(gentle music) - [Announcer 1] This is a production of PBS Charlotte.

- [Announcer 2] The following episode of "Charlotte Cooks" is brought to you by Central Piedmont Community College and viewers like you.

Thank you.

- Coming up on this episode of "Charlotte Cooks," we are making cake with Kool-Aid.

(bright music) Welcome to this edition of "Charlotte Cooks."

And joining us today is our old, now, I don't wanna call you old, is our really good friend Oscar Johnson from Jimmy Pearls.

And he's also been, one of the most exciting things that's happened in a long time, is the semi-finalist for the James Beard Awards.

- Yep.

- That's a big deal, guys.

And also in 2022, you were- - 2022 NCRLA.

- NCRLA.

- NCRLA Chef of the Year.

- Which is North Carolina Restaurant and Lodging Association.

They have a contest every year and Oscar won.

And so it's really kind of fun to have our big people in Charlotte really getting a lot of good Carolina recognition.

- I appreciate that, chef.

Thank you.

- And so what are you gonna make for us today?

You got a really unique recipe.

- So I'm really excited about this one.

We're making a jello cake today.

We're gonna make it with some Kool-Aid though.

Traditionally, it's made with a flavored gelatin, but I'm gonna put my own creative spin on it like I always do.

But this is so a nice, cool, refreshing summer dessert.

And like I said, this just takes me back home to the summer months of having this very exciting dish.

So I'm excited.

- And you mentioned to me earlier that your grandma used to make this.

- Yeah, my grandmother, my mom, those are the two ladies that I most remember, but I'm pretty sure there's some other family members who have made this recipe as well.

But Mama, this is for you.

Like we are gonna do this - [Pamela] Okay, there we go.

- We're gonna do this today.

And like I said, I've been making it a lot this summer.

My mom even made a boozy version of it.

- [Pamela] Oh.

- So there's some exciting twists you can put on this cake.

- Okay.

All right.

Well let's make mama proud.

- Let's do it.

- All right.

So what do we have to do to make this cake?

- Okay, so first we want to get all of our ingredients down for the pound cake.

So this pound cake is a very special pound cake recipe.

This is my wife's grandmother's recipe.

You can certainly use a box cake.

You can, you know, use a very basic vanilla cake recipe for this.

But we just have all of our ingredients together and we're gonna sift our flour.

Gonna go ahead and get that started so we can have a nice light and fluffy cake so that when we pour that gelatin in there, you know, everything will soak up real nicely.

So we're gonna start by sifting our all purpose flour and we'll sift all of this in here like that.

- And what's the purpose of sifting the flour, Oscar?

- So we want to get the clumps out.

We don't want any clumps in the batter.

And this will also make this nice and light for us.

So we're just gonna move this around.

And Grandma, in her recipe, it says to sift twice.

So we've already had, it also depends on the flour that you have.

I like to use a really nice, light all purpose flour.

It doesn't have too many clumps in it.

So we're gonna get all that incorporated.

And this is just like any standard baking recipe, you want to kind of get all of your dry ingredients nice and, you know, mised out and prepped.

And then have all of your wet ingredients.

And this is a real simple- - [Pamela] Add your wet to your dry.

- Add your wet to your dry, yep.

And correction, we will be adding dry to wet in this situation.

Because we're gonna cream our butter and sugar, eggs, and oil all together - And then mix it in.

- Exactly.

- Okay.

- We've got some baking powder that's going to go in.

I've already got salt in my flour.

About a pinch, so a pinch is about a quarter of teaspoon.

All right, got that there.

- [Pamela] Good.

- All right, so our dry ingredients are all set.

So in this separate bowl here, we wanna start with some butter.

That is room temperature.

Room temperature is key to having this cake be, like nice and evenly spread out and everything.

You don't want the ingredients to be cold 'cause when you bake it, it's not gonna bake properly so.

- And speaking about that, your eggs need to be room temperature as well.

- Exactly.

- 'Cause if you put cold eggs in with room temperature butter, it's gonna make your butter cold again.

- [Oscar] Yep.

- And so you wanna have, make sure everything is room temperature so it all combines nice and smooth.

