- [Narrator] This is a production of PBS Charlotte.

- [Narrator] The following episode of "Charlotte Cooks" is brought to you by Central Piedmont Community College, and viewers like you, thank you.

- Next on "Charlotte Cooks," we're making Snickerdoodles with a twist.

(upbeat music) Welcome to this edition of "Charlotte Cooks," I'm Chef Pamela Roberts, and I'm so glad you're with me today.

I am excited to have Jamie Turner, 2020 Charlotte Magazine Pastry Chef of the Year, best of the best.

You also have a new business, Cake Sammies Et.

Cetera.

- That's right.

- What's a cake sammie?

- Oh my God, I'm so glad you asked.

For cake lovers, what is the best thing to have than cake and icing put together in a sandwich, and then a little extra twist?

- And we're gonna do a nice extra twist today, aren't we?

- We're gonna make a fried Sinckerdoodle cake sammie.

- Oh my goodness.

I mean there's not one part of that that doesn't sound delicious.

What are we gonna make first?

- Well- - [Pamela] Probably Snickerdoodles, huh?

- Yeah, definitely because we wanna let that batter set a little bit before we scoop it out, and then we'll move on to the marshmallow filling.

- We're gonna make marshmallows, oh boy.

I love marshmallows, especially when they're homemade.

And a lot of people don't even realize you can make marshmallows at home.

- It's pretty easy.

- All right, let's get started with those Snickerdoodles.

- So the first part of our cake sammie is going to be a little bit of vegetable shortening, and we're gonna just put that in the bowl.

Some unsalted butter, and that's at about a three to one ratio.

- Okay.

- On top of that we're gonna put some lovely light brown sugar.

- I love the molasses smell in brown sugar, don't you?

- I sure do.

- It makes me salivate.

It just makes me hungry every time I smell it.

- Totally.

We're gonna use the creaming method for this.

- Okay.

- And so we're gonna use the paddle, and that's what makes this method the creaming method.

So we're gonna put that on, and we're gonna start that out on medium speed.

- All right.

And so in there right now you just have your fat, which is your shortening and your butter, and your sugar, right?

- Yes.

- You're just gonna bring that together.

Are you gonna get any color on it?

You gonna increase the volume, or you just bringing it together?

- Well, because our Crisco is room temperature and our butter was soft, we are going to cream it together until it gets a little lighter in color, and we're also incorporating some air.

- Okay, good, good.

Does that make the cookies nice and light?

- It does.

- Okay, good.

- Super fluffy.

- I love Snickerdoodles, do you?

- They're my favorite.

- I love 'em.

I think they're wonderful.

- I think it was probably fifth or sixth grade when we made Snickerdoodles in school.

- And you're like the world is just- - What is this?

- Where have I been all my life Snickerdoodle.

I love Snickerdoodles.

- Yeah, I've had a lot in a Ziploc bag in my locker that day.

(Pamela laughing) all right, so this is looking really good.

It's lighter in color, and it's leaving tracks as it goes around the bowl instead of sticking to the sides when we first turned it on.

- Right.

- Now we're gonna turn it down just a little bit, and we'll add our eggs one at a time.

- And you got vanilla in there too, don't you?

- I also have my vanilla.

- Okay.

- Gotta have your pure vanilla extract for that delicious flavor.

And we'll add one egg, and then we'll wait till the yellow disappears and it's incorporated.

And then we'll add our next.

Okay so once our eggs are both incorporated, we're going to- - [Pamela And Jamie] Scrape it down.

(laughing) - [Jamie] That is always so important when making any kind of cake.

- You're always finding dry flour on the bottom of the bowl, right?

- Exactly.

- And that ruins your cookie.

- Exactly.

Especially if you have clumps of butter that could be at the bottom of the bowl as well, you'll have a blowout in the oven.

And it won't be pretty.

Now the things that we've taken off the bottom, we're gonna go ahead and incorporate those too.

Next we're going to alternate adding our flour and our liquid, which is milk.

- Okay.

- So also in our flour I have the baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon.

