REDRum(ford)!!

Just about the time I lost my cookie mojo, I also thought I had the biscuit blues.

Luckily, I was so focused on my chocolate chip cookie disaster that I didn't have time to investigate the mystery of the no longer towering treasures of flaky goodness.

Lucky because it took only a few sentences by food scientist and cookbook author Shirley Corriher at a recent Bakers Dozen meeting to put me back on the tall and narrow biscuit path. A few words by food scientist and author Harold McGee at that same meeting added a bit of reassurance as well.

In the Midwestern town where I grew up, we were geographically close enough to both the northern and southern parts of the state that you had your choice of flaky or fluffy biscuits. Flaky biscuits are high rising towers and fluffy biscuits are soft mounds. Just like the type of fat you use in your pie crust, your preference was probably determined by what was served at your dinner table.

For me, it was flaky biscuits. The biscuits my mom often stirred together to serve with her creamed chicken were tall and flaky but they also looked a bit like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. So maybe they weren't picture perfect in the looks department but I always liked how the slope gave me a perfect lever to open up the biscuit for a knob of butter.

Most southerners prefer the fluffy biscuits, which require soft flour like the famous White Lily brand. This low protein, soft flour encourages a tender, cake like texture.

No cake like biscuits for us though. We used "strong" high protein all-purpose flour. This flour ensured a chewier and crispier biscuit but without any sacrifice of the flaky interior.

Besides the difference in flour, there are also strong preferences in the type of fat used -- butter or shortening.

I once substituted butter for the Crisco shortening we traditionally used but the sacrifice in height and texture made it a stranger -- Crisco it had to be. After all, I would soon be slathering the biscuit in butter anyway!

We also didn't use buttermilk -- an exotic ingredient in my childhood home. Our recipe was a basic baking powder biscuit recipe calling for all-purpose flour, salt, baking powder, shortening and milk. This recipe can be found in countless cookbooks for the beginner cook and in classic home cookbooks. Part of the appeal of the recipe is that it can be mixed together quickly and in one bowl.

A few weeks ago we had gotten an early rainfall and the house was feeling very cozy. I decided some homemade chicken soup and biscuits were just the ticket for dinner that evening.

I quickly stirred a batch of biscuits together. My dough was a lovely mass of stickiness -- perfect texture. I think rolling the dough can make the biscuits tough so I gently patted the dough into a circle -- adding just a pinch of flour to the breadboard to get a nice smooth circle.

Twisting the biscuit cutter into the dough instead of making one sharp punch probably caused my mom's lopsided biscuits. I cut them close together to generate fewer scraps. I then like to place them close together on a cookie sheet -- this keeps them moist and gives them each other to lean on as a support when they start to rise. Although you could space them one inch apart and this would just give you a crustier and drier biscuit.

The finished biscuits were a disappointment. Instead of my towering treasures they were now small, hockey puck like mounds of dough. Edible yes, but barely. Of course, butter saves most things and it was certainly the savior that night.

A memory tugged at me as I reviewed whether I had done anything differently this time when I put the biscuits together. I realized that last winter the same low rise had happened to a batch of biscuits the few times I had made them during that busy winter.

Now, as I sat listening to Shirley Corriher and Harold McGee talk about the ongoing difficulties bakers have with baking soda and baking powder, I hear Shirley say an interesting thing that made my ears perk up.

"I'm a lazy cook," Corriher said. "It often takes me a bit before I get my cakes in the oven. Therefore I need to use a baking powder that does its magic primarily in the oven and not while sitting on my counter waiting to be baked."

And then her words that solved my biscuit mystery, "Avoid Rumford Baking Powder, it creates 60% of its bubbles in the first two minutes!" proclaimed Corriher.

What??

No wonder my biscuits were flat. Of course I knew that baking powder is what gives the nice rise to baked goods by introducing carbon dioxide into the batter and I also knew that there were different categories of baking powder: single, double, and fast-acting. Most grocery store brands are double-acting.

What I didn't realize is that although Rumford advertises itself as double-acting it in fact acts more like a single-acting baking powder. According to Corriher, Rumford gets most of its rise as soon as it is stirred into the batter and just a bit more in the oven. True double-acting baking powders give more oven rise.

I had grown up using Clabber Girl Baking Powder. In fact, it is produced in my hometown of Terre Haute, Indiana! It wasn't until recently that I realized that more serious bakers preferred the Rumford brand so of course, I had to switch to that brand. Later I found out that the makers of Clabber Girl also produce Rumford.

One of the reasons it appears that Rumford is preferred is that it is an all-phosphate baking powder -- it contains no aluminum.

This aluminum-free claim became a rallying cry several years ago as worries that excessive amounts of aluminum in the diet may contribute to Alzheimer's disease.

But according to Harold McGee, "You get more aluminum from eating a pickle than you do from eating half a cake."

Clabber Girl contains an acid that dissolves rapidly in liquid and an acid that does not dissolve until the batter reaches a higher temperature in the hot oven -- hence the double-acting label.

In her cookbook, Bakewise, Shirley Corriher has an excellent chart of Reaction Times of Leavening Acids During Baking. I also came across a great post on the different types of baking powders and their reaction times on the blog, thefreshloaf. Check out both of these if you want to find out more about the magic of baking powder.

I believe that just like measuring flour correctly (please buy a scale!), knowing what is in your baking powder is just as critical.

I also now know why some of my recent baking efforts didn't have the nice rise that I had expected from past efforts. Rumford literally was bursting my baking bubble(s)!

I'm back to being a Clabber Girl!

Beauty In the Eye of the Beholder: A Cookie Only A Mother Could Love!

When my husband and I were first married and moved from Indiana to California, his mother still sent him care packages even though he wasn't in college anymore.

Cookie care packages. Actually, primarily one type of cookie.

At that point in my life, I didn't really have much time for baking beyond the occasional chocolate chip cookie so I was glad he was getting his fix.

The cookie she sent him was quite a humble little thing -- not attractive by any stretch of the imagination. And the fact that they usually arrived in many broken pieces didn't matter to him at all.

As the years went by, his mom had less time to make his favorite cookie so I assumed the cookie mantle.

This unattractive and humble tribute to all that is American about milk-and-cookie-time after a hard day at school is none other than Peanut Blossoms. The blossom part of the name makes it sound like a beautiful cookie now doesn't it?

In reality it is a Hershey Kiss set into the middle of a partially baked peanut butter cookie then baked a few minutes more to meld kiss and cookie together. A mouthful of peanut butter and chocolate very much like a very tall Reese cup.

And the origin of this family favorite? Just like ring-a-lings, Peanut Blossoms were also an entrant in a Pillsbury Bake-Off Contest. This time the year was 1957 and was created by Freda Smith of Gibsonburg, Ohio. I guess I shouldn't be surprised given that both of our moms were from the Midwest and were housewives during the 1950s but still, I think it is one more reason for our compatibility!

