How to Cook That: Cake Rescue

Welcome to How To Cook That, I'm Ann Reardon and this is an episode of cake rescue where we take cake fails from across the internet and show you how to rescue them. Let's start with this first cake by Maddie. I did everything by the box but there was a giant gap, this is the worst cake I've ever made. All that work and wanted it get me. First things first, let's take a closer look at what went wrong here. It looks like the batter didn't spread evenly in the pan, resulting in a big gap in the middle.

To fix this, we need to think about how to fill in the gap without adding too much weight to the cake. One way to do this is by using a combination of frosting and decorations. Let's start by applying a thin layer of frosting all over the cake to act as a "glue" to hold everything together. Next, we can use some fondant or buttercream to fill in the gap, making sure to smooth it out as much as possible.

Once we've got the gap filled in, we need to think about how to decorate the rest of the cake. Since Maddie's cake is a bit bare, let's add some decorations to give it a bit more visual interest. We can use fresh flowers or some pre-made decorations to create a beautiful and balanced design. With a little bit of creativity and some cake rescue magic, we can turn this disaster into a stunning masterpiece.

In another episode of Cake Rescue, Justin shared with us his experience making a 3D cake. He wanted to try something new and create a cake that would stand out from the crowd. First, he designed a template for the cake using cardboard. However, when it came time to carve the shape into the cake, he realized that the cardboard was not strong enough to hold its weight.

To fix this, Justin decided to switch to wood, which provided much more stability and support. He then used his template to cut out the shape of the cake from both sides and back, making sure to pay attention to every detail. The result was a beautiful and impressive 3D cake that would be perfect for any occasion.

One thing that Justin did really well was try something new when it wasn't needed for an occasion. This is a great way to learn a cake decorating technique because there's no pressure, and you can just laugh off the fact that it didn't work out if you want to. Even when we make a cake fail, we still learn something about the process, even if it's just learning what not to do.

In another part of the episode, Dave talked about his upcoming book launch. His second book, "Deadline," is set to launch on July 9 and is available for pre-order now on Amazon and from bookstores like Barnes & Noble, Waterstones, and Indigo. For Bronze Patrons and above who pre-order "Deadline," we will be posting a special exclusive hand-signed book plate. We'll also put all the details of how you can claim yours on Patreon.

Finally, Dave shared with us an excerpt from his first award-winning book in The Deep Enders series, Chapter 4 - All around him Broome was bubbling with urgent, sweat-stained life but Murph had never felt like more of an outsider. It wasn't a big town but it was busy with civilians and soldiers, rifles slung over shoulders and slouch hats turned up on one side. A military truck roared along the main street carrying US troops, or Yanks as the locals called them, to reinforce the town's airfield. Once a sleepy little strip of flattened dirt used for deliveries in occasional passenger flights, Broome airport was now bursting with Australian and US defence aircraft. The war machine was in full swing with soldiers replacing much of the civilian population who, fearing Japanese invasion had fled south to Perth 3,000 miles away.

