January 2: Opening early at Flour

I trudged out into the snow on New Years Eve laden with a full box of sticky buns and other brioche treats that I was excited to share with the Myers+Chang staff…and immediately slipped on the ice and dropped the whole box.  Pastries decorated the parking lot and I couldn’t have been more bummed.  I rescued some - the ones that didn’t fly out were okay - but most were lost to the snowbanks.

Anyway I hope you all had a festive New Year’s celebration.  Flour closed early on NY Eve to allow the staff to go out and have fun; Myers+Chang was bustling with revelers partaking in the delicious specials that our Chef created for the evening; I made the rounds at both bakeries and spent a few hours celebrating with customers and staff at Myers+Chang before heading out to Radius where Christopher and I had a late dinner with friends.  We stayed out till 3:30 am which is just silly because that’s the time I wake up when I have to do the opening bake-off shift at Flour.  Luckily I wasn’t opening the next day (I’m no longer able to pull “all-nighters” like I did in college!).  We opened New Years Day late - 10am - and the bakers could come in at a decent hour (if you call 7am decent that is).

I opened today and I have to say it’s my very favorite thing to do.  Coming into the bakery before the world has woken up, sliding sheet tray upon sheet tray of scones, brioche, croissant, bread and muffins in and out of the oven, watching each pastry bake and rise and turn golden, smelling the rich buttery sweet scent of hundreds of breakfast goodies coming out of the oven at once.  It’s heaven.  The best part is that I’m required to taste every item to make sure it’s up to snuff.  Sure it gets a bit overwhelming at times but it never ever gets old.  And I rest easier knowing that I personally have tasted everything we are selling today.  When Flour first opened for the first 8 months this was the case.  Now that we are into our 9th year I have a coterie of bakers who take care of the early morning bakeoff and tasting.  I trust them (or else they wouldn’t be doing the bake-off shift) but I do like it very much when I can do it myself. It’s a great start to the day!

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December 31: Throwdown

In March of 2007 the Food Network contacted me asking if I was available for a few days of filming in Boston.  They were considering a series called the Science of Sweets and they invited me to film the pilot episode. After I hung up I admit I looked around to see if Candid Camera crews were in the wings.

It all seemed legitimate when I showed up in the studio.  There were actual cameras and people who seemed to know what they were doing.  I spent a day talking over and over into a camera: “Welcome to the Science of Sweets!” “These sticky buns will knock your socks off!” “Baking is like chemistry!”  and by the end of the day I was convinced that a show was going to be filmed.

The second day they came to the bakery and filmed me teaching the making of sticky buns to an audience.  Again, it was all under the pretense that I was demonstrating that sticky bun baking is full of science and wonder. All seemed normal and then…Bobby Flay walked in.  Chef Flay is the star of a Food Network show called Throwdown with Bobby Flay in which he surprises and challenges chefs in their area of expertise and tries to outdo them by making a better version of their specialty.  All on live TV.

I went head-to-head with Chef Flay and for an agonizing hour audience members were quizzed while the judges privately did their judging.  Flour’s sticky buns won!  Many people wonder if the judging is fixed; the visible sweat on my brow during the judging should assure them that it is entirely anonymous. I’m glad I don’t have to wonder what life would be like had we lost the challenge.

These buns outsell everything else we make by a mile, all due to one show.  We can’t make them fast enough.  At any point in time someone at Flour is either making sticky bun dough, shaping sticky buns, making the goo, baking off buns, or packing them up for orders.  We should change the name of the bakery to Sticky Buns.

I tested these today - an itty bitty batch that made 8.  They are resting now and I plan on baking them off in a few hours and bringing them to the staff at Myers+Chang as a New Years Eve treat.

Everyone have a wonderful New Year!

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December 29: Happy New Year!

I am way overdue on posting and I’m sorry for being out of touch!  I hope all of you had a wonderful holiday full of delicious food and lots of family and friends.  I have never eaten as much as I did on Xmas day - turkey, ham, stuffing, kale, stuffed cabbage, lemon buche de noel, christmas cookies, chocolate pudding, pannetone, and pear crostata.  It was divine!  I’d love to hear how you spent your holiday and your favorite desserts and foods.  Did you cook or bake yourself?  Did you discover any new treats?

I’m fully recovered both from the nasty case of food poisoning I had a few weeks ago (thanks to all of you for your get well wishes) as well as the onslaught of crazy baking that goes on during the Xmas week.  It’s not quite the New Year but I feel like I’ve turned over a new leaf already and I’m jazzed up once again for a slew of recipe testing and interns and experimenting.

First on the docket - finalizing the Brioche recipe and all of the yummy treats that you can make with brioche - sticky buns, craqueline, brioche au chocolat, etc.  I had been struggling to create a recipe that just made one batch of treats (one brioche loaf or 8-10 pastries) thinking that no one would want to make a big batch since you’d have to have a family of 20 to eat it all.  But this weekend I had a revelation - I was reading Dorie Greenspan’s Baking from My Home to Yours (a fantastic book - I highly recommend it) and in it she makes brioche for 2 loaves and uses a half batch for her brioche breakfast treats, recommending that you freeze the other half.  This is the way to go - if you make too small a batch (as I was trying to do) there really isn’t enough dough to move around well in  the mixer and it never develops the lovely sheen and stretch that a good brioche dough needs.  But if you make a “double” batch there is enough stuff in the bowl to engage the dough hook.  And you get a fabulous dough.  So that is what I did this morning - I made a larger batch and it came out beautifully.  I’m proofing it overnight and will make treats with it tomorrow.  And then brioche will be all set.

