Well, hello! Is this thing on? I can’t see you through all the dust. Anyway! If you’re reading this, you might already know what I’ve been up to via Instagram, since I’ve been much better at microblogging life and recipes there. After a couple years’ worth of hard work, the manuscript and photography for book #4 are complete–all about the glorious home baking heritage of the Midwest, with recipes both vintage and new–and soon we’ll move onto the work of taking a machete to it and making it as beautiful and useful as it can be. It’s full of pastries and pie and bars and bake sale treats galore. You can look forward to seeing it out in the world in Fall 2019! (No one ever said cookbook-making is a sprint.)
I wanted to post a quick note here that in the coming weeks, you can expect an all-new website at this address. The blog archives will still be searchable through the new site, so don’t worry about that if there’s a particular recipe you love and always click over here to find (in fact, it should be even easier to find it!). And with any technical luck, if you’re an email subscriber or through a service like Bloglovin’, that shouldn’t be affected either. I hope you’ll stick around for the next leg of the journey–it wouldn’t be the same without you. Onward! xo
Oh, hello! I’m hoping you are either visiting because you’ve always visited and listened to me talk about all manner of life and baking, or that you’ve landed here after watching the Today show. Welcome!
As soon as I get back from New York, I’ll be diving into the fall and holiday chapters of the new book, and testing lots of great recipes to share with you. One of the best things about creating this new book is that the timeline of developing the manuscript is allowing me to bake my way through the year–we just finished a season of light cakes, ice creams, summer fruit pies, cobblers, dessert salads, and way more. And now, after a solid week of unwavering, sweaty, snappy-retort-causing 90-degree-plus temps in Chicago–the heat seems to have finally broken, and from beneath it I can feel some great baking inspiration rising.
And hey, speaking of rising, how are you feeling about yeast-raised doughs at this point in your baking life? (Heyyyy-ooooh! Tip the bartender on your way out!) For the longest time, they scared me in a totally irrational way. It all seemed way too touchy and volatile, and generally way too easy to mess up. So I either avoided yeast doughs altogether, or stuck to the plethora of no-knead bread recipes available on the internet. But now it’s different. I’ve learned that the trick to great bread is to just keep making freaking bread. Lots of lots of bread, much of it bad. And then suddenly, it will stop being bad. You’ll learn what the silky texture of a dough really means and when you achieve it, and if it’s not feeling silky and buoyant, how you must continue to work it to get it there.
You also learn that if you’re me, against all your old-fashioned homesteading dreams, even just 10 minutes of hand-kneading is incredibly boring and that you get better, quicker results from using a mixer for the heavy lifting, and finishing the kneading with just a few minutes by hand, to enjoy the feel of the dough when it’s really in its kneaded prime. And I feel great about that discovery. It’s brought a whole lot more joy to my bread-making life, I’ll tell you that right now.
One of the most adorable and delicious ways to use a homemade white bread dough is monkey bread, that midwestern classic. For me, it’s evocative of many a Chicago-suburbian slumber party in my school days, bake sales and church basements and snow days at other people’s houses (my mother is many things, but she is not a baker. Except for this and this, and these two things are perfect).
The good news is that you don’t need to make from-scratch bread dough to bake up a great monkey bread. Now this doesn’t mean that I think the Pinteresting trends of using canned biscuits and what not are a grand idea in this case. To me, the genuine article when it comes to monkey bread means that the dough is yeasted. So when I’m short on time or the will to live, I use frozen bread dough, either in 1-pound loaves, or the frozen individual dinner rolls that are designed to have a rise time before baking–the rolls are especially great because they require only a crosswise snip with kitchen scissors to make them just the right size.
From there, you can go many different ways–simply rolling the dough balls in butter and then cinnamon-sugar and stuffing them into a bundt pan, or you can gild the lily by dousing the whole buttery, spicy, sugary lot in a sweet caramel syrup to make it even more irresistible. I’ll give you zero seconds to guess which method I prefer.
Coffee Caramel Monkey Bread
A few tips for success: First, cold dough will cut and shape much more easily. Second, if the bread begins to billow out of the pan during baking, just carefully and gently press it back down into the pan while it’s in the oven–sometimes the caramel syrup can steam underneath the dough and send it upwards. And lastly, be sure to allow the bread to settle in the pan for about 20 minutes before turning it out.
Serves 10-12
For the dough:
2 pounds (907 grams) frozen white bread dough, thawed but still cold
1 cup (7 ounces/200 grams) granulated sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
6 tablespoons (3 ounces/75 grams) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
For the caramel:
1/2 cup (4 ounces/113 grams) strong brewed coffee
6 tablespoons (3 ounces/75 grams) unsalted butter, cut into ½-inch pieces
1 cup (8 ounces/225 grams) dark brown sugar
½ teaspoon fine sea salt
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Spray a 10-inch Bundt or tube pan with nonstick cooking spray and set it on a rimmed baking sheet. Cut the dough into small pieces and roll into 1-inch balls.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the sugar, cinnamon, and salt. Lightly coat the dough balls with melted butter, then toss them in the sugar to coat. Fit the dough balls into the pan. Cover the pan with a clean tea towel or plastic wrap and set aside in a warm place to rise until doubled in volume, about 1 hour.
Position a rack to the center of the oven and preheat it to 350°F.
In a medium saucepan set over high heat, combine the coffee, butter, brown sugar, and salt. Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring often until the sugar is dissolved. Boil for two minutes, until slightly thickened. Immediately pour the caramel over the risen dough. Bake until puffed and golden, 35 to 40 minutes. Let cool on a wire rack for about 20 minutes before inverting onto a platter and serving warm.
]]>Like so many wholly unrelated things in life, I tend to liken this utterly habit-forming snack mix to parenting. Hear me out.