- Yep.

Nice, smooth butter is what we want every single time when we're working with cakes.

We're gonna go ahead and add the oil.

So this you can use canola or vegetable.

And for my home cooks, this is old school right here, using the electric hand mixer.

- It is.

- You can certainly use a KitchenAid, but I know a lot more people have a hand mixer at home or they're more likely to have a hand mixer.

So we wanna go about medium speed on this.

(hand mixer whirring) And how's that for a bit of nostalgia.

- [Pamela] I know right.

- [Oscar] Being in the kitchen with grandma or whoever.

- It even smells like grandma's kitchen with that mixer going.

They have the smell to them don't they?

- Yep.

- That's funny.

- We wanna get this nice and smooth.

This probably take about five minutes max, just to kind of get everything nice and incorporated.

(hand mixer whirring) All right, so we have our butter, we have our eggs, we have our oil and sugar all in here.

Well we have our eggs getting ready to go in.

But it's very important to stop every once in a while, scrape the size of the bowl and make sure everything is incorporated 'cause as this bakes we want everything to be fully incorporated.

We don't want clumps of butter because that will melt and just kind of have the cake, you know, baked dark in some areas, light in others.

So we want to go back and just make sure we scrape.

And this applies when we add the dry ingredients too.

So we're gonna go ahead and add our eggs all at once.

(hand mixer whirring) And the eggs are gonna give us a nice color on this cake.

- Yeah, there's that yellow coming out from all those yolks.

- Yep.

It's gonna be a nice golden brown.

And Grandma B made this, I mean this is amazing.

When I first started dating my wife, you know, I had this pound cake so many times.

- I bet.

- And it was just a hit every single time.

When I went to New York, I was invited by Chef Ricky Moore, who's also is a 2022 Best Chef Southeast James Beard Award winning chef.

- Okay.

Oh he won.

Okay good.

- So he allowed us to come to New York with him for a special installation that he did for North Carolina seafood.

- Oh nice.

- So I made a punch bowl cake using this recipe, which is just the pound cake cut up in small pieces and made it into a trifle, and it was a huge hit.

- [Pamela] Oh I bet.

- Everyone loved it out there so.

Big ups to Grandma B.

May she continue to rest.

All right, so next we are gonna go ahead and add those dry ingredients.

So this is our flour, salt, and baking powder - That's been sifted twice.

- Yep.

Sifted twice.

We're all good to go.

We'll go ahead and mix this in here.

So we get our baking powder all nice and incorporated.

All right.

We're good to go.

So we're gonna go in, we just gonna add a little bit at a time so make sure everything gets in there nice and smooth.

So we won't do medium speed.

We'll go low speed on here.

We don't want flour everywhere.

- Right, right.

It will go airborne real quick if we just put it all in there at once.

- Yep, and it's okay if you get a little bit, that means you, you know, you working.

All right, so we're gonna go in with a little bit more.

So after this will be our, it'll be our whole milk and it'll be the lemon extract and the vanilla extract.

- Okay.

- And so that milk is just gonna kind of tie everything together and just smooth this batter out even more.

And this is gonna be amazing.

- It looks good.

- [Oscar] Yeah, this is not good.

- [Pamela] We're giving your mixer of workout.

- [Oscar] Oh yeah, we are.

So be ready.

So like I said, you can use your KitchenAid mixer for this and it still applies as far as the low speed or the medium speed initially.

- And here is your lemon extract and your vanilla.

- Sweet, sweet, sweet.

And you can certainly use whatever flavoring you would like that is compatible with a fruit-flavored gelatin.

So if you got like some orange extract you want to get some, you know, you wanna get crazy with it, throw some lime or rum extract even.

That'll work.

But we're gonna do lemon and vanilla today.

- [Pamela] Sounds nice.

- So we're gonna go ahead with our vanilla extract and we're not gonna use all this lemon.

We're gonna put like a nice little touch in there.

and you can certainly add some lemon zest to this to kind of bring that lemon flavor out some more.

So we're adding in our whole milk now.

You're gonna preheat your oven to 325.

- [Pamela] Okay.