We heard back from Bill our editor at Chronicle right before the holiday - he sent wonderful compliments our way to Christie and me about the first go-around of the Intro and Table of Contents and first 15 recipes.  This was the best present I could have gotten and I couldn’t be happier.  This is part of the reason I’m re-energized to focus as much time as I can on testing and writing and developing the recipes for the next five months.  Plus as much as I love the holidays and all of the activity and bustle that happens both inside the bakery and within my life, I’ll admit that as a creature of habit I’m looking forward to settling back into my normal routine - working at both Flours and at Myers+Chang, testing recipes, and posting on this blog.  Thanks to all of you for your support and reading and suggestions and comments and keep them coming!!

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December 17: Bedridden

Working around food all day, you take for granted having food around you everywhere all the time.   I don’t think much anymore about whether or not I’m hungry when I eat.  I’m usually eating something to taste it and see what I think of it; not until the end of a long day do I get home and actually eat because I’m hungry.  You develop a stomach of steel when you start your day off with a croissant, cranberry muffin, oatmeal scone, and end it with a vanilla parfait and bite of chocolate cake and spoonful of creme caramel.

Today was supposed to be a day back in the saddle, testing recipes left and right with Ben my intern and myself plowing through our growing stack.  Unfortunately two things sidelined us.  First, Ben got a job - a real paying job -so his internship days with me are over.  Good Luck Ben!  And I found myself bedridded by something that was powerful enough to eat through the sugar coated lining of my stomach.  So no testing happened today.  Just lots of daydreaming about pastries that I wasn’t eating, food that I wasn’t tasting.

I guess it’s not a bad time for a break.  Christie sent out 76 pages of intro and recipes to Chronicle on Monday and it was a pretty long intense weekend of back and forths between us to get the packet to a point we are both happy with.  I’m looking forward to -and I’m pretty nervous about - receiving their feedback.

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December 14: Foiled plans

Unfortunately Ben (my intern) got a call as soon as he got to the bakery - his roommate had locked himself out of the house and he needed to be let back in.  Since he wouldn’t get back to Flour until we were almost closed after returning home to let his roommate back in we decided we would just skip his testing session yesterday.

I did end up testing a maple cranberry pecan pound cake that we are offering on our Xmas menu and that I am considering putting in the book.  The cake tastes like pancakes!  The mellow flavor of the maple syrup shines through and contrasts nicely with the bright tart cranberries and nutty pecans.  I’m not happy with the texture so I’ll be trying this again but it was a good start.

Speaking of maple syrup, did you know that a gallon of syrup costs us $75?  That means that a cup of maple syrup costs over $4.  I was floored when I figured this out.  But that won’t keep me from testing and re-testing until I get this cake right!

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December 12: Triple mousse cake fiasco

Fiasco is a strong word, maybe it’s not that bad.  But we’ve been working on the triple mousse cake for a few weeks and it’s just not an easy recipe to scale down.  Ben has been more than patient, trying the recipe over and over.  I have one more idea to try and get this cake ready for the book that we will try on Saturday.  This is definitely one of the more challenging recipes so far.  But it’s so worth it!  I do want to figure out how to make it doable for home cooks.  The cake is a bit of a bear to work with, especially when we’re making just a small batch for one cake.  But the mousse recipe couldn’t be easier - it’s not really a mousse, it’s actually a light whipping ganache, each made out of white, milk or dark chocolate.  Each ganache is whipped up and spread in between sheets of delicate flourless chocolate cake.  The whole thing is then drizzled with chocolate ganache.  It’s one of our most popular cakes at Flour and it’s one of the cakes I love to snack on when there are edges and broken bits lying around.

We did successfully finalize our butterscotch pudding recipe and the scones and other cakes that are being included in the “first 15″ recipes we are sending to Chronicle.  I feel good about the packet so far.  Included in the packet is an Author Questionnaire that has got me stumped so far!  There are questions like, who are the people you think should get an advanced copy of the book?  Um, my mom and dad?  I’m sure they would like to see it.  But I don’t think this is what they are asking.  I’m wracking my brain thinking back to chefs and pastry people and other industry folks that might be helpful in promoting the book.  When it comes out in almost 2 years!

I’ve had a creme caramel (or at least part of one) a day for the last week since putting this dessert on our menu at Myers+Chang.  I can’t stop tasting it.  Each time I say, I’m just going to make sure it’s okay today.  And then I eat the whole thing.  I guess that’s a sign of a successful recipe!

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December 8: The first 15

In one week a draft of the introduction and a sampling of 15 recipes are due to Chronicle.  Yippee! The recipes are all ready to go…but I think I’ll retest most of them just to make sure.

