'School cake’ with custard!!

Yes, Adam watched another British cooking show and got obsessed about something. How did I make it 43 years before learning about school cake, which is exactly what it sounds like, a big sheetcake they make for school kids in the UK. And they serve it with custard cake with custard at school. I'm making it basically the way Pru Leaf made it on the Great British Bakeoff with a few modifications and I'm scaling it down. I don't need a whole sheetcake. My recipe here will fill like a square brownie pan type situation. And I'll prepare it with parchment paper. Get a strip that's longer than the pan. Then cut it to the width of the bottom of the pan. Grease the pan so the parchment will stick to it. And also to lubricate these two sides where the cake will actually touch metal. Lay the strip in there and those long ends will function as a sling to get the cake out later. You can crease them backwards to stop them from flopping forward into the batter. Electric beers really help with this kind of sponge cake. I wouldn't do it by hand. We need 200 g of butter, which is two sticks minus 2 tablespoons. I'll butter my bread with that. Butter in a bowl. And note that it's softened butter. I actually remembered to leave it on the counter this time, but you can soften it in the microwave if you're really careful. 200 g of granulated sugar, which is one cup. It's weird how round that conversion is. And now we need to beat these together until fluffy. This sponge is basically a leavened pound cake. Very high fat, very low water. To get it light enough, you need to spend a few minutes beating these together on a high speed. And it wouldn't work if the butter was cold. Get it to the point where it looks like the whipped butter that they serve at cheap restaurants because whipped butter is spreadable at refrigerator temperatures. And that means they don't have to worry about warming it up for the customer. Lots of microbubbles in there to lighten this sponge. as fluffy as my mattress from Helix, sponsor of this video. You know, the last time I talked about Helix, somebody asked me, "Adam, how many mattresses do you have?" Well, the answer is five. Uh, one that we sleep on, and then there's one for each of the kids, and then there's one in the upstairs guest room, and then there's one in the downstairs guest room. It's a basement guest room. Actually, uh, fun fact, this is my basement guest room. I don't actually want to show you guys my real bedroom, so I shoot the ads down here. But all of the mattresses are Helix's because we love them. Helix's are the best. They are real premium quality mattresses that arrive at your house in a box just under vacuum. You puncture the seal and then they come back to life. And we've slept on them for years and it's really improved my back issues. I think you should replace your mattress with a Helix mattress that is customized for your body. Just take their quiz. There's a 100 night sleep trial to make sure it's the right one for you. And hey, what if you can't replace your mattress right now? Well, consider getting a Helix mattress topper. basically converts your old lumpy mattress into something that has helix level comfort, the kind that uh Reggusia depends on. They've got memory foam toppers. They've got the Erggo Align one, which has different support zones for spinal alignment. Go ahead and hit my link in the description, helixleep.com/regusia. Right now, you can get in on their Black Friday sale. That's 27% off sitewide. Black Friday sale at helixleep.comusia. Thank you, Helix. I'm now going to eat my cake in bed. Anyway, the butter and the sugar are whipped now. We put in three eggs. And it's worth beating them in one at a time, or else you'll get teeny clumps of butter just slloshing around in egg. It'll be hard to mix smooth. Pru calls for a full tablespoon of vanilla. I'm glad I'm not the only one with a heavy hand. Oh, but I'm cutting the quantities in half, so that's too much. Oh, so sad. Double vanilla. How awful. But seriously, it matters if you don't want the cake to have a slightly brown color inside. I'll take flavor over color. two teaspoons of baking powder, which is basically the only thing that makes this not a pound cake. A teeny pinch of salt because I used salted butter already. I would do a big pinch if I didn't. And then 200 g of allpurpose flour, which is 1 and 2/3 cups. You know, I've repeated the line for years that you can only reliably measure flour by weight. But lately, I've been weighing my flour and measuring the volume. And a cup of all-purpose flour is 120 g on the money every single time whether I fluff it up or not. That's just an anecdote, not