Cake

Recently it was my girlfriend’s birthday. She casually mentioned that she might like a certain cake - however, it had been discontinued. Rather than give up or compromise, I decided to try to make it myself at home. As part of my research into what it would take, I wrote this document. Everything below the break is copied directly from my personal notes. The only exception is that I obfuscated her name.

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This is a spoof of the “Momofuku Milk Bar Chocolate Caramel Pretzel Cake”. may god have mercy on my soul.

The Materials

I’ve combined all the necessary ingredients and kitchen equipment into a single list here for easy access. Check off items as you collect them.

Ingredients:

• 3 sticks unsalted butter
• 6 eggs
• 1 cup milk
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1/2 cup coconut oil
• vanilla
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• baking powder
• 1 3/4 cup flour
• 1 1/2 cup sugar
• salt
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 can sweetened condensed milk
• chocolate chips
• pretzels

Equipment:

• 9x13 cake pan
• 6" ramekin
• saucepan
• double boiler
• large, medium, small mixing bowls
• sturdy whisk
• small and large spatulas
• plastic wrap
• tin foil
• parchment paper
• cardboard cake base
• 6" cake cutter/ring
• acetate cake collar
• plenty of fridge space

The Schedule

This has to be a multi-day project. Some things need time to set. plan for 2-4 days, depending on how busy you are.

• day 0/1:
  • go shopping (check The Materials for list)
• day 1:
  • make Dulce de Leche
  • make Pretzel Cheesecake
  • make Pretzel Crumbs
• day 2:
  • make Double Chocolate Chip Cake
  • make Dulce Frosting
• day 2/3:
  • assemble and serve

The Blueprint

There are 9 layers, in 5 types:

• Pretzel Crumbs
• Dulce Frosting
• Double Chocolate Chip Cake
• Dulce de Leche
• Pretzel Cheesecake
• Double Chocolate Chip Cake 2
• Dulce de Leche 2
• Pretzel Cheesecake 2
• Double Chocolate Chip Cake 3

However, she does not like cheesecake, so instead I need a substitute. It would be easy to sub in plain yogurt, but the tang is what she doesn’t like about cheesecake. If I can make cheesecake without cream cheese, and especially come up with a different name for it that doesn’t have “cheese” in the title, that will go a long way toward making this project viable.

The Layers

Topping: Pretzel Crumbs

This should be simple:

• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup pretzels crushed to dust
• 1/2 cup pretzels in big chunks

Stir it all together. bake in the oven on parchment paper at 350 for idk 30 minutes or something. this aint rocket science. Watch the crumb-chunk ratio.

Frosting: Dulce Meringue

She hates buttercream frosting. However, it might be impossible to mix dulce de leche into whipped cream. If I make a swiss or italian buttercream by whipping egg whites into a meringue, and then call it “meringue frosting”, I can get the best of both worlds. The taste should be lighter and less sweet, but the frosting will still be sturdy enough to withstand caramel being mixed into it - which will obscure any subtle butter flavors anyway.

• 2 egg whites
• 6 tbsp room temp unsalted butter
• a pinch of salt
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup dulce de leche (see below)

1. put the egg whites, salt, and sugar into a double boiler. whisk constantly while heating. reach 160F, or until no longer grainy
2. take off heat, whisk until egg whites form glossy peaks
3. add butter 1tbsp at a time, whisking each until incorporated
4. pour in cold/room temp dulce de leche, fold in with a spatula

We make not that much, because it only needs to go on top of a 6" cake.

Cake: Double Chocolate Chip

So the idea is to make a single 9x13 sheet, cut out 2 6in circles, and use the scraps to make the bottom layer. Just crumble them up, squish them into the corners - the bottom does not get a lot of love here.

• 1/2 cup unsalted butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup brown sugar (optional)
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup coconut oil
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 1/4 cups flour
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup chocolate chips(?)

1. cream together butter and sugar in a large bowl. add eggs and mix until thoroughly combined.
2. slowly add milk, melted coconut oil, and vanilla, mixing to combine. beat for several minutes, until mixture is lighter, fluffy, and fully incorporated. do not leave streaks of fat or liquid in the mixture.
3. add flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt. mix until dry ingredients are almost incorporated.
4. add chocolate chips. mix until chocolate chips are evenly distributed, and the dry ingredients are fully incorporated. try not to overmix, or Cake will become chewy.
5. preheat oven to 350F. line the bottom of a 9x13 pan with parchment paper, and grease the inside. pour batter into pan, and spread evenly with a spatula.
6. bake for 30-35 minutes. Cake should spring back when poked, and not jiggle in the center when shaken.
7. Cake can be stored in the fridge in plastic wrap for a few days before using.

Cake needs to cool before it can be used. chocolate chip amount is a guesstimate - add however much is needed to get a chip in every bite.

Dulce de Leche: Dulce de Leche

It’s dulce de leche. This shit is so easy you can do it in your sleep.