Ben spent Saturday afternoon working on Butterscotch Pudding and a Triple Chocolate Mousse Cake.  I’m finishing the cake today (it needed at least a night in the freezer to set up) and the pudding was, well, not so hot.  The pudding is actually on the list of recipes to send to Chronicle next week so that is first on the list to retest.  He’s got his work cut out for him this week! (Ben if you’re reading this prepared to be busy on Wed!!)

Other that this upcoming deadline, everything else is going along smoothly.  I keep testing recipes, writing headnotes, and adding notes to the draft of the introduction.  The Christmas menu is up at Flour and the bakers are working hard at all of the prep for Buche de Noels, Apple Pithiviers, Lemon Meringue Pies.  I wish I could figure out how to add a picture to this post because Nicole made the most beautiful Croquembouche for a customer on Sunday and I’d love for you all to see it.  I’m not that savvy with the computer however so I don’t think my attempts at attaching the picture is going to work. I’ll keep trying.

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December 5: Custards and cakes

Ben my intern was in on Wednesday and he did a great job testing a few recipes.  First he made a creme caramel.  It looks awesome.  It needs a few days to set before eating so we haven’t tried it yet but he’s back on Saturday so we’ll dig in then.  I’ve been making creme caramel for years and I recently decided to put it on the Myers+Chang dessert menu.  We’re going to serve it with bananas and a black and white sesame brittle.  I tested it during a manager meeting this week and I couldn’t stop eating it!  I hope the customers like it as well.

He also started a flourless chocolate cake for a triple chocolate mousse cake.  This wasn’t so successful.  I don’t have a home baking sheet at the bakery - just professional “half sheet” baking sheets that we use for everything.  These are 18×13 inches and they are perfect for the cake we are making.  But I tried to reduce the recipe down to fit a more standard 11×14 inch sheet that I think is more common.  The problem is that this size is too small and the resulting cake ends up being about 4 inches square.  Totally not cool.  I’m wondering if I can require readers to buy a professional half sheet pan in order to make this cake or should I adjust the recipe and batch size to accommodate a typical home kitchen.

On a similar note, I’d forgotten that many people don’t have a stand mixer at home.  I remember baking for years without my own mixer and somehow I did it and I did fine.  But now I rely on it so much for so many recipes that again, I’m wondering if I should say, “this recipe really works best with a stand mixer” or should I try to figure out how people can make the recipes by hand.  Even though the recipe really does work best with a stand mixer!!

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December 2: Post holiday recap

I hope everyone had a fantastic holiday. The bakers at Flour were tremendous - as was the rest of the staff - cranking out pies by the dozen along with blueberry crumb coffee cakes, buttermilk biscuits with sage, pumpkin bread, chocolate truffle tarts, roasted pear and cranberry crostatas, upsidedown apple gingerbreads…the spread of desserts was quite something to behold at both locations. I’ve been eating pie for a week!

Now it’s time to hunker down and get back on the wagon for the cookbook. I have my first official intern coming in tomorrow and I’m so excited to have someone else helping with the testing. We’re going to make classic creme caramel (which we are going to start serving at Myers+Chang soon along with caramel bananas and black sesame brittle) and a triple chocolate mousse cake with white, milk, and dark chocolate mousses in between flourless chocolate cake layers.

BTW I’ve been reading another great cookbook lately - BakeWise by Shirley Corriher. I highly recommend it.

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November 25: Sneaking in a post….

The bakers at Flour are working around the clock - literally - to fill all of our Thanksgiving orders.  It’s a crazy time of year and we love it!  The ovens are all full, the walk-in is packed, the shelves are loaded with southern pecan pies, chocolate cream pies, cinnamon roll cakes, buttermilk biscuits, cornbread and sausage stuffing.  And everywhere you turn there’s bread proofing, shaping, baking, or cooling off.  I’ve had my fair share of cranberry pecan rolls and it’s not even 7:30 am yet.

I’m in the kitchen helping out so I’m out of the cookbook loop.  But I have been thinking about it on the side and getting ready for the onslaught of testing that I’m prepared to do once Tday is over.  First I’ve hired a few interns to work in 1 month blocks, two days a week, helping me test recipes.  This will make testing go by much faster and it allows me a chance to re-test items I wasn’t to sure about to begin with.  This past weekend we made an apple brown sugar poptart.  It’s quite delicious but I’m wondering if I should make an apple compote or apple butter for the filling.  Christopher said it needed more acid and more apple and I could add that by including a bit of lemon in a compote-y filling.  (Currently it’s simply a paste of brown sugar and butter and a touch of flour with a chopped apple mixed in.)  Christie has also been working on the intro for the book and I’ll be taking a long look at that this weekend to flesh it out.  Techniques, pointers, helpful hints, info about ingredients and necessary equipment, all that jazz.  I want this to be a thorough and complete baking book so I don’t want to leave out essential fundamental information.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

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November 22: Interns!

What a great idea!  I’ve gotten such a great response and I’m excited to have students and home bakers helping me test all of these recipes.  I’m interviewing a couple of people today, a couple next week and a couple the week after that.  I have broken it down into 1-2 month internships to both “spread the wealth” so to speak and to get a variety of levels of baking experience testing the recipes.

We’re crazy at the bakery this week and next because of Thanksgiving - our busiest day of the year is the day before Tday and this year will be no exception.  I’m rushing to test all of the holiday sorts of recipes so that I can help out a bit, although making one pecan pie isn’t really that much help when we have orders for dozens!  I’ll have to put cookbook testing on pause as I jump into full production mode starting tomorrow.