Overall, this episode of Cake Rescue is all about learning from mistakes and having fun with cake decorating. Whether you're a seasoned pro or just starting out, we hope you'll join us next time as we share more tips, tricks, and cake rescue stories.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enWelcome to How To Cook That I'm Ann Reardon and this is an episode of cake rescue where we take  cake fails from across the internet and show you how to rescue them. Let's start with this first  cake by Maddie. I did everything by the box but there was a giant gap this is the worst  cake I've ever made. All that work and wanted it get me. First let me recreate the fail she  used a box cake mix so I've made that now for the store bought frosting spread that on and put it  together add some more on top. Now there's not a whole lot of frosting in these little containers  there's kind of enough to put on top of a cake but not all over the sides. Then she cut a chunk  out here and added some pink frosting on the sides and some sprinkles for good luck and the  bunny ears on top and there you go. I think that's pretty accurate 😁 Now if I came over to your house  and you wanted me to rescue this here's what I would suggest that you do. Number one grab a plate  because cakes always look better on a plate than they do on the baking tray. Take out the ears and  save them for later pick up one half of the cake and put it on the plate, get some jam and we're  going to use that in the middle because we don't have enough frosting for the middle pick up the  other half of the cake and put it so that the flat sides or the bottom of the cake are together and  that solves the gap problem. Next get rid of the sprinkles and smooth out the frosting that we do  have so that everything is covered. Now I feel like the head needs to be a little bit longer  so I'm going to cut some off the sides and add it to the front and if you've still got those chunks  that we cut out before let's add them to the back for the tail. Now this shape is not great but for  a simple rabbit cake it will pass so now you just want to add some shredded coconut for the fur and  to try and hide all the cake crumbs that we have in our frosting. Press that into the sides and  cover all the gaps and then just use some candy for the eyes and a Jelly Bean for the nose and add  the ears back into place. You could leave it just like that or to make it pop mix some green food  coloring into the rest of the coconut and add that all the way around the edge and your bunny cake is  rescued 🐰 Moving on to the next cake fail. I'm trying something I've never done before this was  a complete fail my family will forever make fun of me for this cake now. If you can't tell the  bottom part will be a wooden spoon I'm starting to sculpt his face add his fur. I added his arms.  You can't guess the cake cuz what the heck is that supposed to be. I was attempting to make Remy from  Ratatouille. What is that? If we take a look at Remy he is tall and thin with a skinny neck and  a big head which is a really difficult shape to make in cake. If we overlay that shape here for  the width of that baseboard, Remy would need to be this tall so the central support is just not high  enough. When it comes to 3D cakes I'd suggest that you draw it out first so that you can plan where  those supports are going to need to go and how big they need to be. As a general rule I don't like to  have more than three layers of cake without adding a support in place and then once you've got that  planned you can then use that to make a template as to how big each layer of cake needs to be.  Which reduces the amount of cake and in that you need to carve off later then you just cut out the  pieces of cake and stack them up in order paying attention to where each hole is positioned cuz  they're not necessarily in the centre. Now it's apparent that this cardboard is not going to be  strong enough for the weight of the cake so I'm going to have to take that one off and use wood  instead here that is much more secure. And now you simply use your template to carve the shape of the  cake from from the side and the back. Templates do take quite a while to design and think through so  if you're not confident in making your own I've got more than 40 different cake templates on my  website that you can use which is a good place to start if you've never done a 3D cake like this  before. Once you've used the template to cut the shape from the side and the back there's only a  tiny bit of hand carving that you need to do just to round out the corners and then you're ready for  buttercream. You need to make sure that you're 100% happy with the shape of your cake at this  stage and then you can put it in the fridge and start making the fondant details. One thing that  Justin did really well is he tried something new when it was not needed for an occasion and that's  a great way to learn a cake decorating technique because there's no pressure. If it doesn't work  you can just laugh it off eat the cake and try again another day and even when you make a cake  fail you still learn something about the process even if it's just learning what not to do. Now  it's time to wrap the cake in fondant now notice the fondant doesn't change the shape of the cake  at all if you don't have that shape right before you add this it's not going to fix it by adding  fondant. By the way I have some exciting news Dave's second book launches on July 9 it's called  Deadline and it's available for pre-order now on Amazon and from bookstores like Barnes & Noble,  Waterstones and Indigo or if you live in Australia you can get it direct from us I'll put all those  links in the description below and for Bronze Patrons and above who pre-order Deadline we will  be posting you a special exclusive hand signed book plate I'll put all the details of how you  can claim yours on Patreon. And if you haven't read the first award-winning book in The Deep  Enders series make sure you get that one first or you could listen to it on Audible narrated by  Dave himself: Chapter 4 - All around him Broome was bubbling with urgent, sweat stained life but  Murph had never felt like more of an outsider. It wasn't a big town but it was busy with civilians  and soldiers, rifles slung over shoulders and slouch hats turned up on one side. A military  truck roared along the main street carrying US troops, or Yanks as the locals called them,  to reinforce the town's airfield. Once a sleepy little strip of flattened dirt used for deliveries  in occasional passenger flights the Broome aerodrome was now bursting with Australian  and US defence aircraft. The war machine was in full swing with soldiers replacing much of  the civilian population who, fearing Japanese, invasion had fled south to Perth 3,000 miles  away. \"Murph Turner?