28 Layer Chocolate Cake | Anything With Alvin

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This week on Anything with Alvin: A decadent, 28-layer chocolate cake for all your dessert-making needs – inspired by the famous 24-layer cake at Strip House.

Reference video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtKt8yv5Qro

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– [Announcer] It’s the strip house chocolate cake. – You can do it layer by layer to get our 24 layers chocolate cake. We put the first layer here, then we kind of put chocolate, chocolate custard. – [Announcer] It’s like a crescendo of chocolate and it happens over and over. – Another one.

And this one we have to put chocolate ganache on top. – [Announcer] Here you have 20 something layers of chocolate coming at you. – [Alvin] Hello there. Welcome back to another episode of “Anything with Alvin”, where I attempt to make something from a food video that I’ve been watching in my spare time.

Today I’ll be attempting the famous 24 layer chocolate cake from Strip House here in New York City, a well-established steakhouse in the city that has become very famous for this dessert specifically. This video is exciting to me for a couple of reasons. One, instead of a frosting, they seem

To be making a chocolate pastry cream or custard, which I think would taste a lot better. And two, I’m curious to see how all those layers would taste after you do them a lot thinner than a normal cake. And three, well, this just sounds like fun. Fortunately for us, the recipe

For this cake is actually quite available online. So that’s what we are gonna do. We’re gonna start by creaming seven sticks of butter with four pounds of sugar. Keep in mind that this is gonna be split into two batches ’cause our stand mixer can’t fit all of it at once.

Now the studio is quite cold today. So in order to make this butter cream properly, we’re gonna warm the bowl with our hands, using the power of friendship and community to make this cake happen. And fun fact, it’s actually working. Feels kind of like a butter spirit bomb of sorts.

Then we’re gonna beat in 14 eggs at room temperature, one egg at a time, so that doesn’t get all too chunky in there. Now we’re gonna get our dry ingredients sorted. We’re gonna combine three quarters of a pound of cocoa powder, two and one-eighth pound of cake flour, quarter cup of salt.

Yes, trust me. Two tablespoons of baking soda, three quarters of teaspoon of baking powder, and just whisk it all together until all of our dry ingredients are mixed. Then we’re gonna handle our liquid ingredients. Two and one-third cups of coffee, two and one-third cups of milk,

And one quarter of a cup of vanilla extract. Somehow I can never make these things without spilling a little bit, so there’s our spill for the day. Basically making a vanilla latte as liquids for this cake, which I think is pretty awesome. Then we’re gonna alternate adding our dry ingredients

And our wet ingredients roughly one third at a time just to make sure that everything kind of gets a chance to incorporate and nothing gets too either wet or too sticky. We’re gonna go ahead and finish adding our dry and wet ingredients until our batter is looking pretty good.

Now we’re gonna do this all over again to make a second batch of cake batter ’cause they couldn’t all fit in the same one. Then in two 11 inch spring form pans, which have been lined with a sheet of parchment on the bottom, we’re going to evenly divide up our batter until

That they’re the same height across all three of them. Then these cakes go into the oven at 325 degrees for about 50 minutes to an hour. Now I’m a big fan of cakes that don’t actually use frosting. So for this cake we’re gonna be making a chocolate custard.

We’re first gonna crack and separate three whole eggs and five egg yolks into one bowl and whisk that together until homogenous. Then we’re gonna bring three cups of whole milk and six cups of heavy cream to a scald. Once you see wisps of steam starting

To emerge from the surface of the white liquid, we’re going to slowly ladle one cup of this into the eggs and whisk continuously, sort of tempering the eggs until we add about three ladle fulls. Once the eggs have been tempered properly, we’re gonna add this mixture back into the pot

And bring this back up to a slow simmer. Then we’re gonna add in a mix of three quarter cups of flour and two cups of sugar whisking the whole time. Then we’re gonna add in a mixture of one cup of corns starch with one cup of cold milk as sort

Of a corn starch milk slurry, which is gonna be one of our thickening agents and whisk that in, stirring continuously as well. Once this has started to thicken, I’m gonna retake this off of the heat and add in one pound of bittersweet chocolate. This is Valrhona chocolate, probably my favorite brand

Because of its shape and its flavor and its quality. I’m using 60% cacao content chocolate here, pretty good balance. We’re also gonna whisk in two tablespoons of vanilla extract as well. Once this is all whisked in, it seems to me that this is still a little thick, so we’re gonna loosen this up,

Adding in one more cup of milk and one more cup of cream. After tasting it, I realized there should be a little bit more sugar, so we’re going to go ahead and add one quarter cups of sugar additional. Now this is looking pretty good, but there’s probably a couple lumps

From all that starch in there. So with Rachel’s help, we’re gonna go ahead and strain this through a fine mesh sieve, whisking the whole time, making sure that our end result custard comes out silky and smooth. Now, as the person who is making the custard, it is your right and your right only

To have the first taste of the whisk after it comes out. This little snack is completely entitled to you or whoever you would want bestow this gift upon. Now that our custard is good, we’re gonna wrap that and set that in the fridge until we’re ready to use it.