If you were wondering, the pecan pie came out soooooo good.  We ate about half of it and 4 lucky customers bought the rest.

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November 17: Testers

I had dinner with Kate Zuckerman, pastry chef of Chanterelle and author of The Sweet Life, and she was shocked to hear that I am not using interns to help test the recipes. While I am sending out the occasional recipe to the students at Cambridge Culinary she brings up a good point that it helps to have one person who can test all the recipes besides yourself. So I think I may pursue that. It would be very helpful to have an intern in the kitchen a few afternoons a week who simply makes the recipes as I’ve written them. I could watch them bake, see where my instructions might need more clarification, and see how the final product comes out from someone who hasn’t been baking for many years.

I tested pain aux raisins at home yesterday and they were delicious. I brought them to the restaurant for the crew at M+C and they were so happy. I couldn’t save them at home because then Christopher and I would have eaten them all and gotten sick. I had to get them out of the house, they smelled so good!

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November 15: Brioche

I love brioche.  I was introduced to it while working at Payard and every morning the head baker in the viennoiserie department would present me with a new brioche treat after the bake off and I would decide that the 16 hour days were worth it.  I can’t wait to share the recipes I’ve learned with brioche.

I tested a bunch of different brioche pastries yesterday but I think I’m getting a bit overzealous.  The batches I made were enough for about 18-20 pastries each and after much discussion with Nicole, she and I decided that regardless of how delicious brioche is, the home baker is not going to want to make this many.  So I will have to scale down the recipe again to make a manageable amount.

So today I will make, again, brioche au chocolat (brioche filled with pastry cream, chocolate chunks and folded over and sliced), pain aux raisins (brioche rolled with golden raisins and pastry cream in a spiral and topped with a sugar glaze), sugar-and-spice brioche buns (brioche baked plain and then dipped in melted butter and rolled around in a cinnamon-spice sugar mix) and maybe, just maybe, I’ll delve into sticky buns.

I did test the yellow cake once more with an adjusted recipe for the frosting and Christopher ate a slice this morning for breakfast.  It was really quite delicious!  I added an egg yolk and I reduced the flour and it still came out great.  A few people said it was dry and I’m sure it’s because they measured too much flour.  So I’ve reduced the amount so that the range of flour in the recipe makes a great cake even if it’s over-measured somewhat.  Christie is going to test this recipe once more and then we should be good to go.

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November 14: A Holiday Game Plan

I met with Christie yesterday and we had a very fruitful meeting.  I wish I had had enough time to test something and bring it to our meeting but alas, as usual, my day got crazed and I ran out of extra time.  We went through the table of contents, the list of recipes and the preliminary introduction draft.  We have about a month to go before we send out our sample chapter and recipes to Chronicle and of course I want these to all be perfect.  I’ve figured out that I probably spend about half of my time at least on the book which means that I’m really relying on Nicole and Aaron and their staffs to continue running Flour.  Myers+Chang is still getting a good chunk of my time - as the baby in the family it needs the most attention!

Next on the agenda is to flesh and finish out a few sections by the end of the year so that we can start fresh next year with a new section of the book.  At this point I need to test a few more breakfast items (lemon poppy pound cake, sticky buns, brioche au chocolat, etc.) and then I want to get all of the holiday items tested (pumpkin pie, pecan pie, lemon meringue pie, and pear-cranberry crostata).  Then by and large “breakfast treats” and “pies/tarts” will be complete.  Then I can focus on sections of the book I’ve not even touched (breads, savory stuff).

Based on lots of great feedback from testers I’ve found that the Yellow Cake has been coming out great for some people and dry for others.  I really think it is the different ways people measure flour and I’m going to make this cake one more time with some adjustments in the recipe to anticipate that people may be using more flour than they should.  Baking is a science definitely, but given that each person puts his/her stamp on it it is also very much an art.  My goal is to create recipes that meld these two realities so that readers can bake delicious pastries every time.

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November 12: Finishing up breakfast

I’ve been baking at home a lot more now in order to really really see how these recipes come out at home.  Today I made blueberry muffins, cranberry orange muffins, and pineapple coconut yogurt muffins.   I don’t know what I’ll do with 3 dozen muffins at home but at least I now feel very comfortable with these recipes!  I’m almost done with the breakfast pastry section of the book.  It feels good to have a section almost entirely squared away.

I meet with Christie tomorrow and we are going over the initial draft for the introduction as well as finalizing the table of contents.  It’s funny, when we first started this whole thing I thought to myself, “Ain’t no way I can come up with 150 recipes!!” but now that we’re almost halfway through I’m realizing that I’m going to have to be WAY more selective about what I include so that I have room to share all of my best recipes.  Unless I plan on writing Flour part deux…

What continues to surprise me is how inexact baking is if you don’t weigh ingredients.  I still test each ingredient with a cup measurer and then weigh it (even though at this point I’ve weighed a cup of flour about a thousand times) and I still get different weights no matter how careful I am.  I can’t help but think that the home baker is not going to be quite as meticulous as I am, and I really want to make these recipes as fool proof as possible.  But that is so difficult when one person weighs a cup of flour at 125 grams and another person at 155 grams.  An entire ounce difference.  All I can do is explain how to scoop out a cup of flour and cross all of my fingers and toes that they follow my instruction.