So here’s me at my desk in my little “office” in a corner of the attic, right? The space that has a door that I can use to close myself away from my children so I don’t even care that it’s just an alcove and not a real office. Now don’t get me wrong, people. I love my children. They are delicious and precious and I love them even more since the third week of August when they were dispatched to their separate schools and are no longer finding themselves inexplicably and repeatedly drawn to my ONE, NICE, ONLY, NICE, sitting room sofa trying to kill each other for sport all summer long. Because I give my all to my children, really I do. I’m not the very best parent on the planet, but I can confidently say that I do the very best I can. I caress them, listen to their needs and their stories, tell them they are wonderful and look at their stick drawings with Monet-observing awe. I really try to not lose my shit on them every single day, tell them fascinating things about art and music and culture, feed them nutritious food so they can grow and thrive and leave their unique, never-to-be-replicated mark on this big, beautiful, uncertain world.
And then I watch them nod slowly and politely (9-year-old female) or outright ignore me (4 1/2-year-old male) and wordlessly retreat to the basement, from which they ask for frozen pizza and why all their colorful and loud shows on Netflix aren’t working. And then I wonder why I work so damn hard to provide all the other stuff. Maybe I should just start with frozen pizza and Netflix? But I love them with my whole self anyway, and have actually grown to appreciate the cycle of sometimes very complex demands, but often simple desires. It’s a delicate dance, this business of parenting.
And in case you forgot, here’s me at my desk in the attic, right? I’m surrounded by stacks of cookbooks and scribbled on legal pads with ideas and bits of recipes for the new book I’m writing between episodes of parenting. It’s here that I’ve sometimes stressed over, but mostly happily developed a countless number of recipes, always tweaking amounts, techniques, baking times and more. Down in the kitchen, I’ve lovingly mixed batters and massaged doughs just so, listening to what they need to become their very best selves and be released into the world and the lives of others. I’ve strived for the gentle balance of understanding and perfecting baking techniques, and then learning to love the process enough to forget about all of those specifics and just have a good time in the kitchen. Again, a delicate dance, this business of baking.
I’m getting somewhere with all of this, I promise.
So two weeks ago, I “developed” a “recipe” for this S’mores Snack Mix for the Today Show. Now, I don’t know if I should reveal alllll of my trade secrets, but the very scientific process of devising this formula involved dumping a bunch of stuff from boxes and bags into a big bowl and stirring it around until it looked right. EXTREMELY HIGH LEVEL CULINARY ACHIEVEMENT.
And yet! I’ve never received so much email after a TV appearance in my life. Three separate people at my cousin’s baby shower came up to me to say it was the “new thing” that they were all bringing to “all their things”. We gave away bakers’ twine-tied bags of it for my daughter’s camping-themed birthday party soon after, and more than one mother texted to admit she’d eaten the whole bag, out of sight of her children the very same evening and demanded the “recipe”. Maybe there’s more magic in easy combinations than any of us realize. Don’t overthink it. A delicate balance, indeed.
S’mores Snack Mix
I know it’s a verrrrry complicated, bougie recipe, but let me just say that if you need more mix, just use more stuff in these ratios. Boom.
(It is worth noting, however, that the best salted peanuts for sweet and salty snacks or baking are the cocktail variety that just have peanuts, oil, and salt listed as ingredients. Other salted peanuts can be subtly flavored with savory spices like paprika and garlic which just end up tasting odd. So check your nuts, is what I’m saying.)
Makes 8 cups
4 cups Golden Grahams cereal
2 cups mini marshmallows
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup salted cocktail peanuts
Combine all in a large bowl. Store in an airtight container in a cool, dry place. Sit back and wait for that James Beard award.
]]>So hey! First, some news: as you might have guessed from the past several months of posts on Instagram, book #4 is officially in the works. I couldn’t be more excited to be sharing the recipes and stories of my journey home to the great Midwest, and doing so with the fine folks from Running Press, purveyor of gorgeous cookbooks. It will be packed with not only great Heartland-inspired recipes, but also bits of food history, snapshots of the immigrant cultures that have influenced our baking for centuries, and conversations with some of the Midwest’s most influential bakers. It will be my most personal book yet, which is at once terrifying and yet oddly comfortable. Going home after a long time away will do that to a person, I suppose.
I’ll share wordier details and the release date here as I am able, but you’re much more likely to get the updates on Instagram, as the glorious micro-blogging qualities of that platform are much more conducive to my headless chicken tendencies. At any rate, I am deep into recipe testing and research, and couldn’t be happier about the whole thing. The insanity of cookbook writing hasn’t scared me off yet. Hooray!
With that out in the open (!!), let’s talk about scones. Not the dreary, doorstop kind, oh nnneeeewww. Those are the type that frighten most of us away, unless presented with copious amounts of jam and clotted cream, and even then. But! When I was writing recipes for Real Sweet, I discovered a method for scone-making that changed my mind about the potential of scones. Nearly every scone recipe calls for heavy cream to be added to the dry ingredients blended with butter. And that’s perfectly fine, in the way that traditional things often are. But I find that if you take a couple minutes to whip the cream to soft peaks first, you get a lightness and a melting quality to the finished baked good that makes them truly crave-worthy, and more importantly foolproof, because the dough seems to more readily absorb the whipped cream, and you can stir together a smooth dough with fewer strokes, and avoid overworking the whole thing, which gives you those aforementioned doorstops, bah.
When it comes to riffing on this basic recipe, you can go sweet or savory. In Real Sweet, I sweeten the whipped cream with honey and add dried apricots and cranberries that are rehydrated with a bit of water and vanilla and almond extracts, and I add sliced almonds, too. Delicious! But bittersweet chocolate chunks and dried cherries, or fresh berries and citrus zest are divine as well. On the savory side, I load them up with scallions and grated sharp cheeses of all sorts, and chopped bacon or bits of ham. In either case, whether you take them savory or sweet, it’s the basic method of marrying flour and fat that makes these special and secures your genius baker status. Show off for mom and make her some of these with her favorite add-ins this Mothers’ Day! Really, it’s the least you can do.
