♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - I guarantee you, today on Milk Street, we're going to show you three cakes you've never even heard of.

The first is a hot milk sponge cake.

This comes from someone called Linda White, whose grandmother had half a recipe.

(chuckling): We had to figure out the rest of it.

It's sort of a cross between a sponge cake and an angel food cake.

Absolutely amazing.

Second, a broken phyllo cake.

You actually take phyllo, cut it, toast it in the oven and use that instead of flour.

Just an incredible cake.

And finally, a gâteau invisible, which is invisible apple cake.

You essentially take two and a half pounds of apples like you would for a pie.

Instead of a crust, you actually use a cake batter.

So it's super easy to do.

So please stay tuned as we show you how to make three great forgotten cakes.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - A couple years ago we did a TV show called My Family Recipe.

My favorite recipe from that show was something called hot milk sponge cake.

This is from Linda White, who got the recipe from her family.

The problem was the recipe didn't have very good directions, so she had difficulty making it.

So we spent a few days here at Milk Street figuring out how to do it.

Now, the beauty of this recipe, and it's one of my all-time favorite recipes, is that it does use some leavener.

It ends up with a very stable foam in a cake that actually stays moist for a few days.

So if you like sponge cake and if you like genoise and if you like angel food cake, it's really the best of all those worlds.

It says hot milk sponge cake, right?

So we need some hot milk.

Now we have flour, salt, and baking powder.

Sugar, four eggs, and also a little bit of orange zest; like a tablespoon of zest.

It's gonna take two or three minutes to do this and the color's gonna turn a lighter yellow than sort of the orange it is now.

And it's going to start to almost ribbon.

Now we have the hot milk.

Little vanilla goes in.

So the question is, why use hot milk?

This helps denature the proteins.

So I think the answer is, although I'm not sure it's scientifically proven, that by denaturing some of the proteins, you end up with a mixture that can attract water and hold onto it.

You end up with a really moist cake.

And a moist cake is going to last longer than a dry cake.

So now we're going to take the dry ingredients and add it in three additions.

Now that, that looks good.

Didn't overbeat it.

There are no big clumps of flour in there.

Have the batter, whip some egg whites, fold them in, and then into the oven.

So we're going to start by just breaking up the whites for about 20 seconds.

Now, if you're making any kind of dessert and it calls for beating egg whites and the recipe does not say put sugar in with the whites, that's a mistake.

Sugar is fabulous.

Sugar will stabilize the whites, make them foamy.

So it's essential always to have a little sugar with the whites.

This is a cup of sugar and four whites.

The second rule of beating egg whites is don't leave the room.

(chuckling): You gotta really pay attention because five or ten seconds towards the end, you can overbeat the whites literally in five seconds.

So you really want to pay attention and you want to check and check often.

Doesn't really hold a peak, but the texture is super creamy.

It's going to be easy to fold into the batter.

So the standard procedure is to take about a third of the whites, put them into the bowl.

And one of the things you should think about-- this is not my idea, this was told to me by Claire Ptak, who has a bakery in London.

She said think about the texture of the whites being similar to the texture of the batter.

That's going to mean it's really easy to fold them together.

Now that looks nice and creamy.

You're not getting any big streaks of whites.

So give it a couple little whacks.

Get any air bubbles out.

So, low oven, 325 for 50, 55 minutes.

I always start checking about halfway through.

My oven runs hot at home.

So whatever time I tell you will not be right for your oven.

It could be 40, 45 minutes, could be longer.

♪ ♪ Okay, time for cake.

So a lot of people say, put a toothpick in a couple inches, comes out clean.

I don't love that.

What I do like to do is just press down on a cake and it should press back, right?

If it leaves a depression, it's not ready yet.

So now we'll take this... ...and we will flip it upside down... ...to let it cool.

Just like an angel food cake.

If you don't do that as it cools, even though it's attached to the sides, it'll start to deflate a little bit.

So to get maximum volume when it's cool, you let it cool upside down.

That's why the tube pan is designed with these three pieces on the side.

