Cake: So Great. So, So Great

quite a while ago. I don't remember exactly where you landed on that. I'm surprised you can only think of one 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 hit like the birthday party Jackpot where they'll have like cake am pie and you're like, looks like I'm in heaven. But today, today, Chuck, we're

not talking about pie. Although we can't 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. Yeah, surprise, Boston, sorry to ruin your day. They're probably the ones that are like that are saying that. Oh yeah, probably maybe, I don't know. The article on it was written in a thick Boston accent. 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. Um. I mean we both worked off of the house Stuff Works article. But I also found a lot of good stuff on a site called What's Cooking America? Did you run across them? They are good man. They they have, you know, clearly their niches cooking, baking, all things like ulinary. But they're They've got some really well researched articles on their site about like the history of cakes and things like that. Yeah, that's good stuff.

Kudos to you, remember kudos. They're gran Oli bar. Those are great. Oh yeah, are those not around anymore? No? No, no, those are gone. And then r I p also Bonkers candy, So kudo went the way of the Dodo M. 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's 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, we don't need that in here. There's like three or four people who are like walking around toothless now, just rotten right out of their heads. Well and also not you.

My toothlessness is for different reasons. Here's this from a Christini. Uh. And I've also noticed that there's this weird mix in our office now because they try to get super healthy. Yeah, so there will be like Swiss 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. Seeweed uh, seaweed strips. Oh yeah, yeah, I know, I know what

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

I don't, 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 get like ten rappers laying around your desk thinking like what have I done? I know it's post Halloween stuff too, 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 from me. Well, and at my house at Halloween, we gave away two things. We gave away whole slices of pound cake and just pigs. That's the worst house in the block. Did you? Uh you have a a pound cake fan? Um? 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, like, clark me a pound cake. I would never ask one 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, it's good, sugary and dent 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. Um. 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? Cheese? I'm gonna toss it up between a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. That's Bill Clinton's favorite. Well, you know, as Bill goes so it goes chuck, which is not true? Um that the carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, or um, I like a red velvet cake. Really? Yeah? Well that's the

cream or cream cheese frosting. Yeah. Yeah. Emily's favorite of all time, hands down is the Waldorf Story of Red Velvet cake, which is red velvet cake with a frosting that is basically only like shortening, vanilla and sugar. Oh that sounds nice. It's not a cream cheese thing. What's what's your favorite favorite of all time? Well, everybody knows that cake perfection was achieved sometime in the twentieth century when Public's grocery stores started selling their yellow cake with

butter cream frosting. There's no better cake on the planets like a yellow sheet cake. It's simple, but it's tasty. It doesn't need any dress enough, but if it does, we'll just put like some add some more frosting in the shape of balloons on top. It's just it's just perfection. It's a 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 anyway that it was given to me. Uh. I'm a big frosting and icing guy too, So a corner piece of sheet cake is pretty much heaven. Yeah, that's that is the tops. What what is you me's favorite cake? You mean's is actually the same as mine. We both are junkies for Public's cake, to tell the truth, although I have to say she introduced me to the wonder of um Japanese cakes. And there's this little known fact about Japan.

It loves to take I shouldn't say it's a little I'm probably a lot of people know this, but it loves to take things that other cultures came up with and then improve them ten percent. And one of the things that they've done that with is the French bakery. So if you go to Japan, you'll see all these cute, little kind of um Provence style French bakeries everywhere. That's still the best baked goods you've ever had in your life. Right, yes,

oh by far, by far. That's very controversial, it is, but I'm telling you you would you would just be like, Josh's right, this is better. I'm not kidding. They've they've improved on it, and they're all they're they're very deferential still, they're like, oh, well, this is this is crap compared to the 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 notches. This um what they call cheesecake. It is not what you or I will call cheesecake at all. Um, 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 um, 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 Umi would say is one of

her favorites. And just a little shout out, there's a place in Toronto. Uh, next time we're there, I'm going to take you there. Actually, that's not true. I brought you a cake from there from Uncle Tetsus Cheesecake Bakery. 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, I'll just slide that over to your desk. Then. Yes,

I don't even like German chocolate cake. Really, I love German chocolate al 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 does. That's what it is that I don't like. I like sort of a tradish butter creamy or just good old fashioned birthday cake icing

type thing. Yeah, and and surely you agree. Public is the pinnacle of that. I don't know if I've ever had a public's cake. I go to public 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 as 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 up by the slice, chuck, Like I can't bring a whole cake in my house.