Whipped Cream Scones
Makes 8 large or 12 small scones
Use this melt-in-your-mouth building block scone recipe to create either sweet or savory scones in your favorite flavor. When adding in bits like dried fruit, nuts, chopped chocolate, bacon, grated cheese, scallions, and more, chop them fine and aim for about 1 1/4 cups total of any combination of ingredients. If making sweet scones, add 2 tablespoons of granulated sugar and sprinkle the scones with turbinado sugar before baking; for savory flavors, use 1 teaspoon of sugar for browning and flavor.
For the scone dough:
2 cups (9 ounces/256 grams) unbleached all-purpose flour, spooned and leveled
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
6 tablespoons (3 ounces/85 grams) unsalted butter, cut into 1/4-inch pieces, very cold
1 cup (8 1/2 ounces/240 grams) heavy cream, chilled
1 teaspoon to 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 1/4 cups add-ins of your choice (see note)
For finishing the scones:
1 large egg
1 tablespoon water or milk
Pinch of fine sea salt
Position a rack to the center of the oven and preheat it to 425°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Have ready an 8-inch round cake pan.
In the bowl of a food processor fitted with the steel blade, combine the flour, baking powder, and salt. Add the butter pieces. Blend until the mixture resembles a coarse meal without any obvious little chunks of butter in the mix. Transfer the mixture to a large bowl. Add 1 1/4 cups of add-ins to the bowl. Toss with your hands to combine.
In a medium bowl, combine the heavy cream and sugar. Using a handheld mixer, beat the cream to soft peaks. Using a large, flexible spatula, gently fold the whipped cream into the flour mixture; it will look quite dry at first, but after several folds, the dough will come together. When no large puffs of cream remain visible, stop folding—don’t overmix.
Lightly flour a work surface, and turn the dough out onto it—the dough will be soft and sticky. Gently knead the dough 5 or 6 times just to smooth it out. Pat the dough into a disc about 6 inches across. Dust a little more flour onto the top of the disc, and invert it, flour side-down, into the cake pan. Press the dough evenly into the pan to shape it into a neat circle. Dust the top lightly with flour. Invert the molded dough back out onto the work surface. Using the bench scraper or large knife, cut the circle into 8 large wedges.
Place the scones, evenly spaced, onto the prepared baking sheet. In a small bowl, whisk together the egg, water, and pinch of salt. Using a pastry brush, lightly brush the scones with the egg wash. Bake until the scones are golden all over, about 15 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool. Serve slightly warm or at room temperature.
]]>Well, hey! I figure now that it’s April and we’ve all clearly gotten over carb-banning early months of the new year, that we can get real once again and talk about the good stuff in life. Like bread. And let’s just go all in here and talk white bread. YOLOOOOOOO.
Since relocating to my hometown of Chicago from San Francisco a year and a half ago (!!), I’ve gotten deep into the art of Midwestern baking. What it looks like, what it tastes like, what it means, the roots of it all. It’s been good for the brain, the spirit, the soul. When I left the Midwest in 2003, there was so much about this place that I didn’t realize was special, interesting, or different from other parts of the country. I guess that’s to be expected when you grow up somewhere and just take the little things for granted, and I realize this is not a unique story. But what is unique is getting the opportunity to come back, not just after having spent my entire early adulthood on the west coast, but the early part of motherhood, too.
Because now coming “home” isn’t just about me. It’s about making a real home in the place where my earliest memories live, and suddenly recalling those memories, one after the next like I’ve unearthed a dusty box of Polaroids and Beta home videos, with my kids who are currently forming their own earliest memories. TRIPPY. I even might use the word “meta” here if I felt confident enough about using it correctly?
Anyway, what all this has meant in terms of my life and my work is that there’s been a shift. In some ways, it’s been quite transformative–when 13 years of West Coast life fell away, feeling a whole lot like the end of an era, I was a little let down. And so much of that had to do with having grown up in the middle of the country, where coastal life seemed to so many of us like the end point, a place you’d never want to leave if you actually made it there, like Gold Rush pioneers struggling to reach the Pacific or something. It’s true that there’s nothing quite like California–the landscape, the variety, the top-notch avocados, the light (particularly Southern California light, glorrrrious as it is). There’s also the fantastic West Coast mindset of experimentation, always innovating and trying something new. This is what makes food writing and recipe development as a Californian so exciting; it’s a very present-and-future-focused place. There’s always something inspiring at every turn to scribble down in a notebook and bring back to the kitchen.
But while I loved that, and it really did wonders for my work, it does start to all feel like a crazy spinning wheel after a while. I found myself craving history, tradition, especially when it came to baking. I’ve always been drawn to vintage recipes, food history, the whys and the hows. And although I suppose you can ask these questions from anywhere, it’s not exactly the first place the mind goes when you’re embracing that California vibe. At least, that how I felt, first just a little, and then like a primal scream. It was time to find a place to slow down a little.
And so here we are, and yet, I’m busier than ever–isn’t that always the way? But the good news is that I’m busy doing things that I love and am really passionate about, like researching the unique and storied baking of the great Midwest. One of the earliest recipes I started playing with in the kitchen of our new home is a classic white sandwich bread, a perfectly square loaf from being baked in a special lidded bread pan, longer than most, with a thin, golden crust that encases a surprisingly tender, tight-knit crumb. To be fancy, you can call it a pain de mie, which it absolutely is, but it’s commonly known as Pullman bread because the perfectly square loaves became the signature bread of Chicago’s Pullman rail cars in the late 1800s, since they were space savers in a tightly packed rail car–three square loaves would fit in a pantry shelf normally occupied by two domed loaves.
Shape aside, it’s the perfect type of bread for picnic sandwiches, thick-cut with a schmear of mayo, stacked with a modest amount of meat and cheese, the type of sandwich that calls for the use of an old-school wax paper baggie. In short, it tastes like coming home.
Classic Pullman Loaf
Makes 1 13-by-4-inch loaf
This bread is meant to be quick to make with little hands-on time–the dough comes together delightfully quickly and is fun to shape. A lidded pan is essential–I love my Pullman pan, and recommend this one (ahem, not sponsored).
