Christopher Kimball: Hey, this is Milk Street Radio from PRX, and I’m your host, Christopher Kimball. Today we’re kicking off the holiday season with a woman who changed the way we bake cakes. That’s Rose Levy Beranbaum. She gives us a master class with some surprises along the way, including her passionate defense, fondant.
Rose Beranbaum: Oh, wait until you hear this, we have the most fabulous two versions of fondant. Oh, my God, it’s a whole game changer
CK: The Cake Bible with Rose Levy Beranbaum that’s coming up later in the show. But first, I’m joined by my co-host, Sara Moulton, to answer a few of your cooking questions. Sara is, of course, the star of Sara’s Weeknight Meals on public television, also author of Home Cooking 101.
Sara Moulton: So, Chris, I have a question for you. What is your favorite thing about entertaining? And what do you hate about entertaining?
CK: Oh, boy, this is going to be do I hate entertaining at all. No, I don’t like formal entertaining, and I don’t like a big crowd of people. I just shut down when there’s more than, like, six or eight people in a room. I can’t deal with it. I like intimate entertaining, where it’s casual. You’re not trying to impress anybody, and they’re all people, you know, and the conversation is good. So, I would say the most important thing to me about entertaining is not the food that sounds weird, it’s the conversation. And so that time we can sit around a table and have a great conversation, is absolutely the most important thing I think about entertaining.
SM: You know what’s funny, you asked me that question. That is exactly what I would say. (We agree). Yeah, and both counts, I don’t like large crowds. I like a smaller dinner. It’s also. it’s too much work you spend. If you’re like catering, you’re not having a dinner party. I find that conversations at dinner parties, including when you start with drinks and a few horderves, is far more interesting than any conversation I have at any other moment with a bunch of people, it’s really a time to slow down and talk
CK: Because it’s such a lovely thing to do.
SM: I agree.
CK: All right, time for call. Welcome
SM: Welcome to Milk Street. Who’s calling?
Caller: Oh, hi. This is David ___.
SM: Hi, David. Where are you calling from?
Caller: Eugene, Oregon.
SM: How can we help you today?
Caller: My great grandmother, for Christmas, she would make these milk chocolate and white chocolate balls and press either fruitcake fruit, cherry or something in the middle of it, or a walnut. It seems to me, it was a recipe from the back of a confectioner’s sugars box in her day. And I’ve looked that up online, couldn’t find it. They’re not divinities because they’re not Malawi. They’re more like a fudge ball. She’d make this thing out of butter and confectioner sugar and maybe cream, I think, and roll them into a ball about the size of the ping pong ball, white chocolate, milk chocolate. Now, nobody in my family knows how she made them, and I looked at an old cookbook that she had written in some recipes, and I couldn’t find it there either. And I was wondering if this rings a bell with you all.
SM: Well, what’s interesting to me is that it’s on the back of the confectioner’s sugar box. Was it rolled in confectioner sugar afterwards, or did confectioner sugar go inside?
Caller: Everything was all done, and she would take that mixture, rolled it into balls. I remember that much.
SM: You know what I’m thinking. Does it have the texture of a fudge or does it have more the texture of a chocolate truffle?
Caller: It’s more fudgy
SM: That’s what I would look for. Is a fudge recipe. That’s what I would do, and then roll it into balls, and then flatten it and put walnut or whatever in it. Chris, do you have any thoughts?
CK: No, I’m at a point in my life I have no thoughts. I guess the first question is, if this is fudge, then you have to raise the temperature of the sugar right to the right temperature was a candy thermometer on top of the stove.
Caller: I don’t think she even owned a candy thermometer. She measured using the palm of her hand
CK: Well, on one hand, it kind of sounds like divinity. On the other hand, you say it’s a chocolate ball. I wonder if it’s a combination of those two things In some way,
Caller: It was more like a fudge recipe rolled up into a ball
CK: Right.
What if you just made fudge and put a walnut inside or something? I mean, maybe that’s what it was. It was essentially a fudge recipe with something inside, right?
Caller: It wasn’t as dense as a fudge it was just a little bit less than that.
CK: This has some chew to it, right? Has some texture to it.
Caller: Yeah, it’s not as firm as a fudge, but it’s much more than a truffle.
SM: Oh, dear.
CK: I think this is Google time,
SM: Chris. We failed.
CK: No, well, I’ve never I made divinity. I made fudge. This sounds like some in between concept,
Caller: Yeah, yeah.
CK: I don’t know.
SM: You know what? I just had another idea that isn’t actually about the recipe, but it’s about where you might find it. I have two. One is to reach out to one of these companies that make the confectioner’s sugar, and maybe they have archives history, you know if the old boxes and the old recipes, the other one is there are culinary historians, societies, organizations in many, many cities, and reach out to them and see if they could help you with this, because they might have all those old community cookbooks, church cookbooks.
Caller: Yeah, that’s a good idea.
SM: And if you do find it, please let us know. I’m sorry we’re not more informative here.
CK: Completely useless.
Caller: No, you’ve been very helpful, and it verifies to me that I should be looking more for a fudge like thing so. Okay, well, thank you thanks for your help I appreciate it
CK: Yeah, pleasure,
SM: Bye, bye.