I’m getting lots more feedback on the yellow cake and we’re making changes accordingly.  It’s so helpful to get a myriad of opinions about not only the cake itself but also the way the recipe reads.  Thanks to all the testers!

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November 8: Keep ‘em coming!

I’ve had such helpful feedback so far from the students testing the “Celebration Birthday Cake”.  What is most interesting to me is the comments that are repeated over and over again.  For example:

-Many say that the cake doesn’t take a full hour to bake as I instruct in the recipe.  Christie said she had the same issue when writing Confetti Cakes.  All ovens are different and it’s impossible to give an exact time given the variations so we are going to give a bigger range and decrease the baking time accordingly.  Interestingly, when bakers start at Flour and learn how to bake something, they always ask, “…and how long should I bake it for?” and we always say, “Until it’s done!”  Because our ovens fluctuate throughout the day we never have a specific time, just a general range.  So we teach bakers what to look for in a finished cake and they learn how to test early and often for doneness “until it is done.”

-I say to scald the cream (bring to just under a boil) and many were somewhat confused by this.  Scalding liquid is such a common thing for bakers that I didn’t realize that for many people it was a new term.  So we are going to make sure we address this and clarify it!

-The frosting is coming out soft for many people so we are adjusting the instructions so that it is thicker, cooler, and firmer.

I look forward to getting more feedback!  Thanks so much to the testers.

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November 5: Muffin mania

I decided to test a few recipes at home today.  The main difference I found was that I rely on our amazing dishwasher at Flour, Rita, an incredible amount!  The entire kitchen and all of my spoons, cups, spatulas, and bowls were covered in batter, flour, egg, you name it.  I spent longer cleaning up after myself than I did baking.  It also made me appreciate the vast baking space I have to work in at Flour.  I love my kitchen at home but it’s not really set up for baking.  There is no large counterspace to speak of and most of my equipment is in hard-to-reach shelves and drawers.

But the actual baking went great - I made Great Cornbread Muffins filled with Raspberry Jam and Best Bran Muffins with Birdseed.  They came out perfectly - the corn muffins are light and slightly sweet and slighty crunchy and the bran muffins have converted many a non-bran lover into an addict.  These are full of golden raisins and lots of bran and they are moist and delicious.

I have to thank all of the testers who have sent comments about the Celebration Yellow Cake!  Keep all of the comments coming!  And please note that the recipe I’ve printed on this blog (and the one I emailed to the testers) is not the final, final recipe.  I’m taking everyone’s comments and suggestions and working them into the book so each tested recipe will include the feedback I get from all of you.

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November 4: Vote!

‘Nuff said.

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November 1: Feedback

Well it ain’t positive and now I’m back to the drawing board. Sarah, our pastry chef at Farnsworth Street and an incredible baker, made the yellow cake at home and said it was dense and tough. How can that be?? I’m going to make it again and please everyone who is testing it give me your feedback! She was making cupcakes, not a whole cake…would that make a difference? I’m going to test and see.

_______________________________

Okay it’s three hours and 2 cakes later.  The yellow cake that I just made was just as marvelous as the first one - mellow rich flavor, delicate and soft texture, the perfect cake for a birthday.  The only thing I can think of is that Sarah made the cake using this recipe multiplied by three - I wonder if that changes anything significantly?  I am leaving the cake for her to taste and fill and frost and serve tomorrow.  If you want to try it come by Farnsworth Street and order a slice!  I will continue to wait to hear back from other testers.

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October 30: testing, testing!

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October 29: A full belly

Yippee! All of my recipes worked today and I have so much stuff to eat and bring to the restaurant and bring home. First the yellow butter cake with chocolate frosting - I took as a base our sour cream coffee cake recipe which is made with creme fraiche and I tweaked it a bit and changed the creme fraiche for buttermilk…and ended up with the most delicious amazing yellow butter cake. I didn’t like the frosting that I made with it but no worries, the chocolate ganache frosting I made today was divine. It was pure chocolate with some butter to smooth it out and it tastes like the best chocolate bar melted. Yum. I also made devils food cake with milk chocolate buttercream - known at Flour as the midnight chocolate cake. This cake is the lightest softest cake I’ve ever had and every single time it comes out great. And it is so full of chocolate flavor it always blows me away. I can never stop eating it when we make it and the small batch that made one cake was a success. Then I made sour cream coffee cake with pecan streusal - this is a homey cake that is perfect for breakfast or afternoon snacking. It’s got a river of pecan and brown sugar and butter streusal running through it and it’s been a Flour favorite for years. I was so happy today!  And pretty darn full too…

I talked with Christie and we planned the next several months. We have a preliminary chapter and recipes due to our editor in a month. My main concern is that I’ve been really wordy in my headnotes (headings to the recipes) but I talked to Bill our editor and to Christie and they both think that will be part of the charm of the book. Plus Christie’s job is to whittle me down as needed and she’s been doing a terrific job of that so far.

