From some reading, it looks like powdered sugar in the 1890s was more like what is known in the UK as caster sugar. Its finer than granulated, but not as fine as icing sugar.
I had a british recipe that called for caster sugar and it split just like his did. When i used regular granulated sugar, I had zero issues. I thought I was going crazy because I was following the directions to a T. Im going to stick to granulated sugar. LOL
It seemed to be connected to sugar loaves and grinding up the hard sugar by hand. Shrug. I suspect that if you're hand grinding sugar, it might not be as fine as powdered.
Curdling in cake batter is fine, it won't really affect the finished product, and the flour does usually bring it back together (when the full amount is added). Adding a high amount of liquid to a butter based batter that doesn't have many eggs in it will almost always make it curdle and it's fine.
as a baker I was about to say this, He was like "oh no it's separated" and I was saying as he frowned. "add a bit of flour" Two, she would have hand mixed this so she would have done just that.
@@dorinachan113 Right! Man, I spend so much of the time I'm watching his channel just banging my head against the table xd. But that's the fun of it I guess.
And while he's at it, rather than melting the chocolate directed in the pan on top of the stove, he should have use the double boiler method to ensures that the chocolate won't seize.
In a way, the batter breaking because of the difference between old and modern powdered sugar was a huge stroke of luck. How heartbreaking would it have been to finish the entire cake and then not be able to eat it because of the spoiled milk. Fanny saw you from her resting place and saved your cake.
All cakes say to begin and end with dry ingredients…usually this avoids the mixture splitting…there was simply too much liquid for the butter to absorb and not split. Though splitting is not usually a problem to the final cake. The recipe is slightly strange…so little butter
When the syrup "threads" it actually looks like thin syrupy threads. You lucked out that the frosting worked. The sugar syrup wasn't reduced enough. It was still like water. That's why your frosting was much looser.
I thought it was going for Italian buttercream (admittedly, I did google because I couldn’t remember which meringue frosting did syrup into eggs as opposed to heating whites and sugar and might have found an incorrect source. )
Here in Finland, we have this thing called "sisu". Wiki describes it better than I could do in English: "Sisu is a Finnish concept described as stoic determination, tenacity of purpose, grit, bravery, resilience, and hardiness. It is held by Finns to express their national character. It is generally considered not to have a literal equivalent in English." I really do think that You should be nominated to be a honorary Finn.. because you have more sisu than anyone else I know. :) Thank you for 5 wonderful years of videos :) Happy Holidays!! :)
Just a hint - from experience, all basic cake batters split at that stage where you kept getting trouble. If you ignore it and carry on, it comes back together after the rest of the milk and flour is mixed in.
I know this is a backhanded compliment, but I learn SO MUCH from your screw ups; not to mention your persistence and your stellar array of successes. Thank you for sharing it all with us.
@@akastardust Definitely ! Jamie is a great teacher when it comes to accepting that we are human, and humans make mistakes. That doesn't make us inept or stupid. AND ... when you KEEP going, you win because you didn't quit. He's become an excellent cook/baker, and the fact that he leaves in mistakes helps us learn, AND shows he's still quite humble about his skills...
You should check out Glenn and friends. He does Sunday mornings old cookbook show and he talks about the process that he goes through to decipher old recipes. There's a lot of things to consider. It's pretty interesting
Typos happen. A friend of mine’s mom made a recipe out of Vincent Price’s cookbook and the recipe failed because of a typo. She figured out what he meant and remade the cake correctly. She wrote him a letter and sent pictures of both cakes. He actually sent her a handwritten reply thanking her for letting him know.
Thank you Jamie, for giving people a safe retreat from the stress of the times we live in. I appreciate your channel more than you could know. From one cook’s heart to another…
@@megan4475To me his chaos and mistakes are a sign of true authenticity with no hard scripts aswell as signs of his love of the cooking process/entertaining. Now a days that is hard to find when consuming media so I am thankful for Jamie's attitude and the way he structures his videos. Besides he's human, no one is perfect, that includes you and me.
Enter the sour milk, twirling a moustache, carrying a rope to tie the cake to railroad tracks . . . I didn't expect a mid-bake plot twist. Good recovery from error is a skill, too.
Not sure if this has already been mentioned, but the fat content of milk in the late 1800s would have been much higher. They basically had two products. Skim milk, which would have been ~1% milkfat, and "Milk", which would have been 5-6% milkfat.
I hadn’t seen your comment and typed the same thing….I don’t think that’s the cause of the split batter…it may be why the chocolate didn’t melt nicely into the milk
@@lisaflower5994 Yes I agree, the sugar was probably the culprit...there are so many interesting things about these old recipes n'est pas? Considering Fanny Farmer also wouldn't have used a electric mixer also...definitely food for thought LOL
@@BBoxCleanerAll I know is that there's a difference between spoiled milk and buttermilk (which is what I would call "sour milk"). Spoiled milk is probably more like Kefir and I've never seen anyone recommend using Kefir for baking. I don't think you can actually use spoiled milk...
@@electronblue8334In India we get raw milk, which we boil and then store in fridge. When it is just beginning to turn sour, it's the best time to add lemon/vinegar to make it split to make paneer. The residual liquid afaik is called whey...? For me buttermilk is the residual liquid from making butter. You gather the cream that accumulates on top of the milk, then you add ice water and churn it. The butter will form, and the residual liquid is buttermilk. From what I remember from when I was living in Canada, the way pasteurised and homogenised milk generally behaves, like the way it spoils, was different, but my memory might be playing tricks.
@@BBoxCleaner Yes, our processed milk behaves different and usually bad bacteria win and the spoiled milk tastes bitter and awful, whilst raw milk sours and could be used for baking.
Hello from Boston! As a historian in the city, it's super exciting to see Fannie Farmer in the mix on your channel. A few years ago I lived just a few street numbers away from the site of the former Boston Cooking School building that she studied in. But it's funny that all of her recipes look like a journey for our modern amenities lol
I am watching whilst a Green's packet mix lemon self-saucing pudding bakes in the oven. We shd def feel guilt free enjoying watching Jamie learn and toil!
Now you know: Granulated sugar in the cake itself. & Powdered sugar is for frosting. Is a pretty good rule of 👍 Honestly, I feel Fanny should have been more specific. But then, how was she to know Jamie would be asking these questions A CENTURY LATER! Can you imagine being Fanny, and thinking you've GOT TO aim your writing style to a person 100 years in the future???! If I were Fanny, and someone told me that, I'd be all: 😳 🤷🏼♀️ 😬
OMG I made a lemon loaf from a British recipe a couple months ago that called for castor sugar. Couldnt find it, so I used regular granulated sugar. No issues. This week, I found castor sugar so made the same recipe and my dang batter separated just like yours did! I thought I was going crazy, so I am SO glad I watched this video to explain it was the freaking fine castor sugar that messed up the recipe- I feel vindicated! LOL Thank you! :)
My guess is that the caster sugar or powdered one is stronger hygroscopic and while sitting on the shelf already accumulated some mentionable amount of moisture, which normally would lead to clumping but is hindered to this by industrial additives, e.g starch. When adding this moisture to the fat (butter) without enough of an emulgator, e.g egg yolk, this may result in the emulsion separating.
I like to think i am a veteran home baker. I bake some meeeean desserts. But today, while trying to bake a butter tart square, the stars just weren't aligned, and I kept making mistakes and messes, and I was so annoyed!! Then, I got a notification for this video, and I was so happy. I love how you make us feel like we have an ally in the world of culinary disasters 😂. We all have these days. Thank you for making me feel human today lol
Many cakes incorporate 'BUTTERMILK' just having the addition of Baking Soda to neutralize. The amount of liquid added to a butter mixture is causing the split/curdle (in spite of the egg of whose fat will be an emulsifier), but please continue as the end result will be normal/fine! These cakes actually have a more tender crumb!!