CK: Welcome to Milk Street who’s calling?
Caller: Hi. This is Susie from Banister, Michigan.
CK: How can we help you?
Caller: I was looking for your thoughts on a more savory sweet potato recipe than just the traditional sweet, brown sugar marshmallowy type?
CK: Yeah, it’s interesting because sweet potatoes are, of course, sweet. And it’s interesting. It’s like Colson Newcastle. People put marshmallows on and stuff, and I’ve certainly done that many years ago. I’ll tell you what I did over Thanksgiving. I boiled a bunch of peeled and chunked sweet potatoes, and then mash them up with some butter, but what I used was white pepper with it, (okay) and you could use, you know, a little nutmeg or other things you want, but white pepper really gives you some nice bracing heat, but it’s not overpowering, and it doesn’t have all the other flavors of black pepper. And then to finish it off, I melted two or three tablespoons of butter and I put sumac. It’s a spice, but
Caller: Oh yes I do. I prepare with it. I love sumac. It’s good
CK: Sumac, well, it’s sour and fruity and so, but it’s got that sourness. And so, I took, I don’t know, a teaspoon of that or so and melted it with a butter and drizzled that over the finished dish and baked it a little bit. So, I find that using something a little sour or spicy with sweet potatoes, really, for me, I thought it was the best, and it was easy, the best sweet potato I’d ever made. I mean, Sara?
SM: Yeah, no, I agree. Why add sugar when it’s already so sweet? I do something somewhat similar. I roast the sweet potatoes, then scoop out the very tender flesh and throw it in the food processor with some butter and salt and also chopped chipotles and adobo.
CK: Umm. Good idea.
Caller: Yep, that’s funny you said that because I was actually contemplating something like an ancho chili or something of that nature, to kind of give it a little bit of different like kick, I guess, if you will. Well,
SM: Well, yeah, I mean, chilies and sugar do a happy dance. They balance each other out. And the nice thing about Chipotles is they also have the smoke. And if you get them in adobo sauce, there’s acid in that adobo sauce, so you’re adding acid and chili and smoke, and you get a really lovely balance. Another way I love to prepare sweet potatoes is a way I love to prepare a lot of vegetables, which is to peel them, chunk them, and put them through a food processor fitted with a grating disc. So essentially, I grate them, and then I take a very large skillet and put in your fat of choice. It could be butter, it could be olive oil, it could be vegetable oil, and I sauté them, and they get tender real fast because they’re shredded. And then I add whatever seasoning I want. Usually, what I do is a squeeze of lime, some toasted pistachios, salt and pepper. Sometimes I finish off with fresh mint. It’s sort of fun, and it’s different when I dusted off the grating disc of my food processor, a whole new world opened up. That’s a good I mean, parsnips, carrots, turnips, you know, and they take no time at all to cook, and you didn’t have to cut them up the machine did.
CK: Somebody’s got religion here. Okay, well, that’s actually a really good idea. All right, I learned something
SM: Well, thank you. Thank you, Chris.
Caller: I like that one,
SM: But your dish sounded lovely, too. I love the brown butter with the sumac. That sounds yummy.
Caller: Yeah, that does sound really good now. I can’t wait to try it now
CK: Alright, take care. Thanks.
SM: Thanks. Suzanne
Caller: Well, thank you. Bye, bye
SM: Bye, bye.
CK: This is Milk Street Radio. If you need a hand with dinner, give us a call. The number is 855-426-9843 one more time 855-426-9843, or simply email us at questions at Milk Street Radio.com welcome to Milk Street. Who’s calling?
Caller: Hi. This is Jim calling from Annapolis, Maryland.
CK: How are you?
Caller: Oh, very well, thanks. I have a question regarding cooking a turkey. In the past, I’ve usually done a very large turkey in the something slightly under 20-pound range, and I usually either dry brine or wet brine. But this year, I have use of a ceramic, Big Green Egg grill, and I’m going to end up doing. Something around 14 pounds. (Yeah) not sure if I should use the rack. I’m not sure if I should brine it. So, I’m looking for some help on what to do with a turkey on a grill.
CK: Well, oddly enough, last year, I cooked my turkey in a big green egg, and it’s great. It can handle. I had a 20 pounder. The thing I like about the egg is it takes a little while to get to the right temperature, to get it settled with the draft at the bottom and on top, adjusting the holes. But once you get it stabilized, it’ll hold the temperature perfectly for a very long time. But in the first half hour, you got to watch it really carefully, because it can get pretty hot fast. I put it like at 250 to 275, in that range, and cook it slowly. And you can certainly wet or dry brine it. And I guess you could smoke it, if you like, as well, by putting some wood chips on the coal. But it’s a nice way to cook something a long time with a nice, steady heat. So, I did it because I wanted to free up the kitchen for other stuff. I would say my favorite way to cook a turkey is braising, because you can make a great stock at the same time, but the green egg’s Great. Sara?
SM: Grilling a turkey is great and does free up the kitchen. We tend to reach for it. At we have a family farm when the power goes out, which is frequently, so suddenly that meal you planned in the stove top or in the oven is going to be, you know, at the edge of the barn, in a grill. So, no, that all sounded very good.