The Pillsbury Bake-Off Cookbook noted that sometimes this cookie is also called Brown-Eyed Susans but I think the Peanut Blossoms moniker is more fitting. Something about that pointy Hershey kiss makes the eye reference a bit jarring!

So, I gamely made this reminder of his childhood for every Christmas cookie platter.

Each year at the holidays, my large family would gather for our annual cookie bake. Although we now bring our finished cookies to our Christmas Eve gatherings, in the early years we would actually bake and exchange the cookies at one of our houses the week prior to Christmas. It was a flour and sugar fueled afternoon and it was a lot of fun.

In the beginning, I couldn't see how my humble cookie could compete with the beautifully decorated sugar cookies or laboriously piped Spritz cookies that were my mom's claim to cookie fame. How could a cookie that took so much less time and effort and was ugly to boot share the same cookie tin?

But I baked them each year although I made sure to bake a second cookie selection in an attempt to deflect from my ugly duckling cookie. But Peanut Blossoms were always a constant.

I think my family took them to be polite and they made their way into the trash once they were home!

But then an interesting thing happened: children. Once my siblings and I started having kids, the cookie exchange got bigger in scope and definitely a lot messier!

And the kids LOVED Peanut Blossoms!

And not just the cousins but in confirmation of the magic of genetics, my daughter shares her father's love of Peanut Blossoms. It is her favorite cookie.

These cookies also make an appearance at another time of the year other than Christmas -- October 24. See, one of my nieces loves them maybe even more than my daughter.

I bake them for her on her birthday each year. Not sure how this tradition started but it makes me happy to do it for her. She is one of the more quiet members of our large family. We don't talk a lot or are overly demonstrative with each other but we share a quiet compatibility. I like to think she knows I accept her just as she is and that I would show up if she needed me.

That might be a big burden for one humble cookie to bear but when she is off to college next year I have a feeling I'll be mailing a few care packages.

Peanut Blossoms

Typical of a cookie that has been around for so many years, many different recipes exist. The biggest difference is usually the choice between shortening and butter. The original recipe used shortening but I now use butter. I think it makes for a richer flavor but either one works.

This recipe is from the 1998 cookbook, FamilyFun's Cookies for Christmas. They also have a recipe on their website but it is different from the one in the cookbook. The only change I made is that I don't roll the dough balls in extra sugar before the first bake. I think it makes the cookies too crisp.

Peanut Butter Sealed with a Kiss

1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour (spoon and sweep)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 9-ounce package chocolate kisses, unwrapped

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Cream the peanut butter, butter and sugars. Add the egg and vanilla.

Sift the flour, salt and baking soda together. Combine with the peanut butter mixture.

Shape the dough into 1 1/2-inch balls. Place on an ungreased cookie sheet about 2 inches apart.

Bake for 8 minutes, remove from the oven, and press a chocolate kiss into the center of each cookie. Bake for another 3 minutes.

Cool on a wire rack. Makes 40-50 cookies.

Lost and Found: Cookie Mojo!

Mojo: urbandictionary.com:
Self-confidence, Self-assuredness. As in basis for belief in ones self in a situation.

I had been in such a pie baking frenzy (ipie, that is) that I hadn't been baking much else lately. But then I volunteered to bring cookies to a luncheon.

Not a big deal despite how busy I was. My go-to dessert in situations where I want to bring something special but don't have a lot of time is to bring a towering tray of my chocolate chip cookies.

I know, I know -- chocolate chip cookies don't usually fall into the oohh and ahhh category of baked goodies.

But through the years I had perfected this particular recipe. For people who tasted them for the first time, they quickly became a requested item. For those who had tasted them before, they were met with many happy smiles.

I often used them as edible thank you notes!

My daughter even used them as currency at school (and sometimes still does)!

I started freezing balls of cookie dough so I could quickly bake one or two in case of cookie emergencies like a bad day at work or unexpected guests.

I don't describe all of this to be boastful but so that when I say I lost it, the true loss is realized.

So, let me say: I lost it.

Not the recipe, my cookie mojo.

Several weeks before the luncheon I noticed I was running low on frozen cookie dough so I quickly stirred a batch together. I don't use a recipe anymore since I long ago memorized the simple ingredient list and instructions.

I usually bake a few of the cookies for my family to enjoy that day and then freeze the remainder.

I slid a few cookies onto a cookie sheet and popped the sheet into the oven.

Not knowing of the impending doom that was about to befall me, I innocently went about my morning chores as I waited for the timer to beep.

The cookies looked pretty good as I pulled them out of the oven - the dough had set around the edges but there was still a yummy softness in the center of each cookie. The top of each cookie was evenly browned.

But not on the bottom. As they cooled I took a look at the bottom of the cookies.

Burned!

It took me two more batches before I realized that something more was going on than just burned cookies. In fact, something was terribly wrong!

I had lost my cookie mojo!

And I wanted it back. Quickly. Not just because these cookies had become such a critical part of my baking identity, oh no. Let's just say that life had become a bit uncertain in these dire economic times and I didn't think I could bear for one more thing I relied on to be unchanging to be castaway.

Ok, perhaps that is unfair to put all of that emotion on a simple cookie but there you go.

Being of the test kitchen mindset, I got to work. All other baking projects were put on hold.

I decided that there were only a few variables that I needed to check:
Oven temperature
Cookie Sheet
Ingredients
Technique

Just a note about the weather, I didn't consider the weather to be the cause because during the weeks I tested and retested these cookies the weather didn't experience any real swings in humidity or temperature.

So since I knew my ingredients and techniques hadn't changed, I investigated the first two -- oven temperature and my baking pans.

Baker, know thy oven. Not having the oven at the correct temperature is generally the culprit in underdone or overdone baked goods. Long ago I bought an oven thermometer and I automatically slap it into my oven whenever I turn it on. I'm always surprised at the difference between when the light goes out indicating the correct temperature on the outside oven dial and what temperature the oven thermometer actually registers.

My usual method is to bake one cookie sheet at a time on the center rack. I rotate the cookie sheet halfway through the cooking time.

Many of the cookbooks I consulted recommended baking two sheets at a time with the oven racks on the upper and lower middle positions. Then bake reversing position of cookie sheets halfway through baking -- from top to bottom and front to back. Sounded exhausting.

Perhaps something had changed with my oven. I bought another thermometer (just in case) and tested the temperature. Then I baked a few cookies (I started only baking a few at a time given all my tests!) using the rotating method and different rack position. Still burned.

Perhaps my reliable but very old cookie sheets needed replaced? I'd been using rimless insulated cookie sheets for years. Did I detect a bit of warping?

Here again, cookbook authors differed in their opinion on what cookie sheets delivered the best results. The choices and combinations seemed endless: rimmed half-sheet pans, rimless pans, pans with one rimmed side only, double-thick insulated, dark sheets, shiny light-colored sheets, and so on.

