ON THIS WEEK’S episode, senior test kitchen editors Shilpa Uskokovic and Jesse Szewczyk are back on your feed to tell you about this month’s bake: Shilpa’s gorgeous Hummingbird Cake.
This recipe is BA Bake Club’s first multi-layer cake. It’s big, it’s tall, it has four layers of cake and swoops of cream cheese frosting. What better way to mark six months of Bake Club! Jesse and Shilpa dig into this iconic Southern cake and explain the differences between our recipe and the classic. Shilpa talks about how and why she took everything apart and built it back together to make her ideal version of Hummingbird cake...
There is a lot of angst over cream cheese frosting and some clever questions from our wonderful listeners, including a surprising technique to ripen bananas super fast. They are then joined by a special guest, The Great British Bake Off S1 winner and cookbook author Edd Kimber to help answer a question about small batch baking.
Listen now to hear more about how this month’s bake went, what to expect next month, and how you can come watch Bake Club Live on July 23rd at The Bell House!
Jesse Szewczyk: Hey, listeners. Before we get into this month's episode, we want to invite you to a very special live show we'll be hosting on July 23rd at The Bell House in Brooklyn.
Shilpa Uskokovic: We'll be joining the amazing teams at TASTE and Hark for Stay Cool: A Summer Food Podcast Event.
JS: We'll be talking about how to keep your composure when things go wrong when you're baking, something we have lots of experience with.
SU: And it won't be just us that night. Padma Lakshmi, Hailee Catalano, and Chuck Cruz will also be there.
JS: But of course, we can't do this show without you, our wonderful Bake Clubbers.
SU: So if you have any baking questions, baking fails, or anything you want to share for the live show, you can email us at bakeclubQbonappetite.com.
JS: And if you're in New York, we'd love to see you there. You can buy your tickets today at thebellhouseny.com/staycool.
SU: We'll also put that link in the show notes.
JS: All right. On with the show.
SU: I am Shilpa Uskokovic.
JS: And I'm Jesse Szewczyk.
SU: We're both senior test kitchen editors at Bon Appétit.
JS: And this is the BA Bake Club.
SU: Bake Club is Bon Appétit's book club, but for baking.
JS: We're creating the nerdiest and most wholesome corner of the baking internet.
SU: Every month, we publish a recipe on bonappetit.com that introduces a baking concept we think you should know.
JS: And then you'll go bake, send us any questions you have or pictures of your finished creations.
SU: And we'll get together here on the podcast to talk about the recipe.
JS: So the July Bake Club recipe, it's for cheddar jalapeno bread, is live now on bonappetit.com. But today we are here to look back and dive deep into June's bake, which is your gorgeous tiered hummingbird cake.
SU: It is. Indeed.
JS: So this is probably our most involved Bake Club recipe to date, but we figured it's been more than half a year, and our members are ready.
SU: I actually can't believe it's been more than half a year. And it's true, this is our first big multi-component project bake. It has bake a cake, cut the cake, assemble, piping, which sounds like a lot, but each individual component is fairly easy.
JS: Totally. So can you kind of describe the basic method for this cake, and then we'll get into those details?
SU: Mm-hmm. For this cake, I like to think of it as three main components. It's the cake itself, the layers, and then you have a pineapple jam and a whipped cream cheese frosting. For the cake, it's an oil-based cake. You bake it in two eight-inch cake pans. I'm very particular about eight-inch-
JS: Yes.
SU: ... cake pans. And then after they're cool, you slice them in half, so you make a total of four layers.
Then while the cakes are baking, I make a pineapple jam, which is canned crushed pineapple, sugar, salt, a little bit of lime juice, and zest. And then you cook it on the stove top until it reduces and almost starts caramelizing a little bit. And the lime zest gives it this nice florality.
And the last component is the frosting, which I adapted from my cream cheese frosting that I use on my carrot cheesecake. It's like a whipped cream cheese rather than a powdered sugar, heavy sort of traditional cream cheese frosting. And Jesse, I know you and I have a lot of thoughts on cream cheese...
JS: There's too much to say. Not now, Shilpa.
SU: And I guess the last component is the toasted pecans, which I chop up and then put on the assembled cake. But yeah, that's the cakes. As I said, it is a complex cake both in terms of taste and preparation or putting it together, but each component is fairly easy to make.
JS: Yeah, it's complex, but not complicated.
SU: Exactly.
JS: Yes.
SU: Thanks, Jesse.
JS: So I didn't personally grow up with hummingbird cake, but I know it's big in the south. And I know that when you were developing this recipe, you did a lot of research on the origins of the cake. Can you give us the story and the background of it?
SU: Yes. I didn't grow up with this cake either, but I do know of it for many, many years. And it is, I guess, in some ways the origins are marquee, as many things in food are, as some believe that it originated in Jamaica where it was called Dr. Bird's cake.