Finally I’m really excited and grateful that a bunch of students from Cambridge Culinary - two of whom work for me at Flour- have volunteered to test recipes at home. I’m going to gather a bunch and send them their way and see how that works out. The next post I’ll include a recipe for you as well. Thank you to the Cambridge Culinary Crew!!

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October 27: Cakes and more cakes

The cake saga continues.  I often feel that the simplest pastries are the hardest to master.  Or is it that because these pastries are so simple that if you have any mistakes or if they are not made with the best care then it is really really obvious?  Maybe that’s it.  I made two yellow cakes on Saturday hoping to finally give Christopher the yellow cake and chocolate frosting he’s been pining for.  Both were from recipes that I’d always liked a lot in the past - one was from Flo Braker and the other was from…I don’t remember but it’s in our Flour recipes as Yellow Butter Cake so I assumed it was good to go.  They both came out rubbery and in fact kind of like bad cornbread.  Christopher was quite disappointed - as was I!  But I think I know the error in my ways - I put all of the batter for each cake into one cake pan - and I know that with some more delicate cakes if you put too much batter into the pan they bake up and then inwards and for some reason they don’t turn out light and fluffy.

I filled these two cakes with a whipping ganache recipe that I got off of the Tartelette blog.  This is a blog I just recently started reading that has absolutely the most beautiful breathtaking pictures of pastries.  But the recipe she gives does not match up at all with the picture and I ended up with a light brown sort of chocolatey frosting that was not at all what I was looking for.

So here I am back in the kitchen trying yet again.  I have two cakes in the oven right now.  One is a re-mastered basic vanilla yellow cake - that has been split into TWO pans.  I just took them out of the oven and they are beautiful. I can hardly wait to taste them but they look as light and fluffy as a down blankie.  The second set of cakes is actually a tweaked version of our coffee cake recipe.  The coffee cake makes a most delicious mouth watering light and velvety cake.  So I thought to try it without the streusal mixture and with buttermilk rather than creme fraiche and we’ll see how that comes out.

The frosting is something I’ve been working on for a while.  It’s a chocolate frosting that starts with a swiss meringue base - but not much of one, just enough to smooth out the frosting - and then continues with loads of melted chocolate and soft butter and a little confectioners sugar and cocoa for sweetness and depth.  So far it’s looking (and tasting) mighty fine.

I’ll report back with the results later!

ps Sharon your last comment accidently got spammed!  I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to reply to it - thanks as always for checking in and write again if there was a question in there for me.

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October 24: Ooops

I used to think only my parents read this…and today I found out that many of the bakers at Flour keep up with me thru this blog.  So let me clarify - Julius I really like your cake!  I really do!  And you are one of the most talented bakers I’ve ever worked with!  And I love you!  But …your yellow cake is not something that I crave and that is what I’m looking for.  Haha!  I will share with you when I find a really light, fluffy, moist, velvety, yellow vanilla birthday cake recipe…and you can use it whenever you want!

I am going to make a few cakes tomorrow.  Today I made a dark chocolate whipping ganache to fill the cakes with.  It takes a day to cool before you can whip it so I’ll be ready for tomorrow.  Christopher has been waiting impatiently for this cake.  He thought it was coming yesterday, I’m pretty sure he’s expecting it tonight.  I’ll have to break it to him that it’s not coming until tomorrow.  If he only read this blog too!

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October 22: The Perfect Cake

So yesterday I wrote about making a vanilla cake with chocolate buttercream, sort of like the one I saw on Sex and the City which looked divine.  I brought a piece home to my new husband and while it was devoured in full, it wasn’t what either of us was expecting.  I got the vanilla cake recipe originally from Julius, one of our longtime bakers at Flour - it’s his go-to cake for yellow cake.  We use it for birthday requests from time to time but to be honest I’ve never been totally happy with it: it’s moist but not that moist, it’s tasty but not that tasty, it’s yummy but not that yummy.  Which is probably why we don’t offer a yellow cake regularly at Flour.

I will try again with a Buttermilk Cake recipe that I used to adore from Flo Braker.  And rather than milk chocolate buttercream I will fill this new cake with a dark chocolate whipped ganache.  THEN I think I”ll have something worthy of putting in the book…and bringing home to Christopher.

Speaking of Flo Braker, she’s come out with a new book that I just got, Baking for All Occasions.  I didn’t go to baking school but her book The Simple Art of Perfect Baking was like the best professor for me.  I met her years ago at Rialto and she’s as warm and generous as she is talented.  The book is a beauty!

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October 22: Back on track!

It feels so good to put on a chef’s coat again and have flour and sugar at my fingertips.  I had am ambitious day planned today and it went pretty well.  Christopher and I were watching Sex and the City the movie last night (I can’t believe we spent 2 hours watching it - I wasn’t a fan when it was a series and the movie made me cringe much of the time - especially since Christopher and I just got married ourselves - maybe I don’t know the background story about Carrie and Big but it all seemed so overwrought to me) and the girls were enjoying cake at one point and Christopher said, “You should make cake!”  Now we do make cake at Flour but it’s true that we don’t have cake available to enjoy by the slice.  So I decided today would be cake day.  Until I got to the bakery and found out that we have no cake flour!