- [Oscar] Hour and 15 minutes.

Nice and fluffy.

All right.

- All right.

- So we are all good with our mixer.

And so as a kid I used to love, just like a lot of kids, licking in the bowl once all the batter is in there.

I mean it wasn't until later, I found out you're not supposed to consume raw eggs - [Pamela] Or raw flour.

- [Oscar] Or raw flour.

But whatever.

I'm still here.

Growing up, we didn't have KitchenAid mixers and all that stuff.

- We drank outta the hose.

- Yep.

We drank outta it.

- We licked the beaters.

We ate raw flour, raw eggs, and we were still alive.

- Everything great about summer.

- We're not growing three heads.

- So we want to get this real nice and sprayed out 'cause we are gonna flip this cake over eventually for presentation and we want it to slip out nice and easy.

- Slide right on out of that pan.

- All right.

I'm gonna sprinkle just a little bit of sugar at the bottom.

Just to ensure that our cake is gonna come out.

So chef, we have a 13 by nine aluminum pan.

This is just how it's traditionally done.

If you have like a baking dish, you can certainly use that.

- Like a glass baking dish.

- Exactly.

- Yeah.

- Yep, something shallow so that this cake can bake evenly.

You don't want it too deep, you know, 'cause it'll probably call for a longer bake time.

- Oh yeah.

- But we got this nice and sprayed.

- And it's aluminum so we need to put something under it to support it, right?

- Exactly, because the weight of this batter is gonna cause it to be a little flimsy.

So when it goes in the oven, we don't want our cake turning over as it bakes.

- And we don't want it, you know, folding in half when we pick it up either.

- Exactly, so we want keep a nice, even shape, yep.

- There you go.

- [Pamela] Oh, look at that batter.

Isn't that beautiful?

- [Oscar] Oh yeah.

- [Pamela] Oh that's gorgeous.

- [Oscar] Nice and smooth.

I'm 32 years old and I'm still tempted to take the rest of this batter and get me a nice little spoon.

I'm just so tempted.

We have a little bit left.

If you have some mini Bundt pans or if you have a silver spoon, you know, you can eat some of this better.

Don't eat too much.

We don't want you getting sick.

- [Pamela] No, - [Oscar] But this little bit of butter that's left, it's cool.

You can just put in like some mini Bundt pans and you can certainly do the same process.

- Little cupcakes even.

- Little cupcakes.

Yep.

That'll work.

All right now, so we're nice and secure.

We going to give it a nice little shake, make sure it's even.

And I am not, I like to call myself a fake pastry chef.

Like I bake a little bit but this is one of the things that I do very well.

So I love doing the jello cake.

So 325, hour and 15 minutes we go in the oven with it.

Wanna make sure when it comes out, poke a hole, make sure that that batter comes out clean.

- Okay.

- And then we're good to go.

- Just like you do with every other cake, right?

- Yes ma'am.

- Okay.

- Yep.

- [Pamela] So now we've got the cake in the oven.

- [Oscar] Yep.

- [Pamela] We've got an hour and 15 minutes to wait.

- [Oscar] Yes.

- [Pamela] We're gonna get the Kool-Aid ready?

- [Oscar] Yes ma'am.

- [Pamela] And then we're gonna do the frosting, right?

- [Oscar] Yep.

- [Pamela] All right, so what do we need to do to make the Kool-Aid?

- So you follow your package instructions to make about a quart tropical punch mix.

- Okay.

- So you can use any flavor you like, but this is what we are going with today and red is just awesome.

It's a nice bright color.

- And it'll show up in the cake too, won't it?

- Yes, it definitely will.

It's gonna be so beautiful, like once you see the little marbling.

It's natural too.

You know, when you poke the holes in there, you'll just kind of see how everything nicely comes along.

But it's usually like a swirl when it's all said and done.

- So nice.

That'd be nice.

- But we're gonna add a little pucker to this.

So it got some, the zest of one lime.

This is a summertime thing, so you really want some nice vibrant flavors, you know, coming out.

- And citrus is nothing but summer - Cannot go wrong with it.

- Especially lemon and lime.

- Yep.