JS: Okay. I like that.
SU: And some people say it's called a hummingbird cake because it's so sweet and it attracts birds.
JS: Oh, like nectar.
SU: Yes.
JS: Yes.
SU: Exactly. It's widely believed that Southern Living Magazine was the first to publish a recipe for hummingbird cake in America, and it went on to become the magazine's most requested recipe of all time.
JS: Oh, wow.
SU: Think of it as a cross between kind of like a banana bread and a pineapple upside down cake. And it has the spices of a carrot cake. And usually people believe that it has to have bananas, pineapple, and which is almost always, in most recipes, comes from a can. Then it has to have cream cheese frosting, and it has to have pecans. The jury's out on whether it needs to have coconut.
JS: And yours does not?
SU: Mine does not.
JS: All right.
SU: I did start with-
JS: You did start, yeah. In her defense, she did try.
SU: Yes, I did try to include banana, pecans, pineapple, cream cheese, and coconut. But then I thought the coconut was just one step too far, so I kept it to all of the other classic elements.
JS: I can vouch. So what was your jumping off point? What makes this hummingbird cake, say, different from other ones you saw online or classic iterations of it?
SU: All right first, I was trying to... Because in many ways, this cake was new to me, as it's not something I grew up with. And at first, I was just trying to make sort of like a best-in-class version of a classic. And then I realized that the part that was tripping me up most was the canned pineapple. And something that we don't like in Bake Club, it's lack of control. And canned pineapple was introducing a level of variability that I wasn't happy with because there was so much liquid in this can of pineapple, which was crushed, by the way.
JS: Okay. Crushed pineapple really varies.
SU: Yes.
JS: It could be water or it could be puree.
SU: That's true.
JS: Yes.
SU: It can.
JS: True. No. I forgot I was working on, but it drove me crazy, too.
SU: Oh, yeah.
JS: I remember this. Yes.
SU: And it's weird because some recipes have you dump the whole can in with liquid. But as you just said, if you can, has much more liquid, then the result of your cake is going to be different from mine. And I just was not happy with that. I couldn't sleep at night knowing that our cake couldn't be consistent.
And then I tried many things. I tried to drain the pineapple. I blotted it with paper towel, but nothing really worked in a way that felt practical. So I thought, "Why not just isolate that pineapple component?" And I ended up making a banana-flavored cake. And I thought, "Take these flavors of hummingbird cake, but let's put them back together in a way that made sense to me and in a way that could highlight each flavor better."
JS: I like that. So why this cake? How did you land on this cake? What were you trying to teach people or why do you feel like this big marquee cake was this moment?
SU: Well, I think it's no secret that I love cake, and it's my favorite thing to bake.
JS: You are very good at cake. Yes.
SU: Thank you. And I also thought we didn't have... And we looked at our archive of Bake Club recipes so far, and we realized we didn't have a layer cake. And it just felt like a nice flavor profile to introduce this format to our readers. It felt seasonal. I mean, I guess in a way it's not because it's banana and pineapple, but it feels light and refreshing enough for the season.
JS: It does. Yeah. It does. Feels bright.
SU: Yes, it feels very bright, and it's like a big cake that you can share. Great for the summer when you're probably going for a picnic or a barbecue or a cookout. And I just felt like, as somebody who always struggled with building layer cakes, I wanted to distill all of my knowledge and the things that I've learned over the years and showcase to our readers and listeners that baking a layer cake doesn't have to be hard.
JS: I love that. Okay. So you got the cake, you got the jam. Okay, the frosting... Let's hold off on the gritty-gritty until later because there's a whole existential conversation there, but okay. So you frost it, and what else is going on here?
SU: What? and then I eat it.
JS: And then you eat it. Right. Okay.
SU: No.
JS: But isn't there nuts on the outside? Those are-
SU: Oh, yeah.
JS: ... traditional too, right?
SU: The nuts. The nuts. Yes. Sorry, Jesse. Thank you.
JS: I will say this actually did happen. And she forgot the nuts, and we ate it one time.
SU: That's true.
JS: Yes.
SU: It was actually during when we made the social video. And then I was like, "Oh, shoot. I forgot the nuts." So I have to go back and stick the nuts on the outside.
JS: It looked great, though. You covered it up well.
SU: The nuts, again, it was the same thing as with the pineapples. I could have included the nuts in the cake layers themselves.
JS: And is that traditional?
SU: Yeah, a lot of recipes do have you do that. But when I did that, it was fine. It tasted fine, but I hated the way the nuts impeded the knife.
JS: Oh, right, right, right.
SU: When you cut through the layers-
JS: It'll like rip it.
SU: Yes.
JS: Yes.