Tarts were also on my mind so I jumped to tarts instead.  I made a bittersweet chocolate truffle tart and a caramel nut tart.  They were both hits with the staff and the customers.  The chocolate truffle tart is the most simple recipe with just cream and the best chocolate and a little butter and egg yolk - the filling is so rich and decadent and it fills your mouth with pure chocolate flavor - it’s super silky too.  The caramel nut has dark caramel with a hint of fresh orange zest and vanilla and then tons of mixed nuts - hazelnuts, almonds, pecans, walnuts - and some dried cranberries as well for added zing.  Both of the tarts cake out so well.  In the middle of my tart making, Aaron our general manager (and new father - congratulations Aaron!!) brought over an emergency tub of cake flour.  So I went ahead with my plan to make a simple yellow birthday cake with milk chocolate buttercream.  The cake is cooling right now and will soon be ready to be filled with the most luscious creamy chocolatey buttercream…and then I’m going to slice it and bring it home to my new husband!  The honeymoon ain’t over yet baby!!

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October 21: Martha’s Vineyard

Yes my cookbook testing has come to a complete halt.  But I’m getting back on the wagon tomorrow - the whole day is devoted to cookbook testing - I can’t wait!  I was away this past weekend at the Martha’s Vineyard Food and Wine festival.  I was asked to speak about bread and it was a blast!  I brought 5 different kinds of breads from Flour- multigrain sourdough, raisin-pecan, country, focaccia, and brioche.  I was a little nervous talking in front of the crowd because I wasn’t really sure what they wanted to hear.  So I just launched into what makes a good bread, how bread is made, what is a sourdough starter, etc.  Once the questions started rolling I was much more relaxed.  The attendees were all very attentive and it seemed that they liked the bread so I was happy with the whole thing.  The following day on our way to the ferry we stopped at a wonderful little place called the Scottish Bakeshop that had lots of great pastries and foods.  I was so impressed!  We got a raspberry almond scone (needed sugar but great flavor), a cherry vanilla muffin with rice and quinoa (sorta odd tasting but I’m assuming because of all the different ingredients it’s a challenge to make this taste right), a homemade egg sandwich with local eggs and homemade english muffin (SOOO good) and a rice/beans/kale plate.  Plus we got a slice of pizza and a pecan square to go.  Everything was fresh and clearly made right there.  There aren’t enough places in the world like this.  I loved it.

It’s good to be back - really back - from my travels and I plan on throwing myself back into the cookbook and Flour and Myers+Chang now that my hiatus is over.

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October 16: Running behind

I was planning on spending yesterday (Wednesday) on testing recipes all day as I usually do on Wednesdays…but being away for 2 weeks meant that I was super backed-up so I didn’t leave the office until 6!  I had 2 weeks of payroll and bills to take care of for both bakeries and the restaurant and once I got on the computer I really didn’t look up….

That is, until the UPS guy dropped off a package for me which I immediately tore into.  It was a copy of Amy Scherber’s newest book - The Sweet Side of Amy’s Breads.  Buy this book now.  I only had a few seconds to flip through it and read a couple recipes but already I can tell it’s a winner.  She and her partner Toy have such a natural easy writing style and I can vouch for the deliciousness of her products from my many trips to all of her bakeries.  I hope that the Flour book is as beautiful and thorough and well written and clear.

I’m slowing getting caught up so I hope I can do a little baking tomorrow.  But I am away this weekend at the Martha’s Vineyard Food and Wine festival talking about Bread and Olive Oil so I won’t have my regular Saturday shift in the kitchen to experiment and play around.  By next week I hope to be completely back to normal, schedule-wise.

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October 13: Buongiorno!

I’ve been gone for 2 weeks and it’s great to be back!  I was in Italy on honeymoon with Christopher - we had a wonderful trip.  As promised I’m reporting back on my pastry discoveries.  First Venice had nothing to write home about - the bread in all of the restaurants was plain white (stale) rolls that I could hardly eat.  And I love bread.  Christopher thinks that the bread is purposefully not good so that you won’t fill up on bread and will order more food.  We asked a native Venician what she thought and she agreed that bread is not what Venice is known for.  Gelato was fantastic almost everywhere we went.  There are select number of flavors - around 15 -that each of the stores offers.  I loved the Yogurt the most- not too sweet, tangy and creamy.  Many of the other flavors were too sweet for me - amarena cherry, stratiacella (chocolate chip, I’m sure I’m butchering the spelling), irish coffee, chocolate, even peach was too sweet - but they were all fresh and not too rich, which I loved.  I loved it so much that I can barely fit in my jeans now :).  They have a wonderful candy that is caramel and almonds cut into squares that I could eat every day.  But the patisseries we saw were woefully bereft of anything that I was curious about - and I’m pretty darn curious when it comes to pastry.  So I hoped for better luck at our next stop.

We traveled to Como and had some good meals there as well but again, the pastries did not do that much to wow me.  There was a typical cookie of the Como region that Christopher and I liked - it was made with cocoa and had dried fruit and nuts and was sort of like a little cake, and it was dusted liberally with powdered sugar and we liked having one with our daily afternoon cappucino.  I also had a few great meringues - one of them was so full of nuts that it was chewy and candy like - I want to try this at Flour. I got a few cookies at one local pastisserie and a chocolate mousse cake- these were all fine but I’m not sure I can even remember what they were which tells you something.  Again gelato saved the day most of the time.

