Stuff You Should Know - Selects: Cake: So Great. So, So Great

Episode Date: April 12, 2025

Cake has been around for a long time, but mostly less than great forms. It took the Industrial Revolution, the advent of plentiful sugar, and some good old American know-how to come together to make the cake we know and love today. Find out all about it in this classic episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, everybody. Do you want to learn about cake? It's called podcasts. Hi everybody. Do you wanna learn about cake? It's called Cake So Great, So So Great. That had to be a Josh title. Cake, colon, so great, period. So, comma, so great.

Yeah, that's Josh. This is from November 30th, 2017. This is super-sized because somehow we did 73 minutes on cake, probably because we talked about cake a lot. Beyond just the facts and figures, I know our personal opinions came around in this episode. So I hope you enjoy it as much as you enjoy pie. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and there's Jerry.

Three of us are together, which means it's time for Stuff You Should Know about cake. Cake, cake, cake, cake, cake, cake, cake, cake, cake, cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake Okay This made me Just frankly want to put my face in a cake. I know she caking Man, yeah, I know we had a discussion about cake or pie quite a while ago I don't remember exactly where you landed on that I'm surprised you can only think of one

What do you about one time? We've done that? Yeah? Cake or pie both yeah same here Why choose between two wonderful things that you don't have to choose between agreed? As a matter of fact every once a while you'll hit like the birthday party jackpot where they'll have like cake and pie and you're like, looks like I'm in heaven. But today, today Chuck, we're not talking about pie. Although we can talk about one pie in particular because we're talking about cake. It turns out, I saw this somewhere, that Boston cream pie is actually a cake.

Oh really? Yeah. Surprise Boston. Sorry to ruin your day. They're probably the ones that are saying that. Oh yeah, probably. Maybe, I don't know. So it's a cake, huh?

The article on it was written in a thick Boston accent. Yeah. Yeah, it is a cake. I'm not sure why, but I just know it's a cake now. And I want to give a hat tip here I mean we both worked off of the house to have works article But I also found a lot of good stuff on a site called what's cooking America. Mm-hmm. Did you run across them? I did they are good man there they have you know, clearly their niche is cooking baking all things like culinary

But they've got some really well researched articles on their site about the history of cakes and things like that. So kudos to you. You remember kudos? The granola bar? Those are great. Oh yeah.

Are those not around anymore? No. No? No, those are gone and then RIP also bonkers candy. So kudos went the way of the Dodo. Mm-hmm. I never heard of bonkers. They were like a fruit chew, but like really had some chew to it. Not like Starburst, you

know, it just disintegrates. These were like, they were chewy. They were good. They're about as good as it gets really candy wise. Yeah, they need, I know you've noticed, they need to chill out here with the sweets at work. Oh, dude. Like, they have little Debbie star crunches and Swiss cake rolls and stuff all over the place. I know. Why do we even need that in here?

There's like three or four people who are like walking around toothless now. It's just rotten right out of their heads. Well and also- Not you. My toothlessness is for different reasons. Yours is from a crustini. And I've also noticed though, there's this weird mix in our office now, because they try to get super healthy.

Yeah. So there will be like Swiss cake rolls next to a bag of like clam chips or something. What chips? I don't know. Clam chips sound kind of good. Seaweed, seaweed strips. Oh, yeah, yeah. No, I know what you mean. Or like just figs

Yeah, you know, it's like a fig Newton without the good tasting part We take figs and we mash them up then we wrap them in cellophane and you eat them for five dollars a piece And your child spits them out because they know better right No today. Yes, I'm with you. I do think it's gotten a little out of hand. It's basically just a huge test of willpower at the office every moment. You know?

Yeah, I don't indulge. I'm not getting into those Swiss cake rolls, but it is tough to walk by the miniature candy bar section and not be like, well, just one of those little guys. Look how tiny it is. Right. And then the next thing you know, you've got like 10 wrappers laying around your desk thinking like what have I done? I know man post Halloween stuff to it. So maybe it'll die down I I don't I don't think that's gonna happen, but yeah, but again though today

I guess if if you replaced all of those candy bars with cakes that were just sitting around you get zero complaints for me Well and at my house at Halloween we gave away two things we gave away whole slices of pound cake and just pigs It's the worst house in the block. Did you you have pound cake fan? Not typically like I would never order a pound cake or say hey Can someone bake me one for my birthday? You wouldn't say would never order a pound cake or say, hey, can someone bake me one for my birthday? You wouldn't say like, Clark me a pound cake? No, I would never ask someone to Clark me a pound cake. But occasionally, like in my life, someone has had pound cake and said, would you like

some pound cake? And it's, you know, it's good. Good sugary and dense stuff. Yeah. I like it because you can just eat it with your hand. Sure. Just pick it up and eat it. Yeah.

It's like cake on the go. Yeah. I am not a fan of lemon cakes. Oh, really? So like a lemon pound cake I'm not into. Well, okay. Let's just get it out there. What's your favorite cake of all time?

Oh, cheese. I'm going to toss it up between a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. That's Bill Clinton's favorite. Well, you know, as Bill goes, so goes Chuck, which is not true. That was a good COA. The carrot cake with cream cheese frosting or I like a red velvet cake. Really? Yeah. Well, that's the southern buttercream. This buttercream or cream cheese frosting.

Yeah. You can go either way. Yeah. Emily's favorite of all time, hands down, is the Waldorf Astoria Red Velvet Cake, which is red velvet cake with a frosting that is basically only shortening vanilla and sugar. Oh, that sounds nice. It's not a cream cheese thing. What's your favorite?

Favorite of all time. Well, everybody knows that cake perfection was achieved sometime in the 20th century when Publix grocery stores started selling their yellow cake with buttercream frosting. Oh yeah? There's no better cake on the planet. It's like a yellow sheet cake? It's simple, but it's tasty.

It doesn't need any dressing up, but if it does, we'll just put like some, add some more frosting in the shape of balloons on top, right? It's just, it's just perfection. It's the perfect cake. I love it. I can eat it morning noon and night. I can eat stale stuff I found in the dumpster behind Publix. I can eat the fresh stuff right out of the oven so hot that it burns my mouth. I would eat it any way that it was given to me. I'm a big frosting and icing guy too. So a corner piece of sheet cake is pretty much heaven.

Yeah, that is the tops. What is Yumi's favorite cake? Yumi's is actually the same as mine. We both are junkies for public's cake to tell you the truth. Although I have to say, she introduced me to the wonder of Japanese cakes and there's this little known fact about Japan. It loves to take, I shouldn't say it's a little known, probably a lot of people know this,

but it loves to take things that other cultures came up with and then improve them 10,000%. One of the things that they've done that with is the French bakery. If you go to Japan, you'll see all these cute little kind of Provence style French bakeries everywhere that sell the best baked goods you've ever had in your life, right? Better than Paris? Yes.