I’ve made this bread both with a warm rise, as written here, but I’ve also experimented with a cold rise as well, and really loved the results. Simply work a day ahead, and do the first rise in the refrigerator for at least 12 hours. It’s divine that way when you have the time–you might lose a little rise when it bakes as the yeast loses some spring from the longer rise, but the flavor payoff is totally worth it.
1/4 cup (2 ounces/57 grams) warm water
1 teaspoon granulated sugar
1 package (1/4 ounce/8 grams) instant yeast—1 3/4 teaspoons for cold rise
1 1/4 cups (10 ounces/280 grams) whole milk
3 tablespoons (1 1/2 ounces/42 grams) unsalted butter
4 1/4 cups (19 ounces/544 grams) unbleached all-purpose flour, spooned and leveled
1 1/2 teaspoons fine sea salt
In a bowl of an electric mixer, whisk together the water, sugar, and yeast. Let rest until bubbly, about 5 minutes.
Meanwhile, in a heatproof measuring cup, combine the milk and butter. Heat in the microwave until hot to the touch and the butter has melted, about 1 1/2 minutes. (you can also do this in a small saucepan over low heat, being careful not to let the milk boil).
When the yeast has begun to foam, add the flour and salt to the bowl. Pour in the milk and butter mixture. Stir with a wooden spoon until a shaggy dough forms.
Fix the mixer with a dough hook, and knead the dough on medium speed until soft, smooth, and elastic, and the dough is clinging to the hook, but moving cleanly off the sides of the bowl, 5 to 6 minutes. (Alternatively, you can knead the dough by hand on a lightly floured surface for about 10 to 15 minutes.) Briefly remove the dough from the bowl, spray the bowl with nonstick cooking spray or oil it lightly, and replace the dough in the mixer bowl. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and allow it to rest until doubled in size, about 1 hour.
Lightly grease a 13-by-4-inch Pullman pan and its lid with oil or nonstick cooking spray.
Next, shape the loaf: Flour a work surface generously. Scrape the dough onto the work surface and gently press out the air, shaping the dough into a rectangle as you do so, approximately 10 inches by 7 inches in size. With the short end closest to you, fold the longer left side into the center of the rectangle, pressing the seam tightly. Repeat with the longer right side. Repeat this folding into the center with the two short sides. Rotate the dough 90° so one longer side is now closest to you. Fold and press the longer sides into the center once more. Flip the dough over—you should now have a nice smooth surface for the top of the loaf. Gently and evenly roll the dough back and forth to form a 13-inch log. Place the dough in the prepared loaf pan.
Cover the pan with plastic wrap, and let the dough rest for a second time until it reaches just about 1 inch from the lip of the pan, no higher, 45 minutes to an hour.
Position a rack to the center of the oven, and preheat it to 400°F. Slide the cover onto the pan. Bake for 25 minutes. Remove the cover and bake for 20 minutes more, or until an instant-read thermometer inserted in the center of the loaf reads 190°F.
Turn the bread out of the pan onto a wire rack and let cool completely before slicing. Store in an airtight container for up to 3 days.
]]>Every once in a while, it occurs to me that it’s been a long time since I first started this here blog (July 2007, to be exact, whaaaaat). I’ve not always been the most, er, consistent of bloggers, but it’s kind of amazing to have a record of life both in and out of the kitchen nonetheless. It’s most fascinating for me to look back through the archives and see the recipes I was drawn to at certain points along the way, what I had time for or interest in learning and discovering throughout the years. And much like my life from about 1994-2000, there’s plenty of cringeworthy moments among the entries (although any regrets here don’t involve ill-fitting plaid or intentional visible bra straps).
But! Sometimes a recipe is just so completely perfect, so part of my personal fabric, that it’s worth updating and telling you about it all over again to make sure it doesn’t get lost. In fact, when I first posted about this recipe, I just realized that it was exactly on this day, nine years ago. How about that? So indulge me a little, won’t you? It’s the holidays, after all.
This recipe has been in this site’s Recipe Box since 2007, though I’ve made them multiple times every single Christmas for much longer than that. I’ve talked before about my love of heirloom recipes, and this one fits the bill beautifully. Copied from a yellowed strip of newsprint, tucked into a recipe box full of Gramma’s Greatest Hits. Up until about three months ago, I always thought of this recipe as Super Secret and Special. I mean, along the way I’d seen a few Amish recipes that looked similar, but nothing exact. Then in my research for my latest book, I discovered “Mary Todd Lincoln’s Sugar Cookies”, identical to Gramma’s recipe, and BAM. The bottom fell out I realized my whole life was a sham. A delicious, buttery sham, but still. However, Mary Todd Lincoln was one hell of a baker, the Dorie Greenspan of First Ladies, if you will, so there’s that.
It is the crispest of sugar cookies, sandy-textured but tender with a gorgeous pale golden color that begs for a smattering of colored sugar and sprinkles galore. You never knew the humble ingredients of butter and sugar could have so much flavor until you’ve had this cookie. Making the whole thing that much more interesting is the addition of vegetable oil and confectioners’ sugar to the usual fat and sugar combination, both of which help to keep the cookie’s tender crispness for days on end, a perfect candidate for cheery cookie tins to give as holiday gifts. And both the dough and the finished cookies stash away in the freezer like a dream, giving you another reason to make them the first baking project on your list–they wait in delicious patience while you get the other elements of your cookie tins together.
For last-minute cookie baking urges, this dough is perfect as well, as there’s no chilling time needed. It’s also a good one to have in your back pocket for when your kids start begging to make cookies, but you just don’t have in you to make a big production out of the whole thing. I find just there’s enough “activity” here–mixing, scooping, flattening, sprinkling–to make for a delightful little project without the hassle of rolling and cookie cutters and icing and all that jazz. And if an adult is taking the charge with no singing, circling, tiny people underfoot, you’re a mere 30 minutes away from sugar cookie bliss, right this very second.