I have an oatmeal cookie recipe from my great-grandmother. Every time I get to the point where after creaming the butter and sugar I add the two eggs (so far so good). Then I add the milk. And it looks curdled every single time. The key? Don't stop. Trust the recipe. By the end of the process, I have a beautiful cookie batter and they are wonderful. They have a cake-like texture which is different from most every other oatmeal cookie. I'm so sorry Jamie, but until we found out your milk had curdled I kept wanting to tell you to stop thinking so much, and just stop and keep going. I think just about anyone will tell you it takes a few years of doing these things to get the hang of it and be able to trust your gut when to deviate from what the author of the recipe says. Keep at it. I love watching your videos and they remind me that what I find sometimes second nature (about anything) may not be the same for anyone else.
This is why I always smell the milk before I use it for anything, regardless of whether it's reached it expiration date or not. Milk is sneaky; it can go bad when you least expect it to.
i just buy a fresh quart(or whatever i need) of milk everytime. i hate using milk as an ingredient for this very reason. going by smell isnt really enough imo. there is an overlap where milk is spoiled, or on the verge of, but doesnt really smell bad yet.
It was not uncommon back then to intentionally "sour" the milk by adding in some vinegar (or using buttermilk) because that added another layer of flavor (not unlike sour cream.) Google: "making sour milk for baking".
Thanks for the video! It was painful to see how much you struggled with this recipe, but sooo entertaining LOL...I'm a pastry chef and even I had questions about this recipe and amounts. I've never used icing sugar when creaming butter for cake batter (cookies, yes, cake no). My theory: perhaps the fat content of the milk caused the curdling and the chocolate to seize. Maybe in Fanny's era the milk they used might have had higher than 2% milk fat? Whole milk or cream probably would have done the trick, considering the small amount of butter...so sad about the spoiled milk OMG I felt so bad for you! I would have creamed the butter and sugar much longer first, emulsifying that well (more air/volume), then added the egg and mixed well before adding the milk and flour. Jamie, don't forget to scrape down the sides of your mixing bowl too! Now I want to try this recipe for myself HAHA! You rock!
I remember working with an early Betty Crocker cookbook and coming across multiple references in the ingredient list of the same item, and my mother explained they were spelled out twice as each iteration was used for a different purpose. later recipes would call out the ingredient once and call for it to be seperated within the instructions.
When melting chocolate, instead of heating it directly, use a double boiler. Put a bowl with the chocolate on top of a pan of boiling water. Make sure the bottom of the bowl doesn’t touch water; you’re heating with the steam from the water. This melts the chocolate gently enough to not seize. You could also heat the milk and sugar together until steaming then pour over a bowl of chocolate. Mix to incorporate and you’re done!
Jamie from the past could not recover as well as you did this time around, indeed you are learning and paying attention in what’s happening in your mixing/ cooking/baking process. Kudos 🎉👏🏼👍🏼 Always so fun watching your videos. “Keep on rocking in the free word” and “Doot doula doot doo…”🇨🇦🍁
Ok Jamie, thread syrup really looks like stringy threads. Also, you would do well to research what powdered sugar meant when the recipe was written. I think it means sugar that is not in a cone and is white. So more like caster sugar, but granulated would work fine. The average farm wife would not have access to icing sugar. But I'm glad it turned out alright.
1900's layer cake pans are only 1 inch deep ( I have 2 in my collection of antique cooking equipment) so divided in two pans will bake in 15 minutes moderate oven. Then there would be a little white mountain cream poured between layers and rest over the top...actually the accident with sour milk was "authentic' other chocolate cake receipts of the day use sour milk. The use of powdered sugar offsets the higher gluten of bread flour...making a modern cake flour out of the most common flour found in 1896 kitchens (bread)...technique we can use today. Thank You Jamie for not assuming it was a typo for powdered sugar....cake would have been very soft crumb compared to the pound cake texture common to all but sponge cakes.
Jamie, you should do it once more, continue with the separation, as ppl have said in the comments, just to see if it turns out. Absolutely love your channel!!
Yes! I want to see it. Let's get a cage fight ....same cake 3 ways. 1) granulated sugar, 2) separated, powdered sugar, 3) buttermilk or spoiled milk instead of regular milk (the the addition of a tsp baking soda in the flour
Personally I love that you keep your mistakes. I feel like often times people watch cooking channels, see everything go perfect in the video, then think that person just must be perfect
My 4 year old has decided that he is going to be on an "episode of this show" and it's going to be called "Jamie and Jamie" (it's his name too). ☺️ He says he is going to follow your directions and be a chef too. I think he might just be your biggest fan! 🧑🏽🍳 He did note that if a bowl drops from the sky to him, it WILL drop on the floor. LOL Oh, to have the dreams of a child! Maybe if you have guests on your videos in the future, he can make an appearance one day!
Jaime, it's really satisfying to watch you work through these recipes. Most of us would struggle with an old recipe like this one, when ingredients and techniques have changed so much over the years. Seeing you problem-solve and re-evaluate and re-do is genuinely impressive, and I know I learn so much more from this process than I do from polished cooking shows where nothing ever goes wrong. You bring a combination of tenacity and humor to the kitchen that feels extremely relatable!
Modern confection sugar often has corn starch or other anti-caking agents in it that might affect how it integrates. You could try running some granulated sugar through a coffee grinder to get something closer to what Fanie was working with.
Well....that was a magnificent looking cake in the end! I used the FF cookbook for years, but will confess, never trying them all. I never had any issues, but then again, I never ventured far from the familiar. Great job Jamie in deciding to use castor sugar instead of icing sugar. I had my own issues with making my own icing sugar yesterday when I ran out...Grind castor sugar in your bullet, they said, it will be fine, they said....well, I ground, and ground....the icing still came out gritty, which was a shame because it was for v. expensive Christmas cakes (fruits/nuts are all soaked in Portuguese sherry and Grand Marnier!) All tastes delish (made with Grand Marnier and vanilla), but I am not happy giving them away as gifts if the icing is even a little gritty!! Jamie, you are learning to use your methods and intuition acquired over time...! I think that is what Jules, Paula, Nigella, and Jacques all attest to when cooking...make it once using the recipe, then modify as needed to make it your own. Of course this won't be entirely possible with all baking, but I have substituted and modified for decades and things always turn out....! (she says as she sits with 3 Christmas cakes with gritty icing.....LOL!)~ Cheers for the giggles....
Ok. So when using historical recipes, some terms and assumptions are different. First, as I have seen another post, never use modern powdered sugar. Modern powdered sugar contains a starch of some sort to help with viscosity in icing. What she means is called Caster or superfine sugar. You dont have to purchase this as you can simply pulse regular sugar in a blender or food processor for a few seconds and get a similar product. When it comes to the oven, you did perfectly. At the time, wood fired stoves were the norm. If no temperature is listed, for the most part, assume a moderate oven (350F). A hot or "quick" oven is around 425F. A cool, "late," or slow oven would be around 275-300F. I hope that this was helpful. Loved the video.
Given the quantity of ingredients, I’m not surprised there was only enough batter for one 9” layer. I have a set of 6” cake pans and when I want a small layer cake I find that one 9” layer equals two 6” layers.