I found that the best pastry related item to enjoy was the pizza - I had a pizza a day, which may be another reason why my jeans are tight!  Every casual restaurant boasted about its pizza and usually rightly so.  Charred on the edges and bottom, topped with a smear of tomato and lots of cheese and basil, every pizza was so good that I ended up eating the whole thing.  They were usually about 16-18 inches across.  I think I’ve had enough pizza to last me for a while.

Foodwise it wasn’t such a great trip but that’s okay, that wasn’t my main reason for going anyway!

I’m looking forward to catching up on my cookbook testing.  I can’t wait to get back into the kitchen.  We went to many restaurants with somewhat open kitchens and I loved watching the behind-the-scenes action.  It made me miss home.  I’m hoping to get back on my Wednesday and Saturday testing schedule and I’ve got plans on testing more recipes at home now that I have a groove developed.

As a final note, when I came back I had 244 comments waiting for me on this blog…and 243 of them were spam.  I wish I had as much tenacity in everything I do as these spammer do.  I just spent 10 minutes deleting them all.

Arrivederci!

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September 25: Fig newtons

Every now and then I test a recipe that makes me think, THIS is the reason to buy this book.  The homemade fig newtons is one of these recipes.  I made a small batch of fig jam with a little orange, vanilla, and lemon.  Then I made some shortbread and rolled in out into a long rectangle.  The jam went down the middle, I rolled the whole thing up in a log, and baked it for an hour.  It was one of the best things I’ve eaten in a long time!  The jam is sooooo delicious, especially now that fig season is in full swing.  I was really happy with how they came out.

And then I made some peach ice cream with the last few summer peaches we had in-house.  I’ve been struggling with how to keep the ice cream creamy while still adding enough peaches to make it really peachy and the ratio I came up with seemed to work out well.  Christopher and I enjoyed fresh peach ice cream for dessert last night.

I meet with Christie tomorrow and then I’m off for two weeks…I’ll miss my recipe testing but I’m eager to see what desserts Italy has to offer.

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September 23: Happy Birthday Dad!

My postings have slowed down a bit and in a few days they will go to nothing for a few weeks…I’m going away on honeymoon! This past week has been very busy for me with my parents visiting, the debut of Myers+Chang desserts, the Myers+Chang one-year anniversary party, and the haphazard planning of our trip. Christie says we’re in good shape so I’m not going to stress about the fact that I haven’t tested a recipe in a week. She’s in town this week so we’ll meet before I leave and then hopefully I’ll have a stress-free vacation!

I did finally sign and receive the contract from Chronicle and send it off today. We have a preliminary draft due in a few months and I think we’re well on our way.

I am committed to testing two more things before I go - homemade fig newtons (figs won’t be in season when I come back) and fresh peach ice cream (ditto). The fig newtons are stellar - buttery shortbread and a figgy jam with vanilla and orange. The peach ice cream has been a bit of a challenge. In order to get lots of peach flavor I have to add lots of peaches…but this makes the ice cream more icy than creamy. I’m trying to get a nice balance of creamy and peachy.

Finally, to my dad: Happy Birthday! I’m so glad I get to celebrate it with you in person. I’m the luckiest daughter in the world to have such a kind, generous, loving, supportive, and wonderful dad. I love you Dad!

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September 19: Robert Steinberg

Robert Steinberg introduced himself to me over a decade ago when I was pastry chef at Rialto restaurant in Cambridge.  He’d just started up a chocolate company in San Francisco called ScharffenBerger Chocolates and was eager for me to try his stuff.  I met him in a tiny kitchen of a local bakery that was near Rialto and within minutes we were sharing chocolate experiences, laughing about mutual friends, interrupting each other with stories about various restaurants or to exclaim about a certain chocolate, and all the while he was plying me with his amazing wares.  I left after an hour with a bagful of different chocolates to test - I admit that most of it went directly into my mouth and hardly any of it made its way back to the restaurant for baking.

After that our friendship was set.  We met every time he came back to Boston and while we always started talking about chocolate we soon veered into long passionate discussions about our work, our travels, our lives.  Robert was nothing if not passionate and I’ll always remember how full of life and more importantly, love of live, he was.  We wrote to each other (I have such fascinating letters from him - snail mail!- describing chocolate trips and pastry sojourns), I taught him how to text (although he hated texting), we tried to keep in touch via email, but person-to-person visits were how our friendship flourished.  I visited him in San Francisco a few times; his mom lives in Marblehead, MA, so his visits here were much more frequent.

He passed away a few days ago.  He had lymphoma (diagnosed several years before I met him) but had so successfully battled it thus far that I never thought it would really win.  I had heard he was in the hospital and called his cell, only to be told by a friend that he’d passed a few minutes before.

He was one of the most direct, unassuming, generous, down-to-earth, and simply interesting people I’ve ever met.  He was a dear dear friend and I’ll miss him tremendously.  Chocolate lovers everywhere owe him a huge debt of gratitude for how much he single handedly improved the chocolate landscape in the US; I owe him for always sharing with me his delightful friendship and caring and love.

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