The Ultimate Chocolate Celebration Cake - 5 Years of Bite Me

How do you mark five incredible years of podcasting, especially when your anniversary aligns with the summer solstice and your birthday? For me, the answer was simple: bake a spectacular white chocolate celebration cake infused with CBD butter. In this special episode of Bite Me, I take you on a reflective journey, sharing the highs and lows of creating and growing a niche podcast. We’ll also dive deep into the recipe and baking process for a cake designed to serve up to 50 guests. Oops, not what I had in mind.

As we celebrate the five-year milestone of Bite Me, I am filled with gratitude and pride. The podcast began on June 19th, 2019, and since then, it has evolved into a beloved hub for edibles enthusiasts worldwide. Reflecting on this journey, I share personal anecdotes and highlight some of the memorable moments that have shaped the show. One heartwarming story involves a fan from Australia who left a touching review. Reviews like these are not just ego-boosters; they play a crucial role in organic discoverability, especially for an independent podcast in a niche market.

Growing a niche podcast independently has its set of challenges and triumphs. One of the critical decisions I had to make was whether to stay with Buzzsprout, our podcast host. After much deliberation, I chose to stick with them, primarily because of their excellent customer service and supportive community. This decision, like many others, underscores the importance of making choices that align with your values and needs.

Now, let’s talk cake. This episode's culinary centerpiece is a white chocolate celebration cake infused with CBD butter. This cake is no ordinary dessert; it’s designed to serve up to 50 guests, making it perfect for large celebrations. The ingredients list is as impressive as the cake itself, featuring a dozen eggs, a pound of white chocolate, lemon essence, cream cheese, and butter. The recipe is detailed and somewhat challenging, but the result is a sumptuous, rich cake that’s sure to impress.

The process of making this cake was both a joy and a challenge. With a recipe that calls for large quantities of ingredients, I quickly realized that my home kitchen equipment was not up to the task. For instance, my stand mixer couldn’t handle the volume of batter, which required some improvisation. 

Infusing the cake with CBD butter adds a special twist. I opted for CBD butter to make the cake accessible to a broader audience, including those who may not consume THC. This choice also highlights the versatility of edibles and the various ways you can infuse them to suit different preferences. Whether you’re catering for a crowd or scaling down the recipe, the tips and tricks shared in this episode will help you make a delicious and impressive cake.

In conclusion, this special episode of Bite Me is a celebration of flavour, friendship, and five years of podcasting. From the creation of a decadent white chocolate celebration cake to reflections on the journey, it’s an episode brimming with insights and inspiration. Whether you’re an edibles enthusiast or a casual listener, there’s something in this episode for everyone. So, join me in celebrating this milestone and let’s make it truly unforgettable.

Thank you for being a part of this journey. Your support and engagement have made these five years possible, and I look forward to many more years of sharing recipes, stories, and laughter. Happy anniversary to Bite Me, and here’s to many more delicious episodes!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

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 Gange 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.

Speaker 1: 0:36

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 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. 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 has 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 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. We're enjoying some warm weather right now at the time of the year. We're enjoying some warm weather right now, at the time of this recording.

Speaker 1: 2:28

There's lots to get into for this week's episode. I'm really looking forward to it. 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. So thank you for that.

Speaker 1: 3:12

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 Burton76, who left a review over on I believe it was Apple Podcasts. Thank you for the review. Reviews 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.

Speaker 1: 3:40

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's listening to this, I love you guys. They have the best customer service and, of course, where was I even going with that Shit. I totally lost my train of thought. I think I've been eating too, 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, burton76, 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 Burton76 hails from Australia. So a listener from Australia, almost as far away from Canada as you can possibly get. 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.

Speaker 1: 5:06

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 cups of coffee today.

Speaker 1: 5:47

That's how I start my day out but it adds things like matcha and adaptogenic mushrooms and other ingredients that have been doctor 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 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. I was just talking about it a second ago. They ship internationally to over 65 countries.

Speaker 1: 6:53

All you need to do if you want to buy right now and try it out for yourself is head to magicmindcom 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. 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 Because, as I said that I thought I hadn't, but I'm like, well, maybe I have, 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, from bakes to desserts, shown step by step in 1300 glorious photographs.

Speaker 1: 8:06

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 tortes, 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 for a coffee chocolate torte which is 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. I basically took what felt like an entire day making this cake and I'm not going to lie friends.

Speaker 1: 9:11

Mistakes were made in the creation of this cake, and I shouldn't say cake, because what I ended up with was five cakes. So I have now 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 list. Anyway, I digress. It was one of those recipes. I also started making it.

Speaker 1: 10:04

I had 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 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.

Speaker 1: 10:34

Whipped cream, two pounds of butter. I mean two pounds. 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.

Speaker 1: 11:01

One of the other mistakes that I made is I gather all these ingredients. I mean we're not talking like small ingredients. I called for like two pounds of butter, two pounds 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. I'm like, wow, that's flour. And it never occurred to me like that seems like a lot, like it did occur to me. I'm like wow, that's a lot. This is going to be a really decadent cake.

Speaker 1: 11:26

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've got some friends, but 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.

Speaker 1: 12:00

But 40 to 50 people, so this is a lot of cake. I mean, I should have clued in when it 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 them, 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, they're 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?

Speaker 1: 12:42

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 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 Loran Oils Bakery Emulsions in stock, so I was using that for the lemon to add a real lemony flavor to this. 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, when 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.

Speaker 1: 13:33

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 Cutting the tops off of it, because it just means that the next cake is going to sit flatter on it.

Speaker 1: 14:06

Because they rose a little bit in the middle, as cakes might do in the oven, 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 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, cause 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.

Speaker 1: 14:58

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. 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 wanted to and of course, one of the advantages with doing the icing as well 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.

Speaker 1: 16:21

I think that's it for this week. I have some cake to eat and I hope that you'll be joining me virtually in celebrating 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.