SU: And it made it jagged and weird. It wasn't so easy to cut the layers. So I was like, "Okay, why not take..." And also, what happened was the pecans sort of became a little sogged out in the cake.
JS: They get a little kind of gummy almost.
SU: Yeah. It was saturated.
JS: I'm trying to think of the word.
SU: Not chewy.
JS: Like a chestnut.
SU: Yes.
JS: Yeah.
SU: Yes. Yes.
JS: Like that weird in between-
SU: A little mealy.
JS: Mealy. Yes, yes, yes.
SU: Mealy. Yes. Thank you. And I said, "Why take this effort of toasting the pecans only to put them back in a moist batter and have them be waterlogged in a way?" So I decided, "Let's keep these pecans the same way as the pineapple. Let's keep them separately." And it just happened to be like... Putting it on the outside sort of gave it a nice contrast.
JS: It was really pretty.
SU: Yes. It was a nice graphic bend around the outside.
JS: So literally everything is thought for.
SU: Yes.
JS: Yes.
SU: Of course, Jesse. It's Bake Club.
JS: Of course. It's Shilpa.
SU: No, it's Bake Club. It's us.
JS: Love it. Okay, cool. So I think it's time to take a quick break.
SU: When we get back, we'll answer some of your questions about tiered cakes, decorations, and the perfectly ripe banana.
Welcome back to BA Bake Club.
JS: Shilpa, I have some listener questions for you. So let's start by talking about the cake itself. So first, we got this question from a couple of people. You wrote the recipe to made at eight-inch cake pans. And I know you love them, but people wanted to know whether you could make it in a nine-inch cake pan instead. What do you think? And also why? Why eight inch? I mean, I know why, because I work right across for her, but...
SU: Okay, here's my question that I always ask. When you go to a bakery, have you ever seen a nine-inch cake or do you see a six-inch cake, eight-inch cake, 10-inch cake? You have never seen a nine-inch cake in a professional bakery.
JS: She makes a point. The bigger ones, they lose the chicness.
SU: Yes.
JS:: They're too hefty. They're flat, and they look like... I don't know. They're just-
SU: They're flat.
JS:: Yes.
SU: Here's the thing, any cake that can be baked in an eight-inch can also be baked in a nine-inch cake-
JS: I agree with that.
SU: ... with little to no detriment to the cake, except because of that added inch, the cake layer is now going to be much thinner and much flatter. And this poses two potential problems in my head. When the cake is thinner, when the cake layer is thinner, and when you go to cut it, if you need to have the layer, like in the case of this hummingbird cake, it's going to be a little bit more challenging because the height is reduced, so you're going to have to think a little harder and pay a lot closer attention when you're slicing the cake in half crosswise.
And because the layers are now thinner and wider, your cake as well will be much shallower than if you had used an eight-inch pan, which gives you a little bit more height. In an eight-inch pan, I think the cake just looks nice. It looks-
JS: It looks nicer. Yeah.
SU: ... done. It looks like a sturdy house.
JS: So if they did do it in nine inch, do they have to change anything?
SU: It would change the bake time. You would bake the cake for probably... I would start checking it maybe five minutes earlier than whatever time I call for when you bake it in the eight-inch pan, because the batter is now in a much shallower layer, so it'll bake through faster. So start checking the cake a bit earlier. But otherwise, you don't have to really make any changes.
JS: Okay. So no big deal. Just you're a little less chic.
SU: Yes.
JS: Okay, cool. Next up is from Lee. "Can I roast bananas to speed them to the texture of super ripe? Mine always get eaten before they get too ripe. The kids love fruit."
SU: Wow. Okay. Okay. Here's the thing, I actually hate bananas.
JS: What?
SU: But I like banana-flavored things.
JS: Like a Laffy Taffy?
SU: No, that's-
JS: Like the milk.
SU: ... fake banana. No, like banana bread, for instance.
JS: Oh. Got it. Got it. Got it. Okay.
SU: Yeah.
JS: Okay, okay.
SU: I would never eat a banana out of hand.
JS: Sure, sure, sure.
SU: But I love a banana bread or a hummingbird cake, for instance. And for me, when a banana... When I say a banana needs to be ripe, I mean it's on the verge of being rotten.
JS: Yeah, I've seen this.
SU: Jesse was very horrified that some of my-
JS: I was developing another banana recipe at the same time.
SU: You were also developing... Yes.
JS: So we made this kind of system of ripeness that we would swap every day. And the furthest ripeness is jet black and carbonated.
SU: It was honestly fizzing at one point.
JS: Yeah. It's like banana rum, basically.
SU: I have to say those were some of the best cakes.
JS: So is the answer there is no... The limit to the ripeness is your personal limit.
SU: Yes.
JS: Got it.
SU: I would say the bare minimum for it to be qualify as a ripe banana, which is good for baking, is they should be... At least 40% of the banana should be speckled black or brown.