Caller: Well, good.
CK: Just as I said, just watch that temperature till you get it stabilized, and then you’re good to go. Anyway. It does a great job with the skin too. It looks great.
Caller: Thank you. Thank you very much
SM: Thanks Jim bye. Welcome to Milk Street who’s calling?
Caller: Hi. This is Joe from Galena, Ohio.
SM: How can we help you?
Caller: I’ve been trying for a long time to prevent a pecan pie from sticking to the pie plate. And when I say sticking, it’s like welded.
CK: Well, I’m laughing because I I’ve been there. Let’s start with the pie crust. Are you buying a crust or are you making a crust?
Caller: Not making it. I’m buying it off the shelf. That’s one of those premade crusts.
CK: They’re two kinds. They’re kind of the more commercial Pillsbury style. And there’s also some pretty good quality ones with just butter and flour.
Caller: Oh, it’s the commercial off the shelf style.
CK: I’ve played with those a little bit, and I find they’re pretty thin crusts. So yes, what’s probably happening? You have two things happening, either the filling is going through the bottom of the crust somehow, because there’s a tear in it, or whatever, or sometimes it also bubbles over and then gets in between the crust and the pan. When you bake it, do you see it bubbling over at all? Or is it just, you think, coming through the bottom?
Caller: It has bubbled over in the past, and I have noticed it undermining the crust, and that’s one problem. But everywhere else, where that’s not present, it’s still really bonded, (okay) to the plate.
CK: I think we can solve it. So, first question is the crust, is it room temperature, where you’re putting into the pan, or is it frozen?
Caller: No, it’s not frozen. It’s refrigerated, but I take it out well in advance to allow it to warm up.
CK: Okay, here’s what I would do, a few things. I would fit it to the pie plate right. Then I would put it in the fridge for about 20 minutes to get it cold, then I would put it in the freezer for 20 minutes. (Okay) okay, so when it comes out, it’s frozen. The second thing I would do is prebake. You’re probably not prebaking the crust either. No, not. It’s kind of a pain, but put a double layer foil in, fill it to the top with beans or rice or whatever, and then bake it at about 375 for 20 to 25 minutes, till it starts to get brown. Take the foil off. Give it a couple more minutes. Take it out. Last thing, and I know this is making more complicated, I would make the filling on top of the stove and warm it up and sort of precook it. Put that hot filler in the hot crust, put it back in the oven, and it will cook in about 25 minutes, or something like that. Instead of 45 that’ll stop it from bubbling over. It also means the crust is very unlikely to have a problem because you’ve mostly prebaked it. The pecan pie is the hardest thing to do, but if you freeze it, prebake it, cook the filling on top of the stove, put in the hot crust. That will do it. But the question is, how much do you care? The other thing you could do is do none of the things I just suggested, and then just put the cooked pie in, like 250 oven or 275 oven for 10 or 15 minutes, and that will probably loosen up and melt the glue that’s sticking to the bottom of the plate. So yeah, that’s the easy solution. Sara?
SM: Yeah, and I agree with Chris. You know when you went back to how you took the pie shell out of the refrigerator, let it come to room temperature. The problem with that is that, if it’s warm to begin with, the butter will melt out before the dough sets up, and that could absolutely create leaks. But I think also precooking it is brilliant idea of freezing and everything. Chris said, I agree with, including the if all else fails, just warm it up in a slow oven, and that way you can serve it warm with ice cream.
CK: Yeah, I mean, just as I said, forget everything I said, except for the last part
SM: Right because it is work. It is work to blind bake it. That’s what that’s called prebaking and is blind baking it, and it’s a pain
Caller: I don’t mind doing all the work. It would be worth it, in my opinion.
SM: Okay, good. We agree.
CK: And and try to find, like, Whole Foods and other people sell these. They’re higher quality pie crusts, and I think they’re a little thicker too. You might want to give that a shot too.
Caller: Yeah,
SM: Yeah, okay, Joe, let us know how it goes. Okay?
Caller: Yes, will do thank you very much.
CK: Yeah, thanks for calling pleasure.
SM: Take care. Bye bye.
CK: This is Milk Street radio. If you’re getting ready for the holidays, you can find our favorite recipes for this season at Milk Street radio.com/holiday, coming up next, it’s my interview with Rose Levy Beranbaum about her seminal Book, The Cake Bible. This is Milk Street Radio. I’m your host Christopher Kimball in 1988 Rose levy Beranbaum changed home baking forever when she published her seminal work The Cake Bible. In a world where so many cooks just winged it, Rose’s recipes were precise, scientific and deeply thoughtful. Now she’s released an updated edition of The Cake Bible. It’s the 35th anniversary with new ingredients, equipment and methods. She wrote it with her longtime collaborator and husband, Woody Wolston. They both join us now, Rose and Woody, welcome back to Milk Street.
Rose Beranbaum: Thank you, Chris. We’re happy to be here.
Woody Wolston: Hi, Chris.
CK: So, someone says to me look, I want to bake a cake. What book should I buy? It’s always The Cake Bible. And it was sort of definitive. I think you are a definitive person, right? You don’t, you don’t go back and go, well, you could have done it this way or this way. I mean, you say this is the way to do it. You now are reissuing this 35th anniversary edition. Have you changed anything substantive about your cooking methods when it comes to cakes? Or are these smaller changes that have occurred just because of changes in the world of cookware, for example?