- Okay.

Oh, you got cinnamon in there too, okay.

So all your dry ingredients are in your flour already?

- Correct.

We're going to mix together all of our dry ingredients to make sure all of our ingredients are incorporated properly, and to aerate it a little bit.

So we are going to begin and end with our flour, so our flour is going to be three additions, and our liquid, which is milk, is going to be two additions.

- Okay.

- And I also like to do this while it's running on low as well.

- Yeah, you know, I've made the mistake before, I'm not a baker you know.

You know that right?

(Pamela and Jamie laughing) You look at me like such surprise, but I've done that before where I put some flour in when the machine was off, then turned the machine on, and suddenly I'm wearing more flour than is in there 'cause it just all goes airborne, and it's always a good surprise.

You do that once, maybe twice to remind yourself why you don't do it that way.

- Exactly.

So, since we have it going really low, we won't have that- - We won't have that surprise.

- That atomic bomb of flour in our face.

So that was about one third of our flour mixture, and while it's still running we'll add half of our liquid.

- Now do you have to scrape it down between your additions?

- No, we'll scrape it down at the end, and then give it one last mix.

- Big ole mix.

- Yes.

All right, so we'll go with our other two thirds.

Something like that.

All right, let that go for a little bit, and our last half of milk.

- So don't be afraid if your dough gets a little loose at this point because that last bit of flour is gonna thicken that right up.

- Exactly.

And by doing it this way, having, adding your flour in three stages, you have a chance to let your flour get a little bit of gluten.

A little bit of gluten forms when the flour is mixed and agitated.

- And why do we want a little bit of gluten with this?

'Cause I know with bread why you want gluten, but with cookies you want it to be a little bit more tender, right?

- Exactly.

So, we want to have gluten in our cake sammies because of the shape we're using.

- Okay, so it's not just gonna get misshapen when it cooks.

- Exactly.

It'll hold a nice round shape, and your two cookies when put together to sammie with match perfectly.

- Yay.

All right.

- [Jamie] And you know what we're gonna do next, right?

- [Pamela] Scrape the bowl.

- [Jamie] Exactly.

- [Pamela] This is the last big scrape, right?

- [Jamie] Exactly.

- [Pamela] And then we're, are we gonna mix it again after that?

- Just a little bit to make sure it's all incorporated, and that the mixture is nice and smooth.

I'm gonna turn it up a little more at this point, nothing's gonna fly out anymore.

- Right, no it's not, it's all wet.

(laughing) There we go, look at that.

- And that's all you need.

- Okay.

So now we just let this dough rest about 15-20 minutes, is that it?

- Yeah, about that.

- [Pamela] Do we have to put it in the refrigerator?

- [Jamie] No, you do not.

- [Pamela] Okay, just wanna let it rest a little bit.

- Right.

And we'll move on to making our marshmallows because that needs to set up in the refrigerator as well.

- Marshmallows.

Guys, this is magic, so let's get busy on our marshmallows.

- There's a lot of different ways to make marshmallows, but this way is fool proof and super easy.

- That's what I wanna know.

Fool proof and super easy.

That's got my name all over it.

- Great.

So we're gonna start this recipe off with some powdered gelatin.

In the recipe it says to split the water, and that's because half is going to go into your gelatin, and the other half is going to go into a sugar syrup that we will be cooking to 240 degrees.

- [Pamela] The water that goes into the gelatin is put in there to bloom the gelatin, isn't it?

- Exactly.

- So explain what blooming the gelatin really means.

- Great.

So this is nice and dried, and all the water is sucked out.

With the half a cup of water that we add, always cold, it's the granules of gelatin will absorb the water, and it'll practically double in size and set once the water is absorbed into the dry granules.

- And if you don't do that step, the gelatin won't gel, will it?

- No, not at all.

- You'll just be wondering where's the magic?

(laughing) - Exactly.

You can also bloom your gelatin in other things, it doesn't always have to be water when you're using powdered gelatin, you can do it in fruit juice and things like that as well.