You might recognize version of this recipe from my second book Pure Vanilla, with vanilla paste added for extra panache. It’s an easy way to make them extra special. And over the years, I’ve also learned to add more salt to get the same craveworthy quality that Gramma’s cookies always had. It didn’t occur to me until a few years ago that she always baked with salted butter! Duh. So I’ve tweaked the recipe below to turn out cookie just like the original, but made with unsalted butter, which is my preference.
When making these cookies, I keep them like the ones I grew up loving from Gramma’s cookie plate by lining up walnut-sized balls of dough onto baking sheets and flattening each with a drinking glass dipped in granulated sugar before baking. Gramma always sprinkled hers with kitschy, coarse rainbow sugar, so I always have that on hand. But I’ve also become partial to a mixture of white chocolate vermicelli and festive nonpareils like in the photo above.
Heirloom Sugar Cookies
With its insanely high yield, this recipe is a great one for making lots of cookies to give away as gifts, but it works just as well when halved to make a smaller batch. You can also freeze any leftover dough for up to a month, wrapped tightly.
Makes 8-9 dozen
1 cup (8 ounces/226 grams) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup (7 ounces/200 grams) granulated sugar, plus extra for flattening the cookies
1 cup (4 1/4 ounces/120 grams) confectioners’ sugar
1 cup (8 ounces/226 grams) vegetable oil
2 large eggs, at room temperature
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract or vanilla paste
5 cups (22 1/2 ounces/640 grams) flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
Preheat the oven to 350°F and position your oven racks in the upper and lower thirds of the oven. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking liners or parchment paper.
In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, soda, cream of tartar, and salt and set aside.
In a large glass measuring cup or similar vessel, whisk together the oil, eggs and vanilla until well-combined and set that aside as well.
In the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with the paddle attachment or with an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugars on medium speed until fluffy and pale in color, scraping the sides and bottom of the bowl every so often. Reduce the mixer speed and gradually pour in the oil and egg mixture, beating until the resulting mixer is smooth and somewhat uniform in texture, like a thin cake batter. Stop the mixer, and in three batches, add the dry ingredients, mixing on low speed and scraping the bowl before each addition. Mix on low speed until all the dry ingredients are incorporated. The dough will be very soft.
To form the cookies, roll walnut-sized balls of the dough (depending on my mood and how many cookies I need, I use either my 1 tablespoon or 2 tablespoon-sized cookie scoop) and place on the prepared baking sheets, one dozen to a sheet. Pour about 1/2 cup of granulated sugar (or vanilla sugar) onto a plate. Ever so slightly dampen the bottom of a drinking glass with water on your fingertips, dip it into the sugar to coat the bottom of the glass and flatten each cookie to about 1/4 inch thickness, dipping the glass with more sugar in between each cookie (you should only need to dampen the glass with water at the beginning of the process; the butter from the dough will keep the glass a bit sticky after that).
Sprinkle the flattened cookies with coarse rainbow colored sugar or other decorative sugars. Bake at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes, rotating the sheets from top to bottom and front to back about halfway through, until pale golden and just beginning to turn golden brown at the edges–don’t overbake. Cool on the baking sheets for two minutes, then transfer to a wire rack and cool completely before storing or serving.
]]>Photo by Leigh Beisch
Hi! Just a quick pop-in today, and I’ve got an A+ reason. With just a handful of days left to legitimately spend a whole day baking, eating, and sharing cookies, I realized that I’ve never shared one of my very favorite recipes. Last night I had the pleasure of teaching a super fun baking class at Give Me Some Sugar here in Chicago. The focus was edible gifts, and as the world solidified into a frozen tundra outside, the ovens were roaring and laughs were coming easy in the cozy shop. So good.
We had a grand old time, talking homemade marshmallows, Lemon-Vanilla Dream Bars from Pure Vanilla, and these gems: Spiced Chocolate Molasses Buttons from the pages of Real Sweet. The raves that this recipe received reminded me that I’d not shared it beyond the pages of the book, and that’s just not very Christmas-y of me, now is it? So in the spirit of not hiding our lights under bushels and all of that, here we are!
These cookies hit all the right notes–think super chocolaty gingerbread, or spiced chocolate sugar cookies. However you think of them, they’re a hit with chocolate lovers, the holiday spice cookie die-hards, and those aesthetes who are always drawn to the prettiest cookies in the tin. There’s a lot going on here texturally, too. Soft cookie, the crunch of sparkling turbinado, and a little pool of truffle-like chocolate ganache. I don’t see how this could not go well.
Spiced Chocolate Molasses Buttons
From Real Sweet
Makes about 4 dozen
This cookie gets a double hit of raw sugars: sticky dark muscovado in the dough and a roll through turbinado sugar that adds crunch and a naturally glittering finish. I highly recommend checking your local natural foods or specialty foods store for dark muscovado (or just being lazy like me and ordering via Amazon) because the dynamite flavor is so, so worth it. But if you can’t find it, standard-issue dark brown sugar from the supermarket will work just fine.
I recommend a 1 tablespoon cookie scoop, and make the scoops level so the cookies are uniform, you’ll get the 4 dozen yield as states, and so the cookies are not too big after baking–these are meant to be small but mighty.
For the cookies:
1 1/2 cups plus 2 tablespoons (5 1/8 ounces/144 grams) unbleached all-purpose flour, spooned and leveled
6 tablespoons (1 1/4 ounces/36 grams) unsweetened natural cocoa powder
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon allspice
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
10 tablespoons (5 ounces/142 grams) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup (4 ounces/113 grams) dark muscovado sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 large egg
1/4 cup (3 ounces/84 grams) unsulphured molasses
1/2 cup (3 1/2 ounces/100 grams) turbinado sugar, for coating the cookies
For the chocolate filling:
2 ounces (57 grams) bittersweet chocolate (60 to 70% cacao)
2 tablespoons (1 ounce/28 grams) unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1/2 teaspoon unsulphured molasses
To make the cookie dough, into a medium bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa powder, cinnamon, ginger, allspice, baking soda, and salt.