This is stuck to the side on purpose because we didn't grease the side because we wanted the cake to, like angel food, climb up the sides, which it can't do if it's greased.

Okay, there we are.

So it's stuck to the sides and it also stuck to the bottom.

I'm going to want to go around the bottom and make sure that it's going to come off.

And the tube, that'll lift it up.

I think the best way to do it is to use two offset spatulas; one on either side.

Hey, I didn't mess it up.

(chuckles) So a little powdered sugar is great.

Now, I have a little personal thing here.

Some people, including some people here, like to serve cake with fruit.

Why would you want to?

I... (chuckles) It looks great, I admit, but what I really like to serve with this is I make a sort of burnt sugar caramel cream.

Now that would be really absolutely tremendous.

But strawberries work, too.

Strawberries are easier.

So you can tell just by the color, since there's no egg yolk in angel food cake, it's obviously richer.

The texture is firmer.

It has a lot more flavor to it.

Mm.

It's hard to describe.

It's not like a sponge cake.

It's not like angel food cake.

It's a little bit like devil's food in terms of texture.

It's very satiny.

It has this wonderful crumb.

It's very moist.

So here's the deal.

I hadn't heard of hot milk sponge cake.

You probably didn't know it either, unless maybe you're from Pennsylvania or you're part of Linda White's family.

This is one of the top three or four cakes, I think, in the American repertoire.

Hot milk sponge cake, terrific texture, much better than angel food cake, lasts for days.

That is, unless you eat it on the first day.

Simple to make.

An absolute must for any home baker.

♪ ♪ - So you're all set to bake your niece a birthday cake.

You put pull out your favorite recipe, and those dreaded words pop up: "at room temperature."

Is it really that important that your ingredients are at room temperature?

Yes, it is.

Let me show you why.

♪ ♪ So I'm gonna put together a classic yellow butter cake here.

I've got cold butter out of the fridge.

Slowly drizzle in the sugar, and I'll add a couple of cold eggs right from the fridge.

I've got cold milk that I'm pouring in.

And you can very plainly see what should be a very smooth and creamy batter is not.

It's full of chunks.

By using cold eggs, cold butter, and cold milk, that butter will not emulsify and give you a nice creamy batter.

So I'll show you what kind of cake you get if your batter is a little lumpy like this.

So the first cake here is properly baked with room temperature ingredients.

You can see the difference in the rise already.

And the interior of this cake is beautiful.

Now, this cake was baked and the batter was on the lumpy side.

The butter was cold, the eggs were cold, the milk was cold, didn't rise nearly as nicely.

You can see the top is very uneven.

And the interior is full of air holes and very dense and gummy.

So, yes, when the recipe says ingredients at room temperature, you've got to follow it.

But luckily there are a few things you can do if you find yourself with a lumpy batter, there's a good way to rescue it.

Take a bowl of hot water and a towel, wrap it around your mixer bowl, turn the speed on slow, and it will begin to warm up your batter very gradually.

You can see those bits of butter are slowly breaking down and you may not get them completely dissolved.

But very, very small particles are much better than big chunks.

So if you agree with me that it is important to have those ingredients at room temp, what do you do if you're ready to bake that cake and everything's cold?

Well, first, your butter.

We refer to room temperature butter as cool room temperature.

It's about 65 degrees Fahrenheit.

If you have a super-hot kitchen, and it's starting to really like sog and melt in the plate, it's a little bit too warm.

If it's too firm and you press your finger into it, wait a little bit longer before you bake with it.

You can speed this process up, though.

Pour some hot water in a glass bowl, let it sit for a minute to heat up that bowl, drain it out, wipe out the bowl, and then turn the bowl upside down over the stick of butter.

The heat will travel into the butter and in ten to 15 minutes, it should soften it up enough to make it malleable for cake batters and cookies.

Likewise, if you forgot to pull your eggs out of the refrigerator and you need them at room temp, put your eggs in a bowl and pour hot water right from the tap over the bowl and let them sit for about ten minutes.