• as many cans of sweetened condensed milk as you want cans of dulce de leche

1. peel off the labels, and toss the can(s) in a pot of boiling water. simmer time depends on how you want it: 1hr is blonde, 3hr is dark. I usually aim for 1:45-2

and that’s it. Be careful though because that shit is delicious when it comes out. don’t overindulge.

Cheesecake: Pretzel not-actually-Cheesecake

So. Cheesecake is not frosting: you can’t just toss different ingredients together and eyeball the consistency, it has to make chemical sense. There are some good substitutions for cream cheese suggested online… such as greek yogurt, or milk and lemon. which reintroduce the tang she doesn’t like.

The problem is that separating out the whey by curdling is critical for a no-egg cheesecake to set when baking. And I do need it to set - even though I’ll be spooning it into the cake, this stuff has to have air in it. So the way I see it, there are two paths:

1. I can use eggs. This will result in a flan-like cake, which might actually be a great pairing with our caramel flavors. The downside here is that it could wind up too similar in texture to our meringue frosting, but hopefully not.
2. I can use sweet whey powder. This will give me the holding power of whey without the tang of acid present in most cheeses. It’s slick and cool chemically, But risky to try and work out the proportions of ingredients, as well as hydration.

I feel that flan is the less risky of the two - eggs are easier to source than sweet whey, and I won’t need as much trial and error. I will keep the sweet whey cheesecake in the back of my mind for later, if I ever want to gaslight surprise her with an authentic-textured cheesecake she can enjoy.

With that settled - what the fuck is a “pretzel cheesecake” if not referring to the crust?

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Hold the fort! My research uncovers that apparently true fans of the Momofuku Milk Bar all know that when the marketing material says “cheesecake” it doesn’t mean “cheesecake”. There is a “liquid cheesecake” which is a signature of the store, and head chef Christina Tosi wrote all about it in her cookbook. I quickly procured a pdf, and found this madness within:

I know it seems funny for me to say, but I don’t drink straight milk and haven’t since childhood, when my mom made me. Still, I am in love with the idea of the flavor I think milk should have—and these milk crumbs were the first perfect embodiment of that idealized milk flavor.

This woman built a brand around a food she doesn’t like, dedicated to her Frankensteinian reimagining of the taste. she is a pornographer of flavor. She has dedicated her life to developing and proselytizing the silicon implants of dairy.

With that said, here is the liquid cheesecake recipe:

• 8oz cream cheese
• 150g sugar
• 6g cornstarch
• 2g salt
• 25g milk
• 1 egg

1. beat cream cheese for a couple minutes, then incorporate the sugar
2. whisk cornstarch, salt, milk and egg into a slurry. mix into the cream cheese.
3. line a 6x6 pan with plastic wrap. pour in the batter, bake for 15 minutes at 300, until the edges begin to set but the center is still jiggly.
4. let cool, and use as a spread.

After the bizarre freudian relationship with milk, the fact that she bakes with plastic wrap is the least of my worries. This recipe still uses cream cheese, so it’s a bit worthless to us, but it’s good as a touchstone for the final product - and also the twisted mind behind this monstrous cake (incidentally, I found no pretzel-related recipes beyond a few crumbles).

Cheesecake: Actually Flan

There are no pretzels in flan. However, there is salt and caramel, which is the important flavors. If I wanted to make it “pretzel cheesecake” I think I would add in some pretzel crumb, which can be made similar to the pretzel crumble above except with all powderized pretzels and no chunks. But honestly, who has the time?

In order to make the flan more creamy and spreadable, we should avoid overcooking and high heat, and use egg yolks without whites (take from the meringue frosting recipe above). Also, the caramel part of a standard flan is unnecessary. recipe is for a 6" round dish - you can use a 9" dish and just double the recipe if necessary.

• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1/2 cup milk*
• 1 egg
• 2 egg yolks
• 1 tsp salt (twice as much salt to help the “pretzel” flavor)
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1. prepare a roasting dish to hold the flan dish - put in a ring of foil to support the 6" ramekin off the base of the roasting dish. put on a kettle of water to boil.
2. put sugar and ~2tbsp of water in a saucepan, simmer over medium heat with lid on until sugar dissolves and caramelize. add cream and milk, simmer and stir until dissolved, then take off heat.
3. in a large/medium mixing bowl, whisk together eggs, egg yolks, salt and vanilla. whisk in the hot cream one ladle at a time until fully incorporated.
4. pour into a 6" ramekin, place in the roasting dish, and put in the oven at 300F. pour hot water into the roasting dish to make a water bath for the ramekin. try to get it ~halfway up the ramekin.
5. bake for about 45 minutes, until 170F. try to undercook a bit since we will be spreading it. cool in the fridge for at least 2 hours.

Scoop this stuff out at the time of assembly. if you want, you can try cutting it in half to save some as a treat for later.

*Alright, so here’s what I did: I dumped the cream and milk into a jar with a bunch of mushed up pretzels, let it soak overnight, and filtered out the pretzel chunks. Wa la: pretzel milk. Did it do anything? It took on a tan color, and maybe smelled a bit like pretzel - who can tell. I used the cream-soaked pretzels in the pretzel crumb recipe above to make it extra rich. Decadent and unwholesome, but in the spirit of Christina Tosi I think.