Oh, by far. By far. That's very controversial. It is, but I'm telling you, you would just be like, Josh was right. This is better. I'm not kidding. They've improved on it. And they're very deferential still. They're like, oh, right, this is better. I'm not kidding. They've improved on it. And they're

very deferential still. They're like, oh, this is crap compared to what the French are making, however you would say that in Japanese. But they're actually wrong. It actually is better. But one of the things that they make that's just top notch is this, what they call cheesecake. It is not what you or I would call cheesecake at all It's more like a yellow spongy cake. I don't know where the cheese thing comes in Maybe there's a little cream cheese in there I'm not quite sure but you and I would call it like kind of a dense yellow sponge cake But it is very very tasty and that's a kind of a Japanese tradition that I would guess Yumi would say is one of her Favorites, okay, and just a little shout out there's a place in Toronto. Next time we're there

I'm gonna take you there. All right. Actually that's not true I brought you a cake from there from Uncle Tetsu's cheesecake bakery. Yeah. That's a Japanese cheesecake. Oh that was good. Yeah they're the bomb. All I know is get out of my face with any coconut or any pineapple. I'll take that You'll you'll just slide that over to your desk then. Yes. Not into it. Keep them coming I don't even like German chocolate cake really. I love German chocolate All right. Well, have you ever heard that German chocolate cake and red velvet cake are the same? It's actually not true I haven't heard that. I had heard that many times. it's not true. But that German chocolate frosting is like,

man, that's good. I'm not into that. See, I think that's what it is that I don't like. I like sort of a tradition buttercreamy or just good old fashioned birthday cake icing type thing. Yeah. Piped on. And surely you agree Publix is the pinnacle of that.

I don't know if I've ever had a Publix cake. Oh, I go to Publix three times a week. So next time I'm just gonna well now that you say that it might be best that you stay away because you're gonna start adding this. They sell it by the slice, which is dangerous. Oh, they do. Because that was that's the only way I would want to do it. They sell it by the slice Chuck.

Like I can't bring a whole cake in my house. That's full, Marty. Be sure you look closely because they have, yeah, it would be. They sell also the same kind with like a cream cheese frosting. You want yellow cake with buttercream frosting. Okay. Just give it a shot and let me know what you think. All right.

The funny thing is we really haven't even started yet. No, do you want to take a break? No, let's at least give out like three facts first. Oh, okay. Well, I think we just gave a lot of facts about what the greatest cakes in the world are. All right, how about this then? I'll start you out with the word cake. Apparently it is an old Norse word, kaka, which is kind of funny because I don't know where it came from but here in America kaka can mean doodoo.

Yeah. I don't know where it came from, but here in America, kaka can mean doodoo. But kaka is where the original word supposedly came from. Right. And a lot of English words have Germanic or Norse origins. Do you know that? So cake, the word cake is of English origin, so is bread. And apparently the bread and the cakes from back in the day, say during the medieval era, they were very, very similar. Probably the only difference was the cake might be slightly smaller and it was definitely

sweeter. So cake was like a sweeter version of bread back then. Yeah, they'd add a little honey to it, but it's not like what we think of as cake today. But that's not where the first cakes originated. They actually go way, way, way further back than that, right? Is that true? Yeah, it's true. Tuk-tuk? That may be a little too far back. Yeah, I think so. So, but basically, around the time, I believe of Egypt, the pharaonic Egypt They were making cakes using hot stones and honey and some sort of grain

Mashed up right. It seems like I bet the Chinese were doing it too didn't say in here, right But it seems like anytime you're talking about who did stuff first. It's like Egyptians Chinese Greeks and Romans Pretty much. I mean, you know, ancient civilization. But maybe not China, because it doesn't seem like a very cakey culture. No, I'm not sure about Chinese cakes. I don't think I've ever had one. I bet you someone knows though. And I bet you there's like one of the best things in the world is probably a Chinese

cake. You know, one of the other things too that I didn't realize that I learned from this article Chuck was that a lot of the cakes you see around the world that you would mistake for customary or traditional cakes or that culture, they're actually relatively new. The cake that we know and love and understand is very much a 19th century American invention that came out of the Industrial Revolution. That's right. I mean, clearly, like in Germany, like you talked about in the 15th century, they were making cakes.

They were actually even serving cakes at birthdays. And by all accounts, that's probably the first people to start the birthday cake tradition. And I think they even put candles on top. Well, no, the Greeks put candles on top, but it wasn't like a happy birthday cake. It was more like, hey, this cake is round like the moon and we're going to put candles on it to make them glow. They're probably huge candles now that I think about it. Yeah. The Greeks gave us the round cake and putting candles on the cake to honor Artemis, to make the cake look

like the moon. And Artemis was the goddess of the moon, right? Right. So they were like, look Artemis, what do you think of this cake? She'd be like, it needs some frosting. That's right. And then the Germans in the 1400s started doing birthday cakes. And then the 1700s were full on like, it's a kid's birthday party. It's got candles. It's a cake. And we'll sing some depressing German song. Right.

It makes you reflect on your own existence. That's right. And its eventual end. So by the time people were making birthday cakes in Germany, there was a long, long, long tradition of cakes already. And the word cake had started to originate in medieval Britain. But there was such a thing as a cheesecake already. The Romans created that and called it placenta. Seriously. Really?

Yeah. The Greeks had created something that was basically a prototype of the fruit cake, placus, I believe. Yeah, they calledus I believe. Yeah, they called it feces. Right? So there were all these kind of cakes and breads and things that were starting to be developed. And I think even that pound cake that you're not so hip on came before the Industrial Revolution too. Okay. So there's stuff that you would kind of recognize as cakes, but the idea of a cake, what Americans call a cake and know and love is a cake, that came out of the Industrial

Revolution. The show sponsored by cake. Cake. Eat some today. All right. So let's take a break. We definitely gave away more than three facts. We have earned our keep and we're going to come back and talk about a little chemistry right after this. Have you ever wondered if your pet is lying to you? Why is my cat not here? Am I going and she's eating my lunch?

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to what's happening in the financial news so you can digest this week's headlines without freaking out. Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. So we're back and we promised talk of chemistry and I think we talked about this briefly on one show. I have tried to bake. I did a birthday cake for Emily a couple of years ago, red velvet, Waldorf Astoria cake, and it was okay. It wasn't pretty though.

What do you mean? Like it was lopsided or there's a horn growing out of it? It just you know, it didn't look like a cake you would buy in a store, but it tasted really good I'll bet it was made with a lot of love too. Oh, of course But my deal is is I'm not a great baker because baking Requires you to be very precise With your ingredients because it is chemistry. I'm a much better cook because I'm a fly by the seat of my pants and throw a little of this in there, throw a little of that in there.

And there's a much- You can't do that with- No, there's much more forgiveness in general cooking than baking. Yeah, cooking's an art. Baking is a science for sure. Yeah, that's what they say, right? Yeah. Well, that's what I say too. You didn't make that up right. I think I did. Okay

so With a with a cake right what you're doing is producing a chemical reaction and I knew that yeah, but I had no idea On this granular level that this article gets into Just how much of a chemical reaction baking a cake is yeah It's pretty neat. Yeah, and this sounds pretty neat. The understanding of it too to me. So you want to start with a leavening agent, right? That's right. That's how you get from batter,

which is kind of flat and soupy and wet, to a nice tall cake. The reason it rises is because of a leavening agent. And way, way, way back in the day, they used to use yeast. They used yeast for everything. They would make some beer, they would make a cake, they'd make some bread. Peter T. Leeson They would throw it into the eyes of their enemy.

