The Ultimate Chocolate Celebration Cake 5 Years of Bite Me

Marge (00:00:05) - This is a special episode. Friends, this is five years of Bite Me and we're celebrating with a white chocolate celebration cake. Welcome to Bite Me, the show about edibles where I help you take control of your high life. I'm your host and Certified Ganjier. Marge and I love helping cooks make safe and effective edibles at home. I'm so glad you're here. And thank you for joining me today. Welcome back, friends, to an episode of Bite Me, the Show about edibles. I'm so glad that you're here. This is such a special episode for me for a few reasons, because by the time this episode is released, it will be five years since I started Bite Me. That's right. I think the first episode was released on June 19th, 2019, and here we are June 20th, 2024, five years later. Incredible. I never thought when I started this podcast that I would be sitting here five years, five years later, talking to you folks, having met so many interesting people, having learned so much about cannabis and edibles and myself and many of you, and it's a journey that has taken a lot of twists and turns.

Marge (00:01:17) - A lot of stuff has happened over those last five years, both professionally and personally. But the one thing that has remained constant is putting out episodes every Thursday over most of those last five years, and that constant in life is probably helped me stay sane when I've been going through some difficult stuff on the personal side. And so of course, I had to celebrate this momentous occasion because not only not only does the five year anniversary of Bite Me fall on today's episode, but it also happens to be my birthday. That's right, I'm celebrating five years of Bite Me along with another lap around the sun. And it's not too often that my birthday falls on the same anniversary date as my podcast, but it just so happens that this year, this time it did. And not only that, but Summer solstice. So if you're listening to this as this episode dropped, you're going to be enjoying The Longest Day of Summer as well, which is pretty incredible. Yes, my birthday fell at a great time of the year.

Marge (00:02:23) - We're enjoying some warm weather right now at the time of this recording. There's lots to get into for this week's episode. I'm really looking forward to it. And if you're just joining me for the first time, I hope you stick around and you like what you listen. And if you do, you'll share it and make it part of your daily or not daily perhaps, but regular podcasting listening routine. And if you've been here for a minute, thank you so much from the bottom of my heart. Because honestly, I wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't for you out there listening to me right now. So thank you for that. Before we get into the meat and potatoes or the cake and potatoes, I guess of this week's recipe, I just wanted to give a shout out to Burton, 76, who left a review over on I believe it was Apple Podcasts. Thank you for the review. Reviews really help, really help with organic discoverability and with podcasting and with most things in life. Anything worth doing isn't going to be easy, and it takes a lot of time and energy to grow a show from scratch like this one.

Marge (00:03:40) - I'm an independent podcaster, and I'm not part of a network with deep pockets. In fact, I was recently offered the opportunity to join a network and I turned it down for a few reasons. I'd have to leave my current podcast host, Buzzsprout, who has been excellent. If anybody from Buzzsprout listen to this. I love you guys. They have the best customer service. And of course, what was I even going with that shit? I totally lost my train of thought. I think I've been eating too many edibles lately, but that's okay. In any case, it really does help with organic discoverability because it's really tough to build a podcast from scratch. I'm in a niche and I'm in a niche as well that meta doesn't like, and a lot of other online social media networks and companies, they really frown upon cannabis. And until that changes, well, I got to find other ways to spread the word about Bite Me, the show about edibles so we can have a big community of edibles enthusiasts coming together like you.

Marge (00:04:37) - Burton, 76, who left the review saying thanks. Love your hard work, keep it up and I really appreciate that. And the interesting thing too, was that Burton, 76, hails from Australia, so a listener from Australia, almost as far away from Canada as you can possibly get. But they are listening and hopefully making incredible edibles in their own home kitchen, along with you and I. Actually, I'm doing this right now because I have quite a bit of work to do once I record a podcast. That is just the beginning, and I don't know if you could hear me giving a shake to my magic mind mental performance shot. I'm just gonna have a little drink of it right now. I hope that wasn't rude. They do come in little bottles and they're little shots, so you just take the entire thing. I think they say you can sort of mix them up with stuff if you want to, but I never do. I don't mind the taste. It's not overly sweet, which I really do like, but it really does give me that cognitive enhancement that I'm looking for when I'm sitting down at my desk to work on the podcast, an episode like this one, and it doesn't replace my coffee because I've already had a couple of cup of cups of coffee today.

