I Made A Giant 50-Pound Birthday Cake

If you're gonna have a birthday cake , like you know , you got , you just gotta go for it .

So the first thing I'm gonna do is mix together my dry ingredients , flour , baking powder and salt .

I'm gonna be using a traditional creaming method , what I would call the basic cake baking method .

I'm gonna go ahead and put all my dry ingredients into my mixer .

I'm gonna start with my sugar cocoa powder , baking soda , cake , flour and all purpose flour .

And this mix gives me a combination between a stable cake that has some body and also that has lightness salt .

You always need some salt , sweet things with a little salt , taste better .

Always salt , almost forgot baking powder , powdered peanut butter .

This kind of gives you the flavors that you want without having to worry about dealing with the texture of regular peanut butter and then my all purpose flour .

OK ?

So now everything's mixed together .

I'm going to add my butter .

So the next thing I'm gonna do is combine my butter and sugar and this is a fancy one .

Now , egg number two , my whole milk , my egg whites , vanilla bean paste .

I prefer to use vanilla bean paste .

I find that it just has a much stronger vanilla flavor when I'm choosing between extracts and paste .

The next thing I'm gonna do is add my vanilla into my milk boob .

That's all .

So I have my vegetable oil that's gonna make it nice and moist and then my buttermilk , which is the key ingredient here .

The buttermilk is what really gives it that richness and that moisture .

I'm gonna alternate adding my flour mixture and my milk mixture and I'm to start slow .

So I don't wear all the flour and you just have to kind of work with it and ease things in .

I'm just reading the internet and doing what I'm told and I'm gonna mix this until I don't see the butter anymore .

When I add the milk , I like to turn it on to stir and I like to stream it down the side of the bowl and I would just grab that as a batter made .

Now , I have my hot water and I'm gonna pour it in really slowly because I don't want it to accidentally cook the eggs that I have in here .

Slowly start to add my wet ingredients in .

My batter is made except I need my sprinkles .

So I'm just gonna gently fold these in because if I beat these in , this will just be a brown mess .

Instead of a beautiful rainbow cake , this is looking really smooth and that's what I'm kind of looking for .

I'm not looking for anything specific in terms of the look of the batter .

It's really more just letting it go for two solid minutes after the addition of each section of the milk .

So I like to bake my cake in individual layers .

When you bake it in thinner layers , you just get a better bake because it doesn't spend as long in the oven .

So it doesn't dry out as much .

It might not seem even , but it's a superpower .

That's even one of the most crucial steps .

I think in baking a cake is making sure you can get it out of the cake pan .

I'm also going to add some cocoa powder and then that will also help to get the cake out .

Once it's big , I have a greased and a parchment paper pan and I'm gonna put my batter right in there just kind of work it towards the edges evenly .

I think the main goal is just making sure that they're even , and you do have enough room for them to grow even it out with a spatula .

And then I might give it like a little shake .

I kinda like to give them a little tap , tap corners are kind of hard to spatula into , OK .

You can be as aggressive as you want .

Cake levels itself .

I'm gonna go bake it in the oven at 3 50 degree standard oven for like 35 to 40 minutes .

My cake is in the oven .

So I'm gonna start working on my frosting .

I'm gonna be making a traditional American butter cream and I'm gonna be making it pink .

But today I'm making a Swiss meringue butter cream .

It's going to be a little bit less sweet than your traditional butter cream , which is going to pair beautifully with the chocolatey savoriness of the cake .

My butter cream is a royal icing that has butter added to it .

I'm not 100% sure what royal icing is , but it does sound pretty fancy .

Royal icing is something you might traditionally see on decorated cookies .

It'll dry fur and it'll be something that will last a really long time .

But when we add butter to it , we turn it into an icing that doesn't have any of the grittiness that American butter cream traditionally has .

I have my butter at room temperature .

So it'll be nice and easy to cream .

So , the first thing I'm gonna do is add my salt and vanilla and cream these things together .

So what I'm going to do next is create a double boiler .

I'm going to make sure I'm controlling the temperature that the sugar is melting and combining with the egg whites .

I'm gonna start by adding my powdered sugar , egg whites .

Oh , and I'm also gonna add my salt at this point .

The salt is for flavor for sure .

But it's also to help me break up the proteins in the eggs and to get them going .

Having the the brown sugar as opposed to just a traditional white sugar is going to give me a little bit more of that depth of flavor that I'm looking for .