JS: Yeah, that checks out to me.
SU: Yeah. I feel like anything... Don't you think, Jesse, anything less, the banana's still a bit too starchy and the sugars don't...
JS: It doesn't work the same.
SU: Yeah.
JS: And it doesn't break down the same either. Okay. But the baking?
SU: Oh, yes. I love this question from Lee. It's like, "Can you roast the bananas to speed up the... to mimic the texture of a super ripe banana?" And, yes, you can, actually. You can either roast them in a low oven at 325 for, I don't know, 20 to 25 minutes until they're sort of collapsing on the inside, or you could microwave them still in their skins until you get the same effect. While it doesn't convert the starches in the same way that natural ripening would, I think it still is better than using a raw or semi-ripe-
JS: Sure.
SU: ... banana.
JS: And for the baking, skin on, too.
SU: Skin on, too.
JS: Okay.
SU: Yes. Yeah.
JS: And then also, follow-up, I've seen people ask about the weight of a banana versus just calling for a specific number of bananas.
SU: Yeah. Our Bake Club members are really with us, Jesse on this one. I love when people ask what the weight of something is. In this one, the total weight of the bananas that you need for this recipe is 300 grams. That could be from two large bananas, three medium, four small, whatever it is, but you need 300 grams of bananas, after they've been peeled.
JS: Okay.
SU: Yeah.
JS: Nice. Okay. Next is from Becca. "The tops of my cakes were a little sticky/tacky, which often happens when I bake. Does this mean they're underbaked, even though my cake tester comes out clean?"
SU: I think there's multiple answers to this question. I think generally cakes with a higher sugar content will have a slightly sticky, tacky top.
JS: It's like a brownie or a blondie.
SU: Yeah.
JS: The sugars kind of float up.
SU: Yeah.
JS: Yeah.
SU: That's a good comparison.
JS: Yeah.
SU: And also, sometimes I think if it's a little bit humid outside-
JS: Yes.
SU: ... the sugar interacts with the moisture in the air.
JS: Some ovens are actually just a little steamier, too. My oven at home really feels steamy.
SU: Really?
JS: I don't know why. Yeah.
SU: Is it small or do you think-?
JS: It's small. Yeah, it's small.
SU: Oh, maybe that's why. That's a good point. Yeah. It could be an oven thing. I think as long as your cake doesn't feel gummy or raw, then it's not underbaked. And one test of knowing whether this is due to being underbaked is once you take the cake out, if it sinks, if there's a noticeable dip in the center, that means your cake is underbaked.
JS: Then what?
SU: You're kind of screwed.
JS: Got it. Okay.
SU: No, then you can just... Yeah, you can put it... I mean, you can put it back in the oven.
JS: Then you just go, "Oh, it's a little underbaked, but it's good."
SU:Yeah.
JS: Exactly.
SU: Call it a fudgy banana cake and serve it.
JS: Yeah, whatever.
SU: But if it's sticky or tacky in the top, it's usually a function of the ratio of sugar. And it's not a bad thing. Sometimes you do need a higher ratio of sugar to have a soft cake. And I've also noticed that oil-based cakes have a tendency to feel a bit stickier or gummier on top.
JS: Yeah, they're moister usually, too. They really hold onto that moisture. All right. cool.
Another cake question is from Kai. "Do I cool the cakes right side up or upside down?"
SU: Okay. Here's what I would say. I would say cool them right side up.
JS: I have to admit, I just understood what this question was asking. I thought they were like an angel food cake where you have to like-
SU: Oh, that way.
JS: And I was like, "Whoa."
SU: Okay. I get it.
JS: This actually is a good question.
SU: It is a good question. Wait, speak about the angel food cake.
JS: Because there's some cakes, I guess like panatone, too, or things like that where you literally cool it upside down in the pan-
SU: In the pan.
JS: ... so gravity doesn't ruin it. Yeah. And I was like, "Oh, interesting."
SU: So in the case of this particular hummingbird cake, you don't have to cool it upside down in the pan. You would take the layers out of the pan, maybe 10 to 15 minutes after it comes out of the oven. And then I like to cool it... I like to peel away the parchment paper just so that it doesn't steam up between the cake layer and the parchment. And then I like to flip them back so they're right side up.
JS: So flip, peel, flip.
SU: Yes, correct.
JS: That's a good question.
SU: I had to visualize that. Yes.
JS: That's actually an excellent question.
SU: Jesse's really into this question, Kai.
JS: I never thought about it. Yeah.
SU: And cool them on a wire rack, because you want that air underneath so, again, there's no condensation on the bottom of the cake. Nice.
JS: Okay. Now the hard part of the show. I want to talk about the frosting.
SU: I don't.
JS: Which people-
SU: I don't.