Be sure you look closely, because they have. Yeah, it would be they They sell also the same kind with like a cream cheese frosting. You want yellow cake with buttercream frosting, 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 let's at least give out like three facts first. Okay, well, I think we just give 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 is an old Norse word, uh coca, which is kind of funny because here I don't know where it came from, but you're in America. Coca can mean do do yeah. But k a k a is where the original word supposedly came from. Right, Um, And a lot of English words have like Germanic or Norse origin. Did you you know that? Yeah? So cake, the word cake is is

of English origins. So's bread And apparently the um bread and the cakes from back in the day, say, during the medieval era. Um, 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 had a little honey to it, but it's not like what we think of his cake today. But that's not where the first cake's originated. They actually go way, way, way further

back than that, right, Is that true? Yeah, it's true. Uh, that may be a little too far back, Yeah, I think so so. But basically around the time, um, I believe Egypt, the Faronic Egypt, they were making cakes using hot stones and honey and some sort of grain mashed up. 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 if someone knows, though, and I bet you there's like one of the best things the world, it's 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, um, a lot of the cakes you see around the world that you would mistake for you know, customary or traditional cakes for that culture, they're actually relatively new that the cake that we know and love and understand is is very much a nineteenth 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 fifteenth 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 at tradition. But um, and I think they even put candles on top. Well, none of the Greeks put candles on top, but it

wasn't like happy birthday cake. It was more like, hey, this cake is round like the moon, and we're gonna put candles on it to make them glow. And they're probably huge candles now they 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, so they were like, look, Artemus, what do you think of this cake? She'd be like, it needs some frosting,

that's right. And then the Germans and the four hundred started doing birthday cakes, and then the seventeen hundreds 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 it's eventually and but um there. So by the time people were making birthday cakes in Germany, there was a long, long, long tradition of cakes already, um, And the word cake had started to originate in medieval Britain. But um, there was such a thing as a cheesecake already. The Romans created that and called it placenta. Yeah, Greeks had created something that was basically a prototype of the fruit cake, plock plock house. I believe they called it

feces right. Um. So there were all these kind of cakes and breads and things that we're starting to to be developed. And I think even that that pound cake that you're not so hip on, um came before the Industrial Revolution too. So there's stuff that you would kind of recognize as cakes. But the idea of a cake what Americans call it cake and no one loves a cake, that came out of the Industrial Revolution. The show sponsored by Cake Cake Eat Them Today, Alright, so let's take

a break. We definitely gave way more than three fags. Yeah, we have earned our keep. Then we're going to come back and talk about a little chemistry right after this. All right, so we're back, and uh, 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 waldor Story of Cake, and it was okay.

It wasn't pretty, though, what do you mean like it like it was lopsided or there's an 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 bet it was made with a lot of love too, Oh of course. Um. But my deal is is I'm not a great baker because baking requires you to be very precise with your green dance, 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 that in there, and there's a much you cann't do that with. No, there's much more forgiveness in general cooking than baking. Yeah, cookings and art baking is a science for sure. Yeah, that's what they say, right, Yeah, well that's what I say to you. Know, you didn't make that up, right, I

think I did. Okay, So, uh, with a with a cake, right, what you're doing is producing a chemical reaction, and I knew that, but I had no idea um on this granular level that this article gets into, just how much of a chemical reaction baking a cake is the understanding of it too to me. So you want to start with a levening agent, right, that's right. That's how you get from batter which is kind of flattened, soupy and wet, to a nice tall cake. The reason it rises is

because of a levening agent. And way way way back in the day, they used to use yeast. They use yeast for everything. They would make some beer, they would make a cake, they make some bread, um, they would throw it into the eyes of their enemy. They would in a fight, the dirty fight um. And then eventually, uh, yeast kind of fell to the wayside a little bit as they realized that there's other ways, um, two 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, um, what you're doing. You're not just breaking the eggs down into their their kind of components are like a mishmash of all of their components. You're also introducing air into that mix, which will eventually, as will see, transfers into the cake to make it rise. Yeah.