David Kemp They would, in a fight, a dirty fight. Eventually, yeast fell to the wayside a little bit as they realized that there's other ways to make a cake rise. One of the big ways is to actually introduce air into it. And if you say, you know, beat some eggs, what you're doing, you're not just breaking the eggs down into their kind of components or like a mishmash of all of their components. You're also introducing air into that mix, which will eventually, as we'll see, transfers into the cake to make it rise.

Yeah, and like when you're following a recipe, if you've never baked a cake before, and it says cream the butter and sugar, or sift the flour, you can't just say, eh, like I don't have a sifter, so I'll just throw the flour in here. Like your cake is screwed. Yeah, because it's not just like, oh, that makes the flour pretty. Yeah.

The sifting flour introduces air into the whole mix, too. Yeah, this is all very important stuff, so you can't cheat any of these steps. No, you can't. You really need to follow a cake recipe pretty closely. I mean, I guess if you're a master baker and you know what you're doing, you can do something in lieu of something else. Sure. Michael Sperling But if you're just an ordinary non-professional

baker at home, just follow the recipe and do what they say. David Kempner Yeah, because you couldn't say, well, I'm going to substitute this flour for a bunch of salt. Not only would it taste radically different, you're affecting the chemical composition of the mixture. Michael Sperling True, unless you're making a traditional South Georgia salt cake. Right, which you can also use on those snowy days to clear the road too. That's right.

So you've got yeast as a leavening agent, you've got introducing air through like whipping something, and I found this mention of a recipe that called for four eggs to be beaten for two hours. David K on with your eggs and leave and go get on social media. No, this was with your arm. Yeah. And yeah, it was not, I mean, I imagine if the person you were working for asked for a cake, you're just like, this is a bad day. This is gonna be a bad day.

Did you beat for three hours? Right, and the whole reason, again, you're doing this is to introduce some air, right? But if you could use something else, say like sodium bicarbonate, also known as baking soda, and you mixed it, which is a base, and you added another ingredient in there,

which is like an acid, say like buttermilk or yogurt or vinegar, right? Like in a vinegar cake, that sodium bicarbonate, that base and that acid are going to mix together and Form a chemical reaction and release co2. Yes, and this is how modern cakes rise Co2 is released through this chemical reaction and it goes And bubbles up through the cake and makes the cake rise with it That's what leavening agents do is they take air and they expand it and make it the cake.

Yeah, like when you slice a piece of cake, not so much pound cake because it's way more dense or other non-floured cakes, but your standard birthday cake, you slice it up and you see those pockets, those holes, those are air holes. Those are where the bubbles were. And we'll get to that a little more, but that's very important stuff. That's a famous chef's apron, baker's apron. Ask me about my air holes.

Um, fat source, very important. Sure. Fats improve the texture of a cake, allow it to be moist, flavorful, because we all know fat tastes great. And butter, you know, people can use shortening, which is good, margarine is good, cooking oil, this can all be used. But for me, just get some real butter and I say that for all foods.

I went on a butter, not a... Kick? No, no, no. I am on a butter kick. I went on a butter, a boycott of sorts for a while, like real butter. But now I'm back on butter. Peter T 1 Oh, yeah, yeah. I know what you mean. I tend to think butter is healthier of all of them too. Peter K綻 Yeah. Peter T 1 Although olive oil has a beat, it's just such

a radically different taste. Peter K綻 Yeah, sure. I love olive oil, sure, especially especially when you're baking with it. Although have you ever had an olive oil cake? Don't think so. I don't remember where I had it, but man, they are good. Really? Yes They're surprisingly good, but it is definitely its own distinct thing You know I'm saying like subbing olive oil out for butter is to give you a weirdo recipe that no one's going to like, but they might pretend they do if they like you. But they don't really like that. Right. And all these fat sources, they can be used sometimes together or swapped out for butter.

But again, you got to know what you're doing. You can't just say, well, I'm not going to use butter. I'm going to just use the same amount of cooking oil as melted butter. Right. And one of the reasons why is swapping something out for butter in particular, too I mean butter gives it its richness. It helps improve its moistness and texture right butter is great but butter also has a tendency to Incorporate air when you cream butter when you start to mash it around That's the whole reason like they're not telling you to cream the butter just to make it look good

before you add it to the batter. You're actually incorporating air there. So that butter is serving both as a fat and as a leavening agent in that recipe. So if you come across a recipe that calls for butter that must be creamed, there's something else going on besides just getting a buttery taste out of your cake. David Kramer That's right.

Sweetener, I was about to say sugar instead of sweetener. Peter Kramer Might as well though. David Kramer But let's be honest. You can use honey and stuff. You can use agave, artificial sweetener, but sugar is the best thing to use in my opinion. It bonds best to water molecules. It's really going to help. That'll help everything be nice and moist and soft. And you don't want to overdo it though. You

want to use, again, the right amount of sugar because not only could it affect the taste, but it could make the texture, it could be too tough. Yeah. And sugar is another one too where if you see sugar and you sub it out for something else, it can have an impact on that chemical reaction. For sure. Because it does all those things you were talking about. Like one of the things it does one too where if you see sugar and you which means it does two things. It locks it in so that it keeps moisture in. But it also, sugar also robs that water from some of the proteins and the starches that give the cake its structure, which means that they're not going to be able to become tough and dense like you were saying

because sugar's already grabbed onto that water molecule. And sugar in particular, you're not gonna get the same thing with like stevia or honey. No. Like it's not going to have the same effect. It's crystalline sugar and it doesn't have to be white refined sugar. You have the same effect I think with like turbinado cane sugar too.

Yeah. And you can, I mean if you don't want to use sugar and you want to use honey, look up a recipe that is specific to honey and they will help account for that right in certain ways But it's still to me, you know white sugar do it right? And then they sugar also gives it that nice golden brown color through the Maillard reaction Yeah that in the eggs for sure. Yeah Well, we're at eggs sugar and eggs

Eggs are big Yeah, especially their ostrich at eggs. Sugar and eggs. Eggs are big. Yeah. Especially if they're ostrich eggs. Eggs, I know. Eggs have proteins in them, right? And there's a couple of things in there. Those proteins help give structure to the cake, I believe. Yes, absolutely.

The emulsifiers and the yolk, they help. It also kind of serves as a binding agent. There are a lot of things, including flour, that help bind things together. But those eggs and those yolks very much do, because there are certain things in cake sometimes that don't want to mix. Yeah, like the water. Yeah, and the egg comes together and says, you know, can't we all just kind of stick together here? Literally. Nice. Yes. That wasn't meant to here? Literally. Nice. Yes. That wasn't meant to be a pun.

