04:38 It turned out beautiful, absolutely perfect.
04:41 And what we're going to do is we're going to cut it into three layers
04:45 and then make our chocolate cake.
04:47 So let's cut it with a nice, sharp, long, serrated knife.
04:54 And that can go to the side.
04:57 And now we're going to make three layers of cake out of this.
05:03 So we're just going to eyeball it.
05:09 Okay, now we had the round parchment paper on the bottom,
05:14 so we're going to just take that off. We don't want to forget that.
05:18 So it just peels right off.
05:25 And we'll put that aside.
05:27 And we're going to use a round 8-inch cardboard to support our cake,
05:31 so we'll put that underneath it.
05:34 And we're ready to fill our cake with the different layers of chocolate ganache.
05:42 This cake is very nice and moist and soft,
05:46 but to even make it a little bit moister, we're going to add some sugar water to it.
05:52 We're going to use 250 milligrams of water and then 10 ounces of sugar.
06:00 And we just bring that to a boil, and it's ready.
06:04 We let it cool, and then we can use it for our cake.
06:08 So what I do is we have a little brush that is rubber that I just dip my sugar water in it.
06:20 And you just dab it on the cake like that.
06:28 For this cake, we're going to use chocolate ganache filling.
06:32 And to know how to make a chocolate ganache filling,
06:35 you can see my other video on how to make a chocolate ganache filling.
06:39 And we're going to fill our pastry bag with chocolate ganache filling.
06:44 And I've already put a pastry head on.
06:49 So you can use a nice wide pastry head.
06:58 And I fill it about halfway, and then we can go ahead and put it on the cake.
07:04 Move this away.
07:17 We just squeeze the chocolate ganache filling out of the pastry bag.
07:22 You can use a spatula if that's easier for you to fill your cake.
07:29 And there's our first layer. And now we're going to put our second layer of cake onto the first layer.
07:42 And we'll just press it down gently.
07:46 Okay, and then we're going to again put the sugar water on the cake.
08:04 There's different ways you can fill the cake with a bag or with a spatula, whatever is easier for you.
08:13 Top layer on.
08:17 Here with a spatula, a small spatula, I'm just going to go ahead and wipe the edges of the cake.
08:29 Okay.
08:31 And then we'll continue to put the sugar water on the very last top layer of the cake.
08:39 This is our final top layer.
08:44 Go ahead.
08:46 Okay, so here we have it. We've finished the final layer of the chocolate ganache filling.
08:52 Now we're going to do the sides of the cake, and we're going to put that on a cake stand.
08:57 It's a lot easier to do it with a cake stand.
09:01 Okay, let's go ahead and decorate the sides of the cake.
09:09 Okay, don't worry about how the cake looks right now, the aesthetics.
09:14 We're just going to clean it up, and it'll be nice and smooth and beautiful once we finish smoothing it out.
09:22 Okay, so we're going to smooth the cake, and what we're going to use are two spatulas,
09:27 a small one and a little bit longer one. Small is for the sides, and the longer one is for the top.
09:32 We're also going to use a hot jug of water, and we're going to clean our spatulas with that,
09:38 and that'll help actually smooth the cake.
09:41 So let's go ahead and do the sides, and I just dip my spatula in the hot water,
09:49 and shake it out the little droplets, and then we just twirl the cake on the stand,
10:03 and keep our spatula in one place, and just twirl it, and we get this round, smooth edges.
10:14 The extras you get on your spatula, you can just wipe it off onto a paper roll,
10:19 and dip your spatula again in the hot water, shake out the extra droplets, and do the same thing again.
10:28 Just turn, turn, do that, and look how nice and smooth the sides and the edges of the cake are becoming.
10:42 Okay. Now you can put little sprinklers on the side of the cake if you wish, or you can leave it plain.
10:58 Now let's do the top. Put your spatula in the hot water, let it drip out,
11:04 and then we're just going to glide that on, like that. Dip it in the hot water again.
11:18 The hotter your water, the better. It helps smooth the cake.
11:24 This is a little metal triangle with jagged edges with different sides,
11:29 and it also helps design the top and the sides of our cake, and helps us smooth things out a little bit.
11:36 So we're going to go ahead and use it.
11:39 I'm going to dip it in our hot water again, and shake it out,
11:44 and then what we do is we just glide it over our cake.
11:50 We dip it into our hot water, and again do that.
12:04 Dip it into our hot water, and you can do the side edges too if you'd like.
12:17 If it's not smooth enough, you can do that.
12:24 So I can demonstrate that too.
12:28 You just keep it on the side and turn your cake stand, and there we go.
12:39 Beautiful cake all around. Now we're going to decorate the top of it.
12:43 We're going to use a 10-inch cardboard to place our cake on.
12:47 We're also going to place a doily on top of that,
12:50 and we're going to use a little bit of our sugar water to have it stay in place.
12:56 You can just dab it on the 10-inch cardboard, and then go ahead and put the doily on top of that.
13:05 And now we can transfer our cake onto the doily and decorate it.
13:19 That looks about centered.
13:22 Okay, there's our cake.
13:24 Okay, we're going to go ahead and decorate the cake now with our pastry bag,
13:28 and I'm using a French head.
13:32 You can use whichever type of pastry head that you like.
14:00 Now we're going to decorate the bottom with a small head that's also a French head,
14:06 and that's just the design, that's the name of it.
14:10 So we're decorating the bottom of the cake by simply squeezing and pulling outward.
14:20 And to finalize the cake decoration, I'm just going to put a few tiny silver beads on every other decoration.
14:35 And there you have it, chocolate cake with chocolate ganache filling.
14:40 It's delicious and rich, and I bet you can't wait to taste this.
14:47 [Music]