In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat together the butter, dark muscovado sugar, and vanilla extract on medium-high speed for about 4 minutes until the mixture is noticeably lighter in color, transforming from a dark, gritty looking mixture to something fluffier and latte in color. Beat in the egg until completely absorbed. Beat in the molasses until smooth.
Reduce the mixer speed to low and gradually stir in the dry ingredients. Mix until the well-blended and even in color. Cover the bowl and refrigerate the dough for about 2 hours.
When you’re ready to bake, position the oven racks to the upper and lower thirds of the oven and preheat it to 350°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats.
To form the cookies, pour the turbinado sugar onto a plate. Using a small ice cream with a capacity of about 1 tablespoon, portion the dough into balls. Roll the dough balls in the sugar, coating them completely. Place on the prepared baking sheets, evenly spacing them, 1 dozen cookies per sheet.
Bake the cookies until they are set on the edges, but still very soft in the centers. Quickly pull the sheets from the oven (close the oven door as to not let all the heat escape!). Using deft thumbs, a spoon with a very deep well, like a melon baller, or a thick-handled wooden spoon, make a deep indentation in the center of each cookie. Return to the oven to finish baking, 3 to 5 minutes more. Let the cookies cool on the pans set over wire racks. If the indentations have become shallow, press them down again while the cookies are warm.
For the ganache, place the chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl. Melt in the microwave with 30-second bursts of high heat, stirring well after each interval. Stir in the molasses. Transfer the ganache to a small zip-top bag and work it towards the corner of the bag. Snip off a tiny corner of the bag. Fill each cookie with ganache. Let the cookies cool and set at room temperature until the ganache is firm, about 1 hour.
Store the cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days.
]]>We have now officially entered High Baking Season, and can balm ourselves in butter and sugar. We can surround ourselves with our favorite cookbooks, and tune out the crazy. That’s my new personal strategy, anyway. And just in time for its implementation, I received Sarah Kieffer’s new cookbook, The Vanilla Bean Baking Book. Which is perfect, because it’s packed with enough crave-worthy recipes to keep me avoiding American reality until February, at least. Excellent!
I’ll be honest: I’ve received a lot of cookbooks this season, many gifted, some impulsively purchased. Most of them sit in a towering stack at the edge of my desk, giving me puppy-dog eyes and making me feel terrible for not having time to really dig into them. And then there’s a couple that are already littered with post-its from bookmarking, plus have a few splotches and stains from use, and aren’t those the kind of books we all need more of?
Julia Turshen’s beyond lovely Small Victories is one of those books, providing me with some much-needed savory inspiration–her turkey ricotta meatballs and her father’s chicken with leeks are already in our regular rotation. I’ve also been stroking the pages of Vivian Howard’s Deep Run Roots, an epic tome of Southern cooking unlike its competitors, with a unique, laser focus on her tiny corner of North Carolina. (I interviewed her recently for The Splendid Table, if you’d like to have a listen.)
And then there’s The Vanilla Bean Baking Book. It comes correct with sweet inspiration, providing recipes that may not be screaming with one million Pinteresting colors and craziness, but instead offer what we actually need in real life: straight up delicious, comforting, often classic (but sometimes surprising) baked goods with dynamite flavors and textures.
Sarah’s recipes are exactly the kind of thing I want at 3:00 p.m. when I’d sooner jump off the roof than skip a treat with my afternoon coffee. Everything from simple quickbreads to yeasted morning bakes to cookies and celebration cakes. All beautiful, relatively easy, and just special enough to make every recipe refreshingly different than the usual suspects, whether it be due to a neat technique or a few added ingredients. In short, this book represents the kind of baking we all need, right now. And it would make a slam-dunk gift if you’re the cookbook-gifting type. Am I overreaching? I don’t care. My mouth is full of Granola Chocolate Pecan Cookies and nothing else matters.
Granola Chocolate Pecan Cookies
From Sarah Kieffer’s The Vanilla Bean Baking Book
These cookies are of the generous coffeehouse size, and are portioned with a standard ice cream scoop. Avoid the temptation to make them smaller in the name of portion control. Sarah makes a lot of her recipes with these large portions, and I think that’s the key to their sensational texture—crisp on the edges, wonderfully soft in the middle.
There’s a great recipe for homemade granola in the book, and that’s what the original recipe calls for. But I had some of my favorite Praline Pecan granola from Trader Joe’s on hand, and used that instead. Terrific!
Makes 12 to 14 5-inch cookies
2 1/4 cups (225 grams) granola
1 cup (142 grams) all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks/170 grams) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/3 cup (66 grams) granulated sugar
3/4 cup (149 grams) packed brown sugar
1 large egg
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
5 ounces (143 grams) bittersweet chocolate, chopped
3/4 cup (86 grams) pecan halves, toasted and chopped
Position oven racks to the upper and lower thirds of the oven and preheat it to 350 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
In a medium bowl, stir together the granola, flour, baking soda, and salt.
In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat together the butter and sugars on medium speed until smooth and lightened, about 3 minutes. Beat in the egg and vanilla. Reduce the speed to low and gradually stir in the dry ingredients, followed by the chocolate bits and pecans.
Using a standard ice cream scoop with a capacity of 1/4 cup, portion the dough onto the baking sheets, 6 cookies to a sheet. Bake for 12-15 minutes, until the cookies are golden and set at the edges, but still quite soft at the centers. Let cool on the baking sheets for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely. Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days.
]]>WELL, HELLO! Here we are, another October all over again. Can you believe it? It’s been a busy couple of seasons around here–some TV and video projects, contributing for The Splendid Table (hi, dream job), and developing book #4. Oh, and that not-so-small detail of mothering a a third-grader (!) and a finally potty-trained (!!!) 3 1/2-year-old whose personality is basically Male Sybil on Steroids. There’s a lot to take in. I’m sure a lot of you feel me. In fact, can we all just go somewhere? Like a retreat in Big Sur where we all have our own private, sparkling clean bedrooms and bathrooms and we just breathe deep all day, and then convene in the evening over a case of wine and our favorite new cookbooks? Excellent. I’m bringing that one, up top, and seeing if the author wants to come with us.