I meant that. And I think the two big emulsifiers are actually in the egg yolk. Cholesterol and lecithin are found in egg yolk, and they're like, hey, everybody, come on. Let's hang out. That's right. And there's also fats in egg. And we also, we already mentioned that fats are awesome and taste delicious. Plus also if you're using whole eggs most of the egg white is water, the vast majority

is water and as we'll see water and liquids play a big role in the cake too. So it's all like the idea of people figuring all this out through millennia of little contributions here or there is just it's just a blessing on humanity. It is. It's a really neat accomplishment that everyone came together to figure this out over the span of time in wonderful kitchens on cold winter days where we're like, you know, you've got like a nice cake baking in the oven, you're contributing to humanity's knowledge of being great. Yeah, a lot of bad, the carcasses of a lot of bad cakes have been left in its wake to

get where we are today. Sure. A lot of unhappy families and a lot of unpleasant conversations about those cakes, but still. And I bet in the olden days when times were a little tougher, they probably still ate those cakes. Oh yeah, I would guess so. You know, you probably didn't just toss it out to the mules. No, you gave them to sailors who were glad to have them.

All right, that brings us to flour, very, very important ingredient in most baked goods. Flour is what is going to really be the binding agent. It's really going to hold everything together. Give it its structure. Yeah, a lot of structure and strength. When you mix these proteins with water, it's going to form gluten. I know a lot of people hate gluten, my wife being one of them, but gluten is a pretty key ingredient here, although I will say they've come a long way now with gluten-free cakes.

Peter T. Leeson They have. It doesn't make you quite as sad to eat one. Jeffery Smith No, they're pretty good now. If you get a good gluten-free cakes. They have. It doesn't make you quite as sad to eat one. No, they're pretty good now. If you get a good gluten-free cake, it's... Well, a cheesecake is gluten-free, so that's okay with me. I mean, you know, your standard substitute flour, they've just gotten a lot better, I think.

Yep. So in a standard glutenous cake, that gluten from the flour, mixing with the water forms a gel. And it gives it that structure. It gives it that consistency, the texture that you're looking for. But again, the sugar's robbing the proteins and the starches from getting too much water because the more water it gets, the more the tougher the cake is going to be, the more gluten.

So you actually wanna make sure that your sugar's taking away some of the liquids, but also the type of flour you use has a lot to do with how tough your cake's gonna turn out. So like there is such a thing as cake flour. Yes. That's something like 7%, 7 1 1 2% protein, which is gonna translate into less gluten

when you mix it with water, right? Yeah. So it's gonna be a lighter, fluffier cake. And then there's all purpose flour is 10 1 2%. Bread flour is 12%. And depending on what kind of consistency you want in your cake, you would use these different kinds of flour. And all of it comes down to the

The amount of gluten that's going to be produced when it interacts with the liquids. That's right And finally that brings us to the liquids The liquids are obviously going to help keep things moist. They hydrate those proteins They allow all those chemical changes to take place proteins. They allow all those chemical changes to take place. But that liquid does when you actually bake the cake, when it comes time to put it in the oven, which we're going to get to here in a sec, that creates a steam. That liquid cooks out and vaporizes. That steam expands the air cells and that volume and it really lends itself to the light airy structure and texture that you're going to

get. Yeah, it blows up the CO2 bubbles in it even further, which helps make the cake rise. Plus, it also chucks fosters that chemical reaction between the acids and the bases that act as leavening agents that release CO2 in the first place. The presence of liquids in the presence, or water specifically, I think, and heat really make that CO2 go berserk. All right. Well, we should talk about ovens. Yeah. I was about to say you can't bake a cake without an oven, but apparently you can.

You can in Egypt. Yeah. Ancient Egypt. All right. So let's say we're not in ancient Egypt. Let's say we're in regular North America and Europe. And the 18th century is basically when the semi-closed oven came around. And before this, if you were baking cakes well, you were probably a professional baker

because these ovens weren't in every household. Right, and even in the 18th century, they weren't in every household. Right. And even in the 18th century, they weren't in every household either, but they started to become a lot more prevalent around that time. That was a big first step toward people baking at home, not just cakes, but anything, you know? Yeah.

In cake history, that was a huge monumental moment when the enclosed oven became kind of ubiquitous among households. For sure, because what you get there is consistency. You get a consistent even temperature, and of course that just got better and better over the years with advances in oven technology. And more than anything, you get a reliable temperature, ideally. Right.

And if you have those things, you can make a cake after cake after cake that your family won't be mad about. The sailors will stop coming by and being like you got any more of them terrible cakes you made? Sailors? Yeah that's who you give the terrible cakes to. Bumpkin sailors? Sure. All right. So with the oven in particular I I didn't realize this, but you know how the liquid and the heat and the sodium bicarbonate and the acids are mixing together to make the cake rise?

Yes. That is actually a really fragile state of affairs while the cake is baking, and the structure, the proteins and the starches and the gluten are actually solidifying and making this this cake. And if you mess with the oven, meaning like you open and close the door too often or you slam it shut too hard, the change in temperature on the one hand can cool those gases and make your cake fall and it makes a wah-wah sound as it does, as everyone knows. And then the air pressure from slamming the door can burst those CO2 bubbles and again the proteins haven't

had a chance to like solidify and make the cake structure so the cake can fall from that as well. And if you'll notice once a cake gets to a certain point if it falls it falls in the middle. The outside usually stays up because that part has solidified already. The stuff in the middle hasn't quite cooked through. So that would be the part that falls. And that also proves my point. That's right.

You also want to put your cake in the middle. Where you place your cake in the oven can even cause problems. It's very finicky, cakes are. Sure, well again, it's a science experiment. Yeah, they're basically like, do this right, jerk. Or I might just take a nap here in the middle of the cake.

Matthew Kempner Maybe you'll burn. Maybe I'll stick up your whole house. David Kempner But like you said about opening the door, ideally, you know the temperature of your oven. You know how long it takes. And maybe don't wait till literally you think I can pull it out. Although if you're a good baker, you're not sweating it. You pull it out and you know it's pretty much ready,

but definitely don't keep opening it. Try and lease, wait till the end. And if you have, uh, they're not quite as in fashion now, I don't think, but ovens with a window and a light, um, you can obviously take a little peek that way. Sure. Those are kind of out of fashion, right? Or or are they I don't not that I know I feel like I don't see those a lot Do you have a window in your oven sure of course what am I a communist do you yes with the light? Oh, man, what do you have just a stainless steel door? That's a dishwasher man. Oh That's my problem. Yeah, like my cakes always come out wet and soapy. Wait a minute. Do I have a window? Sure, you do. I think everyone does. I literally cannot picture my kitchen right now

Jerry he's got a window right? I've been baking in the dishwasher Jerry and I say yes, you have a window and you're up. Yeah, that might be I might have just said something very dumb So so it's staying in. Well, I do know, you know what, I think I do have a window, but I don't have a working light. That's why I think I don't have a window. You need to replace the light bulb. Yeah, but who wants a bottle of that?