RB: Well, I really didn’t want to have to revise it, because things worked the way they did, and then I noticed things that had changed, like I didn’t have to write in the past bleached cake flour because there wasn’t anything else. And now there’s something called unbleached cake flour that doesn’t perform the same way. And then there’s the eggs, and how the egg yolks are smaller in proportion to the whites. And that is a really big deal. Of course, the cake pans in various revisions, minor revisions, I would say that you could do one and a half times the amount, I think, for a two-inch-high pan. But the point, it was never exact. So, we actually retested all the recipes that were originally there for two-inch-high pans and made the necessary adjustments.
CK: Well, of course, you did.
WW: She is precise as can be.
CK: I would expect no less.
WW: She had cataract surgery, and she was wondering if she had enough medication for one of her eye drops. And you see, well, I use point 02, grams. I think I’ll make it to the end of the week.
CK: Rose, you’re carrying the cross of precision for the rest of us. who’s reading your biography. It said her writing career began with Cook’s magazine. (And it’s true) I don’t remember that. So, what, what is it you wrote? I can’t remember.
RB: Chris, don’t you know why I love you so much. You know, you were the only person who cared about writing what I wanted to write about. And my first article was understanding the genoise and then understanding the layer cake. No other magazine or editor would have let me do that. You know, it was too scientific. You know, too exacting.
CK: Well that that brings up. You know, the most hated cake in my repertoire is genoise, because I look I’ve been baking all my life. I’m not as good a baker as you are, but I baked a lot, and I find genoise still to this day, I just won’t make it. I’ll make a sponge cake, or chiffon cake, or hot milk sponge cake. I just find it dicey. Can you tell me why I always had trouble with genoise? It’s so finicky.
RB: Well, you can look at the magazine. I do still have a copy of it, but I haven’t changed my basic concept of how to do it. And one of the ways that I really improved people’s success is that when you add the melted butter, I add a little bit of the batter to the butter to lighten it before putting it in. I remember Madeline Cameron saying to Maria Martin Shelly, my editor Rose copied that for me, and Maria asked me about it, and it turned out when I gave the date of when I put it in Cooks magazine was before Madeline Cameron ever wrote about it. So, you see, you saved me in two different ways.
CK: So, your favorite chocolate cake the chocolate Domingo at this I don’t actually remember the sour cream chocolate cake, so tell me about the cake and tell me why sour cream and chocolate somehow go together.
RB: I wouldn’t have thought so, but my protege David said, sour cream is so wonderful in the yellow cakes. Couldn’t you make a chocolate cake that way? And it gives it the most incredible flavor with the chocolate, surprisingly, but Woody is the one. And he should tell you how he made me improve it, because it was always a slight dark line at the bottom, (the fudge line) yeah, and I always said that the cake is perfect, except for that little dark line. But I can’t use water to hydrate the cocoa, because I want sour cream in. And one day, he said to me, take away one tablespoon of the sour cream and add one tablespoon of boiling water to the cocoa, (just enough to get the flavor out. And it worked) And no more dark line, but we did more for the flavor, yeah, because hydrating cocoa really burst of flavor that you don’t get without. That was something I discovered when I worked as a consultant at Procter and Gamble on their chocolate cake mix years ago. The head scientist told me that cocoa is made up of little particles like cells, and the flavors are locked inside, but if you put boiling water in, it bursts the outside of the cell and it releases the flavor. And I took that to heart.
CK: Well, I’ve noticed I make a chocolate cake on top of the stove. I steam it and it has cocoa in it, it doesn’t have chocolate, I find that the flavor of the chocolate is almost better with just cocoa. It’s not as overpowering, it’s cleaner and I think some ways more desirable. Can you talk about chocolate versus cocoa, whether you should use both, or when you use one versus the other?
RB: I much prefer cocoa for cakes and chocolate for buttercream. But one day, I decided to combine the two, and I poked holes in the baked cake that was made with cocoa, and I piped in chocolate ganache, and that was the ultimate because the minute you start cooking with chocolate, you denature it, you lose all the subtlety, but you’re not really cooking when you make ganache. You’re just heating the cream to the point where it will melt the chocolate, and that way you get the best of both worlds.
CK: So, over your career, have you gotten cornered and someone says, could you make me a wedding cake? Or could you make me a birthday cake? Do people come to you and expect you to jump in with both feet to make them a cake for special occasion?
WW: I don’t know about the past. They haven’t lately.
CK: I love cooking for other people, but I would never in a million years. Mean, I, I talked to Claire Pataki, you know, in East London, who did the royal cake in 2017 or whatever it was. And she just told me, like, what it was like. She had to bring all these cakes to Buckingham Palace and do a taste test, and she had to get all dressed up. And then, you know, they have, like, three backups, right made, and then you have to have one cake that’s done for slices and one that’s done for the cutting. And it’s like, I just, you know, I wouldn’t sleep for two weeks.