- But it needs to be cold.

- Yes.

Half of our water is going into the gelatin.

And I have a trick.

I use a glove.

- To mix the gelatin and the water together?

- Yes.

So that you don't have little balls of hard gelatin.

- [Pamela] So, Jamie, why wouldn't we use a whisk for doing that?

Why would you use your hand instead of a whisk or a spoon?

- Well I like to use my hand, a gloved hand because then I can get all the excess off really easy and quickly.

- Okay.

- Sometimes a whisk or a spatula might miss those clumps, and you can break 'em up with your fingers.

- Okay, got it.

And you use a glove because gelatin is super sticky, right?

- Yes, it does not feel good- - Super sticky.

- On your fingers.

- Right.

- All right, so it's nice and smooth, as you can see.

There's no powdery lumps at all.

We are going to let this set and bloom for about two, three minutes.

The next part of our marshmallow is our sugar syrup.

The other half of the water goes in the pot, as well as all your sugar and corn syrup.

- That's just regular old every day corn syrup, right?

- Exactly.

And this is actually what makes this recipe so fool proof.

- Okay.

- When you're heating sugar and water only to 240, sometimes it can burn or crystallize, but the addition of this corn syrup just makes it so easy.

- Corn syrup does magic to it, doesn't it?

- It really does.

We're just going to mix this together to make sure it's incorporated.

You won't have to worry about crystallization at all.

Once it's all incorporated, we'll turn it on to medium/high heat, and let that come to 240 degrees.

- All right.

- Now while we were mixing together our water, corn syrup and sugar, you can see that our gelatin is nice and set.

Our dry granules are nice and incorporated with the water, and we're gonna scrape it all down to the middle, and using our whip attachment we are going to turn on the gelatin and actually start whipping it.

- Even with nothing else in it right now?

- Nothing else in it.

- Okay, so it's going to break those clumps up a little bit.

- Exactly.

- A lot (indistinct).

- And it's also gonna get lighter in color, and that's gonna incorporate air into your marshmallows, make 'em nice and fluffy.

- That's what makes 'em fluffy.

You know so many tricks.

- Too many.

So what we have here is our sugar syrup has come up to 240 degrees.

At this point we're gonna take it off the heat, turn our mixer down really low.

- Yeah, this is pretty hot syrup over here.

- We'll take our hot syrup and pour it down the very side of the bowl, being careful not to hit the whip.

- And so you're just pouring that in there a little bit by little, you're not dumping it all in there all at once.

- No.

You don't wanna shock the gelatin, you just want to slowly incorporate this hot syrup into the gelatin.

- And that hot sugar syrup, Jamie, is going to melt that gelatin that's already bloomed in there, right?

- Exactly.

All right, so that's all of it.

And now we're gonna turn it up to medium speed.

- Okay.

- This is going to go for about 10 minutes.

These are some cinnamon crunch that I made, and had left over in the house, but you can also buy mini cinnamon chips at your grocery store, and add 'em to taste.

It's totally optional.

I like a lot.

(Pamela laughing) All right, we're gonna gently fold the cinnamon in.

I didn't do it with the paddle because then it would just break it all up, and you wouldn't really get that crunch anymore.

- And you do wanna have those pieces not so fine.

You don't want it to be crumbled.

We just want it to be crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch.

- Exactly.

A nice folding motion will add in the cinnamon crunch.

These Snickerdoodles are really... - I can't wait to try one.

I mean I've only had the regular Snickerdoodles, you know just the little ones, the little cookies rolled in cinnamon sugar when they're done.

- (indistinct) - I've never had anything with marshmallow, and it's just gonna be a taste treat.

- Yeah.

These are really going to be for cinnamon lovers for sure.

- Yeah, right.

- So you know how I love my scoops.

- You love your scoops.

- We're gonna use a yellow scoop to make sure all of our cakes are the same size.

- [Pamela] You wanna make sure you even that off every time.

- Exactly.

We're gonna rub it on the side so that each scoop is nice and level.

