From Publishers Weekly
Inspired by the annual fundraising bake sale of Share Our Strength, a nationwide anti-hunger organization, this volume contains 100 recipes for cookies, brownies, cakes and other sweet treats, contributed by an impressive array of 54 American culinary standouts. Rosen (Midnight Snacks; Cooking from the Heart) convinced such well-known pastry chefs as François Payard, who launched Manhattan’s Restaurant Daniel with Daniel Boulud, and nationally renowned dessert teacher Maida Heatter to supply recipes for their enticing versions of bake sale fare. A biography of the contributing chef accompanies each recipe, along with tips for making the recipe bake-sale friendly, should that, in fact, be the goal. Easy-to-follow entries range from indulgently homey, like Joanne Chang’s Homemade Oreos®, to intriguing, like Jimmy Schmidt’s Black Walnut Pound Cake with a Ginger-Black Pepper Glaze. This is a warmly rendered, appealing collection.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
A portion of the book’s proceeds will benefit Share Our Strength, one of the nation’s leading organizations in the fight against hunger and poverty.
From the Inside Flap
Baking is about memories: recipes handed down from generation to generation and tastes that conjure childhood—think of Proust’s madeleines or your mom’s chocolate cake. Sweets are often bound up in our emotional life as adults, too: they’re how we reward ourselves or our children, how we celebrate holidays, birthdays, and special occasions, and how we honor guests.
In Baking from the Heart, more than fifty of the nation’s preeminent bakers share their recipes for cookies, cakes, and other dessert favorites, and the memories of why they hold that recipe dear. From the Apple Snacking Spice Cake that Joanna Chang made her fourth-grade teacher to show her how much she loved her to the Polvorones that were a Sunday after-church treat in Miguel Ravago’s home, these are recipes—and stories—to treasure.
When James Beard Award–winner Greg Patent was a teenager, he won a trip to New York City to compete in the Pillsbury Bake-Off with his Cherry-Apricot Coconut Bars. Forty years later, his mother earned a place in that same competition with her Walnut Fudge Bars. World-renowned chocolatier Jacques Torres tucked a few pints of hand-picked Michigan blueberries into his luggage so he could again make Blueberry Dame Blanche, the jam-filled cookies he made when he was a child in France, with his aging mother. For her son Gio’s first Valentine’s Day at school, Food TV’s Gale Gand concocted Marshmallow Heart Throbs, a cupcake he could cut into the shape of a heart. When Jimmy Schmidt’s family vacationed in Wisconsin, his contribution to his mother’s Black Walnut Pound Cake were the walnuts he picked and shelled with his siblings, aided by their father who would crack the hulls by driving over them in his ’55 Chevy. Like many of the other contributors, Jimmy Schmidt serves up two recipes with reminiscences (the walnut cake and his Blueberry Slump) for our delectation.
Baking from the Heart is also sweet inspiration for anyone who wants to join in The Great American Bake Sale™. When Share Our Strength—the nation’s preeminent hunger-fighting organization—joined with PARADE magazine to launch The Great American Bake Sale™ in 2003, the country’s response was overwhelming: nearly half a million people baked, bought, or sold, raising over a million dollars to end childhood hunger. (More information appears inside.)
A portion of the proceeds from the sale of this book benefit Share Our Strength, one of the nation’s preeminent anti-hunger agencies.
From the Back Cover
A portion of the book's proceeds will benefit Share Our Strength, one of the nation's leading organizations in the fight against hunger and poverty.
About the Author
Michael J. Rosen is the author, editor, or illustrator of nearly sixty books for children and adults; fourteen of these, which include over 500 authors, artists, and chefs, have benefited philanthropic efforts. A member of the national board of Share Our Strength, Baking from the Heart is his second cookbook for that organization; Broadway Books published Cooking from the Heart in September 2003. His other books include poetry, pictures books, and the humor biennial Mirth of a Nation. He lives in central Ohio.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Cookies and Bars
Michel Richard's Hazelnut Grahams
Miguel Ravago's Polvorones con Canela (Mexican Wedding Cookies)
Elizabeth Falkner's Browned Butter-Walnut Tea Cakes
Judy Rosenberg's Almond Raspberry Bars
Greg Patent's Apricot-Cherry Coconut Bars and his mom's Walnut Fudge Brownies
Joanne Chang's Homemade Oreos(r)
Dorie Greenspan's Choco-Peanut Butter Oatmeal Chipsters
Francoise Payard's Flourless, Butterless Chocolate Cookies
Susan and Cassandra Purdy's Apricot Crumb Bars
Judy Zeidler's Korjas (Crisp Poppy Seed Thins) and Poppy Seed Hamantaschen
Lora Brody's grandmother's Mohn Kickle (Poppy Seed Cookies)
Jacques Torres's Blueberry Dame Blanche
Nicole Kaplan's Most Favorite Cheesecake Brownies and Best-Ever Hot Fudge Sundaes
Lindsey Shere and Kathleen Stewart's Gingersnap Ice Cream Sandwiches with Wild Plum Ice Cream
* * *
Fran Bigelow's Chocolate Wafer Cookies (page 195)
Nick Malgieri's Biscotti di Pasta Frolla (page 121)
Michael J. Rosen's Aunt Sylvia's Rugelach (page 6)
Crescent Dragonwagon's Grandma Hat's Butter Cookies (page 284)
Michel Richard's Hazelnut Grahams
I was born in Brittany and raised in Ardens. We had an apricot tree across the street from our home. When the fruit covered the tree, my friend and I would tuck our T-shirts inside our pants and load them up with apricots, dropping the fruit inside the collar until the fruit gave us each a big belly brimming over our pants. The garde de campagne, the country policeman, found us one time: "What do you have in your belly there?" he asked us. He tugged at our T-shirts, pulling them from our pants and spilling all the apricots out onto the ground. He gave us each a ticket; I think my mother had to pay something like a quarter as a fine. But I feasted on a ton of apricots for that quarter.