And I am not sure but I assume that the side was not that high on the pans she might have used. I am not sure where I might have seen or read it but there are also cake pans that are not as tall as the one he used. Right when I am writing this Baklava comes to mind, where the sides of the pans are more shallow.
When I first started helping my elders bake (sixty years ago) cake tins were 8" in diameter. A 9" diameter pan (or larger) didn't exist in our homes (mother, grandmothers.) That 9" pan looked enormous to me. I think two 8" cakes would have been small enough (and thin enough) to make a small layer cake if the nougat had not been so thin (see other comments about the too-watery sugar syrup.)
I always learn from my mistakes, now I learn from your videos everything that can go wrong in a recipe. I really appreciate it and we value your effort.
Just make sure if you are eating or drinking, to be careful ... Jamie frequently makes me literally Laugh Out Loud, and if I was having coffee, it would have been a true spit-take !!
When I was growing up, curdled milk was specifically saved to make baked goods…Cake. Bread. Biscuits. Cornbread. Pancakes. Not for custards or custard-based pies, though. Or the icing. A split cake batter ain’t no thang. I’m almost 60 and honestly never paid attention to a “curdled” batter ever…until your video. 😃 Also, I think the icing is meant to be more like a 7-Minute Frosting.
I’m wondering whether the problem is the fat content of the milk. Way back in Fanny’s day the only milk that was available is what today we call ‘Whole’ milk. If you were using skimmed or 2% milk it may be like adding water to the batter/ cake mix.
Looks great! I have a 1980 edition of Fannie Farmer's cookbook and it looks like they abandoned the Chocolate Nougat Cake recipe, but kept the White Mountain Cream recipe.
As many people said below.. its ok if the batter looks curdled. sometimes recipes even say this will happen and not to worry. I also doubt the sour milk was an issue, many recipes use buttermilk or sourcream which is not very different from sour milk, chemically speaking. I think you could have whipped the cream more to get stiffer, spreadable peaks. keep up the good work, you are learning a lot and making progress.
Great show! Recipes tell you to alternate the flour with the wet ingredients to prevent the separating, always ending with the flour. Also, your syrup was not reduced enough, when lifting the fork out you would see threads drizzling down off off the fork. You'd did great!
I tried to see your sugar syrup but could not tell if it was actually threading. Thread means that little streams come off the fork and sort of set in the air like threads. If that didn't happen, that might be why your icing was a little runny. It looked delicious at any rate and I was glad to hear that it tasted great.
In the past when I met someone who said they couldn't bake or that baking was hard I would scratch my head in confusion as it's always been something that came naturally to me. Then I stumbled upon this channel and now I understand. Also the frosting recipe looks like a version of 7 min frosting which should be very fluffy and marshmallow like. I hate the stuff, but it was a staple in our house as my mother loves it especially on chocolate cake (it dries out to an airy crunchy constancy, so best eaten the day of).
That clip of you slamming the bottom of the cake pan with your fist and putting a dent in it will never fail to make me laugh Cake making really do be like that
The batter always splits when you add a large amount of liquid, it's not that much of a problem, the butter melts and mixes in the oven anyways! I always make a red wine cake that splits so bad it looks inedible while you're making it, but is actually perfect when you add all the other ingredients and bake it!
Cakes today that use the creaming method start with creaming butter and sugar and adding egg. When you do that, you’re creating a water and fat emulsion that is stabilized with the friction of the machine and the lecithin in the eggs. After that, you add in flour and milk (or other liquid). You start by adding flour FIRST. If you add milk first, you overwhelm the emulsion with too much water, and it breaks. If it curdles a little bit, the flour will fix it, but I don’t know about that amount of curdling. 🤔 I don’t know what Fannie was thinking. The science of that recipe just doesn’t work the way it was written. 🤷🏻♀️ Also, the mixture you were making at the end is an Italian meringue. Look up how to make Italian meringue. The sugar wasn’t cooked long enough, leaving too much water in the final meringue. 😊
My two pennies into the opinion hat. Powdered sugar in older recipes is castor sugar. Confectioners sugar is what they would have called our fine sugar plus cornstarch mixture. The recipe isn't the problem. It's not understanding older vocabulary and using the wrong ingredients.
I love watching your videos. You're very skilled in the kitchen and also like a child left to their own devices. And that's what makes all of this work. So entertaining! 😃
When you add powdered sugar to butter and you’re creaming the two, you are essentially making American butter cream frosting. This can split if the butter is too cold or not whipped enough. So I would whip the butter longer until it’s soft and smooth. Then add the powder sugar and whip it slowly. Then add the eggs/ milk and then flour. Sour milk sucks but it’s still useful. You might get better leveling with some baking soda as you basically had a buttermilk cake at first.
Jamie I have 2 ideas that may have contributed to your cake batter separating. The 365 brand of powdered sugar, both the regular and the organic, contain tapioca starch. Historically powdered sugar did not contain starch, the fine sugar that had starch added was called confectioners sugar, the sddition of starch kept the finely ground sugsr from clumping from moisture. Also powdered sugar used to be available in varying numbers designated by a number followed by an X, the number indicated how many times granulated sugar had been processed. In the US it became most standard for powdered sugar to be sold as 6X and 10X sugar with 10X odten being used for confectioners as it has finer sugar particles than 6X. If Fannie's recipe was designed to have no starch in the batter the tapioca starch in the powdered sugar you used may have created a problem or your powdered sugar may have been more finely ground than what was available to Fannie back in her era. Another issue could've been the butter, store bought butter can be quite different than what Fannie may have used, the milk she used may have had a higher fat content. I can remember when the last of the milkman still delivered milk in glass bottles that the milk had a layer of cream on the top, milk was creamier back then. Products do change, often a lot, over the years. How an old recipe performs with modern day ingredients can be surprising. I think it would be interesting to look at the modernized version of Fannie's recipe to see what changes were made. I wonder if the modern version resulted in a broken batter too.
Imperial powdered sugar 10x contains cornstarch. Is there a difference in reaction between tapioca & cornstarch? You’re commenting makes complete sense & I wonder if FF used a powdered sugar with any starch at all? I made an icing the other day and it tasted like cornstarch. I think I may try the 365 product & see if the flavor is better.
American products are so weird! Why is there starch in your sugar? When I buy sugar, I expect it to be 100% sugar... Though you never know, they may have added other stuff over here, too, without me noticing. I really have to remind myself to read the label...
I bet her cake pans were smaller in diameter than yours. That would explain the amount of batter that would fit in the pan, as well as the baking time.
Perseverance, Anti-Chef Jamie is thy name…fun ride for us… hope it was rewarding for you in the end.😊 Keep’em coming!! PS toast the nuts …had to add the small bit of culinary kibitzing.
I use 8" cake pans for older recipes...PLUS sugar/syrup making is a skill on its own. Think pulling out half the liquid AFTER you added the sugar would mean you needed to boil off water for a longer time (or add more sugar) I think a candy thermometer has a syrup setting and one of those may be a help for future cooking. Thread Stage. 230° F-235° F. sugar concentration: 80% ... Soft-Ball Stage. 235° F-240° F. sugar concentration: 85% ... Firm-Ball Stage. 245° F-250° F. sugar concentration: 87% ... Hard-Ball Stage. 250° F-265° F. sugar concentration: 92% ... Soft-Crack Stage. 270° F-290° F. ... Hard-Crack Stage. 300° F-310° F
I have my great grandmother's cookbook, there are so many things in it that we either no longer use, or are very different. Good thing you know how to adapt!