RB: Yeah. Plus, what a responsibility, that if something fails and you don’t have backup, the person doesn’t have a wedding cake,
WW: or we have a problem where people try to pick off the cake. We were doing one for Nathan Fong’s wedding, and it was a three-layer wedding cake, and we had meringue twigs glued onto the cake with with white chocolate, and we’re sitting there waiting for the you know, wedding party to come back, and this woman walked up the cake and took one of the twigs off,
RB: And I screamed. And she said, whoops, I’m not supposed to do that? And then she took another one, and yeah, she Woody got her, got a hold of her, and we had a guard looking at that cake while we went and ate the hors d’oeuvres, because there wouldn’t have been any meringue left by the time where they were finished.
CK: So, cake decorating, what are some simple things you can do at home for decorating a cake. Are there a few things you do that anybody could do relatively easily?
RB: I don’t really. I love to pipe. It’s fun, but I don’t even like the look of it in many cases. And in fact, if you really do elaborate festoons, you have to eat all that buttercream, whereas I’d rather use either fresh flowers, or you can even do dry your own flowers, and they’re exquisite.
WW: For the lemon poppy seed cake, we did lemon peel roses, and also for the carrot cake, we did carrot roses too.
CK: What about sugared flowers or fruits, for example, and using egg white and sugar to make them look sparkly and putting them on a cake.
RB: Oh, yeah, as long as you don’t have to do tons of them, it’s a very nice effect. But the great discovery was using gum paste or fondant
CK: Isn’t, I mean, can’t we put fondant away in the drawer and never open the drawer again?
RB: Oh, wait until you hear this. We have the most fabulous two versions of fondant. One is from a famous decorator who gave us her recipe for white chocolate rolled fondant. Oh, my God, it’s a whole game changer. And then Hector in Hawaii, who baked every single cake in the entire book over several years. He put lemon zest in the fondant, which is not only pretty, but it takes away some of that sweetness. And so, yeah, fondant, even if you didn’t like to eat it, it’s so practical, because people are always saying, when you make a wedding cake in the summer, what buttercream is going to hold up in the heat, especially if it’s not air conditioned, and fondant is like a seal, it’s just really preservative. Okay,
CK: Okay, so the chocolate chip cookie comfort cake. This sounds so not you Rose
WW: because it isn’t, because it’s my cake
CK Okay
WW: Yeah, the chocolate comfort cake came out of Rose’s heavenly cakes had a cake with chunks of brownie in it, and so I thought, well, why don’t we put chocolate chip cookies in? And Rose like no,
RB: I was trying to find a way to to have nuts not sink to the bottom of a cake. And I thought, well, if they’re in a brownie, the brownie will grab on to the rest of the batter. So, Woody took it one step further, and thought, What about chocolate chip cookies? And I said, that won’t work. And every time I tell him something that won’t work, and he tries it, it does work. Yeah, so
WW: Yeah, so at Cake Work. We we cut back on the sugar just a little bit to compensate for the chocolate chip cookie pieces, and it works.
CK: Triple chocolate proposal cake. Over the years, I have received several marriage proposals at first bite, and one thoroughly seduced victim suggested renaming of the triple chocolate orgasm. So, you actually got marriage proposals from this cake.
RB: Yeah, and then when I was on the Charlie Rose show, he said, I see that there’s a word in here that that most people wouldn’t have used.
CK: What was it like being on the Charlie Rose show?
RB: Oh, that was so funny, because it was my first time on air, and I started out looking like deer in the headlights, but by the end of the segment, and this is on YouTube, you should really look at it, because it is so funny, I ended up proposing marriage to him because he said, I want to be your janitor. I want to sweep up after you, because he loved so much what I was doing, and he loved chocolate. And I said, I’d rather that you marry me. And he said, but I thought you’re already married to a doctor. And I said, Yeah, but he didn’t have the right name. I’ve always wanted to be Rose Rose. And here I started off so shy, but when it came to the cake, and I have to tell you my favorite class when I was a little girl and shy was show and tell, because I was always really timid, but when it came to talking about something I believed in or loved, I suddenly lost it, and that was what happened on the Charlie Rose show.
CK: So, okay, it’s, it’s the holidays. I’ve always get stuck because I’m not. I mean, I can do a trifle, sure, sometimes I’ll do a steam pudding, which I love to do, because it’s so you know, classic English. What would your advice be to people around the holidays, to do something that becomes a tradition in your household, or is particularly appropriate for the holidays, for dessert
WW: Well, actually, actually, for Christmas, the English dried fruitcake, (Oh, that’s right) which is basically dried fruits in a cake. So, it’s not, it’s not the class a not your class a fruitcake is. It’s using regular apples and so forth.
RB: Yeah, people who don’t like the traditional fruitcake, too bad, we couldn’t have named it something other than what it’s called, but it is one of the best cakes out there.
CK: So just describe making that.
WW: It’s a 13 by nine pan. It’s diced up apples and I think, apricot
RB: raisins. Raisin nuts and nuts.
WW: And it’s a kind of like a one bowl type cake.
CK: Are these fresh apples or dried apples?
WW: Fresh
CK: Yeah, okay,
WW: Yeah. You cube them up and then mix them with, like, brown sugar, and then you can also soak it with rum,
RB: Which we made ahead and,
CK: Well, I have a question about that. Like the classic Christmas fruit cake, English cake, stuck with rum it. What’s the point of, like, aging it for three or four months? What happens to the cake during that time?
