Daily Dose of English 134
Cake
Daily Dose of English 134
Intermediate
Hey everyone, my name is Ben and you're listening to a Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. I'm glad you could make it today. In this episode, we're going to be talking about cake. Why not? Who doesn't like cake, huh? Well, actually, it's easy not to like it, especially if it's bad cake, but I think most people generally like cake, and I do too. So cake is a very common dessert that has different, well, layers usually, and then frosting, and there's lots of different ways to make a cake. It's probably one of the most famous desserts in the US. It's because it's super duper common in a lot of events, like birthday parties, weddings, really in a lot of different things. It's not as common in things like Christmas or Halloween, but people might make cakes, I guess. There's no reason you can't. and they're relatively easy to make and they're quite delicious. And so why don't we talk about them? I've made a good amount of cakes in my day. I'm a bit of a baker, nothing professional or anything, just casual. But I do like to make a cake every now and then, especially for an event or a birthday party or something like that, because everybody likes to have a cake. And my favorite kind of cake is carrot cake. which is relatively common, at least in the US. But it's not necessarily people's favorite cake. A lot of people like things like red velvet or chocolate cake, things like that. But I've always really liked carrot cake. If you've never had carrot cake, it's a pretty simple cake that has carrots in it. It's got what I would call like a generic cake base with like cinnamon and stuff like that and regular like flour and stuff. And then you add in a bunch of shredded carrots. And the thing about like carrots and cake is that it might sound weird because you have a lot of this carrot flavor, but it really doesn't come through because the carrots get baked and they kind of lose that like really strong carrot-y flavor and it becomes a lot subtler. And the carrots get a bit sweeter. It is naturally without even the sugar. So they get a little bit naturally sweeter and it fits really, really well into the cake. And the thing about cake is that it needs a lot of volume. to be like nice, right? You don't want a really thin cake because it just, the thing that's nice about cake is that it's moist and you can have big bites of it. And so carrots provide that really, really well because you don't have to have a really thick, dense cake because you have all these carrots and there's water in the carrots which means that there's a lot more moisture and it makes a really nice base for a cake. And then on top of that, you add on cream cheese frosting. Sorry, you add cream cheese frosting, which is cream cheese plus sugar, basically. And you get a delicious frosting that also tastes a bit creamy, a bit cheesy, but not in the way that you might associate with a bagel or breakfast. It gets very sweet and has a lovely kind of cream flavor. If you've ever had something like tiramisu or what other cream-based desserts? Custard? Custard, yeah, that's dairy. Then you'll, no, is custard eggs and, yeah, eggs and milk, right? Whatever. But you'll know that sweet cream and sweet cheeses are actually really nice in desserts. Tiramisu is one of my favorite desserts as well. And that has a cream made with mascarpone, which is a type of Italian cheese that is specifically used in desserts. There's also like, oh, cannoli is also filled with sort of a creamy cheese and sweetened. And so sweet cheese is not a weird thing. It's really good actually. And so these carry cakes end up having cream cheese frosting, carrots in the cake, and they also have some cinnamon and some vanilla in there. You can put stuff on top. You can kind of go wild. Ginger is really good with them, but I love a good carrot cake, and I make a very good one. I have a pretty easy recipe that is delicious, and I love it. There's a lot of other cakes though. Something like a chocolate cake is also nice. I do not mind having a chocolate cake. It's very delicious. But the big thing to remember is to make it moist. I remember the last time I made chocolate cake, I actually made two cakes. I made a chocolate cake and a carrot cake, and I forgot to put hot water in the chocolate cake. There's a step where you put in hot water to really like loosen up the batter, which is like what the cake is made of, is the batter. And I forgot that step and the cake became really thick and dense. It was edible, it was still fine, but I didn't like it. It was not very good. It tasted okay, but the texture was just so thick and not good. Amazing, I don't know. And it was just not, I would call it a failure. Other people thought it was fine, but I'm a little pickier with it. And I put on a buttercream frosting. So instead of like cream cheese, it was with butter and sugar and some milk to make it a little bit looser and then chocolate as well. So very chocolatey cake. It had chocolate frosting, chocolate inside. I have something on my tongue. There we go. And yeah, when I make it, usually it's quite good, but don't forget the hot water. And Yeah, oh, the other cake that I mentioned is red velvet, which I actually don't know what is in it, but it's sort of similar to like a chocolatey cake, but it doesn't taste like chocolate necessarily. It's usually red on the inside with a white buttercream frosting. And the thing that I think sets it apart is that it's really light. So chocolate cake and carrot cake are usually a bit denser, right? So they're not supposed to be like super dense, but they do have like some body to them. You can have a bite, you can, eat the cake, but red velvet is supposed to be lighter and fluffier and be more delicate, almost. It's also pretty good, but I almost never make it because, I don't know, I just never do. I don't like it, it's fine, like it's a fine cake, but I just don't make it. I have no other explanation. The other thing that I wanted to mention is the other, so birthdays, can I speak please? So birthdays are the most common time to have a cake. Pretty much everybody's birthday has a cake. We call it birthday cake, yada yada, it's super common. And so in the US, the most common birthday cake is usually like somebody's favorite kind of cake or just like a generic yellow cake is what we might call it, which is essentially it's a vanilla cake with some kind of frosting and that's it. And it's called yellow cake because the inside is usually dyed to be a bit yellow, so it is yellow. I don't make it very often, but it's pretty good. It's not like it's bad or anything. It's just not spectacular and it's pretty average, but they're easy to make. They're pretty cheap. And then you put frosting on, you put some sprinkles or whatever, and then yay, birthday cake for the kids. But the other time that cakes are common is at weddings. Weddings almost always, at least in the US, big Christian weddings have a big, big cake. And the cake is almost always tiered. Tiered cakes have different layers that get smaller as they go up. So if you imagine like a cylinder at the bottom and then a smaller cylinder on top of that with a smaller cylinder on top of that with a smaller cylinder on top of that with then some kind of decoration. Wedding cakes are usually very fancy and extravagant and over the top because they're for like 40 or 50 people, they're for a big event and so they can get pretty fancy. It's also tradition for the bride and groom, the people that are getting married to take the first bite of cake together. And yeah, I also remember a very important cake, which is called ice cream cake. And these are also very good. Ice cream cakes are kind of what they say on the tin. It's like a cake with ice cream in the middle in some way that you eat and it's got ice cream in it and it's great. It's fantastic. They're harder to make. You can't, you can make them at home, but it's definitely harder. And the main thing that you need to do is to make sure that the cake is not going to just collapse onto the ice cream. And so some places might even do like fudge almost. Fudge is another dessert that's pretty thick and heavy. And as long as you can cut through the fudge and the ice cream at the same time, you get a pretty delicious dessert that is just full of sugar and usually chocolate and it can be really nice. I haven't had an ice cream cake in probably like 10 years. I do not remember the last time I had an ice cream cake, but they are good. But I have talked about cake now for 10 minutes and I'm gonna end it here because I'm starting to get a little hungry for cake, but I hope that you enjoyed. And I'm curious, let me know down in the comments, what kind of cake is popular in your country? Is there anything different from what I said? And especially what is your favorite kind of cake? But that's everything from me today. Thank you so much for being here. As always, I really appreciate you listening and maybe subscribing. And I'll see you again tomorrow for another episode. Have a good one. Bye.
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