The chocolate isn't co-operating because you put it straight onto heat. That is something you NEVER do with chocolate. Ideally you should always melt chocolate in a bowl over hot (NOT boiling) water, and be careful that no steam gets into it. If you are using the chocolate for a cake or samething, then the second method of warming up liquid and melting the chocolate into that is ok, as long as you don't let it get too hot. The taste and texture of dark chocolate drops if you let it get hotter than 50-55 degrees celcius / 120-130 degrees farenheit, and milk and white chocolate around 40-45 degrees celcius / 105-115 degrees farenheit.
I love how relatable these videos are, my gosh. The pain of the curdled milk! That was such a rocky start. I ran into the same issue with my milk this Thanksgiving, was ready to pour it into the mashed potatoes and decided to sniff test it just in case first and- SOUR! Speaking of Thanksgiving, I used the lemon trick from the chicken battle video on my turkey this year. It was amazing??? I'm astounded.
That powdered sugar you were using contains cornstarch (most do). Products say they use that to prevent clumping but I think they use it to cut the product and make more money because sugar is expensive and you can't tell the difference between starch and powered sugar. It wasn't actually "splitting" but the addition of a lot of liquid from the milk then caused the starch to precipitate out of the butter/sugar and form small clumps. The acid in the spoiled milk however probably did cause splitting and increased clumps even more. When buying powdered sugar always look at the ingredients and avoid any with fillers like starch (added lecithin in chocolate or gums or carrageenan in cream causes similar problems when cooking with those too as all emulsifiers cause clumping and thickening when you don't actually want it).
Ok -- haven't watched the whole thing yet. But wanted to make a fun point: Went to my Irish Nana. Asked her to teach me her Irish soda bread recipe. She teaches me to scrub the table with Clorox. She says, "4 cups of flour," but she pulls out a tea cup that is easily a cup and a half. "Buttermilk until it looks right."
I had a very similar experience with my Scottish gran, asked for some of her recipes. Made them nothing like hers, so I watched her make them and took notes.
You were killing me, starting over and over when your cake batter was just perfectly fine. If you had continued to just add the flour and milk to the batter, it would have come out fine. That's what cake batter looks like before it's fully mixed.
I held my breath a little bit when (following Fanny's advice) you went to get the cake out of the pan almost immediately. In my experience, it's way easier to get the cake out once it's cooled down a bit. (This may have been the problem in the clip you showed where the cake stuck to the bottom of the pan). As others have mentioned, I wouldn't use flour after greasing the pan, it may help with the separation but it may also leave a bitter taste (like literally "bitter"). I would simply use butter and let the cake cool down considerably before getting it out of the pan.
How I learned to do it with cake batter: Butter and sugar first, then add eggs one by one. Mix in the flour (baking powder, and/or milled nuts), then add any other liquids like milk or beaten egg whites. If you make a split batter (that is, black/white). You take a portion after that last step and add the cocoa powder in one of the portions. As for chocolate melting, how I do it typically is one out of three methods, depending on what I want to achieve: 1. heat it up along with the liquid. 2. pour the hot liquid over the chocolate, wait a few minutes, stir it until they fusion. 3. use a bowl over steam, melt the chocolate fully, add the additional liquids, add additional solid ingredients. If you add the solid ingredients before the liquids it might become too thick and lump up. I typically avoid having the chocolate making direct contact with the pot surface. Chocolate is a sensitive ingredient. If you heat it up too fast it might end up bad depending on what type of chocolate you are using. Some burn really fast, some become bitter, some separate a.s.o.. Best method, in my opinion, is always melting it in a bowl over steam. That is, bring some water in a pot to boil, then grab a bowl and a towel to hold it every so often. You can put it on the pot like a lid, but you should lift it once in a while to avoid spill overs.
I know it might seem like "cheating" but buying a more recent copy of the book, to check for corrected "errata" might help as you attempt to follow the 1800's edition. However, it was fun watching you work your way through it. The granulated sugar was a good call. I think the almonds were supposed to be what we now call "slivered" almonds (closest to "grated" back then) and I would have toasted them in a dry pan over medium heat (stirring gently but constantly with a wooden spoon) until the became slightly golden-brown and fragrant. SO much better in baking than raw chopped almonds. Cheers!
From some reading, it looks like powdered sugar in the 1890s was more like what is known in the UK as caster sugar. Its finer than granulated, but not as fine as icing sugar.
Icing Sugar being what we here in the States call powdered sugar.
@@gardengatesopensome of us call it confectioner’s sugar.
Seems that it would also sometimes have Corn starch in it to prevent clumping. Wonder if that's the difference
I had a british recipe that called for caster sugar and it split just like his did. When i used regular granulated sugar, I had zero issues. I thought I was going crazy because I was following the directions to a T. Im going to stick to granulated sugar. LOL
It seemed to be connected to sugar loaves and grinding up the hard sugar by hand. Shrug. I suspect that if you're hand grinding sugar, it might not be as fine as powdered.
Curdling in cake batter is fine, it won't really affect the finished product, and the flour does usually bring it back together (when the full amount is added). Adding a high amount of liquid to a butter based batter that doesn't have many eggs in it will almost always make it curdle and it's fine.
as a baker I was about to say this, He was like "oh no it's separated" and I was saying as he frowned. "add a bit of flour" Two, she would have hand mixed this so she would have done just that.
Unless it's got spoilt milk 😅
@@dorinachan113 Right! Man, I spend so much of the time I'm watching his channel just banging my head against the table xd. But that's the fun of it I guess.
Knowing this info made it damn painful to watch:D
I was like...don't throw that out you goof! Well...the 2 with the spoiled milk, sure.
Poor Jamie's gun shy on the cakes tho. 😂
When making a chocolate cake instead of dusting the pans with flour, use cocoa. It won’t leave a noticeable residue on the cake, that flour can do.
Definitely.
actually, Cocoa powder isn't a good idea. It soaks up anything you greased the pan with, and will cause your cakes to get stuck
And while he's at it, rather than melting the chocolate directed in the pan on top of the stove, he should have use the double boiler method to ensures that the chocolate won't seize.
@@bloodangel13I swear he's used that method before.
When your post appeared the word 'cocoa' was cut off to 'coc.' I thought you were making a joke post and were going to write the word 'cocaine.'
In a way, the batter breaking because of the difference between old and modern powdered sugar was a huge stroke of luck. How heartbreaking would it have been to finish the entire cake and then not be able to eat it because of the spoiled milk. Fanny saw you from her resting place and saved your cake.
Fanny saved him from spoiled milk, but sure likes wasting ingredients
You can bake with sour milk. Because it cooks to a high temp for a reasonably long time.
Sour milk can give a better rise. My mum always made scones or pancakes with it.
All cakes say to begin and end with dry ingredients…usually this avoids the mixture splitting…there was simply too much liquid for the butter to absorb and not split. Though splitting is not usually a problem to the final cake.
The recipe is slightly strange…so little butter
You can self-curdle milk with lemon juice as a replacement for buttermilk so I think it might actually have been ok
When the syrup "threads" it actually looks like thin syrupy threads.
You lucked out that the frosting worked. The sugar syrup wasn't reduced enough. It was still like water. That's why your frosting was much looser.
came here to tell the same. Cooking sugar is tricky and you could make an episode about it. Try to make candy or fudge
Yeah I think this recipe is basically a swiss meringue, sugar was way under reduced.
I thought it was going for Italian buttercream (admittedly, I did google because I couldn’t remember which meringue frosting did syrup into eggs as opposed to heating whites and sugar and might have found an incorrect source. )
@@sarahbaker7100 I meant italian meringue oops
Agreed. He didn't cook the syrup long enough for threads to run off the fork tines when he held it up.