You can do lemon and lime, but we're gonna just do lime here.

Like I said, I got a tropical punch mix here, so just kind of want to enhance that.

At the end of the day, it is still, you know, just regular Kool-Aid.

- [Pamela] So can you strawberry jello in here, you could put strawberries in here.

- Yep, you can fold some nice diced strawberries in there.

And we're just gonna get the juice.

- [Pamela] Strawberry puree.

- Yep, strawberry puree.

So we're gonna add the juice of a lime as well.

And we're going to, we're not gonna boil this, we just want to get it hot just so that we melt that gelatin in there real nicely.

- [Pamela] All right.

- [Oscar] So we're gonna go ahead and get all that lovely juice.

- [Pamela] We've got a medium heat on this.

- Yes we do.

- And what we're going to do next, 'cause we gotta make this into a jello-like consistency.

So we're gonna, instead of add adding a flavored jello, we're using plain gelatin today.

- [Oscar] Yep, plain gelatin.

Yep.

So this is sweetened juice.

So we've already got the sugar and everything in there.

We've got the powder gelatin, about two tablespoons to one and a half cups of cold water.

So the reason we want to bloom this and we want to stir it is that it is nice and incorporated and doesn't have any clumps.

- [Pamela] Cold water, not hot water.

- [Oscar] Yep.

Just cold water to this.

And give it a nice little stir.

- [Pamela] Then you just let it sit.

- Yep, just let it sit for a little while.

Want to get this nice and incorporated.

I think I'm gonna actually use that whisk over there.

- Okay, there you go.

- Get it nice, break up those lumps as much as possible.

- So what's gonna happen to the gelatin there is that the cold water is gonna allow that gelatin to start absorbing that liquid.

- Yep.

- It just makes the gelatin work so much better.

- Exactly.

And this is good.

This is what you want here.

As it sets it, it is gonna set up more and more and more as we go along.

And I think I have everything nice and incorporated here and so this is nice and clear.

All right, so our drink mix is pretty hot at this point.

It's not boiling though.

We don't want it boiling.

- You don't want it boiling.

- Yep.

So we're just gonna go in with our gelatin.

- "So how hot do you want this," you're gonna ask.

Just warm enough to melt that gelatin.

You gotta cool it back down again.

- Yep.

- So there's no sense in getting it up to a boil.

- [Oscar] Exactly, so we're just gonna whisk this in here and that's pretty much it.

Once you got everything incorporated into here, we're just gonna go ahead and shut our heat off.

- So what you're looking for is melted sugar, melted gelatin, everything is melted and liquid, there's no solids on the bottom of the pot.

- [Oscar] Not at all.

And then we can just kind of set this off the heat and just let that cool.

And then we'll just be waiting for our cake to, you know, finish baking through.

And like I said, you can just let this cool at room temperature, pour it over the cake once we poke the holes in it and then that gelatin's gonna take, or the whole cake is gonna take about eight hours to overnight.

- Next we're gonna make our frosting, it that right?

- [Oscar] Yes, we're gonna make our sour cream frosting.

- [Pamela] This is gonna be a different kind of frosting.

Because it's not gonna be sugar and butter and sugar and butter.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's gonna be a nice light, slightly acidic.

It's almost like a cheesecake.

I personally love having like that cheesecake flavor profile with a lot of things.

- So even when I dip fresh fruit into like, if I make a fruit dip, I like to kind of have like that cream cheese.

and like sugar mixture with a little bit of lemon and citrus, whatever.

But this is gonna be a very special one.

- Okay, so what do we need to make this frosting?

- [Oscar] So we've got 16 ounces of sour cream.

So we're gonna go right in with that.

And this should cover the whole cake.

So a whole tub, whatever your favorite brand is.

- And should this be low fat sour cream or full fat sour cream or does that matter?

- It doesn't matter.

I mean, if you trying to watch your figure, if you want to do the low fat, - You shouldn't be eating cake.

- You shouldn't be eating cake so you might as well do the full fat.

And so we got about three ounces of cream cheese.

And also the great thing about recipes like this, personal preference, like if you want a little bit more cream cheese to kind of give it more of that cheesecake feel, just like I said, you can certainly add more.