And we're gonna give these a lot of space in between each one.

So for this one I'm only gonna put six per pan, leaving about two and a half inches in between each one.

- Six per pan?

I normally put a dozen cookies on that size sheet pan, so you are giving them lots of space.

- These are going to spread a lot in the oven.

- Okay.

Now how can you tell if a cookie's gonna spread or not?

- Based on how loose this batter is.

- okay.

- So for cake sammies, it's really a cake, not as much a cookie.

- Okay.

- All right, so we'll get these in the oven now.

- [Pamela] All right.

- We're gonna bake these at 350 for 10 minutes.

I can hear the marshmallows, they're ready.

We're just gonna add our vanilla, and let that mix in.

All right, so here's our little trick to get marshmallow out of the bowl without getting it all over your hands.

- [Pamela] All over.

- So we are actually going to take our gloves, and spray them really well.

- I do that when I make sushi.

- Really?

- Mm-hmm.

- Well look it there.

(Pamela laughing) And we're also gonna spray our spatula.

- I don't do that.

(Pamela and Jamie laughing) So this is so nothing sticks?

- Exactly.

- All right.

- And with your gloved hand, you can clean off the whip.

Got a lot of marshmallows in there.

- [Pamela] I was gonna say, look at that texture, that's awesome.

- [Jamie] We need to put some sugar on this.

Would you do that for me?

- I'd be happy to.

How much do you want?

- Nice and heavy all the way around.

- Do you want it all over or just around the edges?

- [Jamie] Even in the middle, all over.

- Okay, everywhere.

This is what's gonna help the marshmallows release, isn't it?

- Yes, when we cut 'em out into circles.

- Okay.

How's that?

Is that good?

- That's perfect, thank you.

- All right.

There you go.

Extra measure.

(laughing) - A little extra never hurt.

We are going to get all of our marshmallow, fluffy, delicious marshmallow, into our pan.

- Look at that beautiful gloss on that stuff.

- It looks a lot different than- - [Pamela] It really does.

- That bloom gelatin, right?

- And that's just that granular bloom gelatin, sugar and syrup and water.

That's it?

- [Jamie] That's it.

- Look at how beautiful that is.

That's incredible.

- And you can add a lot of things to this recipe to make it a different color.

- You know, at our bake shop they make strawberry marshmallows.

- Yes.

- And hazelnut marshmallows.

Those are so good.

- We got all that out of the bowl, we're gonna just pat it out.

- [Pamela] It's patty cake time.

(laughing) - [Jamie] Isn't it so simple?

- [Pamela] Oh look at that.

Oh that looks like it would be so much fun to play with.

- It doesn't really matter how big your pan is because you can always stop at the thickness that you want it to be.

And for our cake sammies we want it really thick.

- Yeah.

- All right, and there you go.

This will go into the refrigerator for about 10 to 15 minutes.

- Those cookies, let's get 'em out of the oven.

- Perfect.

And you know that they're done- - [Pamela] Oh look, yeah.

- [Jamie] When they are firm to the touch in the middle.

- And they bounce back, they don't leave a depression, right?

- Exactly.

- Now we have to let these cookies cool, and while we're cooling those cookies, we're gonna look at our marshmallows.

- [Jamie] Oh yeah.

- [Pamela] Out of the refrigerator.

- We are going to cut circles to the exact size of our cake.

- Our cookie.

Yes.

And so the marshmallow now has firmed up beautifully.

- [Jamie] Look at that.

- [Pamela] Oh my goodness.

- And we have the sugar.

- There you go with that.

- That makes it come off the bottom really easy.

- That's that magic sprinkle of that 10X sugar, the powdered sugar.

- And there you go.

- [Pamela] Let's put our sammies together.

- So what I do is I leave one side face down, and the other face up.

And I just line them up, all that you've made for that day, around the pan, and then we'll just add pour marshmallow to the inside.

- [Pamela] Oreos have nothing on you.

(Pamela and Jamie laughing) - I would call this a double stuffed cake sammie.

- Definitely a double stuff.