You can go to like any big box hardware store, pop hardware store off the internet. Sure. I don't replace light bulbs at my house. Matter of fact, I think they probably sell them at the grocery store even. You go find yourself some Gulf wax and you're probably near the refrigerator oven light bulbs. All right. The heat of the oven is very important. So depending on how good your oven is, it may be a little off, maybe a little hotter or cooler. So you might want to purchase an oven thermometer just to give it a double check because baking is science. And when you think that cake is done, take a little peek through your window that everyone has

or open it if you really think it's done. Give a little tap in the center. If it springs back then it's probably done. If you're an experienced baker, you just know by looking at it. Or you can always do the old toothpick trick Which is sticking that toothpick wooden toothpick in the center of the cake and pull it out And if there's no cake on it, then it's pretty much done Right if it's if it's covered in goo that means it's not done That is correct Chuck, but then you can also lick that goo off that toothpick. That's not bad. No you can but you're it's just never quite as good and I think it always tastes

like disappointment. You know what I mean? Because you want it to come out clean anytime you're doing that. You're never really putting it in expecting it to come out battery. Yeah. So even though you do get to lick it that's like the one plus side of that experience, I think. That's true. And if your cake is done, you're not finished baking it yet even. You need to let it cool in the pan. Yeah, that's a big one.

You don't just pull the cake out and turn it upside down in your sink and eat it with your hands while it's still hot. Right. That's not the way to do it. No. No, you way to do it. No. No.

You want to let it finish in the pan cooling because it's still doing a little bit of baking and it's getting used to its new room in the kitchen and saying, all right, this is a different temperature in here. I think I can hang with you guys. Yeah. I'm alive. 10 or 15 minutes later, get out that wire rack, flip it over, and ideally it comes out all in one nice thing.

Yep. And the other good thing about letting it cool in the pan first too is when you cool it on the wire rack, it won't get those wire indentations in the cake because it'll be stable enough. Oh yeah. I never thought about that. Nobody likes that. Sure you can fill it in with a little extra frosting.

Yeah. Actually now that I think about it, that's us. Sure, you can fill it in with a little extra frosting. Yeah. Actually, now that I think about it, that's great. Those indentations are just fine. The frosting grooves, in other words? Yep. Should we take a break? Yes. All right.

We're going to talk, well, just about other cakey stuff right after this. Have you ever wondered if your pet is lying to you? Why is my cat not here? And I go in and she's eating my lunch. Or if hypnotism is real? You will use this suggestion in order to enhance your cognitive control. But what's inside a black hole? Black holes could be a consequence of the way that we understand the universe.

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Totally scattershot, totally random. The theory Matt, I think is that we're trading short-term pain for long-term gain. That's the tariff theory at least. But I have a hard time envisioning the long game rosy outcomes totally random. Yeah, I mean, the theory, Matt, I think is that we're trading short-term pain for long-term gain. That's the tariff theory, at least. But I have a hard time envisioning the long-game rosy outcomes if these policy priorities kind of continue. It can be hard to know how to react to news of accelerating layoffs, increasing stock

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freaking out. Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, Chuck, you remember I was talking about baking soda and how that changed everything? Yep. That was a big one. That was from the 1840s. Baking soda, sodium bicarbonate, just good old fashioned regular old baking soda started to be added to it.

But at the time, you needed to also add another ingredient that was an acid so that the two would react and form CO2 or produce CO2, right? Yeah. Somebody about 20 years after baking soda was developed said, oh, I got this. We're gonna come up with something called baking powder. And I never knew this, but this is the difference between baking soda and baking powder. Baking soda is just sodium bicarbonate.

Baking powder is sodium bicarbonate and two other dry, acidic minerals that when dry, they don't do anything. You can mix them together all day long and they just sit there like what? But in the presence of water and heat then they start to react chemically with one another So you can add just a little baking powder and you don't need an extra ingredient like yogurt or vinegar or some other acid It's got the base and the acid that's going to produce the CO2 in there. That was a huge, huge advancement for cakes. But it actually came kind of toward the end

of cake advancement. Prior to that, just the mass production of the Industrial Revolution had a big impact on cakes among many, many other things, but definitely had an impact on the spread of cake baking, especially in the United States. Yeah. And then, so just leave that baking soda in your fridge to soak up the stink. Sure. Because that's all it's good for. Well that and...

No, you can use the baking soda for a lot of stuff. Yeah. It also gets stink out of like clothes too. Oh yeah? Mm-hmm. You can use it to, well that's it. No, like school science projects, you want to make a volcano? Yeah, vinegar and baking soda.

That's right. I love that. With your parents' help. Yeah. Pre-packaged cake mix was a very big deal when it came out in the 1930s, but it was a company named P. Duff and Sons, and they said, we got a problem here. We got too much molasses on our hands. And this is kind of how a lot of great things have been invented. They had too much of something. They said,

well, what can we use this for? So they got to work, and they said, Mr. John Duff, the owner, said, you know what? Throw a little wheat flour in there with this molasses, a little shortening some spices We got a gingerbread mix that we can sell to the public All you got to do is add water dumb dumb and you can bake yourself some gingerbread cookies Yeah, and the the public went hooray because remember they had Ovens now in their houses. Yes

and ovens now in their houses. They had this idea that you could just get a mix from the store and just add water. Was huge. It was a huge change. What's interesting is this whole pea-duffin-sun story, they're out of Pittsburgh by the way, from them coming up, because I think they quickly went from just gingerbread mixes to cake mixes themselves as well. But that busts several myths actually, some long-standing food myths. One of them is that cake mix came out of a surplus of flour from World War II.

That's where the cake mix came from. Peter Van Doren Yeah. Pre-made cake mixes did get way more popular after World War II, but it wasn't because there was so much flour. No, it was because that a lot of the food companies started getting into pre-mixed foods that you could make pretty easily in your kitchen. But then the other one, I love this one, there's this long-standing myth or this story about a guy named Ernest Dichter, who back in the 1950s, Ernest

Dichter, he was a psychologist I believe, he came up with the term focus group. He came up with the whole idea of focus groups to help companies figure out why their new product wasn't doing so well or how to make a product that they hadn't launched yet even more appealing. This guy came up with that whole idea of focus groups, right? Correct. So he's also credited with being the man who saved cake mixes, because cake mixes came out,

everybody kind of loved them, and then supposedly sales went flat, and Ernest Dichter got a focus group together and found out that women who made cakes using these cake mixes felt guilty that they weren't contributing anything to their families. They were just adding water and making a cake and then quietly sobbing while their family ate it.

Talk about the patriarchal brainwashing. Right. So, Dichter realized that the best thing that these cake mix companies could do is to remove the dried egg ingredients from the mix and tell the consumer to add her own eggs. So then that way she was contributing. Well it was a huge success and cake mixes took off and became part of the American Pantheon from that point on, right? Not true. No?

Yeah, that is a total urban myth. Most of these pre-made mixes for years had said to add your own eggs because it just was better to add fresh eggs. It tastes better and perform better. So I don't know how that got started. The myth? Yeah, it tastes better and perform better. So I don't know how that got started The the myth yeah, was it I'm not sure either. Okay, I don't know But it is a long-standing food myth that you can find like some very credible sources who say like oh, this is this happened It's just everywhere, but it turns out that's not true

But I think the reason why it has had legs for so long is because Ernest Dichter is actually rightfully credited with saving the cake mix market through a focus group. And he did find that women were kind of, they didn't feel guilty about it, about not contributing more to the cake mix. They think they were more bored by it. So he advised companies to figure out a way to make cake baking about way more than just

baking the cake. And so companies decided that they were going to start promoting cakes as just the beginning part that the real point of baking cakes was to make these elaborate, amazing cakes that you decorated and it took you hours and hours to make these things and it was like a scene of like Humpty Dumpty on a brick wall, but the whole thing was made out of cake. And that was fostered by the introduction of frosting and that came from Ernest Dichter and that actually is what saved the cake mix industry. That's right. You want to know something about my mom?