And again , this is made with love .

So it's not perfect .

You know , that's what happens but also food with threats usually works out too .

You will be delicious .

So I'm just gonna let this go and it's gonna take a while .

You're gonna feel like this is not happening and it's never gonna happen and I promise you it will basically we're making a meringue right now and we're gonna start off kind of slow and then we're gonna go ahead and get it going .

The next thing I'm gonna do is start adding in my sugar a little bit at a time .

Uh And this is icing sugar , powdered sugar .

I like this speed , we're gonna keep it , we're gonna cruise .

So , you know , you're starting to get close with the roil when you start to see it kind of holding its shape around the exterior of the bowl .

Ok .

Let's see where we're at .

So see how this is being held up .

It's being suspended into the air .

And then more of this clear vanilla extract .

We're really going through a lot of this vanilla extract today and then the vegetable oil because it makes it look crumbly .

So the goal is to kind of get this like a wet sand , heavily texture situation .

It's almost there .

Kind of looks like rainbow sand that is done .

Take this guy out onto the tray , spread them out a little bit and then to kind of get these like chunks .

I'm just gonna like take a handful and like crust them into rough little balls and things like that .

So it gets this nice little chunky texture .

This is fun .

It's kind of like digging for gold , but you make your own gold .

We have a little cake crumbs of all shapes and sizes .

This is gonna go bake and it's gonna get nice and crumbly and delicious .

I eat a lot of sugar today .

All right .

So my cake has finished baking and cooling .

We're gonna start cutting out the shapes .

We found like a strainer that was really large Macgyver .

It ripped off all of its insides and we're gonna use this to cut the cake .

All right , let's go in .

Oh That is soft .

I declare that pink butter cream .

All right .

So now it's time to assemble my cake and my cakes turned up beautifully .

This is always to me the most difficult phase of cake baking .

Uh Do I just turn it over ?

I might just turn it over if you think it'll just come out if I , I was going for more of a rounded square .

Anyway , I have everything ready to go .

The first thing that I'm gonna do is mix up my soak for the cake and for that , I'm gonna use simple syrup and Saint Germain Elderflower .

It's very floral man g ah by baking the cakes .

My way , they're very even we don't have to trim off excess cake and it just bakes really evenly nice and fluffy .

Basically .

The first thing I'm gonna do is go ahead and trim off this bubble layer where it kind of rose up because I want them to be nice and even layers gorgeous .

Look at that .

Genius .

Really .

And one thing that milk bar cakes also have is a little soak .

So this is milk with vanilla , the same clear vanilla extract .

So vanilla milk , I think this helps the cake stay moist .

I actually do this with any cake I make , I think this really helps achieve that nice moist fudgy cake that we all love .

Very easy salt frosting time .

As you can see , we have a giant tub of frosting over here .

Oh , yeah , that's what I like to see .

Get this nice and smooth and the cake crumbs actually go here .

I like this part .

A lot , kind of acts like a structural component and has a lot of nice crunch and flavor .

Pat this down into the cake and more frosting .

Now you might be wondering , hey , that's a lot of frosting and you would be exactly right .

But it's Victor's birthday .

And as you know , on the show , it's called making it big not being a little woo .

So we're gonna keep going .

I think birthday cakes are less about maybe the taste of the cake and just the fact that it's a cake to celebrate .

So my cake is a surprise inside cake which means that when you cut into it , you get an explosion of something .

And in this case , it's our really pretty fancy golden sprinkles .

I have four layers of cake , one of which will not be um tampered with at all , but the other three are gonna have a hole punched out of the center very gently .

Look at that .

It's like I've done it before .

Ok ?

You pink butter cream .

Let's go .

So technique might be like a strong word for how I frost things .

It's more of um a dump and spread .

I'm gonna just get a nice big dollop of this .

Put it in the middle .

I'm gonna just go ahead and start working it toward the edges .

One cake layer goes down , turn it upside down .

I always turn it upside down because this part of the cake was the part that was in touch with the parchment .

Now , layer two goes over and we repeat this process again , turn the turntable , let it do the work for me one more time and my sprinkles , I'm gonna lie down delicately in the center .

I'm gonna pick it up and then fill the center of my cake with sprinkles .

Bros .

Your cake like a Bob Ross painting .

You know , like there are no mistakes .

Just happy little room and my final cake will go on , go on top .

Saint Jemaine sugar syrup .