JS: ... they had some difficulty with.
SU: Oh.
JS: This was the hard part of the month. There's always something. And it was the hard part of your month, too. I watched.
SU: Oh, yeah.
JS: So the first thing people wanted to know about was temperature. You call for room-temperature cream cheese, but cold heavy cream. Why?
SU: The short answer is, in my testing, I found that room-temperature cream cheese incorporates and whips much better and much faster and is less susceptible to lumps than cold cream cheese.
And the heavy cream needs to be cold because the colder the cream, the better and faster it whips. And I'm making a whipped cream cheese frosting. So essentially, I'm whipping the heavy cream, and I'm folding in this smooth, soft cream cheese.
JS: Let me ask why. Why not just cream cheese frosting?
SU: Jesse.
JS: The people need to know.
SU: You know this, that as long as I've baked, traditional cream cheese frosting has been my personal nemesis. And what I realized is cream cheese frosting, when you make it with powdered sugar, butter, cream cheese always turns sort of loose and gummy.
JS: And you kind of have to add more powdered sugar, try to over correct, and then it gets too sweet.
SU:Yes. And it becomes gritty and thick, hard.
JS: And so you wanted, I'm assuming, a more fluffy kind of lighter texture and less sweet because the cake's so sweet.
SU: Yes, exactly. I wanted a light, fluffy frosting. And I thought about bagel shops and how they whip their cream cheese for a really long time.
JS: Very fluffy.
SU: Yes.
JS: Yes.
SU: And it never breaks. So I was like, "Okay, it's not the sugar. It's something else." And then I thought I wanted that texture. I wanted a light, cloudy cream cheese frosting.
JS: So then you ended up kind of like a whipped cream cheese, whipped cream hybrid thing.
SU: Yes. Because that's what I've done successfully in the past.
JS: For your other cake, yes.
SU: For my carrot sheet cake, most notably. Exactly. And it's essentially a lightly sweetened whipped cream that you fold in very, very soft cream cheese into it.
JS: Okay. This all makes sense to me. I was here.
SU: Thanks, Jesse.
JS: I can verify all of this, but... Okay, so even this lighter, kind of slightly-easier-to-make whipped frosting, for the people who had kind clumps, why do you think that happened?
SU:: I'm actually very glad to hear the word clumps, because that's a very easy problem to diagnose. The clumps are just from cream cheese.
JS: Yeah.
SU: Yeah.
JS: It needs to be really room temperature.
SU: Yes. Have you ever done this, Jesse? But I have resorted to sticking cream cheese in the microwave.
JS: I microwave everything to soften it.
SU: Amazing.
JS: I soften cream cheese, butter, whatever.
SU: I agree. It has to be very, very, very soft. If you press a finger on the brick of cream cheese, your fingers should sort of sink through. I have left it overnight wrapped, but my favorite technique, really, is to just put it on a plate, stick it in the microwave. My microwave has a soften cream cheese function, which-
JS: So does mine.
SU: ... I just pressed the button and it works great. But for the microwave that don't, I have successfully done it in 30-second intervals, but at 50% power. And it's really important to paddle the cream cheese first. But essentially, whisking the cream cheese really well, or breaking up any clumps before you introduce it into the whipped cream is the secret to success.
JS: Okay. I'm going to end you on some easy ones. People also had some questions about piping. Do you want to give us any piping tips or piping one-on-one? Or what if they don't have a piping bag?
SU: Sure, sure. I mean, honestly, the piping on this cake was just... It's a choice. You don't have to do it. You could frost the cake smooth, give it a little swirl with the back of your spoon or spatula and call it a day. The piping was just for extra credit, honestly. I know I should say you can use a piping... I mean, like a Ziploc bag.
JS: But you're like, "But you can't."
SU: Yeah, but you can't. Don't do that.
JS: Piping tips are cheap. Some are like $2 at restaurant supply stores. And really, you can just put them in a zip-top baggie or something, but you need a tip.
SU: Oh, wow. Okay. That's very generous, Jesse. I thought you were going to be like, "Yes, you need the piping tip and the piping bag."
JS: Well, I mean, I would, but...
SU: Which is what I was going for. I, for one, think you need both the piping tips and a piping bag. And there's two ways to do this. You can have a roll of disposable piping bags. They come as a roll, and they're fairly cheap. I don't know. They last a long time.
JS: The one I have-
SU: I have a roll. Yeah.
JS: You do?
SU: I do. Mine's been there for five years.
JS: It's a massive roll. Yeah.
SU: It is. And I also, though, have the silicone reusable ones because-
JS: Like a washable one.
SU: Yes.
JS: Yes.
SU: Not the canvas ones, which are gross and stinky and hard to work with-
JS: I agree.