RB: It becomes, well, it’s kind of like, similar to aging a wine a Bordeaux, in that it becomes more mellow, and the flavors come together in a different kind of way. I love having a traditional fruitcake with glace fruit that’s kept for months. My mouth’s watering just remembering this, how good it is
CK: Rose and Woody. This has been a lovely conversation. The only problem is, we didn’t have a piece of cake and a cup of coffee. At least I didn’t, oh, jeez, I have a hot, hot milk sponge cake upstairs so I can have a piece after. Rose and Woody thank you so much.
RB: Thank you, Chris its wonderful as well.
WW: Thank you, Chris.
CK: That was Rose Levy Beranbaum and Woody Wolston, authors of The Cake Bible, 35th anniversary edition. You can find their recipe for the chocolate Domingo cake at Milkstreetradio.com you’re listening to Milk Street Radio coming up, we step inside the kitchen of the World’s most elaborate dollhouse. I’m Christopher Kimball. This is Milk Street Radio. I’m joined now by JM Hirsch to talk about this week’s recipe, almond and citrus biscotti. JM, how are you?
J M Hirsch: I’m great.
CK: So, what part of the world did you visit recently?
JMH: Well, I was in Prato, Tuscany, as I am want to be, and I happened upon the shop called Antonio Mattei, premiata fabrica di biscotti, which translates to Antonio Matteo’s award winning biscotti factory. And this shop is credited with, if not creating biscotti, certainly with popularizing them. And they’ve been doing it for about 170 plus years. And I was really excited to chat with them about this kind of iconic Italian cookie.
CK: What is their version? I mean, I guess they’re different types. They’re sort of, on one end, they’re fully crispy and dry, like Zwieback at the other end, they’re sort of a little softer in the middle. Where do these guys end up on the spectrum?
JM: So, the recipe Antonio Mattei is very simple and very crunchy. It’s sugar, flour, eggs, almonds and pine nuts, nothing more. And as you know, it’s a twice baked cookie. You know, the first baking, the dough is shaped into logs and baked once comes out of the oven while it’s still a little bit tender, it’s cut into that kind of iconic biscotti shape. It’s turned on its sides and baked a second time to dry it out until quite crunchy. That is their model for biscotti. You know, they popularized it because it was actually very clever. They used to sell them, and they still do, in fact, in cardboard hat boxes. It was kind of a two for one special, buy biscotti, get a hat box, and that is what’s credited for making these cookies so popular. But they have not changed the recipe in an awful long time, and it works. It is a delicious, crunchy, crunchy biscotti.
CK: But if you want a little bit of chew in the middle, what do you do?
JM: Well, this is interesting. And so, you know, again, highly unlikely that they created biscotti. Chances are, these cookies have been baked for a lot longer, than 170 years in you know, the hillside communities around Prato. And so, everybody has their own. Own way of doing it you know, Antonio Mattei has their way. And if you want alternatives, you have to head out into those hillsides and find some home cooks, which is exactly what I did. I found a home cook, Julia Scarpalagia, who has a couple twists on the classic biscotti. First of all, she doesn’t use pine nuts because she feels that they’re a little too pricey, I get that. And she also likes to flavor them, but not like this is not a Starbucks chocolate dipped white chocolate pretzel flavored biscotti or whatever. All she does is add some orange and lemon zest, which is really, really nice and floral. It’s a nod, actually, to the Medici family, which was a 15th century powerhouse family in Florence, which is just nearby, it just added such a lovely but subtle flavor that worked so well with the almonds. But there was a secret that she had that kind of changed the whole biscotti experience for me, and I think you’ll appreciate it. You know, traditional recipes just use sugar, but she also likes to use a little bit of honey, and that honey allows the center of the biscotti to remain just ever so slightly chewy. (Oh, I like that). Still very much a crunchy biscotti, but the heart of the biscotti remains just a hint chewy, and in a very pleasant way, it’s actually really a nice improvement on the classic recipe,
CK: JM thank you. A citrus and almond biscotti, and the secret was a hint of honey, which gave it a little bit of chew in the center, which is just the way I like it. JM, thank you.
JM: Thank you. You can get the recipe for almond and citrus biscotti at Milk Street radio.com
CK: This is Milk Street Radio. Now I’m joined by writer Emily Kenway. She recently reported on the world of food miniatures, as well as the people who make them. And the crown jewel of these miniatures can be found at Windsor Castle inside the ornate Queen Mary’s dollhouse. Emily, welcome to Milk Street.
Emily Kenway: Thanks so much for having me.
CK: I guess this goes under the title there always be in England, because Queen Mary’s dollhouse. I never had heard of this. I went online and looked at it. It is extraordinary. The little detail I liked the most, besides the fact there was jam on the little jam jars was a library of miniature books containing original stories written by authors including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and A A Milne. So, when was this house built? How big is it? What’s its basic story?