And like when you're 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, like, I don't have a sifter, so I'll just throw the flour in here, like your cake is screwed it, yeah, because it's not just like that makes a flour pretty Yeah. The sifting flour introduces air into the whole mix too. Yeah, this is all very important stuff. So you can't. 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. But if you're just an ordinary, uh non professional baker at home, just follow the recipe and do what they say. Yeah, because you couldn't say, well, I'm going to substitute um this flour for a bunch of salt, like not only would it would it tastes radically different, like you're affecting the chemical

composition of the mixture. True, unless you're making a traditional south toward of salt cake, right, which you can also use on those snowy days to clear the road. That's right. So you've got yeast as a living levening 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. Holy gal. So you can imagine that everybody was pretty psyched when chemical levening

agents were introduced in the mid nineteenth century. So that was an old recipe, yes, yeah, And so in other words, you couldn't just put the mixer on with your eggs and leave and go get on social media. No, this was with your arm, 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. 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. Um, that sodium bicarbonate, that base and the acid are gonna mix together and form a chemical reaction and release CEO two. And this is how modern cakes rise.

C O two 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 levining agents do, is they take air and they expand it and make it the cake. Yeah, Like when you slice a piece of cake. Um, not not so much pound cake because it's way more dense or other non flowered cakes, but your standard birthday cake. You slice it up and you see those it's you know those pockets, those holes that

you know, those are air holes. Those were where the bubbles were. And we'll we'll we'll get to that a little more. But it's that's very important stuff. That's a that's a famous chef's apron. Baker's apron asked me about my air holes. Um, fat source very important. Uh. Fats improve the texture of a cake, allow it to be moist, flavorful, because we all know if that tastes great. Uh. 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 and I say that for all foods. I went on a butter uh uh, not a kick, No, no, no, I am on a butter kick. I went on a butter a boycott of sorts for a while. Uh, like real butter. But now I'm back on butter. Oh yeah, yeah, I know what you mean. I tend to think butter is healthier of all of them too. Um, although olive oil has it beat. It's just such a radically different taste,

especially when you're baking with it. Although I have you ever had an olive oil cake? I don't think so. I don't remember where I had it. But man, they are good, yes, surprisingly good. But it is definitely it's a distinct thing, you know what I'm saying, Like subbing olive oil out for butter is gonna give you a weirdo recipe no one's going to like. But they might pretend they do if they like you, but they don't

really like that. Uh. And all these fats sources they can be used sometimes together um or swapped out for butter. But but again, you gotta know what you're doing. You can't just say, well, I'm not gonna use butter. I'm gonna just use the same amount of cooking oil as melted butter. Right, And then one of the reasons why he's swapping something out for butter in particular too, I mean, butter gives it its richness, it's it's it helps improve

it's moisteness and texture. Right, butter is great. But butter also has a tendency to um 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 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 that recipe. So if you come across the recipe that calls for butter that

must be creamed. There's something else going on besides just getting a buttery taste out your cake. That's right. Sweetener. I was about to say sugar instead of sweetener might as well, though, but let's be honest. You can use honey and stuff, you can use agabe artificial sweetener, but sugar is the best thing to use in my opinion. It bonds best to water molecules. It's really gonna help. That will 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 could 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 stub it out for something else, you can have an impact on that chemical reaction because it does

all those things you're talking about. Like one of the things that does is that the crystalline structure of sugar actually cuts through the batter to help release c O two more easily. And like you said, it binds to water, which means it does two things that locks it in

so that it keeps moist you're in. But it also sugar also robs that water from some of the proteins and the starches that give the cake its structure, um, which means that they're not going to be able to become tough and dense like you were saying, because sugars already grabbed onto that water molecule, and sugar in particular, you're not gonna get the same thing with like stevia or honey, Like, it's not going to have the same effect. It's 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 uh. 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, uh in certain ways, but it's still to me. You know, white sugar do it right? Um. And then they sugar also gives it that nice golden brown color through the mayard reaction that in the eggs for sure. Yeah, well

we're at eggs. Sugar and eggs are big. Yeah, especially they're ostrich eggs, eggs. I know, eggs have proteins in them, right, and there's a couple of things in there. Um, those proteins help give structure to the cake. I believe, yes, absolutely, the most fires in the yolk. They help. It's also kind of serves as a binding agent. There are a lot of things, including flour that helped bind things together, but those eggs and those yolks very much do because

there are certain things in cake. Sometimes it don't want to mix the water, yeah, and the egg comes together and says, well, you know, can we all just kind of stick together here? Literally? Yes, that wasn't meant to be Upunhi meant that. And I think the two big emostifiers are actually in the egg yolk. Um, cholesterol and less a thin are found in egg yolk, and they're like, hey, everybody,

come on, let's let's hang out. That's right. And there's also fats and egg and we also we already mentioned that fats are are some 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 the idea of people figuring all this out through millennia of little contributions here there. It's just it's just a blessing on humanity. It is.