SU: ... but the silicone ones, so you have two options. And I would say get either of them, disposable, reusable. Get yourself a bunch of piping tips. Just a basic set. I like a round tip, a star tip.
JS: Yeah, round straight tips are great.
SU:: Yeah.
JS: Big ones.
SU: Yeah, that's true. Yeah, don't get the super tiny ones.
JS: Nah.
SU: I think you have more flex with the bigger ones.
JS: The flat ribbony ones. I don't know what they're called.
SU: I actually don't know what... Maybe they're just call a ribbon tip?
JS: They might be, yeah.
SU: Yeah.
JS: Those are really cool. And you could do some really fun stuff with those.
SU: Yeah. I think that's like a bonus credit one. First of all, if we can speak about brands, I love Ateco.
JS: Yeah. It's like classic industry standard.
SU: Yes. I think they make great stainless steel, so they're easy to wash.
JS: Cheap.
SU: They last a long time, and they're cheap. But don't go crazy and get all the...
JS: The Russian piping tips?
SU: Oh.
JS: You remember-
SU: Yes.
JS: ... that was like a thing two years ago?
SU: Yes, yes.
JS: And each one's like $40.
SU: Oh gosh. You would bear down it would be like a rose.
JS: Yes, exactly. But it never works out that way.
SU: Yes. You have to use really stiff frosting, I think, to get them.
JS: I don't even know. Yeah. Okay, cool. We're going to take another break.
SU: When we get back, a baker you should know.
Welcome back to BA Bake Club.
JS: It is one of our favorite parts of the show. It is time for us to introduce you to a baker whose work we think our listeners should know about.
SU: And this month we are joined by a food writer and cookbook author who also won the very first season of this little show called The Great British Bake Off, Edd Kimber. Welcome to Bake Club.
Edd Kimber: Thank you so much for having me.
SU: Okay. Edd, I'm sure you got this question many, many times, but you were on the first season of Bake Off before the show-
EK: Yes.
SU: ... became such a phenomenon. When you signed up, did you know what it was going to be?
EK: No, not at all. And I think part of the reason was there was a kind of tradition at the time in the UK of very nice, very pleasing daytime shows that had no impact whatsoever. They just kind of made them to make them. And we all assumed this twee baking show would just get thrown on in the middle of the afternoon and nobody but... I don't know who would watch it. Students maybe? And it would be a fun thing to do, and that would be it.
And then halfway through filming, they told us that I'd been bumped up to a primetime slot. And that's kind of when I thought, "Oh, this might not be quite what I was expecting." But I don't think anybody really could have expected what actually happened.
And I think the reason that people seem to really love Bake Off was partly because it was positive and it was about watching people who had a skill, and it was nice to see people helping each other. And I think it was the kind of antithesis to everything that was on reality TV at the time. It was just nice, and it was amazing to kind of see where it's gone all those years later. It feels like a complete lifetime ago, to be honest.
SU: How many years ago was it?
EK: 15.
SU: Wow.
EK: I was very young.
SU: Wow. That's amazing.
JS: And you've written a million cookbooks since then.
EK: I've been busy. Yeah. I stumbled onto writing quite early on because the show had never been on before. There wasn't anyone to follow in their footsteps. Lots of opportunities were coming in, but I didn't really know what I wanted to do. And then a magazine editor in the UK, who I'm still very close with, asked if I would write a recipe for the magazine. And I remember going on to set for the shoots and going, "Oh, this really suits my personality." It was really fun. It was really engaging. It was incredibly creative. And restaurants hadn't really suited my personality. I didn't like working in restaurants, and so my dream of being a pastry chef went away. But what I did find was writing, and I just loved it. So if I can continue to write for as long as I can, I will do it forever.
SU: Wow. I mean, part of the reason why we thought you would be so great for this segment is because of your book, Small Batch Bakes.
EK: Yes.
SU: And we have a reader question that ties very well to your work. Jesse, if you want to.
JS: Sure. So this question is from Scott. And Scott writes, "Carrot cake is my favorite cake. Sometimes when I'm out, even if I'm not planning to have dessert, I will order it if there is carrot cake on the menu. I think the biggest hurdle I have is that making a carrot cake is so time-consuming and it makes such a large amount. There are only two of us in our house. Eating a whole carrot cake before it goes bad is too much. I've made carrot muffins in the past, but the recipes I've made don't compare." So we were wondering, where does Scott go from here?
EK: I mean, A, Scott sounds like a great person.
JS: Yeah, I love this.
EK: Someone who just randomly sees carrot cake and goes, "I must have it," sounds like my sort of person. But I do get the small batch thing because baking books often just serve huge amounts of people. And I think it's the nature of baking is it's often a special occasion thing. It's a celebratory thing. And cakes are serving 12 at a minimum. Cookies make batches of 24.