Here in Finland, we have this thing called "sisu". Wiki describes it better than I could do in English:
"Sisu is a Finnish concept described as stoic determination, tenacity of purpose, grit, bravery, resilience, and hardiness. It is held by Finns to express their national character. It is generally considered not to have a literal equivalent in English."
I really do think that You should be nominated to be a honorary Finn.. because you have more sisu than anyone else I know. :)
Thank you for 5 wonderful years of videos :) Happy Holidays!! :)
What a fantastic compliment!!
Sori mut Sisu just means tenacity. Tyhmä juttu tää sisulla ei oo translation, ollaanpa tosi uniikkeja
Just a hint - from experience, all basic cake batters split at that stage where you kept getting trouble. If you ignore it and carry on, it comes back together after the rest of the milk and flour is mixed in.
Yeah, just follow the recipe even if it looks ugly
Yes and it is basic cake making
I know this is a backhanded compliment, but I learn SO MUCH from your screw ups; not to mention your persistence and your stellar array of successes. Thank you for sharing it all with us.
The mistakes are part of the process. I also love the realness of keeping them in.
@@akastardust Definitely ! Jamie is a great teacher when it comes to accepting that we are human, and humans make mistakes. That doesn't make us inept or stupid. AND ... when you KEEP going, you win because you didn't quit. He's become an excellent cook/baker, and the fact that he leaves in mistakes helps us learn, AND shows he's still quite humble about his skills...
You should check out Glenn and friends. He does Sunday mornings old cookbook show and he talks about the process that he goes through to decipher old recipes. There's a lot of things to consider. It's pretty interesting
*Glen
Typos happen. A friend of mine’s mom made a recipe out of Vincent Price’s cookbook and the recipe failed because of a typo. She figured out what he meant and remade the cake correctly. She wrote him a letter and sent pictures of both cakes. He actually sent her a handwritten reply thanking her for letting him know.
He was a class act. Lovely man! Wish I had his cookbooks.
Thank you Jamie, for giving people a safe retreat from the stress of the times we live in. I appreciate your channel more than you could know. From one cook’s heart to another…
I don't understand how people find his chaos relaxing, I am yelling at my screen, and yet youtube recommends and I watch..
@@megan4475To me his chaos and mistakes are a sign of true authenticity with no hard scripts aswell as signs of his love of the cooking process/entertaining. Now a days that is hard to find when consuming media so I am thankful for Jamie's attitude and the way he structures his videos. Besides he's human, no one is perfect, that includes you and me.
the second i see “cake” in an anti-chef video title, i know i’m in for a good time
Enter the sour milk, twirling a moustache, carrying a rope to tie the cake to railroad tracks . . . I didn't expect a mid-bake plot twist. Good recovery from error is a skill, too.
Not sure if this has already been mentioned, but the fat content of milk in the late 1800s would have been much higher. They basically had two products. Skim milk, which would have been ~1% milkfat, and "Milk", which would have been 5-6% milkfat.
Even cookbooks from the 1980s ingredients specifically butter has changed
Thats what I was thinking too! Also why the chocolate seized up...
I hadn’t seen your comment and typed the same thing….I don’t think that’s the cause of the split batter…it may be why the chocolate didn’t melt nicely into the milk
@@lisaflower5994 Very possibly. I'm no baking expert.
@@lisaflower5994 Yes I agree, the sugar was probably the culprit...there are so many interesting things about these old recipes n'est pas? Considering Fanny Farmer also wouldn't have used a electric mixer also...definitely food for thought LOL
Sour milk is an excellent ingredient for cakes! It actually is more acidic and improves the rise of batters. Works great for pancakes too
Put vinegar into milk first for buttermilk, for biscuits.
Isn’t there a difference between sour milk and spoiled milk?
@@BBoxCleanerAll I know is that there's a difference between spoiled milk and buttermilk (which is what I would call "sour milk"). Spoiled milk is probably more like Kefir and I've never seen anyone recommend using Kefir for baking. I don't think you can actually use spoiled milk...
@@electronblue8334In India we get raw milk, which we boil and then store in fridge. When it is just beginning to turn sour, it's the best time to add lemon/vinegar to make it split to make paneer. The residual liquid afaik is called whey...?
For me buttermilk is the residual liquid from making butter. You gather the cream that accumulates on top of the milk, then you add ice water and churn it. The butter will form, and the residual liquid is buttermilk.
From what I remember from when I was living in Canada, the way pasteurised and homogenised milk generally behaves, like the way it spoils, was different, but my memory might be playing tricks.
@@BBoxCleaner Yes, our processed milk behaves different and usually bad bacteria win and the spoiled milk tastes bitter and awful, whilst raw milk sours and could be used for baking.
Hello from Boston! As a historian in the city, it's super exciting to see Fannie Farmer in the mix on your channel. A few years ago I lived just a few street numbers away from the site of the former Boston Cooking School building that she studied in. But it's funny that all of her recipes look like a journey for our modern amenities lol
My 15 month old was rapt watching this video! And laughed hysterically when you found out your milk was bad 😂 You might have a new young fan!
I’m not sure why I watch you. I don’t cook at all, yet find your channel so fun and relaxing. Happy holidays Jamie.
Same here. I'm coming here for entertainment and relaxing. After all his mistakes he is better than I'm
I am watching whilst a Green's packet mix lemon self-saucing pudding bakes in the oven.
We shd def feel guilt free enjoying watching Jamie learn and toil!
Same lol
One of my favorite things to do on Sunday mornings is watch your videos.
Same!
Now you know:
Granulated sugar in the cake itself.
&
Powdered sugar is for frosting.
Is a pretty good rule of 👍
Honestly, I feel Fanny should have been more specific.
But then, how was she to know Jamie would be asking these questions A CENTURY LATER!
Can you imagine being Fanny,
and thinking you've GOT TO aim your writing style to a person 100 years in the future???!
If I were Fanny,
and someone told me that,
I'd be all: 😳 🤷🏼♀️ 😬
OMG I made a lemon loaf from a British recipe a couple months ago that called for castor sugar. Couldnt find it, so I used regular granulated sugar. No issues.
This week, I found castor sugar so made the same recipe and my dang batter separated just like yours did! I thought I was going crazy, so I am SO glad I watched this video to explain it was the freaking fine castor sugar that messed up the recipe- I feel vindicated! LOL
Thank you! :)
My guess is that the caster sugar or powdered one is stronger hygroscopic and while sitting on the shelf already accumulated some mentionable amount of moisture, which normally would lead to clumping but is hindered to this by industrial additives, e.g starch. When adding this moisture to the fat (butter) without enough of an emulgator, e.g egg yolk, this may result in the emulsion separating.
Castor is the same as our granulated sugar in north America.
just put your granulated sugar in a blender and you have castor sugar
I like to think i am a veteran home baker. I bake some meeeean desserts. But today, while trying to bake a butter tart square, the stars just weren't aligned, and I kept making mistakes and messes, and I was so annoyed!! Then, I got a notification for this video, and I was so happy. I love how you make us feel like we have an ally in the world of culinary disasters 😂. We all have these days. Thank you for making me feel human today lol
Many cakes incorporate 'BUTTERMILK' just having the addition of Baking Soda to neutralize. The amount of liquid added to a butter mixture is causing the split/curdle (in spite of the egg of whose fat will be an emulsifier), but please continue as the end result will be normal/fine! These cakes actually have a more tender crumb!!
I love watching these episodes together with my grandma. It's how we bond and has become a ritual of ours.