EK: Yes, so it goes back to someone called Princess Marie Louise, who was a childhood friend of Queen Mary. And because of that friendship, she knew that the Queen adored miniature items, dolls house items, anything diminutive, and so she had the idea to create a doll’s house as a gift. But being a princess, she didn’t just make one herself or go to the local toy shop. She actually went along to one of the most eminent architects of the day, Sir Edwin Lutyens, and asked him to construct it. So, he duly did, and he got kind of everyone else on board. Basically, all of the greatest manufacturers, artisans, designers of the UK at that time were brought into this project. This was 1921 and over the next three years, they built it, and it was unveiled in 1924 you know, it’s so ostentatious. It’s so decadent. We’ve got these three feet high house that is a kind of National Monument, but tiny, and it has 1000s of objects inside made of, you know, silver, mahogany, linen, real jam, as you mentioned, and so on. So, it’s it’s unique, and it is one of the most expensive and largest dolls houses that has ever been made in the world.
CK: You say one of the most this isn’t the most elaborate dollhouse. Was there one bigger and more elaborate than this?
EK: There are some contenders, but certainly there are many people who would say this is the most impressive it has, you know, working lifts. It has running water, it has electricity. And then, of course, it has all these stunning tiny objects, including, you know, oil paintings that were made by the leading painters of the day, and this library, you know, and so on
CK: The kitchen, which, of course, was of great interest to me. You know, they’d have a slate floor near the ovens, of course, because it was easier to sweep a wood parquet floor made of 2000 little pieces of wood, a copper kettle made from a penny. So, it wasn’t a fantasy. It was supposed to be accurate, right?
EK: Yes, exactly. And I mean, it is accurate. Even the tablecloth in the dining hall was made of linen as the real one in Buckingham Palace was at that time and woven in the same pattern. Many of the items are directly what would have been found. And indeed, the food items specifically are that because it was decided that for the branded food, they would only have items from the Royal warrant holders who were the official suppliers of those items. So, Coleman’s mustard, Tiptree jam, McVitie and price biscuit tins, fries, breakfast, cocoa and Berry brothers, champagne and wine.
CK: And this is, this blew my mind. The wine cellar is well stocked. Over 1200 bottles of the finest champagnes, wines and spirits and beers were donated. So, I guess they had little tiny bottles, right? And they filled them with great vintages. (Yes) I really like that a lot. So, let’s go back to the kitchen. So, these, I assume, are coal stoves. What else about the kitchen? The sink, obviously, is a separate room, yeah, anything else that a modern cook might find different or unusual in how this kitchen was set up?
EK: Well, one would hope that a modern cook wouldn’t allow there to be several rodents under a cage being stared at by a cat, so we can see some things about health and safety there. But I think one of the things that’s so interesting about the kitchen is that, yeah, there are obviously elements that are different now, like you say, the sink is not in the kitchen, but it’s actually that it’s immediately kind of recognizable. And I think part of the way they’ve achieved that is they have one element that you will almost uniformly find in any kind of dolls house, any kind of miniature cooking diorama, which is this little display at one end of the table where it seems as if someone is in the middle of making something and it’s
CK: just a couple of boiled eggs and some jam, etc, yeah
EK: And a mixing bowl, you know, and so it’s this notion that someone’s just popped out. And that’s, of course, what we often love about these miniature doll’s houses, is this idea that it could have, you know, could be us. We could be imagining ourselves into the story that was midway through there.
CK: So, let’s just expand the discussion into miniatures and general food miniatures. So very often, these people actually would make a dish, especially if it’s one from the past, first in real life, and then try to imitate it like boar’s head pie. You know, you go out and make that and then craft it in the miniature version. Is this a whole subset of miniatures to imitate food? Is that a specialty?
EK: Creating miniature food is certainly a specialty in the world of miniatures, definitely, and within that specialty, there are lots of sub-specialties. So, I mean, you could spend, yeah, decades looking at this. One of my favorites is the people who make Tudor food miniatures. So, miniatures from the 1500s essentially when Henry the Eighth was around, because in that era they had, you know, kind of ridiculous food items, basically peacock pie, swan’s pie, boy’s head pie. And people become completely obsessed with trying to make them look accurate. But of course, we’re talking here about things which are the size of a bottle cap or of a fingernail, you know. So
CK: What are some of the other food miniatures you talked about Tudor, are there other sub- specialties of things you’re interested in?
EK: There’s a whole world of contemporary food miniatures. So, the things that we would eat now today, and this tends to focus on, of course, the more exciting items, you know, banoffee pies, jellies, lots of Thanksgiving displays, Christmas displays, and also, particularly Easter confectionery has become quite a market within this space. And the thing that’s interesting about that is the social purpose it starts to serve, but also to create. So, the miniature makers are deliberately choosing to create food that will immediately tell a viewer what moment in history and what moment in the calendar that scene is evoking. So, you can look at it and say, Oh, well, that’s a Thanksgiving scene. Oh, that’s an Easter scene, that’s a birthday scene, and so on. And so, it’s a way of, kind of reinforcing cultural symbols in that way.
CK: You mentioned the word scene, and you said this earlier in reference to the kitchen table, where one end would evoke a scene, someone was baking or putting together a cake or eating breakfast or whatever. So, talk to me about miniatures that exist within a scene and why this scene is important.