And so for me, small batch baking, for me personally, kind of came from the pandemic because it was just me and my boyfriend. And we were just in the house, and I was working. And he would say, "Can you make something?" But I wouldn't want to make something that we'd then have to eat forever and ever. And so for me, small batch baking was a real natural fit.
But actually, when you talk to people, it's a real concern to people because they want to bake a lot. They really enjoy the process, but they don't want to waste ingredients or they don't want to waste food.
So there is a lot you can do. And I think there's kind of varying levels. So my first thing is always to say, "Well, take your cake down to a six-inch cake because they serve a lot less people. They're still really pretty. They still give you all the kind of texture you want or the look that you might want, but they're nice and petite and they still have a lot less. But if it really is just for two people, that becomes slightly trickier.
But what I would do is I would make a single-layer six-inch cake because that way it feels like you've got a really nice cake and you're not kind of compromising. Because it's only one layer and it's only six inch, that will last two of you maybe a couple of days. And if you love carrot cake, it might not last you very long at all.
But I also wouldn't discount muffin thing because often I think people think when they're making something in kind of like a cupcake style or a muffin style, they have to use something that's really specifically that style of recipe, but you could make your favorite carrot cake recipe and just scale it down and bake it as muffins or as cupcakes, more technically, probably, but keep the recipe the same. The recipe will likely work perfectly well in a muffin paper, in a muffin case. And they also freeze really well. So you could make a batch of, say, six, which would be relatively easy. And then if you really only want two, freeze the other four without any frosting, and then you have a really easy way of having carrot cake on demand then, because you can literally defrost some carrot cakes whenever you want.
SU: Working on your book, and then when you had to make small batches of things, what were the most common problems that you encountered when you had to scale recipes down? I'm thinking of eggs, for instance. If a recipe calls for-
EK: Eggs is the hardest.
SU: Yeah.
EK: Yeah, eggs was definitely, definitely the hardest. So there was a few ways around the eggs that I personally used. I wrote a second book on small batch baking which was all about cookies. And in that case, eggs were the toughest thing. But by the time you got to a point where the amount of egg from, say, a larger recipe might be a quarter of an egg, replacing with milk worked amazingly because there was so little egg in the recipe, the structure it was giving wasn't a huge amount.
But in a cake, it was trickier. So sometimes it was trying to reduce the amount of moisture in the cake to compensate from using slightly more egg in the recipe than you might normally do. Or it was trying to reduce egg whites, so you were mainly using egg yolks, but then you had the issue of leftover egg whites, which I tried to counter in the original small batch bakes.
There was a section on leftover egg whites and egg yolks, because one of the major things that came up was you were left with lots of leftover ingredients. So there was a whole section which was kind of an egg index. And so it would say, "If you have leftover egg yolks, these recipes use just egg yolks," or "If you have leftover egg whites, these use leftover egg whites." But yeah, it is definitely a concern, and it's definitely one of the harder things of doing it, for sure.
JS: And what about leaveners? Did that prove difficult getting such small amounts in there?
EK: You know, it wasn't too bad. And I think part of the reason was I think equipment with baking is often tricky for home cooks because... I wrote another book a few years ago called One Tin Bakes. And the idea for that was eliminating as much equipment as possible so that you can make every recipe in the book with one piece of bakeware, just one tin.
SU: I love that book.
EK: It was a nine by-
SU: It's such a smart book.
JS: I like the name.
EK: Thank you.
SU: Yeah.
JS: It's a great name.
EK: I was really happy with that book, and it kind of has a similar... They kind of sit in a little miniseries of four books. And I call them my functional baking books because they're meant to solve problems.
So what I did find is that when I talk to people at home about the equipment they had, the one thing people always have was a set of measuring spoons. And so I went down to an eighth of a teaspoon, which is a little tricky, because I found most measuring spoon sets in the UK don't have an eighth teaspoon measure, but I tested most of the recipes where you used a quarter teaspoon, half, and you went a little bit over or a little bit under. And most of the recipes use such a small amount of leavener anyway that the small discrepancy didn't matter too much. But because I could use anything that was within the measuring spoon kind of set, it didn't work out to be too much of a problem. Mostly it was just trying to make recipes that didn't seem like you were doing it in a little science experiment where you were using tiny little bowls and tiny little spoons.
I did find that in lots of videos I was using what I call a sauce whisk, which is a tiny, tiny whisk.
SU: Oh, yeah.
EK: And it looked like I was doing something out of a doll's house, but it's really useful. So I use it every day almost, so I didn't feel too silly using it.
JS: Did you include cup measurements, too? Because I feel like when I try to bake the recipes, it will be like, "Quarter cup plus two tablespoons, plus one teaspoon, plus half a teaspoon."
EK: Jesse, let's not talk about my hated topic of cups.
JS: Got it.
SU: Wonderful. You're in great company.