Marge (00:05:47) - That's how I start my day out. But it adds things like matcha and adaptogenic, mushrooms and other ingredients that have been validated and also studied extensively so that they're not putting anything in this that isn't going to actually do what it says it's going to do. They are 100% carbon neutral, and I've really been seeking out companies lately. Whenever I am looking to buy something, I try to seek out companies that I feel like are having a positive impact on the world. And taking environmental responsibility, I think is really important because things are heating up out there. I think we could all agree and they also have great customer service. So if you don't like whatever you've bought from them, they'll give you a 100% refund, no questions asked for 100 days after buying. So that's a pretty great customer service promise. And as someone who has dealt with a lot of customer service teams, I can tell you that that does make a big difference. So I was just talking about it a second ago. They ship internationally to over 65 countries.

Marge (00:06:52) - All you need to do if you want to buy right now and try it out for yourself as head to magic mind. Com forward slash bite me. And if you use the code bite me 20 at checkout. You can get a discount off your order. Whether it's a first time order or you're purchasing a first subscription. So if you give it a shot, no pun intended, let me know how you find Magic Mind as your mental performance shot. This week we are doing a white chocolate celebration cake, and this was an interesting recipe to try because first of all, I was getting it from a book. That I thrifted a little while ago. I thrifted it and I don't think I've done any recipes from it yet. Maybe I have a. Because as I said that I thought I hadn't, but I'm like, well, maybe I have. I don't, I don't really know. So that's where we're at with that. But I thought I would give it a shot because it's the chocolate and coffee Bible over 300 delicious, easy to make recipes for total indulgence.

Marge (00:07:58) - From bakes to desserts shown step by step, step by step in 1300 glorious photographs. Well, I can't argue with that, except for the easy to make part, because I did happen to choose a cake and cakes. It's been a while since I've made like a traditional layer cake. The last few cakes I've made for this show have been torts, which are more of a cake with not much flour in it, so they don't rise a whole lot, but they are fabulously delicious. A couple of these cakes that come to mind. Actually, I believe Chef Julie also have done a cake by Chef Lucas that I had the opportunity to visit while I was in Berlin, actually, and he had my friend and I over for a small dinner party, and the food was fantastic. This man knows how to cook and he provided me a recipe. A recipe for a coffee chocolate torte, which delectable, that one I have made actually numerous times. So this white chocolate celebration cake. Like I mentioned, I wouldn't necessarily call it easy to make.

Marge (00:09:03) - I basically took what felt like an entire day making this cake. And I'm not going to lie, friends, mistakes were made in the creation of this cake. And I shouldn't say cake because what I ended up with with was five cakes. So I have now two two layer cakes and a single layer cake, and they're all frosted with a delectable buttercream icing, a lemon syrup that you drizzle on top. And there's also, which I didn't really get, a lemon curd that popped up somewhere in the reading of this recipe. But yes, it wasn't in the ingredients list, so I didn't include it. It didn't really need it. It was so bizarre. I still don't know where this lemon curd came from, because it doesn't even tell you you need to buy it in the in the list. I don't. Anyway, I digress, it it was one of those recipes. I also started making it. I bought a bunch of ingredients for this because it calls for some more unconventional ingredients. I mean, I don't make cakes very often, like I was just saying, but it called for your typical dry ingredients like flour, baking soda, salt.

Marge (00:10:17) - Pretty standard stuff. You need to have some sugar. You needed icing sugar as well, but you also needed white chocolate. And I realized later I bought a whole pound of extra chocolate I didn't actually need driving up the cost of this particular cake. whipped cream. £2 of butter. I mean £2. Some of that was for the icing and some of it was also for the cake itself. And then you also needed buttermilk. And what else? Cream cheese and cream cheese. I'll make sure that I get this recipe in the show notes. It will be a little lengthier, but doable. I may write it the way I actually did it versus the way they have it in the book. One of the other mistakes that I made is I get, I gather, all these ingredients. I mean, we're not talking like small ingredients. It called for like £2 of butter, £2 of cream cheese, like eight cups of flour. And it never occurred to me like that seems like a lot like it did occur to me.