One option that sounded intriguing was to double pan the cookie sheets together. Perhaps it was BOTH my oven temp AND my cookie sheet that were the problems??

I quickly put a couple of dough balls on the cookie sheet, set it on another cookie sheet then started the oven rack and rotating dance. I think my poor oven never got to one steady temp!

But still no change.

I was out of control. My family started to tiptoe around me as I continued to pull two cookies out of the oven, look at them, snarl, then toss them in the trash.

I even started questioning my technique after all of these years of using the same method. I remembered an article in The New York Times where writer David Leite reported on crucial elements to turn out the perfect chocolate chip cookies. I tried some of the ideas in the article but none of them made much of a difference.

But then I noticed something that hadn't caught my attention before about the cookies -- they weren't exactly burned on the bottom -- it was almost as if there were a windswept pattern of brownness. Some cookies looked like they had dark brown and light brown stripes! And the entire cookie looked not burned but more golden brown than usual.



Now this was really getting strange!

I surfed the Fine Cooking website -- this site has great baking tips and techniques. Nothing-new here.

I logged on the King Arthur Flour live chat online and chatted with a woman about my cookie dilemma but she was stumped. She very nicely said she would check with their test kitchen and send me an email later with their suggestions. And she actually did send me an email later that same day which I thought was very cool. Their suggestion: double pan your cookie sheets.

Oh well. I decided to take a cookie break for a few days and think through all my testing and what I had learned.

And that turned out to be what I had forgotten. Did I ever mention that I'm a big fan of Sherlock Holmes?

Let's just say that I forgot what his creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had to say:

"...when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

I went back to my ingredients. And there it was. All I had to do was test my theory.

As we all know, baking soda is a type of chemical leavener that gives baked good their desired rise. It reacts with acids to create carbon dioxide gas which create the lovely bubbles that make our cakes and cookies rise.

The types of acids that baking soda neutralizes includes sour cream, buttermilk, honey, brown sugar, cocoa and molasses.

Most cookbooks tell you to measure baking soda carefully because if you use more than can be neutralized by the acidic ingredient, you can end up with a soapy or metallic tasting cookie with a coarse crumb.

But baking soda not only neutralizes acidity, it enhances the BROWNING of a batter -- like a gingerbread or carrot cake batter.

The sugar in my recipe is primarily brown sugar.

Could it POSSIBLY be that I hadn't measured my ingredients carefully enough and had used too much baking soda? Had this recipe become so known to me that I was no longer as exact as I should be?

Had I forgotten what Rose Levy Beranbaum had said:
"Bakers are born, not made. We are exacting people who delight in submitting ourselves to rules and formulas if it means achieving repeatable perfection."

Well, yes, as it turned out.

So I measured each ingredient carefully. I baked a batch.

They were beautiful -- top and bottom. I baked a few more batches just to be certain.

While I was glad I had figured out the mystery and had my cookie mojo back, I felt chastened.

A few days later an email popped into my inbox from a fellow member of the Bakers Dozen organization. Seems this baker had a recipe that he made all the time and all of a sudden it wouldn't work anymore.....

The emails back and forth from the bakers trying to help him out reassured me and reminded me that we bakers never stop learning (and relearning).

But what really reassured me happened just this week at a Bakers Dozen meeting. Food scientists and authors Shirley Corriher and Harold McGee were the featured speakers.

Before the formal presentation began, I asked Harold McGee for his thoughts on the evils of baking soda. He laughed and said that because baking soda gives so much trouble to so many bakers that both he and Shirley Corriher were going to open their presentation with a discussion of baking soda! Cookbook author Flo Braker had organized this event and had specifically asked them to talk about baking soda.

And in fact McGee spoke not only about the more common problems associated with baking soda -- soapy taste, coarse crumb, but he also talked about the overbrowning of batter that can happen.

Corriher added "baking soda (over leavening) is the cause of most baking problems!"
She also agreed "there is a humbling experience for every cook just around the corner!"

Come to think of it, how did I ever come to underestimate that little orange box? After all, a product that is used to soak up odors in my fridge and garbage disposal, used as a cleaning product for my bathroom, makes my stomach feel better and my teeth whiter must be one powerful product!

So I think there should be a campaign to have a warning label put on each box of baking soda:
"proceed at your own risk -- not for sissies!"

Stress Cannot Exist in the Presence of Pie!

As I flip to the first page of my notebook, I note that it all started in early January 2009.

The "it" being my obsession with pie. And not just your usual 9-inch pie.

Small pies. Pies about 3-inches in diameter.

My mom, the inspiration for this blog, had been hospitalized after a fall.

Each night after visiting her, I found myself heading to the kitchen first for a glass of wine then reaching for the flour and butter and my favorite rolling pin.

I'm not sure why I reached for the cupcake pan instead of the faded pink pie plate that had been hers before we moved her to the Alzheimer's facility.

Somehow I felt the need to reinvent the pie.

Month's later people would ask me if I became obsessed with pie because I was simply tired of all the cupcake shops that had opened nearby or of reading about the latest cupcake craze in almost every food magazine and newspaper.

Maybe. But although not a fan of the three-inch high frosting on some of these cupcakes, I actually do like them. And I admire the cute shops and acknowledge all the work that had gone into testing those recipes and opening those shops.

My first attempts at putting dough in muffin pan and filling with fresh peaches, and a bit of ginger were not attractive although tasty. The bottom of each pie had big dimples as though I had pushed my finger into the bottom while they baked.

As January turned into February, I tried all kinds of crimping to the edges of the pie: checkerboard, flute, point and scallop, among others -- because I'm a double-crust girl at heart. Nothing against crumb toppings or pumpkin pie but double-crust will always be my first choice.

Some of the crimping looked good but others simply failed and my top crust popped off the bottom crust like a jack-in-the-box albeit with oozing peach juice instead of a clown.

I experimented with different sized cookie cutters -- I wanted my final product to be about 3-inches in diameter but that meant starting with either a five, four or 4.5-inch cookie cutter. I tried all the combinations.

I haunted cooking stores and checked out every pie book from my library.

In mid-February, my mom passed away. As we dealt with all the details of dealing with my dad, organizing her service, etc., my pie experiments stopped.

But I didn't quit thinking about them. In odd moments I would research pie on the Internet or browse my local bookstore.

In April, I began to fill the notebook again.

Now I began to focus on perfect cooking times, different fillings, the perfect crust.

I decided I wanted people to be able to eat the pie as they would a cupcake -- straight out of the bag without a fork and plate.

That meant a sturdy dough that wasn't all butter or shortening but yet still flaky and tender.
The perfect dough ended up being a combination of butter and cream cheese.

For awhile I tried different combinations of flour but then decided I wanted to make the recipe accessible to all and not dependent on hard to find specialty flours.