Our cake slices have finished baking. This is what they look like, pretty nice and even and flat. Because we bake them at a lower temperature, we’re gonna allow them to cool completely before we cut into it, which means resting them for a whole day for us.

It is now day two chocolate cake making. We’re gonna take these cakes and attempt to get these into super, super, super thin layers. Now in the video, the chef handling the cake is clearly skilled and has done this many times. He’s able to get the cake into almost half a centimeter

Thickness, which is really insane if you think about how hard it is to level the cake. At this point, Andrew also came downstairs to give us a great idea about how to level the cakes in this fashion. He said that if you started

To level the cakes from the bottom instead of the top, by stacking them on something and putting them on a sheet tray, you should be able to get the same thickness every time by using the edges of the sheet tray as a guide for your knife. Although this seems perfect in practice,

This is actually a little bit harder than I thought because the cakes are cold from refrigerating it from the day before. Nevertheless, I will chug through all of these layers and attempt to get them as leveled as possible, and I will say using that cake board technique

To slide under the cake to lift off that thin layer is a great, great technique. when making these. They must have some really skilled, skilled pastry chefs who would make this cake every single day. They probably make this cake many times per day,

So I can’t even imagine and think about all the labor and the skill required to make this. Not all my layers are perfect either. I’m getting a lot of holes, a lot of unevenness, having to patch it up with this nice cake, which is actually nice because this cake is so dense

And gooey that you can kind of use it as a glue patchwork situation for any holes that might arise. Out of the three cakes we baked, I was only actually able to get 10 layers of cake, not the 12 that we needed to make this 24 layer cake.

So I asked Rachel to help me make one additional cake for layering off to the side. Thank you, Rachel. All the remaining scrapped are gathered in a bowl for a future use, which we’re gonna show very soon, and by very soon, I mean right now. So we’re gonna take all the trimmings

That we got off the layering process, and after snacking ’em quite a bit and exclaiming how super good it is, we’re gonna go ahead and crumble them evenly onto a sheet tray lined with parchment paper. Once these are small in size, we’re gonna put them into an oven at 350 degrees convection

For about 30 minutes or so, tossing them every once in a while to make sure that they cook and dry out evenly. While our cake crumbs are getting crispy in the oven, we’re gonna go ahead and assemble the cake. Now, in the video, they seem to assemble the cake in two different deep

Pans and then stack them together, so that’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna line the side of each 11 inch spring form pan with a strip of cake acetate, which is going to help the cake keep its shape and smooth texture on the outside.

We’re gonna start each one with one layer of cake, followed by a healthy helping of the chocolate custard spreading to make sure that it is even all the way through. We’re gonna try to be as even as possible with these, rotating it to make sure that it’s as level

And as smooth as possible. We repeat this process with as many cake layers as we have filling up each spring form as high as we can go until we have no more cake and no more custard leftover. Rachel’s extra cake that she had baked had to help lend us another four layers.

So we actually have a total of 14 cake layers and 14 layers of custard. So yeah, that’s 28. But hey, here at the BCU we strive for greatness and overachieving is just the right amount. These cakes are gonna go into the freezer

For a quick chill while we work on our finished cake crumbs. These crumbs have been cooled for about 30 minutes or so until they’ve gone to room temperature. We’re simply just gonna put them in a food processor until fine. These are just really nice cake crunchies and surprisingly crispy.

I have once second spilled all over the counter as usual. I’d like to say that those are just an excuse for me to have my snacks. Oh no. Once the cake crumbs have been pulverized into small bits, I’m gonna put them in a bowl and set them aside for later use.

Now, Strip House also tops off their cake with a really beautiful layer of ganache as a finisher, so that’s what we’re gonna do. In a bowl we have 12 ounces of Valrhona chocolate, 85% this time because I like my ganaches quite bitter, and one and a half cups of heavy cream,

Which has been brought to a scald. We’re gonna give this little shake to get rid of any air bubbles and cover this with a cake board to let the chocolate slowly warm to temperature. I realized that the heat from the cream was not enough and the studio was kind of cold that day.

So I’m gonna put this steel mixing bowl directly over a low flame and carefully stir it until it has come together and is become glossy and silky smooth. This ganache is going to get poured directly on top of one of our cake stacks, the one that’s going to be the top layer.