I'm gonna try to put as much icing top as I think I need to crumb coat the whole cake .

Don't be afraid to be the boss of your cake .

So this is gonna hang out in the freezer for about 15 minutes .

It's gonna get nice and stable for me .

So I'll be able to put my next coat of icing on and it won't move around thin layer on the side , but a little bit more icing this time , pile it up pretty high on top this time though .

I want a thicker coating and it's gonna look a little varied , but that's sort of what I'm going for .

I'm not trying to make it look perfect .

Perfection is for level three .

Now , I switch tools .

It's flexible and I just leave that here and I spin my turntable and it totally smooths itself .

I don't have to work that hard .

Same thing here up against the side of the cake and spin the cake .

I'll have this really cute swirl in the middle now if you don't leave a little bit of cake showing people aren't gonna know that there's sprinkles inside and that's really important .

Now , my final touch to this cake is gonna be to add a bunch of edible glitter .

There's my cake ready for its final decorations .

It's time to move beyond what you see and make it beautiful .

My Mona Lisa , I have some of the frosting .

I have some chocolate that we're gonna shave on top and see I can practice what it's gonna look like .

Oh , I like that .

Let's start out with everybody's favorite rose .

What if I had like this is this pretty .

When you're decorating a cake , it's good to have flowers of different sizes .

It adds visual interest , but it also helps you when you have little nooks and crannies where you need to hide something .

I'm not doing any of those things .

I'm gonna just try writing Happy Birthday .

I a curious on here with the gel , writing pen and then putting a bunch of sprinkles everywhere because I'm basically a child that's kind of big .

That's OK .

It's fun .

And I'm gonna pipe and bound of icing .

It's gonna help me get some height .

So I'm gonna start with my biggest flower , which is my hero flower .

Wow , that is really not how you write a p some of my little flowers go in my nooks and grays and I'll add a few vines .

This is level one flowers I think for me just using the star tip and sort of making these little ruffly roses is just all I need .

Don't be afraid to overlap cut .

I'm very happy with that .

As you can see , I was obviously an art major in school .

I think that using a dark chocolate bar is gonna bring out those flavors really nicely .

Ok , cool .

I think that's a perfect birthday cake and I have no questions .

Um I'm just gonna add some sprinkles all over it now and that's it .

How do I know when it's done ?

It's done .

And this is my birthday cake and this is my birthday cake and this is a penny Stitz birthday cake .

All right we have a birthday cake because it's epic curious birthday .

What's any birthday cake ?

Without a couple candles ?

Happy birthday , epicurious , happy birthday .

Happy birthday and now it's time to taste my cake now I'm ready .

Are you ready for this ?

There's the magic , let's eat some birthday cake .

Here we go .

Wow .

I think that's might be fine .

Ok .

It is really moist .

It's really nice and rich and chocolatey and I feel like the peanut butter frosting is just so light and airy and fluffy and silky .

The butter cream is like delicious .

It's got just the right amount of salt and I mean look at those sprinkles .

How could you say that ?

That ?

It's delicious .

It's bright , it's light .

The cake being a white cake makes the chocolate stand out even more .

The Saint Germain has soaked in and has add this florals and it just tastes like joy .

The baking soda contributes to the leavening as well while also neutralizing the acidic ingredients like the buttermilk and cocoa powder .

This is a runny loose batter which will induce lots of steam to assist with leavening during baking and give the cake a higher domed top penny is what we call a reverse creaming method for mixing her birthday cake with this method softened butter is added directly to the dry flour and sugar mixture with some of the milk and egg mixture to initially moisten the batter .

The idea is to coat the gluten proteins in the flour with fat from the butter which modifies hydration of these proteins and thereby limits gluten development .

The texture is like Emily's conventional cake but slightly more delicate with an ever so spongy quality that really elevates Penny's cake to level three .

It just bakes really evenly nice and fluffy Gabriel made Peanut butter Swiss meringue frosting .

Typically royal icing is a smooth , stiff and very stable mixture of just egg whites and confectioner sugar .

It's so stable because the proteins in the egg whites combine with the sugar and harden quickly .

Which means timing matters when you're working with royal icing penny added luxurious amounts of butter to give it shine and soften the texture a bit .

Making a birthday cake is such a happy way to celebrate someone you love or in this case , something thing we love .

Happy birthday .

Epic .

Curious .

And may you have many , many more ?