EK: So, when we put miniatures into a scene, there is a kind of process going on where people are creating a world as they want to see it, but then trying to place themselves into that scene psychologically, right? So, this is the reason why miniature food makers are making so much miniature food that looks half eaten. So, you can buy pies which have a bite taken out as if they’ve just been put down, you know, a plate that’s been left with the knife and fork and it’s all been half eaten, or a baking display and the eggs are cracked, but the things aren’t mixed. And so, in these scenes, what we see is people creating a setting that they can see themselves in and that you as the viewer can use for your own ends. One of the really interesting things when you spend too much time in this world is you start to realize very few miniaturists put figures, human figures into their scenes.
CK: Yeah, that’s a good point,
EK: Right. They’ll have furniture, they’ll have food, they’ll have decoration, but they won’t have dolls, and that’s because of the function of the miniature. Because we want to imagine ourselves as having just put that pie down and so on.
CK: Why do you think people? Many people are fascinated, perhaps obsessed, by tiny, little versions of real-life objects. Why? Why is it so compelling?
EK: So, I’ve spent quite a lot of time wondering why people find miniatures compelling, partly because I do myself and have wondered, what on earth is going on with that? And I think there are two reasons, essentially. And one is as straightforward as how marvelous these tiny objects are. You know, we don’t ordinarily spend time staring at a jam jar, but when it’s at this scale that we could balance it on a fingertip. And of course, when it’s placed in a royal palace, it does seem extraordinary. And so, by shrinking something to be miniature, we are made able to see it anew. You know, kind of re-enchanting the everyday. And how on earth has someone turned something so normal into something so unlikely. What we also see with miniature food specifically, even more so than you know, miniature furniture, and what have you is people trying to recapture something that they remember. And food is always so bound up with memories. And that’s true when we shrink it down as well. And so, they become a place where we get to rethink and rework moments from our past in this really marvelous way. And I think that’s partly what people really enjoy about the Queen Mary dolls house as well, is that, you know, it has got this kind of quintessential historical Englishness that some people really enjoy evoking and spending time around.
CK: Why are you obsessed with miniatures? And what specific things do you collect?
EK: I personally collect miniature versions of everyday items or food items, and I don’t have a doll’s house or anything like that, what I do is put them next to their life size objects. So, my toaster has next to it a tiny toaster and a tiny loaf of bread. And my partner periodically finds that whatever food item he’s reaching for has been swapped for a very tiny model, which, yeah, it just amuses me. It’s sheer amusement. And there is perhaps, you know, a need for that in the world. So that’s my love of miniatures.
CK: Well, yeah, one day he’ll get up and sit down to breakfast and there’ll be a tiny miniature of him. One thing you mentioned was interesting. You know, my sister once told me that she loved The Sound of Music, and there was something just charming and perfect about that childhood. Is that part of this, I think you sort of mentioned it was, it’s so somehow recreating, not necessarily something you had, but creating something you did not have.
EK: Yes, people definitely use miniatures to create the world that they wish they’d had the world as they wish it had been. And so, I met a woman recently who had she was very excited. We were outside a miniatures fair, and she’d bought a tiny plate with a kind of decoration around the edge, and she told me, oh, my mom used to have one just like this. We would always have the Chris. Cake on it at Christmas. And then she looked at me and she said, but my sister got it when she died. So, it’s this, there was this real triumph in the way that she held out this thing in the palm of her hand, you know. And I think that’s often what people are doing, is kind of rearranging histories, rearranging memories, and, yeah, playing out a fantasy essentially, in a way, which, of course, is what the Queen Mary dolls house itself is. We might question why a queen needed to play out a fantasy on miniature scale, given that presumably she had everything that anyone could possibly want, but we will never know that because she didn’t. She didn’t speak to the public about it.
CK: Well, let me put it like this. It’s a nice fantasy to think there was a time in the past, you know, can I just keep my fantasy about that, please?
EK: Well, that’s what miniatures are about. Chris, maybe you need a doll’s house.
CK: I need a doll’s house. Absolutely I want. I want that one. That’s the one I want. Emily, it’s been, it’s really been a pleasure, and thank you so much.
EK: Thank you very much. Chris.
CK: That was Emily Kenway, author of the Vittles magazine article, delirium of scale. That’s it for today. You can find all of our episodes at Milk Street radio.com, or wherever you get your podcasts to explore Milk Street and everything we have to offer, go to 177 Milkstreet.com there you can become a member, get full access to every recipe, including holiday recipes, free, standard shipping from the Milk Street store and more. Can also learn about our latest book, Milk Street Bakes
plus we have a complete collection of all of our favorite holiday recipes at Milk Street radio.com/holiday can also find us on Facebook at Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street. On Instagram at 177 Milk Street. We’ll be back next week with more food stories and recipes and kitchen questions. Thanks, as always, for listening.
Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street Radio is produced by Milk Street in association with GBH co-founder Melissa Baldino, executive producer Annie Sensabaugh, senior editor Melissa Allison, producer Sarah Clapp, Assistant Producer Caroline Davis with production help from Debby Paddock. Additional editing by Sidney Lewis, audio mixing by Jay Allison and Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole Massachusetts. Theme music by Toubab Krewe, additional music by George Brandl Egloff, Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street Radio is distributed by PRX.