Because Luisa Weiss feels us, too. She’s a smart, gorgeous woman who juggles motherhood and work and an insatiable creative streak, the kind that makes her take in everything around her and create a story from it, often through food. Her blog, The Wednesday Chef, was one of the first I read way back in the day, and one that finally tipped me over into starting my own in 2007. Ever since, she’s churned out wonderful writing, and vetted recipes that have become part of my personal rotation (Melissa Clark’s Roasted Shrimp and Broccoli became a go-to after drooling over it on Luisa’s site).
Luisa’s first book was My Berlin Kitchen, a food memoir, and her new book combines her personal ties to German culture with her love of baking to create a beautiful recipe collection that speaks to me on all levels. In between the releases of her two books, she and I became friends via the magic of the Internet. And like many of you who follow Luisa on Instagram and have kept up with her visual diary of the development of her first cookbook, I have been impatiently awaiting the release of Classic German Baking.
This is the kind of book that transports you through its design and photography, recipes and headnotes. Both the lovely shots of German scenery and the food images have a sort of rainy-day cast to them, which feels fabulously cozy as you flip through the crave-worthy recipes. There’s everything from cookies to cakes (both baking powder-leavened and yeast-risen), tortes and strudels, savory breads. The Christmas chapter will knock your socks off, and I don’t think I’ve ever actually typed that phrase before. And if you’re me, you’ll page through the whole thing in one sitting, bookmarking recipes with post-its while trying to pronounce their names, failing miserably and making a mental note to consult Google Translate.
But this slight air of foreign mystery is what makes this book so special in a never-ending sea of cookbooks. I actually have a small lake of them sitting on my desk as I type this, and while many are beautiful, few offer recipes that I’ve not experienced before. Classic German Baking offers a window into another world of baking for me. And rather than just being exotic for novelty’s sake, these are recipes that are deeply connected to a culture that embraces home baking in a way that so few places do. These are recipes with story and soul. What’s even better is that there are a handful of baked goods in the book that I initially thought were new to me, but it simply turns out that I never knew them by their original names, or understood the way they’re classically made.
Take, for example, the Apfelkuchen you see here. The base of this yeasted cake is a formula that is endlessly riffable, and appears a number of times in the book (something I love in a cookbook, by the way–one dough, lots of creative ideas!–we all could use a little more of this kind of empowerment when it comes to baking). It’s the kind of coffee cake you’d see in many an old-school American bakery case, usually in a round, topped with a simple layer of jam or fruit, and maybe with a streusel top. But here, the dough is a thinner, rectangular canvas for lots and lots of apple bits, and nothing more. It’s just so lovely and simple, especially if you live in my house and still have pounds of apples knocking around the fridge after a weeks-ago road trip to the orchard with some slightly overzealous apple pickers.
After you make this simple dough and let it rest, you pile it with what seems like an almost chaotic amount of apple chunks and a sprinkling of sugar. To be totally honest, for a moment, I feared that I might have over-apfel’d my kuchen. Luisa did mention in the recipe that it would seem like a lot of apples and to just push them down into the dough, but I was experiencing a rounded dome of apples that would simply NOT stand to be pushed into anything, and threatened to schlump and tumble onto the floor of the oven. So I pulled some off to create more of a generous double layer (1 1/2 layers?) of fruit. (I’m guessing that the six apples I used were probably too bloated and American compared to the six called for in the book. I’m willing to bet that German apples are much more modestly-sized, generally more trim and attractive, worldly and well-read. Typical.)
Self-deprecating apple humor aside, I love how unbashedly apple-y this cake is: no cinnamon, no nutmeg, no brown sugar overdose, or any of the baking-with-apples usual suspects. Still, the cake emerged from the oven insanely fragrant, albeit a bit paler than I’d hoped. But a quick run under the broiler gave the whole thing a little bit of pretty (remove the cake from the parchment to a separate sheet pan first, no house fires, please). I suppose you could also dust the finished cake with confectioners’ sugar, but I don’t think it’s necessary, as the sweetness level is pretty perfect here as is. Classic.
Apfelkuchen
From Luisa Weiss’s Classic German Baking
I opted to make the cake with instant yeast instead of fresh yeast, but the recipe states it will work with both. It’s worth noting, though, that for whatever reason, I had a heck of a time getting the dough to give me any puff at all during rising the first two times I attempted it, with two different brands of instant yeast (and yes, I’m sure the yeast was indeed instant, not active dry, and was well within the use-by date). Normally, one should be able to just throw instant yeast into the dry ingredients without letting it bloom first just as the original recipe states and I’m including that instruction here, but I had much better results when I let the yeast dissolve in the warm milk for a few minutes before pouring it into the mixing bowl. No idea why. But I thought I would mention it as a heads up.
All of the recipes in the book use European-style butter, which is higher in fat and noticeably softer and silkier than American butter. In a recipe like this with only 3 tablespoons, I suppose regular butter won’t completely ruin the recipe. But! I urge you to try European-style butter. It’s easier to find than you might expect; it’s available in pretty much every big supermarket, next to the more common American brands. There’s Plugra, Kerrygold, and more, and even Land O’Lakes makes a European-style butter now. It makes for a wonderfully rich dough and is worth seeking out.
Makes 1 9×13-inch cake
3/4 ounce (20 grams) fresh yeast or 1 teaspoon instant yeast (see note)
2 cups (250 grams) flour, spooned and leveled, plus more for kneading
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons (75 grams) granulated sugar, plus 3 to 4 tablespoons (40 to 50 grams) for sprinkling
1/2 cup (140 mL) whole milk, lukewarm
1 large egg yolk
3 tablespoons (40 grams) unsalted European-style butter, at room temperature
Grated zest and juice of 1/2 organic lemon
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 small to medium apples
Line a 9×13-inch pan with parchment paper, long enough so it can be folded down over two opposite sides by a few inches.