The heat will conduct through the shell and into the eggs and there'll be room temperature before you know it.

And finally, for milk, you've got a couple options there.

You can pop it in the microwave at a low power level for a minute or two until it feels just room temp to your touch.

Or you can pop it in a slow saucepan, turn it on low just for a moment to take the chill off of it.

So a big part of being a successful baker is following that recipe.

When it says ingredients at room temperature, we mean it.

♪ ♪ - This dessert is a riff on Marianna Leivaditaki's portokalopita.

It's a Greek syrup-soaked cake that's made with bits of phyllo dough in place of the flour.

So for this version, we were inspired by baklava, but this is a lot easier to make.

So to start, we're going to make the lemon syrup.

It starts with some water, sugar, of course, and we've got some cardamom here that we've crushed a little bit, and a little bit of peppercorn for just a little bit of spice.

And I'm going to use about five or six strips of lemon zest.

And that's where a lot of the flavor is.

So I'm going to bring this to a simmer on medium high and we're just going to cook it until the sugar dissolves.

And I'm going to add some lemon juice just to give us extra lemon flavor.

And this is optional; it's rose water.

Of course I have to add the rose water because my name is Rose, but I also love it.

So I'm going to let this come to room temperature and then I'm going to get started with my phyllo.

So for this cake, I'm using eight ounces of phyllo dough and I'm going to keep it rolled like this and cut it in half-inch pieces.

And once you have it all cut, you're just gonna open it up and spread it on a cookie sheet.

So the first couple of times that I made this, I did not toast the phyllo, and I found that the cake was kind of heavy.

So we really like to toast it.

It worked out really well.

So I'm gonna bake this in a 350-degree oven for 15 to 18 minutes.

I will toss it halfway through to make sure that every piece gets nicely toasted.

So now I'm gonna make the batter for the cake.

It's really simple.

We're gonna start with some sugar.

Because it's a lemon cake, I am using zest like we often do.

And then I'm gonna mix it around for a little bit.

So we've got some eggs, we have Greek yogurt, and a cup of oil and some baking powder and a little bit of salt.

I'm just going to beat this until it's smooth and combined.

And now I'm going to add this phyllo.

So I'm only going to add half of it.

(phyllo rustling) You can hear how crispy that is.

So what I'm doing is folding it in and making sure that all of the pieces get coated in the batter.

I think this is a really fun cake to make.

It's so unusual.

And it actually has been one of the most popular cakes we've made here at Milk Street.

So I'm going to continue make sure all of that is coated.

(phyllo rustling) Kind of a noisy cake.

And what I'm gonna do now is only add half of it to our cake pan.

This pan has been greased, and there's a parchment circle at the bottom of it.

Spread this in an even layer, but don't compress it too much because you wanna have all those little nooks and crannies for the syrup.

And then I'm gonna take half of my pistachios.

So these are chopped pistachios.

I tried chopping these up in a spice grinder, in a food processor, and when I did that, some of it would turn to kind of pistachio butter.

So, really, you do have to cut them by hand.

It takes a few minutes, but it's really worth it.

So now I'm gonna top that with the rest of my batter.

We're gonna cover up those pistachios that are already there, and then I'm gonna sprinkle the other half of my pistachios in an even layer all over the top.

I'm gonna put this in the oven for 45 to 50 minutes.

It will rise up and get nicely browned.

And then we'll soak it with our lemon syrup.

♪ ♪ Okay, so this is baked.

Look at how beautiful it is.

So brown.

It smells incredible.

So what you want to do now is we want to poke it every half-inch because we're going to soak it with our syrup.

And then I'm going to make sure I strain all of my little spices and the lemon zest out of the syrup.

I'm gonna pour half of the syrup over the cake.

I'm gonna wait about five minutes until it soaks in, and then I'll add the other half.

When you pour in the second half of the syrup, don't worry if it looks like it's pooling on top of the cake.

After two hours, it will completely soak in.

So it's been two hours.

I'm gonna invert it now.

Gonna take one plate, flip it over.

It should come right out.

