Pastry Essentials| How to Bake a French Chocolate Cake

1. Introduction: Hi, everyone. My name is Lily, and I'm a professional pastry chef, and today I'm going to show you how to make a classic you have refined for in chocolate cake. This chocolate cake has more than a dozen ingredients, so I'm going to show you how to organize your workflow so it's easy to handle in this lesson. We're going to learn some essential skills off French pastry, including how to make a French Marine and how to vote different ingredients together to avoid some common baking mistakes. Understanding the skills will improve your pastry at home and in a professional kitchen. In the end, off this lesson, we're gonna have a nicely decorated a chocolate cake that will impress any guest, So let's get started. 2. chocolate cake base : first, let's take a look at all the ingredients. Since we're using so many ingredients, we have to stay organized by separating them into groups based on our workflow. Our first group is the butter cream, chocolate and Laker. We're going to mount them together. Our second group is a joke. And sugar, we're going to beat it until his pale and creamy called blonde Shea Third is our egg white and sugar to make a French Marie and last is our dry ingredients cocoa powder, almond powder flour and a little bit off salt. Next, we're gonna use a water bastard. Melt our cream, but urge and chocolate at 50 degrees. If you're not sure about the temperature, you can use this Mom Attar like me I have with the mama. They're here to check the temperature. I put it heart ring on the bottom to prevent the bottom of the bowl from getting too hot. If your temperature is too high, your emotion is gonna break. So we need to be very careful not to overheat this mixture and we have our liquor right here, which will add a at the very end. I'm going to use medium he then try toe, maintain a very low summer, and you can makes it a little bit with a spatula just to help a heat more evenly. I'm constantly tracking my tank pressure to make sure that it doesn't overheat, and I can see that there's no more chunks off barter or chocolate. This is a good time to take it off the heat. Be careful is quite hot. We're going to makes it a little bit more just to make sure that everything is seeing a nice emotion. And finally, we're gonna add our liquor. We'll give a little makes and I'm going to set this. Make sure aside for later. Now we're going to makes the egg yolk and sugar together. This process is complex, she being French, where we're gonna makes it until as white and creamy after we add the sugar to the egg yolk , we want to make sure that we makes it immediately. Don't let it sit, because if you let this make sure sit without mixing it property, the egg yolk will solidify and you'll have little chunks in your mixture. As we can see, our make sure have become white. And for me. Now we're gonna add the chocolate. Make sure ing if you're working with a larger quantity, feel free to use a mixer. Here, I'm going to add Are like toe are chocolate. Make sure and folding property like this when there's no more streak. So bag, we know that this is thoroughly mixed on. We'll set aside for later. Now it's time to make the Marie a French Maria's AG white beaten with sugar, added in three separate stages, adding the sugar in different stage helps are required to form a stable structure while allowing enough time for all the sugar to dissolve. Here I have us. Then mixer with the whisk attachment. If you don't have us, then make sir, you can also use a handheld makes her at home. But doing it by hand is probably not a good idea. First, I'm going to add the egg white, and we're going to start mixing it a bit before we at the first part of sugar. I'm starting with medium speed, and I'll bring up later. After at the sugar fast, we can see here we're starting to get big forms. This is a good time to add 1/3 offer sugar. We want to make sure that the machines running while we at the sugars so the sugar can be mixing more evenly after we add the first part of sugar. I like to bring our speed up a little bit. Now that we have white full, we can't at the second part of sugar and finally out white have finer falls. Now is a good time to add the last part of Sugar way. Want a stiff peaks before we finish? I like to set the speed toe a lower speed. I study it at a lower speed. Bigger bubbles well break, and we're left with a very fine picture with small bubbles. Okay, we can see that this peak a stiff, and they can stand upright on its old. Here we have our Marais, our chocolate batter and our dry ingredients, learning how to fold property as wealthy Centro skill of pastry. We want to fold efficient. These are ingredients are well incorporated as quickly as possible without deflating the batter. And since the Marine it's much lighter than our chocolate batter. I'm going to adjust the consistency by a first, adding a bit of Marine to the chocolate batter and pour oh back. This method is proven to help fold more evenly Care. I'm just gonna add a little bit of marine to the chocolate batter. Now our chocolate batter have a lighter texture. We can put it back to the Marie. Now I'm going to fold. I'm turning the bull and turning my spatula at the same time, and cutting its highways will help them a ring to makes more evenly and make sure you scraped the side of the bowl. And finally we can sift are powdering. I always like toe makes a dry ingredient first before sifting s so it can be makes more evenly, and now it's time to fold again. So what I'm doing is turning my spatula and at the same time turning in my bowl. Make sure you're folding property by turning your special on your role in opposite directions, and we can scrape down the sides. And when you can see no more dry ingredients, it's time to stop. Make sure you don't over makes because we want to keep as much air in this batter as possible. You can spread your bothered a little bit and now we can put this in our preheated oven at 170 degree Celsius for approximately 35 minutes, or until the center is just set our cake spin in the oven for 35 minutes. And if you're not sure whether the centers bake through, we can use this classic to speak test. I'm going to insert the tools page right in the middle of the cake, all the way down and pull up. We can see that the truth pagans relatively clean so we know that the cake is baked through . We're just gonna let the chocolate kicks that here to cool down for a bid because it is not completely said yet It's been 15 minutes, and their chocolate cake is more set right now, So if you want to cool it further at room temperature, it's better to use a rack so we don't have too much conversation underneath, where you can wrap it with us around rap and Choi in the fridge. I will come back when this cake is completely cooled for our final decoration 3. final decoration: now that our cake is completely showed. I'm going to that created it with come shanty and some fruits. So first I'll take the cake out from the mold. I'm going to set this aside for now and prepare our with green. We're going to use the Sultan of hate hyping tip to decorate our cake before we prepare our cream. I'm going to prepare our piping back first. What I like to do is to put the tip in the piping bag and cut the front open. Push the piping tip all the way to the end and stuff some off the piping bag into the piping tip. And here I have a taller container where I will put my piping bag so I don't need anyone's help. Why fill it with cream? Here I have our camp Shonte, which is the cream sweetened with sugar. You can also put you in the lobby using it. But today I'm gonna keep it simple and only youth sugar. You have to make sure that your cream is very code and this cream is straight out of the fridge to whip are Kareem. We're going to use us then mixer and We have to make sure that this bowl is very clean. But first we're going to with the cream until a slightly thickened before we at the sugaring. I'm going to start with medium smooth way can see here are cream and slightly taken. Now it's a good time to add a sugar. I like to stop whipping my cream just before is ready and finished by hand. This way, you're always sure that you didn't over makes your cream Theo. We have a very smooth on stiff peak right here, and I'm going to transfer the cream into the piping bag. And finally, is the time to decorate our cake. Since our chocolate cake is really rich, the whipped cream is a great compliment, so I'm just going to go back and forth with our tip. It's our first layer and that put the second layer and finally our top there. I'm going to finish our cake with some chocolate decoration and Cherries. Cherries are in season now and goes great with chocolate, but really you can use any fruit you like. And here's some temper chocolate pieces that I'm going to use on top off the cake. I have another video for this Demonstrating how to a temperate chocolate that make the recreational pieces. So be sure to check that out. And since is this more off a freestyle decoration? I'm just gonna break them into pieces. I'm finally finished with some Cherries. So here you go. This is my take on the classic French chocolate cake. Hope you enjoy this lesson and are inspired to make a cake off your own. See you next time.