data. Your results may vary. Different kinds of flour, etc. Anyway, just bring this together until smooth. Overmixing at this stage will make the cake tough. It should look more like cookie dough than cake batter. And you'll have to spread it yourself out to the pan edges. It'll melt in the oven, so you don't have to spread it out like perfect. But get it started spreading so that it bakes evenly at 350 Fahrenheit, 180 C, or actually I'm doing 325 Fahrenheit because I'm adjusting down for my convection fan being on. I find that actually makes a difference with this kind of cake. The outside can get too dark otherwise. While we're waiting, custard, I'll fish out two egg yolks. Pru is old school, so she does some of the complicated stuff that people traditionally do to avoid lumps, like tempering the milk and using a double boiler. For what it's worth, I never have any lumps. And my method is way simpler. 50 g, 1/4 cup of granulated sugar. Just a little vanilla this time because I want that bright yellow color. And I think a tiny pinch of salt is nice. And then for thickening, a teaspoon of corn starch, though regular flour would work. I'm using a fair bit less of it than what Prew calls for because my 300 ms 1 and 1/4 cups of dairy will be half milk and half cream. I think custard made with all plain milk just doesn't taste enough. So cream and the cream will also have a thickening effect when cooked. So less starch needed. I'm just mixing out the lumps now while everything is cold. Nothing is going to gelatinize prematurely into a lump. Just enough liquid to make a thick paste that I can really whisk smooth. Now I will put this over direct heat and put the rest of the dairy in. It will thicken when it comes to a simmer like jello pudding. See how thin it is? Now just keep whisking so that nothing sticks to the pan and cooks into a lump. As you hit a simmer, all of a sudden you'll feel the whisk drag more because your custard is thickening. See, as soon as it does that, pull it off the heat and it can go right back into the Pyrex. One reason people use a double boiler is so that you don't get this thick stuff sticking around the hot sides. My secret is just don't scrape that stuff into your custard. Leave it behind. I want it cold. And you can speed chill it if you want by putting it in a bowl of ice water and stirring it every few minutes. If it's too thick by the time it cools, you can just mix in more cream. It's been a half hour. Let's test the cake in the middle. Not done. Look at all the crumbs sticking to the toothpick. This cake will tend to dry out, so pull it as soon as it passes the toothpick test. Little or no crumbs sticking. Let it cool a minute to solidify and then you can just lift it out with the sling. Easy. Let it cool a little more until you can do this. Flop it over, peel off the paper, and then plop it onto a cooling rack. Let it cool all the way before icing or it'll melt the icing right off itself. And the icing is just water icing. 250 g of powdered sugar. That's 2 and 1/2 cups. And then two or three tablespoons of water. I'll start with just two. It should feel like not enough. You want just enough water to turn this into a fluid. I'll need a little more. If you put in too much water, you'll end up with a thin glaze. This is supposed to be a thick icing, so just barely enough water. And then scrape it all on top of the cake. The trick to icing or frosting any cake is to put a lot on and then gently spread it around. If you don't have enough, you'll tend to tear the cake while spreading, and then you get crumbs in the icing. This stuff is barely a liquid, so it moves slowly. Don't use too much force. Any excess can just drip elegantly through the cooling rack. And then decorate with the obligatory rainbow sprinkles right away while the surface of the icing is still wet and sticky. Let the inside of the icing dry for a while before slicing. This is the next day. I think this cake is way better the next day, but that's just me. A nice long knife to cut nice square pieces reminiscent of cafeterias where they make gigantic rectangular sheetcakes. This kind of tastes like a cakeified American Christmas cookie. What would Paul Hollywood say about the inside of my sponge? Don't tell me I don't want to know. Here's my cold custard, which I will admit is halfway between custard and creme glaze because of the cream. I just think it works way better as a condiment on other things. Without the cream, the flavor just disappears behind the cake. And I love how you can pour it on at the last minute to keep everything from getting too soggy. Cake with custard. Cake with custard at school. How did I not know about this?