Actually, the parchment stuck to the pan.

But if there's parchment on there you wanna peel that off and then you can invert it onto your serving plate.

So let's take a slice of this and see what it looks like on the inside.

So you can see all of the nooks and crannies, the way the batter's kind of gone through there.

It's soaked through with syrup and you've got that layer of pistachio in the middle.

And we really like to serve it with whipped cream that has a little bit of yogurt whipped into it.

It works really well with this cake.

The cake's a little sweet.

The yogurt and the whipped cream's a little bit tart.

It's a perfect combination.

I can't wait to try this.

I love all the flavors of baklava in this-- the lemon, the pistachio, the spices, the phyllo that picks up all the flavors of the syrup.

You never think to use phyllo in a cake like this, but it is so amazing.

♪ ♪ - If you heard of a recipe called invisible apple cake, you might think, well, how do you make that?

What it really refers to is the fact that those apples and the more custard-like cake batter fuse into one and their textures become indistinguishable from each other.

We're going to start with apples.

We have about the same number of apples as you'd find in an apple pie.

But we are treating these apples very differently.

We like to use Honeycrisp apples.

We're going to use a mandolin to slice these 'cause we need slices that are about 1/16th-inch thick.

You could certainly do that by hand, but it's pretty difficult.

The thinness is really crucial for this cake.

We'll start by holding the apples with the core parallel to the blade.

We'll keep slicing the apples until we reach the core.

Then we'll do a quarter turn and slice again.

Stop when you get to the core.

You can see you're starting to emerge there.

And we'll just do it a quarter turn and go the next way.

So we'll look there, and of course, if you have any little core bits in there, we can take those out and cut them off later.

Some are going to be fully round, some are like half round, (chuckling): and some are shaped like this, which is totally fine.

We'll transfer these to a large bowl as we go.

Now this is really less of a cake batter than it is more of a custard with some flour in it, or actually is pretty close to a crêpe-style batter.

So we start with some all-purpose flour.

We add a little bit of baking powder for leavening, and then we have a blend of spices to give that a little bit extra flavor.

You know, think apple pie, but with a little more spices there.

We have cinnamon, nutmeg, all-spice, a little cardamom, and, of course, some salt.

Whisk these dry ingredients together and set them aside while we get the wet portions done.

We'll start with some eggs and some granulated sugar.

We're gonna whip these on medium-high until they are quadrupled in volume and they become very pale from all the aeration.

This is known as an egg foam.

Look at that nice, slow drip.

It falls down on the bottom and sort of sits there for a minute.

Okay, now we'll start incorporating the flour.

And we have a little bit of milk in this as well, and some melted butter, which, of course, a little fat goes a long way in pretty much anything.

All right, we'll add half the flour first.

Keep it on low here.

Then we'll pour in the milk.

Back to low, and add the remaining flour.

Okay, good.

And now we'll just drizzle in the butter.

Stay close to the edge so it doesn't hit the beaters.

You want it to run down the side of the bowl.

Stop just as it's blended.

Okay, give the final hand-stir with the spatula just to make sure there's no dry particles on the bottom of the bowl.

Okay, now returning to our apples.

We'll add about a third of the batter to the apples.

That's more or less half to three-quarters of a cup.

And we're gonna gently toss them to coat all the apples with that batter.

I'm just gonna do this with my hands, which is a lot easier, actually.

So we have a loaf pan that's been buttered.

It's also been lined with parchment so that the parchment is sticking up over the sides of the pan.

First thing we do is add about a half a cup of batter to the bottom of the pan.

Spread that out.

We have all these flat edges on all these slices.

Almost all the slices have this.

The first thing to do with each of these layers is to put a flat edge against the side of the pan.

And then we can use all those irregular shapes to fill in the middle.

You want to use about a third of the apples for this first layer.

Now we add a little more batter there, then another layer of apples, about the same amount of apples as you did for the first layer.

So I'm going to add a little more batter.

We're going to save a little bit of batter for the top.

Spread this out.

This is looking really nice.

Okay, that remaining top batter.