I tried to eliminate the gap between the top crust and my fruit fillings. Sometimes I was successful, sometimes not. Organic fruit seemed to cook down the most. I turned to the experts to find a solution including Rose Levy Beranbaum and Shirley Corriher as well as the online chat help at the King Arthur Flour Company!

I tried their solutions but in the end, decided that I would mound the fruit as high as possible, stretch the top crust over it and be done with it. My testers liked that they could bite into the pie without fruit squirting all over the place.

In June I contacted the farmers' market in Palo Alto. This market is one of the premier markets on the San Francisco Peninsula with its primary focus on agriculture. But they do have a few bakers and other specialty products in the market.

Many board meetings and taste tests later; they invited me to join the market in September. After suffering through the food safety exam required by the county and my hunt for a commercial kitchen, I was in business.

So, let me introduce individual pies or as I named them, ipies. You can see more about my adventures at the farmers' market at theipiestore.com

I've really enjoyed talking to folks at the market about their favorite pie memories. I notice that most people walk up to my stand and announce that they are a pie person. I love that.

It is almost like a code word that helps me to identify them and actually, it kind of does. It tells me a lot about them. It tells me that they are optimistic at heart because I believe pie is optimistic.

And as I learned over these long and fun months of testing and retesting,"stress cannot exist in the presence of pie" as declared by playwright David Mamet and confirmed by me.

Popovers: A Lot of Hot Air

I had quite the urge to bake popovers last week. Maybe it was the slight chill in the morning air that spelled the end of summer or maybe it was just my love of slathering butter on baked goodies but I had the urge to revisit a treat that I hadn't had for quite some time.

I remember looking forward to lunch at Neiman-Marcus a few years ago when I learned that popovers were always served at lunch. And not just any popovers but GIANT popovers.

Unfortunately, although they did have an impressive height, those dried out shells were not related to the popovers of my memory. The popovers I craved were tall yes, but the crisp exterior hid a custard interior that cried out for butter and sometimes jam as well.

Growing up, my mom would make popovers for the big meal of the week -- Sunday dinner. Sunday dinner was generally served around 1 p.m. on Sunday and the quantity of food prepared would ensure leftovers for the week -- even in my large family of seven.

I think part of what made popovers so special is that they really don't wait for anyone -- once they are out of the oven, they need to be consumed fast. They deflate quickly and lose any crispness that they might have had. Sure, recipes will instruct you to make them ahead for your dinner party then re-crisp them in the oven but trust me, the results dim next to popovers right out of the oven.

Mom baked them in clear custard cups set on a rimmed baking sheet. And she made just the basic popovers -- no fancy add-ins like Gruyere cheese or chives like you see in some cookbooks. Once they were ready, we all had to sit down immediately before their high hats deflated. I think there was a bit of the showman in my mom. We loved them though -- my brother and I could put away at least five each of those custardy goodies.

But big midday Sunday dinners don't happen at my house and fancy weeknight dinners don't happen much either. But I didn't want to wait for a special occasion to make them.

But one of the other great things about popovers is they are just as much at home on the breakfast table as on the dinner table.

And although popovers look like they are really hard to make -- nothing could be further from the truth -- although it is nice to blush and say, "oh it was nothing" when your dinner guests gush compliments at their appearance at your dinner party.

In fact, most popover recipes consist of just five ingredients -- flour, salt, eggs, milk and butter. It is hard to believe that a thin batter from just those four ingredients can pop up in the oven to almost triple their original height without help from any leavening agent.

The height is thanks to the steam released during baking to make what is really just a giant bubble.

Since I didn't have my mom's original recipe, I thought I would just pick a recipe from one of my many cookbooks. The first recipe I found looked pretty good but I kept looking. Then I felt like I was back in school trying to solve one of those horrid word problems (you know, "if a train leaves the station at 9 a.m and......) as I realized all the different variables that were possible.

It seems beyond those simple ingredients, almost every cookbook and every cook will give you "the secret" on just how to bake the combination of those simple five ingredients in order to achieve the maximum height.

Unfortunately, I found that the secret was different for each cook. The secret could be:
•only use a hot oven
•only use a cold oven
•start with a blast of heat in a hot oven then turn down to moderate oven
•preheat not only the oven but also the pan
•put batter in a cold pan
•all ingredients at room temperature
•it doesn't matter if the batter is chilled
•use a blender
•don't use a blender -- mix batter gently just until combined
•bake 50 minutes
•bake 20 minutes
•use a special pan made just for popovers called a popover plaque or gem pan
•use a muffin tin, no special pan needed
•only use whole milk
•use bleached flour
•let the batter stand for one hour
•use the batter immediately

You get the general idea!

As Dr. Seuss so eloquently put it in his poem, My Uncle Terwilliger on the Art of Eating Popovers,: "To eat these things, said my uncle, you must exercise great care."

Eating? Well, what about BAKING them?

Well, in the interest of once again enjoying popovers (and because I love a challenge) I tried five different batches of popovers using a combination of the above variables.

But although (most) of my popovers tasted good, they had no pop at all. Plus I had a hard time getting them to even pop out of the pan!


After scraping the last batch out of the muffin tin with the aid of elbow grease and an SOS pad, I decided to take charge and make up my OWN criteria.

Because I wanted to make these as a breakfast treat during the week, I needed a recipe that would be quick to mix and bake. To protect my sanity, I decided that my popover recipe had to have the following criteria:
•preheated oven
•no preheated pan
•ingredients would be chilled and sometimes I would even make the batter the night before then give it a quick whisk in the morning
•no special popover pan
•use unbleached flour because I always have it on hand
•use 1% milk or whatever I had on hand -- and I rarely had whole milk in the fridge
•no longer than 25-30 minutes to bake

I had glanced at the popover recipe in The Baker's Dozen Cookbook but dismissed it because the author used vegetable oil instead of butter -- that sounded unappealing to me. The recipe also called for vanilla which was unusual in a popover recipe.

But then I read the complete recipe again and read these words by well-known baker John Phillip Carroll who had created this particular recipe for this project, "The eggs and milk can be chilled or at room temperature; use unbleached or all-purpose flour. These variables won't make any difference in the popovers." And while he advocated the use of a popover pan he said, "don't let the lack of a pan stop you from bringing these delicate puffs of pastry into your life."

I liked his attitude!

And so using my criteria and his recipe, I had the chance once again to be a magician with only a few ingredients and a hot oven.




(and they really do look amazing baked in a special popover pan if you want to splurge for one!)

Angel Food Cake: Snow White Perfection

Not long ago I asked a friend who had a birthday coming up if he was excited to dig in to his special birthday cake. When he looked puzzled, I said you know, the one you had for each and every birthday when you were growing up and now that you are married, the one your wife bakes for you each year.

He looked at me like I was crazy. He asked me what I was talking about – he sometimes had a cake but often he didn’t even have a cake on his special day.

I thought EVERYONE had their very own special birthday cake that was baked just for them to celebrate their birthday.