Yeah. Champion cake decorator. Is that right? Not literal champion, like she never won a contest. Right? Yeah, because it is out there. But yeah, I mean, as far as the home cake baker goes, like she couldn't go on one of these shows now where

they make like giants. Peter Bregman The Great British Bake Off? Jon Moffitt Yeah, like giant submarines and stuff out of fondant. But just for like mom making special cakes every year for the birthday, every year she would say, what kind of cake you want this year? I'd be like, I want a Star Wars cake. I want an Atlanta Falcons cake.

And lo and behold, I would get my Atlanta Falcons cake. That's awesome. Very cool stuff. You know, I had an older sister who she died actually when I was 16 in a car accident, but she used to be the equivalent of your mom at making cakes. Oh, really? But she didn't even need to ask. She would just, she just make something up, right?

And there was this one year, I'll never forget this cake, we were all big time into Howard Jones. The singer? Yeah. It must have been like my ninth or tenth birthday. My whole, both my sisters and me were totally into Howard Jones. And Karen, my sister, my oldest sister, made a Howard Jones keyboard cake. Wow.

And it was a couple of sheet cakes put together, frosted, so it looked like one big thing. The black keys were Kit Kats, like the knobs on the synthesizer were Rolos. Wow. And I just looked around at all my friends like, does everyone see my cake? This is the greatest cake anyone's ever had. And no one can have any but me. No, I shared. Of course. I wanted everyone greatest cake anyone's ever had. And no one can have any but me. No, I shared. Of course.

I wanted everyone to partake in the bounty. Was it a keytar or a keyboard? It was a keyboard. Okay. Yeah. You never know. I know. Strap a guitar strap on it.

You might could have held it. I would not have put a pastor to make it a keytar. Man, that is very sweet story. Yeah. Literally and figuratively, thank you. Matt Lauer Hojo fans, huh? David Kps Yes. Matt Lauer Isn't that his nickname?

David Kps I don't think so. Matt Lauer Did I make that up? David Kps Yeah, I think that's the hotel chain. Matt Lauer I think you're totally right. All right, well, another tip here for baking a cake. If you were looking at recipes and it says use this kind of pan, you think, well, I don't have that kind of pan. I've got this kind of pan. It's aluminum and square and they're calling

for a round dark pan. It makes a big difference. It can literally ruin your cake. Yeah, you supposedly want to reduce the heat. I think not the heat or the cook time, one of the two. Yeah, it says a dark non-stick pan requires 25% reduction in temperature. So you want to knock that heat down 25%. Yeah, but also like Google that stuff. Don't just say Josh and Chuck said this should work.

You know, like you have to have the right pan for that recipe. And they will tell you in the recipe. And if you don't have it, just look up the cheat for it basically. Yeah, two things you don't want to take our advice blindly on, medical stuff and baking stuff. Everything else is fine. I don't know about that, but those are the two leading ways that we will mess your life up. For sure.

All right, well I guess we need to talk about the different methods. We're getting super wonky into cakes here. Well, I mean, that's what we do. All right, well, let's talk about creaming then, because that is one kind of method of making a cake. And creaming is what we talked about. You may not have known exactly what we meant. But when you combine like the butter and sugar and it says cream it with an electric beater,

that's what you're doing. And it's really tough at first to get it going, but just hang in there because that butter will start to break apart, mix in it with that sugar, and you've got a nice creamed mix of ingredients, starter mix of ingredients on your hand there. Right. But don't skimp on that first step. No, and that's like that. I think the creaming method, that's the one that best gets across this point that this is like, it's a chemical reaction. I know we've kind of been beating that horse, but it's really true. Like if you don't follow the steps correctly, the

chemical reaction is not going to come out correctly. And when you step back, you're like, but I'm baking a cake. That's true, but do you want your cake to be good or do you want to just waste your time? Yeah. So in the creaming method, when it says then mix ingredients in this order, wet, then dry, do that. Don't just say, ah, just throw it all in there, right?

It makes a difference. And it says that pound cakes are like a variation on the theme. I looked in the pound cakes, man. Do you know? So the idea that pound cakes called for a pound of each ingredient, that's actually true. But the reason why it called for a pound of each ingredient was because a lot of the British

people at the time in the early 1700s Couldn't read so it was just an easy way to remember the recipe. Oh interesting. Yeah All right. I'll buy that they'd be like what's a tibs? And also pound cakes to the reason Why you're not gonna find a pound cake with a big buttercream frosting is because that will send you into sugar shock in a second. Because pound cake is already really dense and sugary. That's why you just have a little glaze on top. I do like that glaze, actually.

I'll eat a pound cake. I think that glaze is, what's it called? Delicious? Something icing? Imperial icing? Oh, I don't know. I can't remember. Okay, so the next one is the no aeration method to where you're not really, you're not whipping anything up.

Yeah, you probably don't even have flour in this. This is probably a flourless cake. Right. So this is the kind of thing that you use to make like a cheesecake or a flourless chocolate cake. Yeah, this can be very good. Sure. And you are probably going to need to add some sort of moisture because cakes like this

tend to crack while they're baking, which is why a lot of them, cheesecakes in particular, you cook in a water bath in the oven because that water vaporizes and steams around it and helps keep that moisture in. Yeah, I never knew that. The reason for the water bath? I didn't know that he used a water bath. That was news to me. Yeah.

I've never made a cheesecake. Yeah, they can be quite good. Oh, I love cheesecake. I don't think I've ever had any bad cheesecake. It's always good. That's another thing too. Publix cheesecake is incredible. Man, That's another thing too. Public's cheesecake is incredible. And they need to sponsor us. And they sell it by the double slice for those.

Oh. Like you get two slices and they have a key lime one too, Chuck. That's just, oh man. Although if you don't like lemon stuff, you might not like that. Oh no, I love key lime. Okay. Try their key lime cheesecake. Yeah. They really should send us some stuff, frankly. At Isle of Palms, for my vacation that I've spoken about, they had one of the, I can't remember which one, but one of the seafood joints where I would get all the fresh seafood had a homemade key lime pie. And I bought and ate one of them with my friends that week,

and I bought two to go home with. Did they make it home? Huh? Do they make it all the way home? Yeah, yeah. I stopped at the border. Just put my face in it. No, they made it home.

I think there's still one in the freezer actually and then one of them was consumed. Nice. Yeah, good key lime pie. And finally, with the non-aeration method, you are not doing the beating. You're not creaming that stuff. You're folding the batter. And we could describe it here, but if you don't know what folding is in baking, just look it up on the YouTube for a proper folding technique.