And so I'm going in with my powdered sugar and this powdered sugar is gonna give this some body and it's gonna bring everything together and make a really nice frosting.

I'm back again with the lime.

So we're gonna go in with a full, 'cause this is gonna be a nice, it's not gonna be super puckery like a key lime, But you're still gonna get that fresh citrus and that strawberry.

- It's gonna be a fresh flavor, yes.

- It's gonna be really nice.

And it's beautiful too.

Look at that color.

We haven't even mixed it together yet.

So we are gonna go ahead and do vanilla extract too.

We're back with the hand mixer again guys.

So I'm gonna get all this stuff nice and incorporated.

- So while you're mixing that, why don't you tell us a little bit about the James Beard award?

- Man, this is a very prestigious honor.

- Yeah.

- First and foremost.

And we're just so fortunate to have gotten that recognition.

This is like a lot of people like to call it the Oscars of the culinary.

- [Pamela] Yes, it is.

It really is.

- [Oscar] the culinary world.

And so you just got like food writers, mixologists, storytellers, chefs, pastry chefs, all getting recognition for their hard work on a national scale.

Just to, the way everything happened was just so organic.

You know, my partner Darryl Cooper and I just worked hard and I mean, we just looked up and next thing you know we're getting recognized for what we're doing with our food so.

- Yeah, absolutely.

I mean I know that you guys have really put your heart and soul into everything you've been doing.

- Oh yeah.

- And representing Virginia and Tidewater area.

- Most importantly.

- Yeah, absolutely.

- Most importantly.

So what we're doing is, the same thing that we did with the cake, we wanna make sure we have room temperature cream cheese.

So we break these lumps up so we don't have a whole lot of lumps in this frosting.

Just like we did with the cake too, we wanna scrape the sides, get everything in there, and this is pretty much it.

All right, so we're gonna, I just scraped the sides of the bowl again just to make sure we get, you know, we don't have any lumps or anything.

This is super smooth.

We're gonna let this kind of chill out for a little bit as we wait for that cake.

So you can refrigerate this just to cool it down and make sure it stays nice and cold.

So when we put it on top of that cake, be nice and smooth.

It's not runny and this is gonna be a awesome, awesome, awesome frosting.

- [Pamela] All right.

- [Oscar] All right.

And that's everything.

Real simple.

- [Pamela] When you garnish your plates, you want your plates to reflect what is actually the flavors that you're gonna be tasting.

- [Oscar] Yep.

- So because we have lime, - Yep.

- Because we have some tropical fruits, we're gonna put some berries on there.

- Yep.

- And it's gonna be very pretty.

It's gonna be very delicious.

So how do you, how what kind of a... - All right, so we're gonna do lime and strawberry today.

You can certainly do a pineapple, like if you want a sliced pineapple, get a real nice thin, you know, pineapple in there, whatever you have.

It can be blueberries, whatever you want.

- It could be anything you have, right?

- Any summer fruit.

- Okay.

- We're gonna do seasonal.

So I'm just gonna cut a real thin lime on here.

Something real simple and just put a little slit in there.

- [Pamela] Oh, we're gonna make a little twisty.

- Oh yeah, and so the top of the strawberry, I know you go to some fancy restaurants and they'll just leave it on there.

But you can't eat that.

I mean you can, but you can't.

But we are not going- - I use it for a handle.

- Yeah, there we go.

Look, just use it as a handle, but we wanna make this easy to eat.

So we're just gonna cut this top off of here and just cut like some nice little slices.

You could even cut these in quarters.

However you're feeling on any given day.

And we'll just kind of fan that on there.

So we got that garnish set.

So- - Now for the cake.

- We're gonna get into the cake.

All right, so our cake has cooled for eight hours to overnight, right?

So here we go.

- [Pamela] Turn it over onto a, whatever you're gonna serve it on.

- Yep, you can put it on a serving platter, whatever you have, a big old round plate, whatever you have available.

And so during this process, we are going to poke holes in here so that that gelatin can seep through and poke as many holes as possible.