Now, I don’t mean an individual cake meant to be eaten only by them.

What I mean is the same type of cake that they had YEAR after YEAR after YEAR on their birthday that was then poked with candles, lit on fire, then shared by all.

For example, my mom always baked an angel food cake for my birthday. And not just any angel food cake – my cake had been baked with confetti sprinkles folded into the batter so each slice included an exploded rainbow of color.

And each of my four siblings had their own special cake.

Having our own special birthday cake became yet another way we labeled each other in my family like being left handed or the one with the green eyes or the one who is best at card games or who could sew the best.

I knew this wasn’t just special to my family because my husband’s birthday cake while he was growing up was always, as he puts it, “white cake with white frosting” – he didn’t specify what type that white frosting was but I get the general idea.

But maybe it was a quirk of growing up in the mid-west as we both had. We certainly love our regional dishes -- I was particularly fond of pork tenderloin sandwiches.

But then I found out that the favored birthday cake of my sister-in-laws husband who grew up on the east coast is banana whipped cream cake. That cake is truly unique. Here is how my sister-in-law described the recipe:

“You take 2 8-inch rounds of yellow cake and slice them down the center. Whip cream with sugar and a little vanilla and then slice several bananas. Layer the cake with bananas and cream then cover it with the whipped cream. It tastes the best the next day after it has sat in the fridge overnight.”

Not exactly a gourmet cake but I have actually tasted that cake and it is pretty darn good! But this cake didn’t make the cut on a technicality – this cake was made for all family birthdays – not just her husband’s birthday.

One has to wonder how those cakes became identified with a specific kid. My mom loved to bake and here was yet another way she could indulge her passion. I certainly didn’t know that angel food cake was my favorite when I was only a year old. As I got older and also became passionate about baking, I often wondered why my mom who was such an accomplished baker would always use a cake mix when she baked cakes.

I never got to ask her but my guess is that at the time she was baking, cake mixes where seen as the modern way to bake cakes.

So, while she labored over her other creations – ring-a-lings, pies, homemade noodles, etc., she looked to Betty Crocker and Duncan Hines to celebrate birthdays.

But our special birthday cakes came to an end as the monster known as Alzheimer’s swallowed up my mom.

So there have been a few years where I also didn’t have my special birthday cake made by my mom and it has been a long time since I have bought a cake mix.

I didn’t intend to resurrect the angel food cake tradition but over the last few months the thought of making one has tugged at my thoughts.

In April, at the Baker’s Dozen Anniversary Celebration, we were asked to bring a recipe from the Baker’s Dozen Cookbook to help celebrate the day.

I decided to bake an angel food cake using Flo Braker’s recipe from the Baker’s Dozen Cookbook.

My finished cake looked ok and tasted ok but I was finding it hard to remember why I liked it so much.

As I mentioned in my post about the Baker’s Dozen celebration, Flo Braker commented that the photo in the Baker’s Dozen cookbook was not of a cake that she had baked. Actually, she said, “not that ugly brown thing!”

According to Braker the exterior of an angel food cake can be snowy white – as white as the interior.

Since my finished cake was certainly brown, I desperately hoped that she hadn’t seen it yet. I vowed then to try to bake one that was as snow-white and as tender as she said it should be.

Over the next few months I asked other baker’s their thoughts about brown angel food cake vs. snow-white angel food cake. Not surprisingly, most had never thought of angel food cake as any other way other than with the brown exterior.

Maybe I heard wrong – I decided to double check with Evie Lieb of The Chocolate Cake recipe fame and who had been at the same table when Flo Braker made her statement.

Evie confirmed Braker’s statement and pointed me to an article on the Fine Cooking Magazine's website that included detailed instructions on Braker’s technique for baking the perfect angel food cake.

Then I had the good fortune to actually run into Braker at our local farmer’s market. She confirmed that it was possible to bake an angel food cake that would “slip out of” its brown exterior – the brown crust would be left behind in the tube pan.

And finally, my birthday was fast approaching. Time to bake an angel food cake.

Although the recipe has only seven ingredients and comes together quickly, this is a cake that is all about technique. An angel food cake is a type of sponge cake – in contrast to butter cakes.

According to Flo Braker in her book The Simple Art of Perfect Baking, “ The methods for making these cakes are unlike those used to make butter cakes. The egg is to the sponge cake what butter is to the butter cake, and making a perfect sponge cake depends on how well you whip the eggs to create what is known as a foam.”

In the Baker’s Dozen Cookbook, Braker outlines the techniques that will result in a delicate and tender cake. I highly recommend checking out her recommendations in that cookbook as well as her articles on this subject online at the Fine Cooking Magazine website.

Probably the most important technique that I hadn’t paid much attention to was the temperature of the egg whites – Braker recommends 60 degrees instead of the room temperature 70 degrees that most cookbooks recommend.

According to Braker, “You want whites that are whipped to the optimum, but not necessarily the maximum, capacity. Angel food cake needs a smooth, shiny, and soft meringue that will incorporate easily with the other ingredients, leaving room to expand in the oven.”

Bottom line, stiffly beaten egg whites are too stiff to be folded correctly into the other ingredients.

For the first cake I made I left the egg whites out in the mixer bowl for one hour. I had a hard time getting them to 60 degrees because of the weather that day. The second time it only took a half hour. So, keep checking the temperature with an instant read thermometer after about 15 minutes.

But, now for the hard part – getting the brown exterior to stay in the pan.

According to Braker, the trick is to leave the cake upside down on a bottle or on the pan’s feet at least four hours or overnight if possible – not just for a few hours as most recipes state. Then, turn the pan right side up and run a thin knife around the edges. Don’t worry about the center tube. Turn the pan on its side. Tap the pan on the counter and rotate. Then carefully tap the bottom of the pan and release the cake.

Both my test cakes came out almost completely white -- if not snow-white, certainly closer to white than brown. What didn’t come off I could easily rub off with my fingers. This was a beautiful cake and because I had followed the other techniques, the cake almost melted in my mouth.

The reason I made a second cake was not so much to perfect my technique although that was certainly a factor. I needed my confetti! I gently folded in sprinkles into the batter. You could just see a hint of the sprinkles on the exterior of the cake as it slipped out of the pan.

And on the inside? Well, happy birthday to me.

In Search of Lost Time -- Memories and Taste

After I wrote about inheriting my Grandmother's cookbook, The Household Searchlight Recipe Book, I received an email from Judy in Oregon:

"That was one of two main cookbooks my mother used and from which I learned to cook. I am now 63 years old and have not seen that cookbook for over 40 years, but there is one recipe I truly miss and would love to have again."

"It's a one-crust pie made with sour cream and has a streusel top crust as I remember. It is so-o-o-o-o-o-o good!"

Judy was hoping I could send her the recipe fro Apple Cream Pie that she had such fond memories of baking and eating.