Sometimes I really wish some of us were there so we could help him but gosh he's so entertaining and he's come such a long way
I have an oatmeal cookie recipe from my great-grandmother. Every time I get to the point where after creaming the butter and sugar I add the two eggs (so far so good). Then I add the milk. And it looks curdled every single time. The key? Don't stop. Trust the recipe. By the end of the process, I have a beautiful cookie batter and they are wonderful. They have a cake-like texture which is different from most every other oatmeal cookie. I'm so sorry Jamie, but until we found out your milk had curdled I kept wanting to tell you to stop thinking so much, and just stop and keep going. I think just about anyone will tell you it takes a few years of doing these things to get the hang of it and be able to trust your gut when to deviate from what the author of the recipe says. Keep at it. I love watching your videos and they remind me that what I find sometimes second nature (about anything) may not be the same for anyone else.
This is why I always smell the milk before I use it for anything, regardless of whether it's reached it expiration date or not. Milk is sneaky; it can go bad when you least expect it to.
Milk & Eggs.
Sneaky players.
Always check their qualifications before entering.
i just buy a fresh quart(or whatever i need) of milk everytime. i hate using milk as an ingredient for this very reason. going by smell isnt really enough imo. there is an overlap where milk is spoiled, or on the verge of, but doesnt really smell bad yet.
It was not uncommon back then to intentionally "sour" the milk by adding in some vinegar (or using buttermilk) because that added another layer of flavor (not unlike sour cream.) Google: "making sour milk for baking".
So... it's like the Spanish Inquisition?! (LOL,I can't believe nobody went for that joke!)
@@kamicokrolocknobody expects the Spanish Inquisition😂
Thanks for the video! It was painful to see how much you struggled with this recipe, but sooo entertaining LOL...I'm a pastry chef and even I had questions about this recipe and amounts. I've never used icing sugar when creaming butter for cake batter (cookies, yes, cake no). My theory: perhaps the fat content of the milk caused the curdling and the chocolate to seize. Maybe in Fanny's era the milk they used might have had higher than 2% milk fat? Whole milk or cream probably would have done the trick, considering the small amount of butter...so sad about the spoiled milk OMG I felt so bad for you! I would have creamed the butter and sugar much longer first, emulsifying that well (more air/volume), then added the egg and mixed well before adding the milk and flour. Jamie, don't forget to scrape down the sides of your mixing bowl too! Now I want to try this recipe for myself HAHA! You rock!
The pan flip has made my day! 😂
I use butter and sugar instead of the flour in the cake tins. Gives a nice crust and the cakes comes out perfektly
I remember working with an early Betty Crocker cookbook and coming across multiple references in the ingredient list of the same item, and my mother explained they were spelled out twice as each iteration was used for a different purpose. later recipes would call out the ingredient once and call for it to be seperated within the instructions.
When melting chocolate, instead of heating it directly, use a double boiler. Put a bowl with the chocolate on top of a pan of boiling water. Make sure the bottom of the bowl doesn’t touch water; you’re heating with the steam from the water. This melts the chocolate gently enough to not seize. You could also heat the milk and sugar together until steaming then pour over a bowl of chocolate. Mix to incorporate and you’re done!
The Old Cookbook Show on the Glen and Friends cooking channel is a phenomenal resource for decoding old recipes.
Jamie from the past could not recover as well as you did this time around, indeed you are learning and paying attention in what’s happening in your mixing/ cooking/baking process. Kudos 🎉👏🏼👍🏼 Always so fun watching your videos. “Keep on rocking in the free word” and “Doot doula doot doo…”🇨🇦🍁
39890
Yes! The Silver Fox. The finished cake was gorgeous.
Ok Jamie, thread syrup really looks like stringy threads. Also, you would do well to research what powdered sugar meant when the recipe was written. I think it means sugar that is not in a cone and is white. So more like caster sugar, but granulated would work fine. The average farm wife would not have access to icing sugar. But I'm glad it turned out alright.
1900's layer cake pans are only 1 inch deep ( I have 2 in my collection of antique cooking equipment) so divided in two pans will bake in 15 minutes moderate oven. Then there would be a little white mountain cream poured between layers and rest over the top...actually the accident with sour milk was "authentic' other chocolate cake receipts of the day use sour milk. The use of powdered sugar offsets the higher gluten of bread flour...making a modern cake flour out of the most common flour found in 1896 kitchens (bread)...technique we can use today. Thank You Jamie for not assuming it was a typo for powdered sugar....cake would have been very soft crumb compared to the pound cake texture common to all but sponge cakes.
Jamie, you should do it once more, continue with the separation, as ppl have said in the comments, just to see if it turns out. Absolutely love your channel!!
Yes! I want to see it. Let's get a cage fight ....same cake 3 ways. 1) granulated sugar, 2) separated, powdered sugar, 3) buttermilk or spoiled milk instead of regular milk (the the addition of a tsp baking soda in the flour
Personally I love that you keep your mistakes. I feel like often times people watch cooking channels, see everything go perfect in the video, then think that person just must be perfect
My 4 year old has decided that he is going to be on an "episode of this show" and it's going to be called "Jamie and Jamie" (it's his name too). ☺️ He says he is going to follow your directions and be a chef too. I think he might just be your biggest fan! 🧑🏽🍳 He did note that if a bowl drops from the sky to him, it WILL drop on the floor. LOL Oh, to have the dreams of a child! Maybe if you have guests on your videos in the future, he can make an appearance one day!
Jaime, it's really satisfying to watch you work through these recipes. Most of us would struggle with an old recipe like this one, when ingredients and techniques have changed so much over the years. Seeing you problem-solve and re-evaluate and re-do is genuinely impressive, and I know I learn so much more from this process than I do from polished cooking shows where nothing ever goes wrong. You bring a combination of tenacity and humor to the kitchen that feels extremely relatable!
Modern confection sugar often has corn starch or other anti-caking agents in it that might affect how it integrates. You could try running some granulated sugar through a coffee grinder to get something closer to what Fanie was working with.
Well....that was a magnificent looking cake in the end! I used the FF cookbook for years, but will confess, never trying them all. I never had any issues, but then again, I never ventured far from the familiar. Great job Jamie in deciding to use castor sugar instead of icing sugar. I had my own issues with making my own icing sugar yesterday when I ran out...Grind castor sugar in your bullet, they said, it will be fine, they said....well, I ground, and ground....the icing still came out gritty, which was a shame because it was for v. expensive Christmas cakes (fruits/nuts are all soaked in Portuguese sherry and Grand Marnier!) All tastes delish (made with Grand Marnier and vanilla), but I am not happy giving them away as gifts if the icing is even a little gritty!! Jamie, you are learning to use your methods and intuition acquired over time...! I think that is what Jules, Paula, Nigella, and Jacques all attest to when cooking...make it once using the recipe, then modify as needed to make it your own. Of course this won't be entirely possible with all baking, but I have substituted and modified for decades and things always turn out....! (she says as she sits with 3 Christmas cakes with gritty icing.....LOL!)~ Cheers for the giggles....
Ok. So when using historical recipes, some terms and assumptions are different. First, as I have seen another post, never use modern powdered sugar. Modern powdered sugar contains a starch of some sort to help with viscosity in icing. What she means is called Caster or superfine sugar. You dont have to purchase this as you can simply pulse regular sugar in a blender or food processor for a few seconds and get a similar product. When it comes to the oven, you did perfectly. At the time, wood fired stoves were the norm. If no temperature is listed, for the most part, assume a moderate oven (350F). A hot or "quick" oven is around 425F. A cool, "late," or slow oven would be around 275-300F. I hope that this was helpful. Loved the video.