This is just to sort of seal everything in.

Spread it evenly.

Now give it a couple of taps against the counter to settle everything.

Any air bubbles, we want those filled with the batter.

The oven has been preset to 375 degrees.

That's a sort of a relatively hot oven.

And even with that temperature, this bakes for 80 to 90 minutes, which is nice, (chuckling): 'cause now you get a little break.

Now, this apple cake is pretty amazing on its own, but apples and caramel go so good together.

And a spiced caramel even more so.

Now, you can caramelize sugar without the water.

But it's a very tricky process, and it is highly likely to crystallize.

So this water helps take care of that problem.

And we wanna pour the sugar carefully right into the center of the water.

It's going to take a little bit to get started, but you want to watch it carefully once it starts bubbling, because that's the point.

It will stay white for a little bit of time, and then eventually it will start browning.

And then the process goes pretty quickly from there.

That's my comfort level.

I'm done there.

All right, now watch out.

This is very bubbly.

(sizzling) Just swirl the cream in.

And we'll add the butter right away as well.

And do take the pot off the heat 'cause there is some residual heat left there.

So you wanna move it over.

All right, wile that butter finishes melting, we can go ahead and add a little bit of vanilla extract, and, of course, a little bit of bourbon.

(chuckling): Now, this truly is optional to some people, but a little bit of bourbon gives it a little punch to the caramel.

The bourbon complements really well with the all-spice that we're adding here too.

And, of course, we can't forget the salt.

You want just a little bit of salt in there to balance all that sugar.

Oh, that is a really nice caramel sauce.

Okay, so we've made our delicious spiced caramel.

We have our apple cake waiting.

Why not make a little whipped cream to go with it?

(chuckling): Because this will sort of just pull it all together.

All right, so we'll start with a little bit of cold cream right from the fridge.

The sweetener for this is a little bit of brown sugar.

Really, the quantity is personal taste.

Little bit of vanilla.

And we're enriching this cream with a little bit of sour cream, and, of course, a pinch of salt.

Okay, I'm gonna start this on low just to get everything blended.

And then I'll crank up the speed until we have a beautiful, fluffy whipped cream.

Good.

You want a soft peak on the cream.

There we are.

Look at that.

Really nice.

You can always whip it a little bit more, but if you overwhip it, there's not much you can do about that.

♪ ♪ Okay, here's our apple cake.

Remember how it was all the way to the top of the pan when we filled it?

Well, this is normal.

The apples, as they cook, will release their juices.

Some of that evaporates.

And it also intensifies the flavors.

Hmm... Okay.

We are gonna get rid of this parchment; no worries.

Ladies and gentlemen, the moment we've all been waiting for.

Look at that.

That is pretty extraordinary.

It's the custard, it's the apple slices.

The texture will be soft enough to slice with a fork.

Now, this is really lovely served room temperature or warm like this the same day it's baked.

And it's delicious cold as well.

We are going to take a little bit of caramel here.

And we will put a little blop of that here, too.

Now you can put the blop of cream on either side.

Okay, a little caramel, a little cream.

Mm.

This is like your grandmother's apple pie in this elegant cake form.

As you can see, it does take a little bit of effort, and some attention needs to be paid.

But the results are so well worth it.

You will be rewarding yourself basically for putting in just a little bit of hard work.

And this is Milk Street's version of gâteau invisible, our invisible apple cake.

And you can get this recipe and all the recipes from this season at MilkStreetTV.com.

- Recipes and episodes from this season of Milk Street are available at MilkStreetTV.com, along with shopping lists, printer-ready recipes, and step-by-step videos.

Access our content anytime to change the way you cook.

- The new Milk Street Cookbook is now available and includes every recipe from our TV show.

From Vietnamese chicken salad and tiramisu to easy-stretch pizza dough and Austrian apple strudel, the new Milk Street Cookbook offers bolder, fresher, simpler recipes.

Order your copy of the Milk Street Cookbook for $29.95, 40% less than the cover price.

Call 855-MILK-177 or order online.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following.

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