I turned to the pie section but no apple cream pie recipe was listed. But then I checked out the index and found it listed under Special Suggestions at the end of the cookbook -- go figure. But I was relieved; I didn't want to disappoint Judy!

I emailed her the recipe and then checked in with her a few weeks later. I wanted to see if it was as good as she remembered:

"I made the pie the next day and it was fabulous. I've had other sour cream apple pies through the years, but never as good as that one. Making that pie again took me right back to my youth and the cooking I used to do on our 1950s GE Pushbutton Range."

I was glad to help Judy relive a cherished taste memory. This got me wondering about just that -- taste memory or to use the term coined by Marcel Proust as he munched on those madeleines, involuntary memory (sounds better in his native French: souvenir involontaire).

I often wonder what will be the dishes from her childhood that my daughter will remember when she is older. Will she crave the chocolate chip coffeecake that we always make on Christmas morning? Or will it be the endless batches of my chocolate chip cookies that she often uses as currency at school? I often find myself wondering as I bake if this pie or cake will become a favorite.

That's part of the fun of baking and the challenge as well.

For me the taste of a ring-a-ling brings memories of Sunday mornings in the house where I grew up. For my sister, the perfect coconut macaroon evokes memories of Christmas mornings and for my sister-in-law, it's a sugar cream pie that transports her back to growing up on a farm in Indiana.

And it isn't just the taste that can transport us back to another time. In an article for The New York Times Magazine, cookbook author and food writer Molly O'Neill said, "Indeed, taste summons memory, but context imbues it."

So it isn't just the taste of the ring-a-ling that makes up my good feeling it is the ability of that taste to transport me back to the kitchen in my childhood home where I'm standing on a stepstool watching my mom fill and shape yeast dough into ring-a-lings while the smell of cinnamon and baking bread fills the air. It is the smell of the honeysuckle outside the window that drifts in as we bake and the hot and humid air that hangs heavy around us.

The context of that taste memory makes it a cherished memory. And in the same way, Judy remembered more than just how good that pie was, she was transported "right back to my youth and the cooking I used to do on our 1950s GE Pushbutton Range."

In a piece for The New Yorker, cookbook author Madhur Jaffrey relates a question posed to her husband who is a musician, "Can you hear the music as you read it?" In a similar way, even thought it was decades before I made my own batch of ring-a-lings, my taste memory had recorded much of what I needed to know to recreate them.

My grandmother used to wear an apron that almost looked like a dress. It completely covered her from the neck down -- it resembled a hospital gown with its full coverage in the front and exposed back. These aprons always had a flower pattern -- usually an explosion of wildflowers. The edges were often trimmed in white rickrack (talk about memories -- where did that word come from!)

I found just such an apron one day as I was poking around a vintage clothing store. It only seemed appropriate to wear this apron as I used my Grandmother's cookbook to make Judy's cherished Apple Cream Pie.

Like many older cookbooks, this one assumed that you grew up at your Grandmother's knee making these recipes. As such, a general assumption of baking knowledge was assumed. The recipe didn't elaborate on many of the details. For example, no mention of size or type of pan to use, no details on whether the butter for the topping should be soft, firm or melted. And bake in a hot oven then a slow oven? Huh? And is the pastry shell prebaked or partially baked? And how should I know when it was done -- what should I look for at the end of the baking time?

But I used my memories to assemble and bake the pie. I did know what to do simply because I did help my mother bake. My souvenir involontaire kicked in.

The day I baked the pie it was way to hot to be baking pies and apples weren't exactly in season but I didn't want to wait any longer to make Judy's pie. I decided to stay in the spirit of the book and use the book's recipe for piecrust. It was a standard shortening crust and was called simply, Plain Pastry, in the cookbook.

The finished pie was truly as fabulous as Judy promised. It reminded me (taste memory) of the apple puffed pancake my husband bakes every Christmas morning.

I would not have made this pie if I hadn't received that email from Judy. I'm of the two-crust pie with a fruit filling camp. But this pie was irresistible. It tasted even better right out of the fridge and it only got better the next day as the flavors deepened.

This pie would be right at home on the Thanksgiving buffet next to the pumpkin pie. The melding of sour cream and apples baked into a custard then topped with a buttery cinnamon streusel is a taste memory that will linger long after the pie was gone.

Apple Cream Pie

Mrs. Roy B. Olsen, Driscoll, N.D.

From The Household Searchlight Recipe Book, versions 1931

(no changes made to recipe. Use whatever piecrust you prefer)

2 cups finely chopped tart apples
3/4 cup sugar
2 Tablespoons flour
1 cup sour cream 1 egg, well beaten
1/2 teaspoon vanilla flavoring
1/8 teaspoon salt

Combine sugar and flour. Add cream, egg, flavoring and salt. Beat until smooth. Add apples. Mix thoroughly. Pour into pastry-lined pie pan. Bake in hot oven (450 degrees) 15 minutes; reduce heat to 325 degrees and bake 30 minutes. Remove from oven.
Combine 1/3 cup sugar, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/3 cup flour, and 1/4 butter or butter alternate. Mix thoroughly. Sprinkle over pie. Return to oven. Bake in slow oven (325 degrees) 20 minutes.

The Buzz Is On!!!

In May I received a “save the date” email from the Bakers Dozens membership for upcoming field trips and other meetings.

This year the summer field trip for the bakers would be at Marshall’s Honey Farm in Napa Valley.

Not being a big fan of honey, I didn’t really take much note of the field trip. Sure, I had a plastic bottle shaped like a bear in my pantry.

My husband was the one who liked honey – he put it on his peanut butter sandwiches. Sometimes I would buy a jar of unusual honey, like white honey, to put in the toe of his Christmas stocking.

Instead I noted the October meeting on my calendar since it would be with authors Harold McGee and Shirley Corriher. Now, that was a meeting I didn’t want to miss.

But then a strange thing happened. I started noticing one article after another on honey and bees.

The first article I noticed was an announcement of a shop that had just opened in June in San Francisco. This shop is called Her Majesty’s Secret Beekeeper. Owner Cameo Wood is an urban beekeeper and her shops carries not only honey, candles and other honey related products, but she also offers some most unusual classes including how to get started in becoming a beekeeper.

Hmm, urban beekeepers? Sounded like crazy talk. But I vowed to check out her shop. Being an avid Sherlock Holmes fan, I liked the name she had given her shop.

Then in early July, Florida became the first state (and actually probably the first in the world) to regulate honey. The regulation prohibits any additives, chemicals or adulterants in honey produced, processed or sold in Florida, which is a big producer of honey.

Regulate honey?

It seems that children’s toys and pet food from China aren’t the only products that this government produces that can make us sick. The claim is that honey is being shipped to the U.S. from China and other countries that are full of additives and much worse.

Then I heard about an upcoming PBS show on bees called “Silence of the Bees.” Like many, I had heard that the honeybee population was on the decline but I had chalked it up to another bad thing caused by global warming.