- [Pamela] And can you poke big holes in there?

Or just prefer not to?

- Yeah, just a nice skewer or a toothpick.

You know, nothing too crazy.

- So something small.

- Yeah, we don't wanna mangle the cake.

So we got a good amount of holes poked here.

We got our jello mixture and so I've already kind of done this step just because it takes so long to cool.

So I just want to show the folks at home just a little bit of this jello mixture - And before you add that, that's why they're seeing the pink in there now, isn't it?

Yep.

Because you've already done that step.

- Yep.

And it looks like it's a lot of Kool-Aid.

So when you go to pour it in there, trust me, all of it, the cake is gonna soak up that whole quart of Kool-Aid.

- And you do it while it's still in the baking pan?

- Yes, it's still in the baking pan.

Like I said, when you, the reason why we spray it so heavily is that when we turn this over, it can look beautiful just like this.

- Yes.

- So we're just gonna take a little bit just so you guys can see how this process works and it's gonna soak it right on up.

- Oh yes, you see how it soaks, yeah.

- Exactly, and you'll just do a lot more of this at home and then you'll, once again, set this anywhere between eight hours to overnight.

- And you would use all of this?

- All of it.

- Okay.

- It's gonna seem like a lot.

Trust me, the first time I ever made it, I was like, "Man, this is gonna be a whole lot," but it's gonna cover it.

You're gonna get a nice marble, vanilla cake with the Kool-Aid or the jello mix.

- And so after we do this, we put it in the refrigerator for eight hours or overnight.

- Yep.

- And then it's gonna be all nice and cold.

Your jello's are gonna be nice and solidified.

And now we get to frost it.

- We get to frost it.

So this is the favorite part right here.

So we just gonna put that on there.

- Let it run down the sides - And let it run down the sides - Like a ganache.

- Yep, yep, yep.

So we'll start with this, nice little offset spatula.

And this is some old school stuff, so it is not fancy at all.

- [Pamela] Yes, it is.

- Like I said, I'm a fake pastry chef, so I do not do this for real, for real.

I just know what tastes good.

I know what I like.

That's how I like to bake.

I like to tap into old southern desserts that people may have not heard of, or, you know, I've forgotten about.

And that is what I like to do with my, the little bit of pastry work that I do do.

- [Pamela] Nice.

- [Oscar] Just gotta go back and patch it up a little bit.

Because we're gonna slice this and this is gonna look so nice.

I'm gonna have that fruit garnish on there.

So this is the jello cake.

So we're gonna cut this and we're gonna plate it.

Get a nice little slice here.

So we want to get a nice little square piece so you guys can kind of see.

And so you can do, I think we can probably do about four by four.

- Okay.

- Three by four, kind of depending on how large you cut it.

- So you get quite few servings outta this.

- Yep.

All right.

So we got a nice little square piece here.

Like I said, guys, this is gonna be, watch this.

- [Pamela] Oh!

- [Oscar] And like I said, this could be made with any of your favorite fruit-flavored gelatin, whatever you want to do.

And we're gonna slide this on over to the plate here.

- Nice.

- So we got our strawberry, got our little lime here.

However you do the twisty thing.

Nice little jello cake guys.

- How beautiful.

Looky there.

Looky there.

Oh, look at all that, yes.

Well folks, here you go.

Thank you Oscar.

- No problem.

- This looks absolutely fantastic.

- I'm glad I could share it.

- Old school recipes are best.

- Old school.

- I'm so happy you shared this one with us.

- [Oscar] Kool-Aid jello cake.

- [Pamela] Kool-Aid jello cake with sour cream and cream cheese frosting.

You can modify it according to the flavors you want with whatever flavor gelatin.

- [Oscar] Gelatin.

If it's easier for you to follow that way, you can.

- And if you wanted to make a vanilla pound cake?

Just as easy.

So Oscar, thank you for joining us.

And if you'd like to grab our recipes, get them off of pbscharlotte.org.

And thank you for joining us on this episode of "Charlotte Cooks" and we're gonna catch you next time.

(bright music) (bright music continues) (gentle music) - [Announcer 1] A production of PBS Charlotte.