Marge (00:11:17) - I'm like, wow, that's that's a lot. This is going to be a really decadent cake. And then as I'm baking the cake and I've already gotten the process started, I look and I'm like, this serves 40 to 50 people. And I mean, I know I'm I've got some friends, but, you know, I wasn't prepared to serve 40 or 50 people. Cake. And now that I've made the cake, 40 or 50 people would be pretty small slices. I've had thought that maybe I should make, like a five layer cake just for fun, but then I was like, that's actually like, super ridiculous because I may be able to freeze one of these cakes once I figure out how to do it. So that it best preserves it, but 40 to 50 people. So this is a lot of cake. I mean, I should have clued in when I was just like, you need four cups of icing sugar. Like all the ingredients were like. A lot, but no, I just went out and bought.

Marge (00:12:13) - I'm like, okay, this is what I need. This is going to be a super decadent cake. So that's a whole dozen eggs that didn't clue me in. I was like, oh, cakes are supposed to be rich, aren't they? I don't know, that's how often I make traditional cakes. Of course, the picture looks much different than the way my cake turned out, but I did send a photo to my sister and she said they looked amazing. So of course my sister wouldn't lie, would she? And so basically for this cake, you make the cake. And in the process of making the batter for the cake, you are putting in a pound of white chocolate. And oh, it's like a white chocolate whipping cream mixture that you melt ahead of time while you're sort of. Doing, you know, putting together the dry ingredients and whipping up the butter and eggs and stuff. And then you're going to need lemon essence for this. It was like an extract. I actually happened to have the Lorraine oils bakery emulsions in stock, so I was using that for the lemon to add a real lemon flavor to this.

Marge (00:13:10) - So it's sort of like a white chocolate with like lemon essence in it. Oh, I guess it does say lemon curd for filling. I totally just read over that. But you know what? It doesn't really need it. Because basically once one of these cakes were done baking in the oven, you would cut the cake in half, put a layer of lemon curd in it, and then put the top back on. And then there was also lemon syrup that was supposed to go be soaked into the cake as well, because again, I cut the tops off when I was going to stack the cakes. And so I use this lemon syrup on top as it suggested. And then I iced it with the lemon with the buttercream. So you don't really need the curd. In my opinion, this cake is far rich enough as it is with all the butter, sugar, cream, like all that good stuff. So white chocolate you really don't need the curd, but cutting the tops off because it just means that the next cake is going to sit flatter on it because they rose a little bit in the middle, as cakes might do in the oven.

Marge (00:14:10) - And because I ended up with five of them, this cake ended up being so large that I couldn't all mix it in my stand mixer. I have a I have a KitchenAid stand mixer, the typical home kitchen one that you would find at your regular appliance store or Costco or whatever. And this cake was so big I couldn't do it. It was like for a commercial kitchen mixer or like stand mixer, you may want to make this, take this recipe and have it all. So that you don't end up with so many cakes. Because now I have five cakes, like two, a total of three cakes in my fridge. But fortunately it is the anniversary of Bite Me and it's my birthday, so I will definitely be sharing this cake with. I infused the butter in this cake and I did CBD butter. I made a CBD butter specifically for this cake because I knew I could just do a whole pound of butter and infuse it. And the rationale behind this for me was because it's a celebration cake, and I happen to be living with my father, who does not consume THC, and there may be other people who would be joining for a celebration that may not want to consume THC.

Marge (00:15:26) - Then this way I would still let people know that there's CBD in it, but it's not going to be the same kind of precautionary measures, if you will. There's so many ways you can infuse this cake because there's so many. Fats in it, but very easy to infuse this cake and make it super potent if you want it to. And of course, one of the advantages with doing the icing as well as you can bake the cake. And if you wanted to infuse the icing, you could almost make two batches of the icing, one infused and one not. And that way you could have an infused cake versus a non infused cake. Because even if you have this recipe, you would end up with two cake pans of cake, so you wouldn't necessarily have to layer them up together to make a layer cake. You could have two single cakes instead in lieu of to accommodate all the people who may be celebrating with you. I think that's it for this week. I have some cake to eat, and I hope that you'll be joining me virtually and celebrating.

Marge (00:16:29) - Bite me. Why not send me a text message via the fan mail feature in your podcasting app, and let me know what your favorite episode has been over the last five years? If you've got one, I would love to hear it. Once again, friends, thank you so much for being here. I hope that you will consider sharing this episode with someone you care about, and consider joining the Bite Me Cannabis Club. Until next week, my friends. Stay high.