But it turns out that the disappearance of the honeybee is a mystery that Sherlock Holmes would have relished.

According to an article in Environmental Nutrition, it all started in the fall of 2006 when beekeepers around the world reported that honeybee colonies were mysteriously missing large number of bees. In 2007 the mystery was given the name of colony collapse disorder. According to this article, “colony collapse disorder is a syndrome characterized by the disappearance of all adult honey bees in a hive while immature bees and honey remain. “

The PBS documentary, while not putting its finger on one reason for the collapse of the hives, did identify several possible causes including new pathogens and pests in our environment as well as the push to use hives to supply pollination services.

Hoping to help the bees recover and in the interest of riding the trend of all foods being as local as possible, some chefs are actually raising their own bees.

An article in Caterer and Hotelkeeper noted that the Royal Lancaster hotel in London installed beehives on its roof in an effort to reverse the worldwide decline in honeybees. The hotel, situated next to Hyde Park, is an ideal stomping ground for the bees to flourish. And of course the restaurant in the hotel is looking forward to the use of all that honey produced by the hive.

Closer to home, two chefs in the Washington, D.C. area are also tending to their own hives.

It seems that foodies as well as the mainstream press are all on the bee bandwagon.

In the Atlantic Magazine, writer Ryan Bradley has been treating his readers to the saga of his parents in their new role as urban beekeepers.

And in a recent article for the Los Angeles Times Magazine, writer Amy Seidenwurm talks about her adventures in beekeeping and how she was able to use the honey to create a honey driven menu for the exclusive, “Friends Cook at Canele Restaurant “ gig.

The day of the tour at Marshall’s was grey and chilly – a typical summer morning in northern California. The farm is located on the outskirts off the Napa Valley – I must have passed it numerous times on my way to the wineries. As I pulled into the dirt lane that I assumed must be the parking area, I noticed two or three ramshackle buildings – none of which I thought could be the heart of an artisan honey farm.


About 40 of us bakers shivered in the gloom as we waited for owners Spencer and Helene Marshall to begin their talk and tour. Kittens that must have been only a few weeks old threaded their way through our group. I picked up one of the kittens and nuzzled its fur – honey – the kitten smelled like honey!

As I have found over and over again in meeting with small business owners in the food business, Helene and Spencer are very down to earth and passionate about what they do and the product they make.

They gave us the history of how they started their business and how grateful they are that after all these years -- the foodie spotlight was on honey. As Helene put it, “there is a new appreciation for ingredients in our own backyards.”

Their farm has about 600 hives in 70 different locations. They have been around for many years – they provided honey to Postrio restaurant when that restaurant first opened their doors and delivered honey to Whole Foods when it was just a local grocery store. They use no chemicals or antibiotics on their hives.

Helene said that they think of themselves almost as modern day cowboys as they herd their hives around California to assist farmers in pollinating their crops. But they are adamant in not overly stressing their bees by constantly moving them outside of California to various farms as other beekeepers so often do. They agree that these pollination trips might be one of the possible factors in the colony collapse disorder.

We toured the farm including the shed where they remove the wax from the combs, spin the combs and drip the honey into a bucket to be put into small stainless steel vats. Each vat has a different type of honey.

Then it was time for the tasting and also food pairing. As I mentioned, I wasn’t a big fan of the taste of honey so I didn’t intend to taste too much honey.

But then I tasted the orange blossom honey and then the blackberry honey.
Turns out my notion of what honey should taste like was limited, to say the least.

I tasted wildflower, alfalfa, almond blossom, and clover honey among many others.

The food pairing included a fragrant blue cheese topped with a bit of honeycomb all on a rice cracker -- an easy and tasty appetizer. I commented to Helene that I would love to buy some of their honeycomb but had missed out on the limited amount offered for sale that day.

Helene asked me to follow her to the honey-processing shed. She pulled out another honeycomb, asked me how much I wanted and cut a chunk right off the comb.

It doesn’t get much more local than that.


When I returned home, I searched my cookbooks for a recipe that would highlight the flavor of the orange blossom honey I had brought home.

The Honey Peanut Wafers from The Modern Baker by Nick Malgieri was just the right vehicle. These thin and sticky cookies were chewy and full of the great taste of my honey - the honey that Spencer had filled a jar with from one of the vats, screwed on a lid and slapped on a label indicating the varietal -- just for me.

A few days later I visited the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market. I couldn’t resist chatting with Bill Lewis, beekeeper and owner of Bill’s Bees. I told him about my tour and how I was a converted honey lover. He seemed gratified not only that I knew a bit about the work involved in keeping bees, but also that I understood his passion for beekeeping. By the way, L.A. Magazine named Bill’s honey Best Local Honey in 2008.

Somehow I don’t think it will be too much longer before we start seeing more chefs keeping their own hives and see honey identified by place of origin and type on menus.

And of course I have to say that when that happens, it will be BEE-UTIFUL! Had to say it.

Daring Bakers Challenge: Marsh(mallow) Madness

The July Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Nicole at Sweet Tooth. She chose Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies and Milan Cookies from pastry chef Gale Gand of the Food Network.

The Bakers were given the option to make both the Marshmallow and Milan cookies or just one of the recipes.

With the completion of this challenge, I’ve been a member of the Daring Bakers for one year.

And what an educational and sweet year it has been.

I’ve piped dough for éclairs, sweated through a layer cake with five different complicated steps, stretched strudel dough and learned about Bakewell Tarts and murder.

Probably the challenge that was the most fun was learning to toss pizza dough!

Several of the recipes became favorites, like the caramel cake, and some were best forgotten, like that layer cake.

And it has been fun to see how differently the other bakers approached each challenge. It often seemed that the more than 1000 members had that many different ways to interpret each challenge.

For this month’s challenge, I chose to focus only on the Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies. I was excited to try my hand at making marshmallows. Making marshmallows has become the latest bakery treat but I hadn’t yet attempted to make a batch.

I flipped through a few of my newer cookbooks and was surprised to find only one or two that had recipes for making marshmallows. I plan to try both the recipes by Dorie Greenspan in her book, Baking: From My Home to Yours and also the recipes by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito in their recent book, Baked: New Frontiers in Baking.

I had to go all the way back to my cookbooks from the 1940s and 1950s to find recipes for making marshmallow.

It appears that once technology made it possible for marshmallows to be commercially produced in 1948 and became available as a standard grocery store product, it was no longer considered a skill cooks needed to have in their repertoire.

These cookies are also called Mallows by the host of this challenge but when I was growing up, we called them Mallomars.

Introduced in the U.S. in 1913 by Nabisco, a Mallomar is a graham cracker cookie topped with marshmallow then dipped in dark chocolate (the Nabisco description says “enrobed in chocolate!”).

Similar cookies have been around for hundreds of years. Many countries have their own version. Most likely the first “mallomar” was created in Denmark.