It's a really neat accomplishment that everyone had came together to figure this out over the span of time and wonderful kitchens on cold winter days that we're like, you know, you've got like a nice cake baking in the oven, and 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, sure to get where we are today, a lot of unhappy families

and a lot of unpleasant conversations about those cakes. But still in a bed in the olden days when times are a little tougher, they probably still ate those cakes. Oh yeah, I would guess. So, you know, you probably just toss it out to the mules. No, you gave them the sailors who are glad to have them. All right. That brings us to flour, very very important ingredient in most baked goods, and flour is what is going to really be the binding agent it's really good. It's gonna

hold everything together, give it its structure. Yeah, a lot of structure and strength. And uh, this is when when you mix these proteins with water, it's gonna form gluten and 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 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 um. Well the cheesecake is gluten free, So that's I mean, you know, your standard substitute flour. Uh, they've they've just gotten a lot better, I think. Ye. So in a standard glutenous cake, um that that gluten from the um from the flour mixing with the water forms of gel and it gives it that structure, It gives it that um consistency, the texture that you're looking for. But again, the sugar is robbing the the um, the

proteins and the starches from getting too much water. Because the more water it gets, the more um, the tougher the cake is going to be. The more gluten, so you actually want to make sure that your sugar is taking away some of the liquids. But also the type of flour you use UM has a lot to do

with how tough your cake is gonna turn out. So like, there is such a thing as cake flour that's something like seven percent seven and a half percent protein, which is going to translate into less gluten when you mix it with water, right, so it's gonna be a lighter, fluffy your cake. Um. And then there's all purpose flowers

ten and a half percent bread flowers. 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 um 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 gonna help keep things moist, they hydrate those 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 in the oven, which we're gonna get through here in a sec uh, that creates a steam like that liquid cooks out and vaporizes, so that steam expands the air cells and that volume, and uh, it really lends itself to the light, airy structure and texture that you're gonna get. Yeah, it blows up the CEO two bubbles in it even further, which

helps make the cake rise. Plus it also chuck fosters that chemical reaction between the acids in the bases that act as leavening agents that release CEO two in the first place. The presence of liquids in the presence or water specific I think in heat really make that CEO to 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, ancient Egypt. All right, so let's say we're not in

ancient Egypt. Um, let's say we're in in in regular North America and Europe. In the eighteenth 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 eighteenth century they were in every household either, but they tried to become a lot more prevalent around that time. That was a big first step

towards people baking at home. Um, not his cakes, but anything you know in cake history. That was a huge monumental moment when enclosed of and became kind of ubiquitous among the households for sure, because what you get there is um consistency. You get a consistent even temperature, and of course that just got better and better over the

years with advances and ove in technology. Uh 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've got any more of them terrible cakes you made, sailors? Yeah, that's who you give the terrible cakes to us, sailors? Sure,

all right. Um, So with the oven in particular, I didn't realize this, but you know how the the liquid and the heat and the sodium bicarbonate and the acids are mixing together to make the cake rise. 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. Um, And if you mess with the oven, meaning like you open and close the door too often, or you slam it shut too hard, you're gonna the change in temperature on the one hand, can cool those gases and make your cake fall, and it makes you want want sound

as it does, as everyone knows. And then um, the air pressure from slamming the door can burst those c O two bubbles and again you're 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, um, once the 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, basically, like do do this right? Jerk or I might just take a nap here in the in the middle of the in the middle of the cake. Maybe he'll burn.

Maybe I'll stick up your whole house. But like you said about opening the door, like, ideally you know the temperature 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 at least wait till the end. And if you have, 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 peak that way. Sure those are kind of out of fashion, right 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 rubbing? Sure? Of course? What am I a communist? Do you yes? With a light? Man? What do you have just a stainless steel door that's a dishwash shirt? 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'm 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 know. You need to replace the light bulb. Yeah,

but an he wants a bottom of that. For all. You can go to like any any big box hardware store, hardware store off the internet. I don't replace light bulbs at my house. A matter of fact, I think they probably sell them at the grocery store. Even you go find yourself some golf wax, and you're probably near the refrigerator oven light bulbs, alright. The heat of the oven is very important. So depending on how good your oven is, it maybe a little off, maybe a little hotter or cooler.