Given the quantity of ingredients, I’m not surprised there was only enough batter for one 9” layer. I have a set of 6” cake pans and when I want a small layer cake I find that one 9” layer equals two 6” layers.
And I am not sure but I assume that the side was not that high on the pans she might have used. I am not sure where I might have seen or read it but there are also cake pans that are not as tall as the one he used. Right when I am writing this Baklava comes to mind, where the sides of the pans are more shallow.
The area of a 6" round tin is about 28 sq in, and that of a 9" tin is 62 sq in, so your rule of thumb is pretty spot on.
When I first started helping my elders bake (sixty years ago) cake tins were 8" in diameter. A 9" diameter pan (or larger) didn't exist in our homes (mother, grandmothers.) That 9" pan looked enormous to me. I think two 8" cakes would have been small enough (and thin enough) to make a small layer cake if the nougat had not been so thin (see other comments about the too-watery sugar syrup.)
In the Fannie Farmer Cookbook she gives directions for 7 inch cake pans, which are unusual now. I like the smaller recipes myself.
I always learn from my mistakes, now I learn from your videos everything that can go wrong in a recipe. I really appreciate it and we value your effort.
Just discovered your channel a couple weeks ago. Loving every episode and your terrific commentary.
Same here, it’s like a sugar addiction.
The best content on YT is right here
Just make sure if you are eating or drinking, to be careful ... Jamie frequently makes me literally Laugh Out Loud, and if I was having coffee, it would have been a true spit-take !!
When I was growing up, curdled milk was specifically saved to make baked goods…Cake. Bread. Biscuits. Cornbread. Pancakes. Not for custards or custard-based pies, though. Or the icing. A split cake batter ain’t no thang. I’m almost 60 and honestly never paid attention to a “curdled” batter ever…until your video. 😃 Also, I think the icing is meant to be more like a 7-Minute Frosting.
interesting! so you actually used "spoiled" milk? I wouldn't have thought that was a good idea... hrm 🤔
I’m wondering whether the problem is the fat content of the milk.
Way back in Fanny’s day the only milk that was available is what today we call ‘Whole’ milk.
If you were using skimmed or 2% milk it may be like adding water to the batter/ cake mix.
Looks great! I have a 1980 edition of Fannie Farmer's cookbook and it looks like they abandoned the Chocolate Nougat Cake recipe, but kept the White Mountain Cream recipe.
You need to tap the pan upside down to remove the excess flour, otherwise you'll have uncooked flour around the bottom of your cake.
I love when Jamie starts chucking things around 😂
As many people said below.. its ok if the batter looks curdled. sometimes recipes even say this will happen and not to worry. I also doubt the sour milk was an issue, many recipes use buttermilk or sourcream which is not very different from sour milk, chemically speaking.
I think you could have whipped the cream more to get stiffer, spreadable peaks.
keep up the good work, you are learning a lot and making progress.
Great show! Recipes tell you to alternate the flour with the wet ingredients to prevent the separating, always ending with the flour. Also, your syrup was not reduced enough, when lifting the fork out you would see threads drizzling down off off the fork. You'd did great!
I tried to see your sugar syrup but could not tell if it was actually threading. Thread means that little streams come off the fork and sort of set in the air like threads. If that didn't happen, that might be why your icing was a little runny. It looked delicious at any rate and I was glad to hear that it tasted great.
I love this channel. I love this channel.
In the past when I met someone who said they couldn't bake or that baking was hard I would scratch my head in confusion as it's always been something that came naturally to me. Then I stumbled upon this channel and now I understand. Also the frosting recipe looks like a version of 7 min frosting which should be very fluffy and marshmallow like. I hate the stuff, but it was a staple in our house as my mother loves it especially on chocolate cake (it dries out to an airy crunchy constancy, so best eaten the day of).
That clip of you slamming the bottom of the cake pan with your fist and putting a dent in it will never fail to make me laugh
Cake making really do be like that
The batter always splits when you add a large amount of liquid, it's not that much of a problem, the butter melts and mixes in the oven anyways!
I always make a red wine cake that splits so bad it looks inedible while you're making it, but is actually perfect when you add all the other ingredients and bake it!
Cakes today that use the creaming method start with creaming butter and sugar and adding egg. When you do that, you’re creating a water and fat emulsion that is stabilized with the friction of the machine and the lecithin in the eggs. After that, you add in flour and milk (or other liquid). You start by adding flour FIRST. If you add milk first, you overwhelm the emulsion with too much water, and it breaks. If it curdles a little bit, the flour will fix it, but I don’t know about that amount of curdling. 🤔 I don’t know what Fannie was thinking. The science of that recipe just doesn’t work the way it was written. 🤷🏻♀️ Also, the mixture you were making at the end is an Italian meringue. Look up how to make Italian meringue. The sugar wasn’t cooked long enough, leaving too much water in the final meringue. 😊
All of the difficulties that your having with this cake,is probably why no one, online, has admitted to baking this cake.
Mystery solved
My two pennies into the opinion hat.
Powdered sugar in older recipes is castor sugar. Confectioners sugar is what they would have called our fine sugar plus cornstarch mixture.
The recipe isn't the problem. It's not understanding older vocabulary and using the wrong ingredients.
I love watching your videos. You're very skilled in the kitchen and also like a child left to their own devices. And that's what makes all of this work. So entertaining! 😃
This sounds like a good one for Glen and Friends. :)
When you add powdered sugar to butter and you’re creaming the two, you are essentially making American butter cream frosting. This can split if the butter is too cold or not whipped enough. So I would whip the butter longer until it’s soft and smooth. Then add the powder sugar and whip it slowly. Then add the eggs/ milk and then flour. Sour milk sucks but it’s still useful. You might get better leveling with some baking soda as you basically had a buttermilk cake at first.
Back in the 1950’s and 60’s there was a chocolate shop named Fanny Farmer. Finally understand the name. Good Job, Jamie.
Jamie I have 2 ideas that may have contributed to your cake batter separating. The 365 brand of powdered sugar, both the regular and the organic, contain tapioca starch. Historically powdered sugar did not contain starch, the fine sugar that had starch added was called confectioners sugar, the sddition of starch kept the finely ground sugsr from clumping from moisture. Also powdered sugar used to be available in varying numbers designated by a number followed by an X, the number indicated how many times granulated sugar had been processed. In the US it became most standard for powdered sugar to be sold as 6X and 10X sugar with 10X odten being used for confectioners as it has finer sugar particles than 6X. If Fannie's recipe was designed to have no starch in the batter the tapioca starch in the powdered sugar you used may have created a problem or your powdered sugar may have been more finely ground than what was available to Fannie back in her era. Another issue could've been the butter, store bought butter can be quite different than what Fannie may have used, the milk she used may have had a higher fat content. I can remember when the last of the milkman still delivered milk in glass bottles that the milk had a layer of cream on the top, milk was creamier back then. Products do change, often a lot, over the years. How an old recipe performs with modern day ingredients can be surprising.
I think it would be interesting to look at the modernized version of Fannie's recipe to see what changes were made. I wonder if the modern version resulted in a broken batter too.
Imperial powdered sugar 10x contains cornstarch. Is there a difference in reaction between tapioca & cornstarch? You’re commenting makes complete sense & I wonder if FF used a powdered sugar with any starch at all? I made an icing the other day and it tasted like cornstarch. I think I may try the 365 product & see if the flavor is better.