\" He turned and spotted an Aboriginal boy heading his way. He was about  14 with a mop of dark hair and a big smile on his light brown face. \"Yeah?\" Murph said cautiously as  he stood up and dusted off his pants. \"How ya goin' brudder!\" the boy grinned. \"I'm Banjo.\" \"Uh, hi,\" Murph said, trying to adjust to the unusual accent. Get your pre-order in so that you don't miss out. Now for the spoon, I want to make that out of  chocolate because it's yummier and stronger than fondant. Just pour a thick layer onto baking paper  over the template and once it's just setting on top but it's still soft, cut around the edge of  the template so that you get that spoon shape. Then using a brand new comb scratch in some  wood grain pattern. Then at the top end of the spoon dig it out a little bit and indent it in  the centre there and then add wood grain in the middle too. Now that looks pretty good but it's  a little bit thin so we're going to flip it over and thicken it up especially at the top on the  back and that also lets us add wood grain on the other side too. This spoon is pretty big  and ideally I should have planned a support coming from the centre pole for it. Now I'm going to make  do by just adding a skewer and pushing that into the cake and at the base here I'm going  to put a screw into the board at the front to stop the spoon from sliding forward and we'll  cover that up with some Rosemary. Add the ears now I made these out of modelling chocolate and it's  not setting firm how fondant does so I suggest you make ears out of fondant if you make this  cake and then make the hands and the arms and add them into place and there you have a Remy  cake. You can of course add whiskers using just thin pieces of spaghetti I'm leaving them off for  transport reasons if you want to see what we did with this cake you'll have to check out the behind  the scenes video on Patreon but hopefully you can see from this just how much planning and support  needs to go into a gravity defying cake. What's next?Credit: Budding Chef Eric. Today had some extra butternuts from my butternut soup recipe so I took my banana recipe like the classic one and then replaced the bananas  with butternut up until this point I was feeling like a complete genius thinking I've created the  next revolutionary thing and then I pop this into a baking tin and then bake it for around  an hour and that's where horror struck the cake was actually super gummy inside and didn't like  turn out the way I expected. If you want to swap ingredients like pumpkin for banana in a cake the  first thing you need to do is look it up on Food Data Central and see how much water there is and  also look at the protein the fat the carbohydrates and the total sugars. In a banana bread recipe the  amount of protein and fat from these two is really quite small and it's not going to make  much difference but if we look at the sugar you'd get this much sugar from the amount of bananas and  the same weight of pumpkin has this much sugar and of more concern though is that the pumpkin  needed for this recipe has this much water in it whereas the same amount of banana has considerably  less water so you'd need to remove that much liquid from elsewhere in your ingredient list.  So let's do an experiment and leave out the yogurt all together from the standard banana  bread recipe. Everything else I'm going to do exactly the same except we've just swapped those  bananas for pumpkin instead. From the outside this is looking pretty good but when we cut it open  it's not great. It's still a bit gummy down the bottom there I want to see what Dave thinks of it.Hmm, I think I took too big a mouthful. Um it's got a nice flavour um quite moist and it's got  a little bit of a pumpkin pie flavour almost to it. That's pretty good I'd eat that. What  about the texture? Uh it's a little bit sort of um that's probably why I said pumpkin pie rather  than pumpkin scones cuz it's a little bit sort of dense and um squishy. Now the reason that pumpkin  doesn't swap very well for bananas is because bananas are special. If I put oil water and banana  in a blender you get a thick mixture like this the exact same amount of oil water and pumpkin puree  and it looks like this. Now let me put this in fast forward for you and you can see the pumpkin  mixture separates out while the banana acts as an emulsifier and keeps the oil and water mixed  together. Interestingly though the pumpkin pulp seems to have stayed with the oil layer and not  the water layer and that might be contributing to the gumminess problem that we're having at the  bottom of the cake. But we can try and overcome this problem by using raw grated pumpkin instead  of cooked pumpkin puree. I'm also going to reduce the amount of pumpkin slightly to match the the  water content that was in the bananas so that I can still use the yogurt in the recipe and I'm  going to add two more egg yolks to act as extra emulsifiers in the recipe and the result is much  better. This is what it looked like before when we just reduced the liquid taste test time. Mmmm,  that's the best that one's nice. That one's kind of light, light and fluffy and  um still got a really nice pumpkin and walnut flavour. That's a winner I like it. Don't forget  to pre-order Dave's book with thanks to my amazing patrons for your support of this channel you guys  are absolute legends! Make it a great week by being kind to others and I'll see you on Friday ❤\n"