So you might want to you purchase an oven thermometer just to give it a double check. Because baking a science, and when you think that that cake is done, take a little peek 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 woulden 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. Uh, 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's it always tastes like disappointment, you know what I mean, because you all 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. So even though you do get to lick it, that's like the one plus side of that that experience. I think that's true. Uh. 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 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 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 can I think I can hang with you guys. Yeah, I'm alive.

Ten or fifteen minutes later, get out that wire rack, flip it over and ideally it comes out all in one nice thing. And the other good thing about letting it cool in the pan first two is when you cool it on the wire rack, it won't get those wire indent indentations in the cake because it is stable enough. I never thought about that. Nobody likes us. Sure you can fill it in with a little extra frousting. Actually, now I think about that's great. Those those invitations are

just fine. The frosting grooves. In other words, yeah, should we take a break, Yes, all right, we're gonna talk, um, well, just about other Kiki stuff. Right after this. Okay, Chuck, you remember I was talking about baking soda and how that changed everything. That was a big one that was from the forties. Baking soda sodium bicarbonate. UM, just good

old fashioned, regular old baking soda. Sorry to be added to it, but at the time you needed to, um also add another ingredient that was an acid, so that the two would react and form C O two or produce C O two. Right, somebody about twenty years after baking soda was developed said, oh, I got this, Um, 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. Um, 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 CO two in there.

That was a huge, huge advancement for cakes, but it actually came, um, kind of towards the end of cake advancements prior to that. Um, just the 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 you know, leave that baking soda in your fridge to soak up the stink. Sure, that's all that's good for. Well that now you can use

a baking soda for a lot of stuff. Yeah. It also gets stink out of like clothes too. Oh yeah, um, you can use it to uh well that's it. You know, like school science projects. You want to make a volcano. Yeah, vinegar and baking soda and tried with your parents help. Yeah. Uh. Pre packaged cake mix was a very big deal when it came out in the nineteen thirties. But it was it was a company named p. Duff and Sons. And they said, here, we got a problem here, we got

too much molasses on our hands. So and then 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, the little weie flour in there with this molasses, little shortening. Some spy says, we got a gingerbread mix that we can sell to the public. All you gotta do is add water, dumb, dumb, and you

can bake yourself some gingerbread cookies. Yeah. And the public went hooray because remember they had um ovens now in their houses, um, and they had this. The idea that you could just get a mix from the store and just add water was huge. It was a huge change. And what's interesting is this this whole like p. Duffin Son's story there 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 uh several myths actually, some some like longstanding food myths. One of them is that UM cake mix came out of a surplus of flour in from World War Two. That's where the cake mix came from. Yeah, I mean cake. Pre made cake mixes did get way more popular after World Wars. 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 that you could make pretty easily in your kitchen. Um. But then the other one, I'd love this one. There's this longstanding myth or this story about a guy named Ernest Dichter who back in the nineteen fifties, Ernest dictor, he was a psychologist. I believe he came up with the term focus group. He came up with the whole idea of focus groups, um, 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. Um, this guy came up with that whole idea of focus groups. Right. So he's also credited with being the man who saved cake mixes because cake mixes came out, everybody kind of loved him, 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, but 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. Talked about the patriarchal brainwashing. Right, So dickter Um 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. Uh. 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 get started up the myth.

I'm not sure either. 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, Um, 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 Dickter is actually rightfully credited with saving the cake mix market UM through a focus group, and he did find that, UM, women were kind of not they didn't feel guilty about it about you know, not contributing more to the cake mix. They think they were more bored by it. So he advised companies to um figure out a way to make cake baking about way more than just baking the cake.