Right. Generally done with like a rubber spatula. Yep. There's a foaming method, too, where you are basically using just egg whites usually and you're aerating it by whipping them up, which makes a meringue. You can just stop there and incorporate sugar and you've got meringue, which would make a pavlova cake, which apparently Australia and New Zealand have been fighting over the origin of for close to a hundred years now.

But doesn't New Zealand win? Supposedly. Although I saw another article from some researchers who said, no, it came even earlier, a decade earlier out of America via Germany. So who knows? But yes, out of Australia, New Zealand, New Zealand's apparently won that fight. But that's meringue and Pavlova cake is like a meringue cake with like fruit in the middle of it. And then, yeah, and then a listener sent us pavlova once we made it.

It was pretty good. It is pretty good. Yeah. And then you can also take that egg foam and turn it into it like a sponge cake, like an angel food cake or something like that. You don't like those either? No, not big into angel food cake. Although you can use sponge cake for strawberry shortcake. That I will have. Okay, so those spongy cakes that uses the egg foaming method. But if you're making a true strawberry shortcake, you're going to use an actual shortcake. Yeah, those are really good. And the reason they're called shortcake or shortbreads called shortbread is short is apparently a British term for crumbly. Oh, okay. So that's where that came from.

Has nothing to do with the size. Yeah, Emily makes a really good gluten-free shortbread. She's kind of gotten into baking a bit in the last five or six years and gotten pretty good at it. So she makes a good gluten-free shortbread that we've had as shortcake with homemade whipped topping and good fresh strawberries. Those are good, but my one complaint with her baking is it literally looks like she came in there and just started throwing ingredients everywhere with her bare hands like a three-year-old

and then baked and then said, I'm done. Yeah. Good night It is a it is a mess. Yeah a big big mess and she always just says get out of here I'll clean it up afterward. Don't worry about it Yeah, yeah, it's funny the kitchen can be a place of real tension sometimes, huh? Oh for sure Yeah, especially if both of you Do different things in the kitchen, right, like one's hovering, like, are you gonna clean that up? Well, I'm the kitchen cleaner,

so that's why she's just like, just stay out of here, dude. Right, just wait until the end? Yeah. And you show up, you're like, it's Marge's time to shine. Well, I'll do this, and this is such a passive aggressive move for me, which is my style. Not endorsing that, I'm just saying it's one of my downfalls

I need to work on, but I will just go in there and just like groan or something. She'll be like, oh god. And she'll just say no, out. Right, again. That's life at the Bryant House. That's pretty nice Chuck. It's always with love though.

Yeah, it always comes out. There's always a cake on the other end, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean it's not like we get in serious fights over the kitchen stuff. Right, yeah. So what's the last thing here? Something called the all-in-one method. Yeah, that's just like a cake mix.

We put it all together at once. Yeah, well we should talk a little bit about frosting and icing. The earliest versions of frosting was just sort of an almond and sugar paste. Eh, not so big on that. But a French chef. Oh really? I mean it could be okay but. Almond croissants are like one of my great joys in life.

Oh yeah. They're so good. I suppose that's kind of what a bear claw is too right? Yeah. All right I'll take it back. Yeah but that's kind of what a bear claw is too, right? Yeah. All right, I take it back. Yeah, but that almond, that sweet almond paste inside is, man, that's good stuff. No, it is good, but don't put that on top of a cake for me. Sure, understood.

Stuff it in a pastry. A French chef, though, was the first person, they think, that created the first legit iced layer cake in the 15th century. And then about the middle of the 17th century is when the first frosting recipes started spreading around on the internet. Right. And fondant is gross. Yeah, I'm not into it.

No. I mean, you can make a neat looking cake, but it's gross tasting, I think. Yeah, I'm not into it. Buttercream or cream cheese or even Emily's Waldorf Astoria frosting believe it or not. I mean it has a bit of a mouthfeel because of the shortening but um like a residue on the palate yeah on the roof of your mouth yeah but it's still good. Well let's talk about cakes like the specific cakes like the red velvet cake,

right? Yeah, delicious. Do you know why it's red? Well food coloring. They use that to make it a little richer, but it actually naturally turns red. It's a chemical reaction between the cocoa, the vinegar in it, and the buttermilk, I believe. Really? Yes.

It turns it red. All right. I don't know about that. No, it's true. Okay. I read it on What's Cookin' America. I'll try it because I'm making it, Emily. It's her birthday.

It's in a couple of weeks and I'm making another, taking another stab at it. Try the, try, go find like an original like recipe. Well, I mean, what do you mean? Like one, if you see one that actually uses buttermilk, be like, okay, this one, this is one of the ones I'm going to try. No, no, no, I have to use the recipe she tells me to use. Oh, I gotcha. Which is the Waldo, the gluten-free Waldo Astoria version. Oh, gotcha, I see.

But you have cocoa, does it have like vinegar and buttermilk in it? I can't remember. It's been a couple of years since I tried it. Okay. Well, it should turn red on its own, but I don't think there's any harm in adding some more synthetic chemical red dye. Well, the thing is too, a lot of people that don't try red velvet cake don't try it because they think it doesn't like it tastes like chocolate cake. Right.

Yeah. It just is red. It doesn't taste red. No, that'd be weird. It's not ketchup cake. Yeah, that's Canadian, isn't it? There's Hummingbird cakes. Well what do you mean by the Hummingbird? A Hummingbird cake has some nuts and some fruit in it, lots of frosting. I think it's a Southern cake.

My grandmother, Bryant, called one of the great all-time Southern cooks and bakers, like, you know, banana nut bread? Yeah. She called that Hummingbird, and I don't know if that was specific to her or if they are interchangeable. I don't know. I'm not actually a Southern native, so I would not say one way or the other. All my experience with Hummingbird cake is it's more like a Carrot II cake yeah with with say like pineapple in it and some other fruits in it and a thick layer of frosting

And supposedly the reason it's called a hummingbird cake is because it's so sweet. It could attract hummingbirds Mmm, see maybe I mean that's sort of like banana nut bread So I don't know if they're interchangeable or for variation but give me some banana nut bread, which is not a cake, but it sort of is, and slice it up and put some butter on it, toast it in the oven. Yep. No, I'm with you. Our freezer is always chock full of black bananas, blackened with age.

Oh, sure. Because Yumi makes a killer banana nut bread from scratch. I mean, you just can't look at the bananas when she's incorporating them Yeah, what does that do? Why is that the key? Do you know? They just are supposed to be mushy. Okay. Oh, okay. Gotcha And and like the best way to make bananas mushy is to let them age let them age Freeze age them. All right. Let's talk about Indian pound cake Apparently that's a thing that has cornmeal in it age, freeze age them. All right, let's talk about Indian pound cake.