JS: You're in good company. Yeah. I've literally cried over a cup of flour, what it weighs, so...
EK: Every time I write a book, I ask my followers on Instagram, "Do you really need the cups?" And I swear, over the 15 years I've been doing this, the number has got slightly higher every time towards grams are better. But it's so slow. It's so slow. And I wish there was a really big American publisher that just went, "Do you know what? We're going to go for it, and we're only going to do grams."
JS: Not in our lifetime.
EK: Nope. No. No. It's definitely a pie-in-the-sky dream. It's never going to happen. So I have to look at these really ugly conversions and go, "Oh, my beautiful text now looks really ugly because it has all these weird and random conversions because the amount I've used doesn't nicely fit into two tablespoons. It's two tablespoons, two teaspoons, and a pinch of..." It's incredibly frustrating.
JS: Yeah.
EK: Please use grams. Please.
SU: Yes. That's our number one rule at Bake Club.
JS: Yeah, we have rules.
EK: Good.
SU: First, you have to use a scale.
JS: Yeah.
EK: Yes. I'll be there to protest with you. Don't worry.
JS: Thank you.
SU: Great. Okay. So what was the conclusion for Scott? The conclusion was you recommend Scott bakes a one-layer, six-inch cake.
EK: I would do a one-layer, six-inch cake. Say if you're doing an eight-inch layer cake that has two layers, then normally as a first kind of guesstimation of where I would start, that's likely to be a quarter of that recipe. So I would look at the recipe that you really, really like that you may make all the time if you're making it for a bigger occasion and see if it neatly turns into a quarter recipe.
SU: Sure.
EK: If that works, amazing. If not, then I might go to the muffins again and then make them as muffins and you can freeze them. I think that's an excellent option because it's really easy to make, say, a cream cheese frosting in a small batch. That's incredibly easy.
But I also wouldn't think about changing your recipe too much. If you have a recipe that you love, if it's oil-based, if it's butter-based, it probably will make a really good muffin/cupcake. It probably will bake off absolutely fine. It might not have the perfect dome of a muffin, but it'll bake off as a delicious cake.
SU: Wow. This has been a great conversation, honestly. I think we learned a lot. And I hope Scott certainly... I think he has a very satisfactory answer. Thanks for being here, Edd.
EK: My absolute pleasure.
SU: Would you like to tell listeners where we can find you on the internet?
EK: Yes. I am basically The Boy Who Bakes on everything except TikTok, where I am Edd Kimber. And because of a childhood strange issue and a character on TV, my name is spelled with two Ds, so it's E-D-D Kimber. I'm also on Substack @theboywhobakes, where I write a weekly newsletter.
JS: Nice.
SU: Wonderful.
JS: That's it for this month's edition of BA Bake Club.
SU: Jesse, could you tell our bakers about the July Bake Club recipe?
JS: Yes. I'm super excited about this one. We're going savory.
SU: We love it.
JS: And we're doing something I love to do. We are making a lean dough, and we are making a jalapeno cheddar loaf. It is like a big kind of bakery-style boule, very rustic, very brown, that is studded with really big pieces of cheese and jalapeno throughout.
SU: When I tell you the number of loaves we ripped in the test kitchen, we couldn't get enough of this loaf. And it's true, it's almost unbelievable that you can make a loaf of this quality in your home oven.
JS: Yeah. I mean, if Shilpa's like the cake fan over here, I feel like I'm the fan of this style of bread, so I was excited to make this one.
SU: We loved it.
JS: Thank you. Thank you.
SU: Any special equipment or ingredients that you think our bakers should have on hand?
JS:No, which is the great part. I think the only thing you need is a heavy Dutch oven, just the classic that you'd make a ragout in something. And that's it.
SU: Amazing.
JS: Yeah.
SU: Well, Bake Clubbers, once you bake through Jesse's amazing bread, send us your pictures and questions. There are so many different ways for you to get in touch with us.
JS: So you can comment on the recipe on the Epicurious app or on the Bon Appétit website, or you can email us at bakeclub@bonappetit.com. And if you've made it and you've loved it, please rate and review the recipe on our site.
SU: We're your hosts, Shilpa Uskokovic.
JS: And Jesse Szewczyk.
SU: Michele O'Brien is our senior producer.
JS: James Yost and Pran Bandi are our studio engineers.
SU: Research editing by Ryan Harrington.
JS: This episode was mixed by Amar Lal at Macro Sound.
SU: Our executive producer is Jordan Bell.
JS: Chris Bannon is Condé Nast Head of Global Audio.
SU: If you like the show, leave us a rating and review, and hit that follow button so you never miss an episode.
JS: And if you're not already part of the club, head to bonappetit.com/bakeclub to find all the information you need to join.
SU: Thank you for listening to BA Bake Club. We'll see you next month.