@@OkiepharmerI often find that tapioca starch binds more liquid than cornstarch
American products are so weird! Why is there starch in your sugar? When I buy sugar, I expect it to be 100% sugar... Though you never know, they may have added other stuff over here, too, without me noticing. I really have to remind myself to read the label...
I bet her cake pans were smaller in diameter than yours. That would explain the amount of batter that would fit in the pan, as well as the baking time.
Man, Jamie. You worked so hard for this!! I'm proud of your resilience!
I love seeing you baking cakes, particularly chocolate cakes! Thank you for entertaining us!
When it splits: just do au bain marie and whisk it up. Need to reactivate the proteins :)
Perseverance, Anti-Chef Jamie is thy name…fun ride for us… hope it was rewarding for you in the end.😊 Keep’em coming!! PS toast the nuts …had to add the small bit of culinary kibitzing.
Ohhhh yeah... toasted... !
Awesome! My favorite part of this show is back. Bring the pain! 😊
Even at an hour , I have never been so early! How exciting . Love Fanny Farmer!
I use 8" cake pans for older recipes...PLUS sugar/syrup making is a skill on its own. Think pulling out half the liquid AFTER you added the sugar would mean you needed to boil off water for a longer time (or add more sugar) I think a candy thermometer has a syrup setting and one of those may be a help for future cooking.
Thread Stage. 230° F-235° F. sugar concentration: 80% ...
Soft-Ball Stage. 235° F-240° F. sugar concentration: 85% ...
Firm-Ball Stage. 245° F-250° F. sugar concentration: 87% ...
Hard-Ball Stage. 250° F-265° F. sugar concentration: 92% ...
Soft-Crack Stage. 270° F-290° F. ...
Hard-Crack Stage. 300° F-310° F
Order Up with Jazz Hands!!
Perfect for Take Five!!!!!!!
LOVING THE JAZZY TUNES!!!
And I wish I could have a slice too!!❤
EVERYTIME I watch you I have the best laughs! Thank you for your humor and baking ❤
JAMIE, OMG! I swear @2:24 it looked like you spooned out some Flour and just sprinkled it on the Baking Pan beneath the Layer Pans!😂😂😂💖
I have my great grandmother's cookbook, there are so many things in it that we either no longer use, or are very different. Good thing you know how to adapt!
The chocolate isn't co-operating because you put it straight onto heat. That is something you NEVER do with chocolate. Ideally you should always melt chocolate in a bowl over hot (NOT boiling) water, and be careful that no steam gets into it. If you are using the chocolate for a cake or samething, then the second method of warming up liquid and melting the chocolate into that is ok, as long as you don't let it get too hot. The taste and texture of dark chocolate drops if you let it get hotter than 50-55 degrees celcius / 120-130 degrees farenheit, and milk and white chocolate around 40-45 degrees celcius / 105-115 degrees farenheit.
I love your videos so much. Thank you for sharing your frustrations, cooking and baking can be so stupidily challenging and we've all been there!
I love how relatable these videos are, my gosh. The pain of the curdled milk! That was such a rocky start. I ran into the same issue with my milk this Thanksgiving, was ready to pour it into the mashed potatoes and decided to sniff test it just in case first and- SOUR! Speaking of Thanksgiving, I used the lemon trick from the chicken battle video on my turkey this year. It was amazing??? I'm astounded.
That powdered sugar you were using contains cornstarch (most do). Products say they use that to prevent clumping but I think they use it to cut the product and make more money because sugar is expensive and you can't tell the difference between starch and powered sugar. It wasn't actually "splitting" but the addition of a lot of liquid from the milk then caused the starch to precipitate out of the butter/sugar and form small clumps. The acid in the spoiled milk however probably did cause splitting and increased clumps even more. When buying powdered sugar always look at the ingredients and avoid any with fillers like starch (added lecithin in chocolate or gums or carrageenan in cream causes similar problems when cooking with those too as all emulsifiers cause clumping and thickening when you don't actually want it).
Really good job. Well executed.
I totally love all these series great job I look forward to it.
Ok -- haven't watched the whole thing yet. But wanted to make a fun point:
Went to my Irish Nana. Asked her to teach me her Irish soda bread recipe. She teaches me to scrub the table with Clorox. She says, "4 cups of flour," but she pulls out a tea cup that is easily a cup and a half. "Buttermilk until it looks right."
Except that Fanny Farmer is famous for standardising measurements.
I have some of those recipes from my grandparents.
I had a very similar experience with my Scottish gran, asked for some of her recipes. Made them nothing like hers, so I watched her make them and took notes.
You were killing me, starting over and over when your cake batter was just perfectly fine. If you had continued to just add the flour and milk to the batter, it would have come out fine. That's what cake batter looks like before it's fully mixed.
The first two batches with the spoilt milk might not have been fine, but the third one.
When you make a chocolate cake you can dust the pan with cocoa powder rather than flour and that eliminates having white flour on the bottom.
It's always a lot of fun. Thanks.
I held my breath a little bit when (following Fanny's advice) you went to get the cake out of the pan almost immediately. In my experience, it's way easier to get the cake out once it's cooled down a bit. (This may have been the problem in the clip you showed where the cake stuck to the bottom of the pan). As others have mentioned, I wouldn't use flour after greasing the pan, it may help with the separation but it may also leave a bitter taste (like literally "bitter"). I would simply use butter and let the cake cool down considerably before getting it out of the pan.
Love your content man!😊😊😊❤❤❤
super dooper, enjoyed that my little one. xx
How I learned to do it with cake batter: Butter and sugar first, then add eggs one by one. Mix in the flour (baking powder, and/or milled nuts), then add any other liquids like milk or beaten egg whites. If you make a split batter (that is, black/white). You take a portion after that last step and add the cocoa powder in one of the portions.
As for chocolate melting, how I do it typically is one out of three methods, depending on what I want to achieve:
1. heat it up along with the liquid.
2. pour the hot liquid over the chocolate, wait a few minutes, stir it until they fusion.
3. use a bowl over steam, melt the chocolate fully, add the additional liquids, add additional solid ingredients. If you add the solid ingredients before the liquids it might become too thick and lump up.
I typically avoid having the chocolate making direct contact with the pot surface. Chocolate is a sensitive ingredient. If you heat it up too fast it might end up bad depending on what type of chocolate you are using. Some burn really fast, some become bitter, some separate a.s.o.. Best method, in my opinion, is always melting it in a bowl over steam. That is, bring some water in a pot to boil, then grab a bowl and a towel to hold it every so often. You can put it on the pot like a lid, but you should lift it once in a while to avoid spill overs.
Ahh! I’m so happy to see the return of Fannie Farmer! Great video Jamie :)
I agree, I think Fannie would definitely use & LOVE the Silver Fox.
As an alternative to cream in the middle use some apricot jam / red currant jelly mixed with some rum. Can also be used underneath the frosting.
I know it might seem like "cheating" but buying a more recent copy of the book, to check for corrected "errata" might help as you attempt to follow the 1800's edition. However, it was fun watching you work your way through it. The granulated sugar was a good call. I think the almonds were supposed to be what we now call "slivered" almonds (closest to "grated" back then) and I would have toasted them in a dry pan over medium heat (stirring gently but constantly with a wooden spoon) until the became slightly golden-brown and fragrant. SO much better in baking than raw chopped almonds. Cheers!
The music in this episode- on point!
I just thought to myself "where is he going with the cake" and you questioned yourself. This is my kind of cooking show!
It's always a good day when AC uploads! :)
Would love a collaboration of taking with history and anti-chef!!!! Yall would kill it with historical recipes
I’m just at the curdled milk stage and haven’t laughed so much in ages! You are a comedic genius.