Spread out and tilted until evenly spread across the top. Any leftover ganache is going to go straight to either your mouth or someone else that you really care about. Like to also give this a pretty hard tap on the table a couple times to release any air bubbles

That have risen to the surface. Then we’re gonna return this cake and the other cake into the freezer overnight. It is now day three of making this chocolate cake. We’re gonna go ahead and take these frozen cakes out of the freezer. I’m gonna use remaining chocolate custard as sort of a glue

Between the two stacks, sparing it out evenly to make sure that the cake stack that goes on top has something sticky to stick to. Now, we’re gonna take off through spring form harnesses and unwrap their acetate. After admiring how the acetate peels off so smoothly and all the layers we have,

The cake with the ganache goes directly on top of the cake on the bottom, making sure that all sides are level and have easily aligned. Gonna hit the top with a little bit of a trim that any edges of the ganache that stick out are trimmed off and go directly into my belly.

On a cake stand, I’m gonna work quickly to fill in the remaining holes with the chocolate custard that we have left. Once all the outsides have been covered, I’m going to take those cake crumbs that we made earlier and add a nice sort of coating to the edge of the cake.

Some of the custard has start to freeze up, so I’m gonna take a blowtorch and lightly heat it up until it has become a little bit more sticky so that the cake crumbs have somewhere to adhere to. After rotating and generously coating the edges

Of this cake, we’re gonna let this cake just sit out for about an hour or two just so that the inside can come up to room temperature. It is very cold right now, and I’m guessing it’s gonna be pretty difficult to cut. Once it feels a little bit better, we’re gonna go ahead

And take a knife, dip it in some hot water to make sure that it is hot and lubricated and attempt our first slice down these 24 layers of cake. The cake is still quite cold in the middle, which makes it extremely difficult to cut through. Here’s Steve also attempting to cut through it.

He is about twice as strong as I am, so the fact that he can’t do it means well, we gotta wait a little bit more. After reheating and making our wake through our first slice of the cake, I thought to myself, “Hey, clearly the knife is getting really cold while we’re cutting.

How about we blowtorch it and get the metal screaming hot so that it can just sort of cut through the second slice like butter?” And great idea. So here I am about torching this knife until it is screaming hot and oh yeah, it kind of sizzled while it cut through.

I didn’t really think about that part. Don’t worry. It’s not burnt and still is very cold in the middle, which made it a lot more difficult to cut through. After we have made two cuts, it is now time for the big reveal. Here we go slowly. I like how this looks.

I like it very much. Now that is a slice of chocolate cake. Let’s go ahead and cut another slice. For whatever reason, when you cut the second slice, it’s a lot easier than cutting the first one. Wonder why? We’re gonna take a second

To admire the cross section and the layers of this cake. Even though I don’t really work with cakes in this capacity, I’m pretty pleased with how this turned out. The tray technique with the leveling really made a huge difference in the way that we made our layers, but there it is.

I present to you our version of the famous 24 layer chocolate cake from Strip House, this time with four extra layers with a total of 28. A towering slice of chocolate decadence that you would be pleased to receive at any meal, any time, any day of the year.

And the big question is, well, how does it taste? Here we go, let’s go for a nice fork shot that goes all the way through each and every 28 layers. Oh, I like this cake. The texture is quite wonderful. A lot of the chocolate custard absorbed into the really nice

Dense cake itself, so it’s more of a like a sticky, chocolate gooey pudding. The salt that we added definitely makes this taste extra awesome. Here’s a nice little cross section of all the layers cut from the top. And yeah, we all took a huge huge slice home that day,

Which means we’re gonna be eating this through the new year. Maybe we should go for a hundred layers next time. I mentioned before that this cake comes from a restaurant in the city called Strip House, and well, Andrew, Steve and I all decided to go take a trip

And see the cake for itself. We went in, got some steak, and ultimately ordered the 24 layer chocolate cake, which our server made sure to mention was 24 layers of indulgence. And when it came out, it looked very similar to the one that we had made, which was a really promising sign.

The color was slightly different, a little bit darker, and the server mentioned that they did make them offsite in bulk because they do tend to also ship them in whole, in case you wanted an entire cake for yourself, which seems pretty cool, and we were super excited

And curious in how it stacked up compares to the version that we made as this is the OG. The cake had a lot lighter crumb than ours. Ours was a little bit more dense and gooey where I think theirs was a little bit more airy and crumbly.

The crumbs on the side were also not as crunchy as the ones that we had done, but that’s probably because they make so many of these cakes that need to be held in refrigerators. I personally preferred the one that we made because it was a lot more gooey and moist in texture,

And I tend to like chocolate cakes that are more on that side rather than on the lighter and crumbly side. Nevertheless, it was still good chocolate cake, although I do look forward to eating the one that I have at home that we made. – [Babish] Thanks again to Squarespace for sponsoring today’s episode.

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