And so companies decided that um, 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 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. UM. And that was fostered by the introduction of frosting, and that came from Ernest Dictor 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 want to contest because that is out there. But yeah, I mean as far as the home the home cake baker goes like she she couldn't go on one of these uh shows now where they make like the British Bake offf like giant submarines and stuff how to fond it. But um 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 to Atlanta Falcons cake, and lo and behold, I would get my Atlanta Falcons cake. That awesome, very cool stuff, you know. Um. I had an older sister who she died actually when I was sixteen, uh, in a car accident. But she um used to be the equivalent of your mom at making cakes. 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. Um. We were all big time into Howard Jones. So it must have been seen it, but yeah, it must have been like my ninth or tenth birthday. My whole like, both my sisters and me were totally into Howard Jones. And Karen, my sister, my

oldest sister, made a Howard Jones keyboard cake. And it was a couple of cheat cakes put together frosted so it looked like one big thing that like the black keys were kick cats, like the the knobs on the synthesizer were rollos, And I was 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 couldn't have any but me. No, I shared, of course I wanted to everyone did partake in the bounty?

Was it a key tar or a keyboard? It was a keyboard, okay, yeah, you never know. Strap a yeah, trap a guitar strap on it. You might could have held it. I would not have put it past her to make it a key tar. Man. That is very sweet story. Yeah, literally and figuratively. Thank you. Hojo fans Huh, Yes, isn't that his nickname? I don't think so. Did I make that up? Yeah? I think that's the hotel chain. I think you're totally right. Um, all right, Well another

tip here for baking a cake. If you were looking at recipes and it says use this kind of pan, and you think, wow, 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. Uh, It's it makes a big difference, like 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 cars reduction and temperature, so you want to knock

that heat down. 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 this 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. Yeah. Everything else is fine. I don't know about that, but those are the two leading ways

that we will miss your life up. Um. 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 you 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 it's really tough at first to get it going, but just hang in there because that butter will start to break apart mixing it with that sugar, and you you've got a nice, a nice creamed um mix of ingredients starter mix of ingredients on your hand there, right, But you don't skimp on that that that first step. No, and that's like that. I think the creaming method, um, that's that's that's the one that best gets across this point that this is like, this is there. It's a

chemical reaction. I know we've kind of been beating that horse, but it's really true. Like if you 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 making a cake. That's true, but do you want your cake to 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 right to say just throw it all in there, right, Yep, it makes a difference. And uh it says that pound cakes are like a variation on the theme. I looked in the pound cakes. Man. Do you know so that the idea that pound cakes called for a pound of each ingredient. That's actually true. Yeah,

I know. 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 seventeen hundreds, um, couldn't read, so it was just an easy way to remember the recipe. Interesting, yeah, all right, I'll buy that

they'd be like what's the tips? And also pound cakes to the reason, um, why you're not going to find a pound cake with a big butter cream frosting is because that will that will send you into sugar shock in a second pound cake is already really dense and sugary. Like that's why you just have it like a little glaze on top. I do like that glaze. Actually, I'll eat a pound cake. I think that glazes. What's it

called something icing? Imperializing? Oh, I don't know, I can't remember. Okay, So the next one is the not the no aeration method to where you're not really you're not whipping anything up. Um. Yeah, you probably don't even have flour in this in this this is probably a flower less cake, right, So this, this is the kind of thing that you use to um make like a cheesecake or a flowerless chocolate cake. Yeah,

this can be very good. Sure, um. 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 you use a water bath. That was news to me. Made a cheesecake, yeah,

they can be quite good. Oh. I love cheesecake. I don't think I've ever had any bad cheesecake. That's always good. That's another thing too. Um Public cheesecake is incredible and they need to sponsor us, and they sell it by the double slice for those like you get two slices and they have a key lime one to chuck. That's just man. Although if you don't like lemon stuff. You might not like that. Oh no, I love key lime in Okay, try their key lime cheesecake. Yeah, they really

should send us some stuff. Frankly, at uh Al 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 an ate one of them with my friends that week, and I bought two to go home with. Did they make it home? Huh? Did they make it all the way home? No? Yeah, I stopped in, 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 good key lime pie. And finally, with a non aeration method, you are you are not doing the 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 and making, just just look it up on the YouTube for a

proper folding technique. Generally done with a like a rubber spatula. Um, there's a foaming method to where you are basically using just egg whites usually and you're aerating it by whipping them up, which makes a merangue. You can just stop there and incorporate sugar and you've got marangue, 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 um 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 merangue, and Pavlova cake is like a marangue cake with um like fruit in the middle of it. Um and then uh and then um. A listener sent us pavlova once we made it, it was pretty good.