If using fresh yeast: Place the flour in a large mixing bowl and make a well in the center. Place the yeast in the well, add a pinch of sugar. Pour the milk into the well as you stir, to dissolve the yeast. Cover the bowl and let rest for 15 minutes. Add the remaining sugar, egg yolk, lemon zest, and salt. Stir until a shaggy dough forms.
If using instant yeast: whisk together the yeast, flour, sugar, salt, and lemon zest. Pour into the milk and egg yolk. Start stirring, and once the dough begins to come together, add the butter in rough chunks. Continue to stir into a shaggy dough.
Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface. Knead for a few minutes by hand until a soft, smooth, floppy dough forms. You want to avoid adding too much flour as you knead, so a bench scraper is helpful for keeping the dough moving and not sticking to the work surface too much. Place the dough into the prepared pan, and cover with a clean dish cloth. Let rise in a warm, draft-free place for about 1 hour until slightly puffy (it won’t double the way bread dough does).
Using your fingers, press the dough out to completely fill the pan in a thin, even layer (the dough will be about 1/4 inch thick). Cover the pan again and let rest for 20 to 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 350°F. Peel, core, and quarter the apples, and cut them into 1/2-inch chunks. Scatter the apples over the dough, and sprinkle with 3 to 4 tablespoons of sugar.
Bake until the cake is browned at the edges, slightly puffed, and the apples have begun to color, 50 to 55 minutes.
Let the cake cool in the pan set over a wire rack before using the parchment sling to remove the cake to a cutting board. Cut into squares or rectangles. This cake is best served the day it’s made, but leftovers can be kept at room temperature tightly wrapped in foil, for 1 additional day.
]]>DON’T YOU DARE TOUCH THAT CAKE IT’S FOR COMPANY I MEAN IT.
Does that remind anyone else of childhood?
Whether it was made from scratch, a boxed Entemann’s, or something more stepped-up, like say a coffee cake from the local bakery, I think most of us knew to approach a cake on the countertop with caution. Because clearly it was something special, right? And like getting one of those flouride treatments as a kid and being told you couldn’t eat for 30 minutes, nothing makes you want to eat something more than being told you can’t. Counter cakes are magical that way. The pull of a counter cake on a kid is vortex-like.
I still love a good counter cake, although these days, I’m usually the one making them around here and so I will have a slice whenever I damn well please, even though I might swat (gently PAT, I mean, of course) my kids’ hands away when it’s too close to dinner time. But! There is something great about having a simple cake on hand, just at the ready, in case you get the chance to invite someone over for coffee and a chat on a random Tuesday. That’s the good stuff, right there.
Looking back through my archives on this site and recipes I’ve developed, it’s clear I have a deep love for the simplest, most satisfying cakes (see here, here, and here, just for starters). I’m talking about the kind of cakes that can be dressed up or down, eaten out of hand with a paper napkin standing in for a plate, or with a fork and an actual plate, if you’re not an animal like me. You can have these cakes for dessert after a proper, healthy meal or at midnight while standing over the counter, just because. The fewer the dishes dirtied and machinery required in the preparation of said cakes, the better. The batter needs to go all into one generous, crowd-serving pan, and when baked, there’s no frosting required. Maaayyybe a dusting of confectioners’ sugar if you’re feeling jazzy. But that’s a strong maybe.
After a winter full of banana bread and a few great Bundt cakes, I wanted to get a good chocolate loaf cake locked down before the summer, something that could be used in a dozen different ways. And of course, as is so often the case, I found the perfect recipe from the good folks at King Arthur Flour. It’s a great recipe for doubling, and then freezing one–I’m feeling it straight up, sliced thin and used for ice cream sandwiches, or cubed and layered with summer fruit, cream, and crushed meringues OHMAHGAH.
The resulting cake here is deeply chocolaty without being overwhelming (even more so thanks to a couple spoonfuls of my beloved black cocoa, which, coincidentally, is also from KAF #notsponsorediswear), and is one of those awesome cakes that manages to get a little more list and crave-worthy as it sits for a few days tightly wrapped. If it actually lasts that long.
Simple Chocolate Loaf Cake
Adapted ever-so-slightly from King Arthur Flour
I use this awesome black cocoa every chance I get–it super intense (and spendy), so you don’t want to replace all the cocoa powder in a recipe like this with black cocoa. Instead, think of black cocoa like a regular cocoa powder booster; the original recipe calls for 2/3 cup Dutch-process cocoa powder, so I used 1/2 cup Dutch-process and just two tablespoons black cocoa powder to add that SHAZAM. Of course, the black cocoa is optional here. If you do go with all Dutch-process, it’s a great idea to add 2 teaspoons of instant espresso powder to boost the chocolate flavor.
Makes 1 9×5-inch cake, serves 10
1/2 cup (1 stick/4 ounces/113 grams) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups (300 grams) sugar
3/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup (1 5/8 ounces/48 grams) Dutch-process cocoa
2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons black cocoa (or use 2/3 cup Dutch-process; see note)
3 large eggs, at room temperature
1 1/4 cups (5 5/8 ounces/160 grams) unbleached all-purpose flour
3/4 cup milk (6 ounces/170 grams) (low fat is fine)
Position a rack to the lower third of the oven and preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly grease a 9-by-5-inch metal loaf pan and line it with parchment paper.
In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, on medium speed beat together the butter, sugar, salt, vanilla, baking powder and cocoa powders to make a sandy, somewhat clumpy mixture.
Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition and stopping to scrape the bowl often.
Reduce the mixer speed to low and gradually beat in half the flour. Add the milk and mix to combine. Stir in the remaining flour. Fold the batter by hand with a flexible spatula to make sure the batter is even mixed. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and smooth top.
Bake until a toothpick just comes out clean, with maybe a fudgy crumb or two, 60 to 70 minutes (top may look a bit damp, but that’s good!). Let the cake cool in the pan for about 10 minutes before using the parchment sleeve to remove the cake to a wire rack to cool completely. Store tightly wrapped at room temperature for up to four days.
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