- Get that last one.

And now we'll top 'em.

- Crown the cookies.

Oh look at that.

That looks good already.

But you have another step that you're going to do, don't you?

- Yes.

- And that is... - We are going to wrap them in spring roll wrappers.

- Those lovely light, thin, crispy spring roll wrappers.

- Yes.

So this is so easy.

You just take the spring roll wrapper, and I have one for each, and I lay it out.

And I also cut one into various size squares just in case you have any holes, you can patch it up.

And what we're gonna do is we're going to place our sammie right in the middle of the wrapper, and we're actually going to use only water to seal everything up.

- [Pamela] You're just putting the water right around the edge?

- Right around the edge.

No special tools required.

All four edges.

And then we're going to start bringing in the edges one at a time.

And you can go clockwise or counterclockwise, but you don't want to go opposite sides at a time- - Right.

- Because then you'll have a lot of big holes.

- Right, you want it to be nice and tight all the way around the cookie, is that right?

- [Jamie] Yes.

And I'm folding in the excess, and I'm bringing in the next corner.

- [Pamela] Ah, yeah.

- And just keep going that way, bringing it into the middle.

Got this little excess piece over here.

- [Pamela] So you're just folding that up.

- Fold that up.

There we go.

Now, depending on the size of your filling, you might have a little space in between there, and you might also need a little more water to make it stick, and that's why we have these- - That's why you had the little pieces, little bandages.

- Bandages, exactly.

This doesn't have to look pretty because once it's fried it's going to look all uniform.

- Okay.

- [Jamie] And there you go.

Nice little bandage.

And that's how you wrap your cake sammie to be fried.

- [Pamela] All right.

- Now that our oil is at 350, we're also gonna make sure we have our utensil to take it out of the oil, and our cinnamon sugar ready as well.

- They're going into cinnamon sugar when they come out of the fryer?

- Of course.

- Oh gosh, this just gets better and better.

- All right, so all we have to do is drop our sammie into the oil, and they will float.

- Yes they will.

Look at 'em, little pillows.

- We'll do one at a time.

Depending on the size of your pan.

It's going to take about five minutes total at 350.

And after half of the time, two and a half minutes, go ahead and flip 'em for a nice even color.

Look at that nice golden brown.

- Beautiful golden brown.

That's the nice thing about spring roll wrappers is they get beautifully golden brown, don't they?

- Yes.

- And crispy.

- And rather quickly as well.

- Yes, exactly.

- All right, so now that it's golden on both sides, right into our cinnamon sugar.

And we're gonna coat it up really nice, give it a little flip.

Look at that.

Is that not beautiful?

- [Pamela] That is amazing.

- I like to serve these warm.

- Ooh, yes.

- And that way you can have, tap off the excess, and you can have the gooey marshmallow coming out.

- We're ready to cut one of these babies open and show everybody what it looks like, right?

- Yes.

- Oh, they're beautiful.

- I love to serve these warm.

Let's use a serrated knife, and that'll really help since the spring roll is fried up nice and crispy.

- Yes.

Absolutely.

- [Jamie] Little sawing action back and forth.

- Ooh, look at that beautiful, it's like that spring roll created a gorgeous shell around that wonderful inside, didn't it?

- It sure did.

And there is your gooey marshmallow, and look- - [Pamela] You can see the cinnamon cookie in there.

- You even have the cinnamon crunch as well.

- Absolutely you do.

Look at this guys.

And you've been waiting all this time to see what is a cake sammie from Jamie Turner and her Cake Sammies- - [Pamela And Jamie] Et.

Cetera.

- If you wanna grab Jamie's recipes, you can get them on our website at pbscharlotte.org, or send me an email at Pamela.Roberts, P-a-m-e-l-a.Roberts, R-o-b-e-r-t-s@cpcc.edu, and I'll pop 'em in the mail to you right away.

Thanks for watching this episode of "Charlotte Cooks."

Jamie, wonder having you again, as always, and we'll catch you next time.

Thanks for watching.

(upbeat music)