Apparently that's a thing that has cornmeal in it. And I can't imagine that taste, but I'd like to try it. Well, yeah, and that was one of the earliest cakes in the US. And I think what the author, Leah Hoyt, is pointing out is that cakes came from all over the place through time and geography. And that the mass immigration tore into America over say like the 17th, 18th, 19th centuries and 20th too. All these people from all these different lands brought their ideas or ingredients of cake and they kind of went through this Americanized grinder to where eggs were added, butter was added and like you've got these ingredients

So it bears a resemblance to its original one, but it's been like cake-ified right in the American way and that that started basically right as as European settlers got to North America. Yeah, apparently the good old-fashioned chocolate layer cake came out of Boston Because there were chocolate companies there even the German chocolate cake is not German Yeah, apparently the good old fashioned chocolate layer cake came out of Boston because there were chocolate companies there. Even the German chocolate cake is not German. It's American. It's named after a man whose last name was German.

Oh, interesting. Well, that means he's German. German American. Could be. Maybe they should call it the German American chocolate cake. Or just German chocolate cake, but it's really American everybody is what the real title should be Strawberry shortcake that you mentioned that does come from the old world. I'm not much of a jingoist either I think you might say of course

I've never felt more national pride than in talking about cakes. Yeah. Yeah This is where cakes were born really the pineapple upside down cake Heaven help you if you eat that stuff. I love it. Do you really man? It's so good. Yeah I just don't like fruit anywhere near my cake. Yeah, unless a strawberry shortcake. You definitely wouldn't like a hummingbird cake then even Yeah, maybe that's the difference between the Hummingbird and banana bread right Right. Although bananas in there. Right.

That's a, well, that's not a fruit cake to me. No, you just don't like the juicy fruits in your cake. It sounds like no or coconut, which isn't the German chocolate cake in that coconut in the icing. Yeah. Yeah. See that? I don't want coconut anywhere near my cakes.

But that pineapple upside down cake, apparently that stuff sort of sprang out of a contest. Dole had the Dole Company in the mid-1920s that said, hey, bake some cakes with fruit. And so thousands of pineapple upside down cakes came out. So I don't think they were invented for that, but maybe that's just what made them so popular. I don't know. Gotcha.

And then there's other, again, there's cakes around the world that look like cakes, kind of like tiramisu. Yum. It's a quintessential Italian cake, but it was invented in the 1960s. Black Forest cake actually is from Germany. It was invented in 1915. So what happened was, again, cake explosion happened here in the good old US of A, and it spread back out to the world.

There was an influx of cake ideas into America. America perfected the cake, and it went back out to the world. That's right. That's what happened. What else? What about tres leches? It's great too. Three kinds of milk evaporated, condensed and whole. It's tough to go wrong with that. Yeah talk about moist. And I've like I've had good and bad tres leches but I've never had an actual tres leches that I was like this

is so bad I'm not gonna finish it. Right. Have you? No. And then there's Dorayaki, which is like, have you ever had this? I don't think so. One of the big things that people in Japan love is like sweetened red bean paste. Okay. You can find it here or there in like sweets, but this Dorayaki in particular is between two pancakes. It's like a filling. Sometimes it's not even two pancakes. It's like a hole with a red bean paste inside.

It's like this light kind of fluffy cake-like thing with red bean paste inside. It's good. They're best hot off of the street from somebody who just made it. That's when it's absolutely best, but it's like the kind of thing you can also find in a 7-Eleven or something too, like in cellophane. Wow. Yeah, it's good. It's no cheesecake, no Japanese cheesecake,

I'll tell you that. Nope. But it's still pretty good. Man, that was a good one, I think. Cakes. All right. Are you done? I'm done.

Okay, if you want to know more about cakes, go eat some. You're going to love them. Yes. There's a cake out there for you. And since I said that, it's time for Listener Mail. All right. I'm going to call this a special one-man administrative details shout. Oh, wow. Because we got a box today from a man named Nick Pagan

from San Jose Bay Area and he sent us just a blotted stuff. Like good stuff. It wasn't a box full of garbage. He sent us framed things, sent me a framed pavement poster, which is great. Very nice. And sent us CDs of music. He sent bottles of liquid stuff, most notably wine for Jerry and then bourbon and scotch for us. And he is a whiskey enthusiast that lives in the Bay Area, like big time. And just a good dude.

And beyond that, he added this. He added, he's a list maker, an amateur list maker. And he sent us a list, and Nick, if you're listening, please send us the Word document, digital version of this printout that you sent. Because he said, every time you said we should do a podcast on that, he made a list alphabetically of that stuff. Nice work, Nick. And the list is so comprehensive and awesome that we need it to work from.

Yes, please do. He made a list of films that each of us said we need to see, which is pretty good. And then finally he sent us a list and encouraged us to play a little game here, which we'll do very quickly, see if Josh can guess how many times we've done the following things. You ready? Why me? Well, because I have the list in my hand and you're sitting across from me and you can't

see it through this paper, I don't think. So how many COAs, and for people that don't know it means cover our butts, how many COAs have we issued over a thousand shows? I'm going to say 27. 75. Wow. Wow, we are really good at that, huh? How many times have we admitted on the air that it is a take two?

You're not gonna get anything, or maybe you might. It'll be total luck if I do. Eight! Seven! Oh, so close! Uh, rare listener mail shout-outs. Mm-hmm. Oh, uh, I don't know what that means.

Uh, like where we say, Hey, can you say hello to my boyfriend? Oh, yeah. three. No, 62. What? That's pretty rare though, out of a thousand. Yeah, but still it seems like I thought it was even rarer than that. Did we used to do it more than we do now? I think so. I think that's what it was. We're a little more generous in our earlier days. Yeah. Trips in the Wayback Machine. Oh, there's a lot of those. I'm gonna say out of a thousand episodes 320 he says 59 so I don't know about this Nick. I think you missed a few Nick You're just making up numbers aren't you how we can scotch at home and making up numbers

How many paper lists have you eaten? Me yeah one that I know of yep. You nailed it. I remember the episode too. It was How geniuses work or what makes a genius? Uh-huh. And I said that if this list, if the list of geniuses, if the number one genius was Einstein I would eat the list and it turned out it was Einstein. How many Glenn Danzig or Misfits references? Those would be all you. 17. Four. references those would be all you 17 for need to step it up how many times has Chuck was how many times have I done this I think it's literally countless if he came up with a number it's a lie he says 288 that's gotta be more than that

Simpsons references I'll just go ahead and tell you 197 apparently we have high does that include the two episodes on the Simpsons no no no okay apparently we have high five once okay I'm surprised we even did that sure the number of times Josh has done this a lot I don't know I think a lot just just works for that 426 Almost half our episodes. That's great. Yeah And then bonus name all of Josh's nicknames for Chuck. I'll just go ahead and read those You have called me Chuckers. You've called me beautiful. You don't remember that one the famous Chuck Tran cheech

rusty zonkers, and The Flash. Nick is my new favorite listener. This is all gold. Nick Pagan Plus, thanks for buttering us up with the care package too, Nick. That was nice of you. Jeffery Brown Yeah, so Nick Pagan, you are now on the guest list for the San Francisco SketchFest show. Just hit me up with an email, send that list of shows that we need to do via digital document, and you are in like Flynn.

Cool. Thanks a lot, Nick. Well, if you want to be like Nick, you can send us an email to StuffPodcast at HowStuffWorks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, StuffYouShouldKknow.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok, you come across a video of a teenage girl, and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her.

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