The Assembly

So to build this stuff you basically dump it all into a tube. It’s pretty simple. let’s consult The Blueprint:

• Pretzel Crumbs (Crumb)
• Dulce Frosting (Frosting)
• Double Chocolate Chip Cake (Cake)
• Dulce de Leche (Dulce)
• Pretzel Cheesecake (Flan)
• Double Chocolate Chip Cake 2
• Dulce de Leche 2
• Pretzel Cheesecake 2
• Double Chocolate Chip Cake 3

1. use a 6" ring to cut two 6" rounds out of the Cake.
2. place the 6" ring on a cardboard round. place an acetate cake collar around the inside of the ring.
3. take the scraps of Cake (not rounds) and crumble them into the cake ring. press crumbs into the corner, try to lay an even foundation for your cake.
4. add half of the Flan. use it to present a smooth top for the next layer.
5. add enough Dulce to fully cover the Flan.
6. add the less pretty of the two round Cakes. take a second acetate collar and tuck it in around Cake 2. make sure it goes inside the first collar.
7. add the other half of the Flan. make sure to consult diagram above to get the right amount.
8. add Dulce as before, completely obscuring the Flan.
9. add the last Cake on top, smooth side up.
10. put Frosting on top in a generous layer. use a small spatula or other implement to smooth it out.
11. add Crumb on top of Frosting. make little piles around the circumference of the cake.
12. put in the fridge for several hours.
13. when it’s time to serve, slide the cake ring up first, then peel the acetate collars off one after another.
14. photograph, slice, enjoy.

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The Aftermath

I made the cake.

I started cooking on a Tuesday evening and assembled the final cake Thursday morning. I started with soaking pretzels in milk+cream for the day, then separated them and used them in pretzel crumb and flan respectively. Wednesday I boiled the dulce, whipped up frosting, and baked a sheet cake. Thursday morning I put it all together.

There was at least one major flaw with every element, so for stylistic consistency I’ve made a bulleted list:

• Pretzel Crumb
  • not enough big chunks. add more whole/half/third pretzel pieces.
  • way too much of it (arguably not a bad thing).
• Dulce Frosting
  • was pretty runny for a frosting. wound up dripping down the sides instead of staying piled on top, even when very cold.
    • not enough butter?
    • egg whites too soft?
    • merangue fundamentally unfit for such a purpose?
• Double Chocolate Chip Cake
  • too dense.
  • a bit too tall (minor nitpick).
• Dulce de Leche
  • blonde, despite >2hr of cooking - water simmered but didn’t boil, might have been too cold to cook at full speed.
  • felt a bit cramped with only one can, making another just in case wouldn’t hurt.
• Pretzel Cheesecake (Flan)
  • embarrassingly scrambled eggs. this is because I put the eggs and cream in all together, rather than one at a time. no good excuse for this except feeling like I did not have enough dishes to hold all the components. did not matter the most since I spread everything out, but would have really destroyed the texture in an actual flan.
  • should have had more. my filling layers were not as large as in the marketing material.

Assembly was not perfect, but went well enough. I wound up using only one acetate collar. The circles of cake were a bit tight squeezing into the collar. I pressed down too hard on the middle cake layer and filling squeezed up the side of the collar - be gentle with assembly!

It was awkward to put in the liquid filling layers - both because my two fillings were limited in quantity, and because I didn’t have an adequately bent tool. I spent several minutes trying to stretch a thin layer of caramel over a thin layer of cheesecake. Make more of each, and use a tool with a handle as close to perpendicular as possible.

For three days, the kitchen smelled delicious. Every individual component was tasty. I had way more than enough frosting and pretzel crumb. I held some of the frosting back because I was worried about it being too sweet and overpowering the rest of the cake. I needn’t have worried - could have put on 1.5-2x as much and probably been fine.

Most importantly, the cake was delicious. My recipe contained significantly less sugar than the average Milk Bar cake (still very sweet, just not overpowering). I was pleasantly surprised to be able to find the flavor and texture of each individual element in the cake, even when scraping crumbs out of the bottom. It was only slightly difficult to slice.

The cake did sag after cutting it up. The chocolate cake was too solid relative to the other stuff, so I couldn’t have frozen it for easier slicing. The frosting melted, oozing down the sides. That said, it held together better than the worst case scenario, and remained reasonably presentable the whole time. The bottom layer being a crumbled mess did not matter that much, which was a worry. On a technical level, I might rate this cake a 6/10.

I took it to her office at lunch time. We sat in the break room, offering slices to all of her coworkers as they walked by. She texted her mother a picture - Mom said “it looked professional.”

The whole experience was more complex than I expected, and more manageable than I feared. It’s the sort of thing that would really benefit from me making it a second time, and since I’ve already ordered the tools it would almost be a waste not to…. We’ll see.