The cookie base in this recipe was more shortbread in consistency than graham cracker. I would be happy just having them on their own with a cup of tea.

The marshmallow component was the hard part of this challenge and my kitchen and almost every utensil shows traces of my efforts (not to mention my hair and clothes).

I had thought that the marshmallow would be made in a pan then cut to fit the cookie base. But of course that would have been too easy.

The recipe called for the ingredients to be whipped to stiff peaks then piped from a pastry bag onto the cookie paste. Not easy and very messy.

But it worked ok. But I hadn’t factored in Mother Nature.

As all bakers know, one of the most important ingredients in any baking project is the weather. A change in humidity or too hot or cold weather can alter any baking result.

In this case, although I live in Northern California where we don’t really have too many hot days or any humidity to complain about, this particular day was hotter than normal and there was a slight humid feel to the air.

So while the marshmallow did set up pretty well – not great though, the chocolate that I then dipped each cookie into did not.

Then I discovered an interesting fact about Mallomars – Nabisco considers them a seasonal product. Mallomars are only available from October-April then they disappear!

It appears that many people across the country anxiously await the appearance of that yellow box in their grocery stores.

Even amazon.com shows the Mallomar as a product you can order online but if you try to order them now, they show as currently unavailable. The product description on amazon says, “product sensitive to heat”. You can even sign up to be notified when the product is available.

An article from the New York Times in 2005 titled, The Cookie that Comes Out in The Cold, focuses on the reappearance of this treasured cookie when the cold weather hits.

There are also numerous fan websites dedicated to singing the praise of this humble cookie. Movies, TV and print have all paid homage to the Mallomar.

I had no idea the Mallomar inspired such rapture and frenzy in its dedicated followers. I personally was a pink Sno-Ball fan…

So now it makes more sense to me why my cookies failed.

But of course now I want a box. I wonder if there is a limit to the number of boxes you can order on amazon………

Sour Cherries: Rare as Rubies

It all started with an email.

The email was from a fellow member of the Baker’s Dozen that was sent to the general membership. Jennie Schacht from Schacht & Associates wanted to know where oh where she could get fresh sour cherries in the SF Bay Area.

I read her email then followed the thread of responses with growing interest. I had no idea how hard it was to find sour (also called tart) cherries in this area.

I had no idea because having grown up in the Mid-West, finding sour cherries wasn’t a big deal. And for me, it was especially easy because we had a cherry tree in our back yard!

Every springtime our cherry tree would be thick with white blossoms foretelling the bounty we would soon harvest. And every June we would have Montmorency sour cherries – baskets and baskets of them.

My mom, who worked full time, had quite the difficult time keeping up with the harvest. Having grown up during the Great Depression, it went against her thrifty nature to waste anything.

As the youngest of five, the best way to get some of her time was to bake with her on her rare day off. And bake I did – pies, cakes, cookies, -- many a Sunday was spent rolling dough.

She would put up jars and jars of cherry jam. She would make lots of cherry pies. And when she was overwhelmed with too many cherries, she would make cherry cobbler.

I know that depending upon where you live or where you grew up, there is more than one definition of what makes something a cobbler as well as differing opinions on how to make a cobbler.

All I know is that in my house, cobbler was something that was made in a glass casserole dish that measured 9x13 and had a top crust only; no bottom crust. The crust was basic pie dough made from Crisco.

I guess this must have been my mom’s version of pie fast food – a way to use up a lot of cherries with a minimal amount of effort.

I ruined many a shirt pitting those cherries. I look liked I’d been shot – my shirts were scattered with brown stains. I didn’t wear an apron because she didn’t – I don’t remember why she didn’t but to this day, I often don’t realize I’ve forgotten to put on one of my many aprons until I’m covered in flour (or worse).

So, back to that email from Jennie. Her recommendation on how to score sour cherries in the SF area is to keep your eyes out for the cherries at your local market or ask one of the farmer's at your local farmer's market to hold some for you when they come in.

I checked with two local organic farm stands near me. The produce manager informed me that the season this year for the cherries was only about two weeks long and they sold out immediately. The local season is usually mid-May to early June.

Two of the gourmet grocery stores near me had the same response. At one of the fruit stands, I asked about a wait list for next year and was met with a long silence, then a nod and an offer to come see him next year so he could put me on the list.

I felt like I was making a drug deal.

I hadn’t made a cherry pie or cobbler in years – probably because of all those cherry pies in my past. I usually opted for a peach pie during the summer and apple in the fall.

But now I just had to make a cherry cobbler. But where to find cherries? And did they have to be the rare sour cherry? Is that the only cherry that would do? What about frozen or canned cherries from other cherry producing states?

Most bakers like to use sour cherries in their baked goods. These cherries are called Montmorency as I mentioned above. But some bakers like to use the sweet cherries, which are called Bing cherries. Bing cherries are easily found at grocery stores and farmer’s markets. There are of course many other types of cherries such as the Rainier cherry with yellow and reddish skin and the Royal Ann variety that are mostly used for maraschino cherries. But it was the rare and elusive sour cherry that I sought.

And as Matthew Amster-Burton put it in his May 2008 article for Gourmet Magazine, “they’re lovely, fleeting, and very expensive, like a pony. I’ve routinely spent $50 on them.”

If I had a back yard I would be planting a Montmorency tree right now. And in fact, that is what Jenni told us she was going to do. I will be sure to introduce myself to her at our next meeting!

In her book, The Pie and Pastry Bible, Rose Levy Beranbaum recommends that if you are unable to find fresh, local cherries, to get them from American Spoon Foods located in Michigan.

If Beranbaum says it is ok to use frozen or canned, who am I to argue??

Some markets carry frozen cherries from Michigan, Washington and Oregon – the primary states for cherry production. But most of the cherries were sweet cherries, not sour and I was too impatient to order them online.

But then I remembered the cherry strudel I had made for a recent Daring Baker’s Challenge. I hadn’t paid too much attention to the filling since the real challenge had been in making strudel dough. I had used canned cherries from Oregon Fruit Products. They were nothing more than fruit packed in water. No additives. And this time I noticed that the label declared that the cherries were Montmorency cherries. They were about $6/can.

I thought of my mom as I rolled out the pie dough and fitted it over my filling in my seldom-used 9x13 casserole dish. I put my own twist on the cobbler while remaining true to her original recipe.

For the crust I used Crisco but also added a bit of butter. For the filling I primarily used the sour cherries and a small amount of their juice, which I had thickened with a bit of cornstarch. I had decided to add some sweet Bing cherries to my cobbler --- also from Oregon Fruit Products -- so I added just a small amount of sugar to my filling. And in a nod to all those baking days with my mom, I didn’t wear an apron – but of course I didn’t have to pit those cherries either!



As it baked, my house was filled with the familiar scent of pastry dough and bubbling cherries. I wished that my mom were still alive to enjoy it with me. But like the rare Montmorency cherry, I didn’t know she would leave so soon.