It is pretty good, yeah, um and then um. You can also take that egg foam and turn it into it like a sponge cake, like an angel food cake or something like me. You don't like those either. No, not big into the angel food cake. Although you can use sponge cake for strawberry shortcake that I will have. Okay, So those spongey cakes, that's 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 shortbread is called short bread is short is apparently a British term for crumbly. Okay, so that's where that came from. Not not 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 getting pretty good at it. Um, So she makes a good gluten free shortbread that we've had, a shortcake with

homemade whip 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 right and then said I'm done, Yeah, good night. It is a It is a mess, 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, yeah, it's funny. The kitchen can be a place of real

tension sometimes high oh for sure. Yeah, especially if both of you, uh do different things in the kitchen, right, like ones hovering like are you going to 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. Um, not endorsing that, I'm just saying it's

one of my downfalls. I need to porcan. But I'll just go in there and just like groan or something like God, and she'll just say no out right. Again, that's life at the Briant House. Um, that's that's a pretty nice that's always with love though. Yeah, it always comes out. There's always a cake out the on the other end, right yeah yeah, yeah, I mean it's not gonna get in serious fights over the kitchen stuff, right. Um, So what's the last thing here? Uh? Something called the

all in one method. Yeah, that's just like a cake makes you put it all all together at once. Yeah, well, we should talk a little bit about frosting and icing. Um, the earliest versions of frosting was just sort of an almond and sugar paste. Uh, not so big on that, but really, I mean it could be okay, but almond croistants are like one of my great joys in life. Like, oh, yeah,

they're so good. I suppose that's kind of what a bear claw is too, right, yeah, alright, yeah, but that all that's sweet almond paste inside is man, I know it's it is good, but I'm like, don't put that on top of a cake. From sure, I understand, stuff it in a pastry. Um, a friend chief that was the first person they think that created like the first legit iced layer cake in the fifteenth century, and then about the middle of the seventeenth century is when the

first frosting recipe started spreading around on the internet. And fondante is gross. Yeah, I'm not into it. I mean, you can make a neat looking cake, but it's gross tasting, I think. Yeah, I'm then into a buttercream or cream cheese or even Emily's Waldorf History of frosting. Believe it or not. I mean it has a bit of a mouth feel 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

like the well, no specific cake. It's like the red velvet cake, right, yea delicious. Do you know why it's red? Well food coloring that 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 that and the buttermilk. I believe, really, yes, that turns it red. All right, I don't know about that. No, it's true. Okay, I read it on What's cook in America. I'll try it because i'm making Emily. It's her birthdays in a

couple of weeks and I'm making another. I'm taking another stab at it. Try the try go find like an original like like recipe. Well, I mean, what do you mean like one if you if you see one that actually uses buttermilk, being like, okay, this one, this is one of the ones. I'm gonna try. No, no no, no, I have to use the recipe she tells me to use. Oh I got which isn't the waldor the gluten free Waldorf? The story of 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 year 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, and the thing is, to 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 pretty much. Yeah, it just is red. It tastes red. No, that'd be weird.

It's not catchup cake. There's uh yeah, that's Canadian, isn't it. There's a hummingbird cakes. Uh well, what do you mean by the hummingbird? What? Hummingbird cake has like some nuts and some fruit in it, lots of frosting. I think it's a Southern cake. Yeah, like we called my grandmother Bryant called one of the great all time Southern cooks and bakers, like you know, banana nutbread. 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 charity cake 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. See maybe, I mean that's sort of like banana upbread. So I don't know

if they're interchangeable for variation. But give me some banana nutbread, which is not a cake but it sort of is, and slice it up and flut some butter on it toasted in the oven. Now I'm with you. Our freezer is always chuck full of black bananas blackened with age um because you makes a killer banana nutbread from scratch using I mean, you just can't look at the bananas when she's incorporating them. What does that do? Why? Why is that the key? Do you know? They just are

supposed to be mushy? Okay, Okay, gotcha, and and like it. The best way to make banana's mushy is to let them age, let him age freeze age them. All right, Let's talk about Indian pound cake. Apparently that's a thing that has corn meal 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's pointing out is that like cakes came from all over the place through time and and geography, and that the mass immigration tore into America over say like the seventeen eight nineteenth centuries in twenty to 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 afide in the American way. Um, and that that started basically right as as um European settlers got to um North America. Yeah, apparently the 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 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 jingo list either, I think you might say, but I've never felt more national pride than in talking about cakes. Yeah. Yeah, this is where cakes were born. Really. Uh 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, that's a strawberry shortcake. You definitely win like a hummingbird cake then even Yeah, maybe that's the difference between that uh hummingbird and uh banana bread. 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 is in the German chocolate cake in the coconut in the icing. Yeah yeah, see that. So 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. Uh Doll had the Doll Company in the in the mid nineteen twenties. They said, hey, bake some cakes with fruit, and so thousands of pineapple

upside out 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. And then there's other Again, there's cakes around the world that look like cakes, kind of like tearmy sou um. Is it quintessential Italian cake? But it was invented in the nineteen sixties. Black forest cake actually is from Germany. It was invented in nineteen five teen. So what happened was again, cake explosion happened here in the good old US of A, and its

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 what happened. What else, what what about the chase that's great too, kinds of milk evaporated, condensed, and whole. It's tough to go wrong with that. Talk about moist and I've like, I've had good and bad Tracey Late chase, but I've never had an actual Tracey Late sus like, this is so bad, I'm not going to finish it, right, have

you know? And then there's Doda yucky, which is like, um, have you ever had this? I don't think so. Uh. One of the big things that that people in Japan love is like sweet and red bean paste. You can find it here there in like sweets. But this dory YACKI um, in particular is like between two pancakes. It's like a filling. Sometimes it's not even two pancakes. It's like a hole with like a red bean paste inside. It's like this light, kind of fluffy cake like thing

with red bean paste inside. It's good. Um, you can they're best like 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 seven eleven or something to like in cellophane. 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 something. You're gonna love them. There's a cake out there for you. Uh. And since I said that, it's time for listener man. All right, I'm gonna call this um a special one man administrative details shout, because we got a box today from a man named Nick Pegan 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. He said that anyone ever has sent us a box full

of garbage. He sent us, uh, framed things, sent me a framed pavement poster, which is great, 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 a big time and just a good dude.

And beyond that, he uh, he added this, he added, he's a 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 print out that you sent because he said every time you said we should to do a podcast on that, he made a list alphabetically of that stuff. And the list is so comprehensive and awesome that we need it to work from. Yes, he made 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 and encouraged us to play a little game here which will do very quickly of see if Chuck can see if Josh can guess how many times we've done the following things. Are you ready well, because I have the list in my hand and you're sitting across from me, and you can't can't do this paper, I don't think so. How many c o A s and for people who don't know it means cover our butts? How many c oas have we issued over a thousand shows?

I'm going to say seven? Wow, Wow, we are really good at that. How many times have we admitted on the air that it is a take two? Yeah, you're not gonna get anything, or maybe you might it will be totally luck if I do eight seven, Oh so close rare listener mail shout outs, Oh, I don't know what that means, like where we say, hey, can you say hello to my boyfriend? Three st 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, and I think so. I think that's what It was a little more generous in earlier days. Trips in the way back machine. Oh, there's a lot of those, I'm gonna say, out of a thousand episodes three and twenty, he says, fifty nine. So I don't know about this. Nick, think he missed a few. Nick. You're just making up numbers, aren't you. How many 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 two It was um, how geniuses work? Or what makes a genius? And I said that if this list, if the list of geniuses, if the number one genius was Einstein, I would eat the list. Turned out it was Einstein. How many Glenn Danzig or Misfits references? Those would be all you four. You need to step it up. How many times has Chuck was How many times have I done this? Wow? I think it's literally countless.

If he came up with a number, it's a lot. He says two eight. That's got to be more than that. Simpsons references. I'll just go ahead and tell you a hundred ninety seven. Apparently we have high include the two episodes on the Simpsons. No, no no, no, I think um, apparently we have high fived once. Okay, I'm surprised we even did that a number of times. Josh has done this a lot? Uh, I don't know. I think a lot just just works for that. Four hundred and twenty

six time, almost half our episodes. That's great, um, 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, I don't remember that one. The famous Chuck tran Cheach, Rusty Zonkers, and the flash nick is my new favorite listener. This this is all gold plus. Thanks for for buttering us up with the care package to Nick, that was nice of you. Yeah, so, Nick Pagan, you are now on the guest list for the San

Francisco Sketch Fest 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 tweet to us at Josh I'm Clark or s y s K podcast, hang out on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know, or slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant you. You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot com and has always joined us at our home on the web,

Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is that how stuff Works dot com. H