The other crop that was free for the taking was the fresh hazelnuts that bordered a forest on the way to school. We had no money to buy candy, but here was the candy offered by God. You have to pluck off the green case with your fingers, and then pop the hard shell into your mouth and crack it open with your teeth--at least, if you're a kid walking to school. The nut meat inside is soft, like a fresh pea; they have a wonderful milky texture. The typical hazelnut aroma comes from roasting them, but we had no time to take them home to the oven; my stomach had to be my oven!
This hazelnut graham cracker, something I invented many years later, brings back the memory of those hazelnut trees, as well as the very best of the hazelnut's flavor. The nut's buttery texture is enhanced with a little more butter and the graham cracker's own nuttiness. And they're simple enough for your own kids to make and take to school.
Michel Richard's Basque Custard Cookie Cake appears on page 117.
Hazelnut Grahams
Makes 3 dozen cookies
1/2 cup hazelnuts
2 cups graham cracker crumbs
16 tablespoons (2 sticks) unsalted butter
1/2 cup dark brown sugar (packed)
1 large egg, at room temperature
1. Preheat the oven to 350°F and place the hazelnuts on a baking sheet. Toast the nuts for 7 minutes, or until they just begin to brown; lightly shake the pan midway through the toasting to turn the nuts. Remove the nuts from the oven. If your hazelnuts were not "husked" and still possess a papery outer skin, place them in a tea towel, and rub briskly to dislodge this darker outer covering from the nuts.
2. Combine the hazelnuts and crumbs in a food processor and grind to a fine powder.
3. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the butter and brown sugar on low speed and mix until just blended. Add the egg and mix until just incorporated. On low speed, add the crumb mixture and blend until just incorporated.
4. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate the dough for 15 to 30 minutes or until it is firm enough to shape.
5. Divide the dough into 2 equal portions. Place each portion on a 12-inch piece of plastic wrap and form two logs with a diameter of 1 1/2 inches. Seal the plastic around the logs and refrigerate for 4 hours or until firm. You can also freeze the dough for 2 months; defrost in the refrigerator before continuing with the recipe.
6. When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone mats.
7. Slice the dough into 1/4-inch coins and arrange them on the prepared sheets, leaving a bit less than an inch between each cookie. Bake the cookies on the middle rack of the oven for 8 to 10 minutes or until the edges of the cookies are browned; rotate the pans halfway through the baking. Allow the cookies to cool slightly on the baking sheet before transferring them to a wire rack to cool completely. Store in an airtight container.
Michel Richard is an internationally acclaimed chef and restaurateur. He has been the recipient of the most prestigious culinary honors and appears frequently on nationally televised cooking shows. Born in France, Michel came to the United States in 1974 to open Gaston Lenôtre's New York City pastry shop. Michel then moved to Santa Fe before opening his own pastry shop in Los Angeles. He opened his famed restaurant Citrus in 1987. In September 1997, Michel moved to Washington, D.C., to create Citronelle. He is co-author with Judy Zeidler of Michel Richard's Home Cooking with a French Accent.
Miguel Ravago's
Polvorones con Canela
(Mexican Wedding Cookies)
This recipe is my mother's, but its origin is certainly Arabic, taken to Mexico by the Spaniards at some point in their long mutual history. Polvorones comes from the Spanish word for "dust," polvo, because the cookies are dusted with powdered sugar. And the cookies have to be small enough to just pop in your mouth whole, because if you bite into one, the dust of the powdered sugar will make you cough.
My mother baked these cookies every week, and we'd have them after church on Sunday: We'd walk in the door and the cookies would be sitting on a plate, cooled to room temperature, and all we'd need to do was stir up a batch of Mexican chocolate drink to accompany them.
But polvorones are also part of most every Mexican wedding, mounded into in a pyramid at the reception. They make a beautiful white centerpiece: all the little balls carefully stacked into a tower as high as someone can reach. With all the dressed-up people hugging and rushing over to see relatives, the table is always jostled and the tower of cookies inevitably falls over, the balls rolling across the tablecloth. It doesn't matter. Each guest has a few polvorones with a glass of liqueur--my grandfather insisted that anise was perfect--or a glass of Mexican chocolate, and the celebration continues for hours.
These cookies are also just right for bake sales or with a gulp of milk drunk right from a little school-size carton.
Miguel Ravago's Capirotada (Mexican Bread Pudding) and his unusual Almond Flan begin on page 143.
Polvorones
con Canela
(Mexican Wedding Cookies)
Makes 4 dozen cookies
16 tablespoons (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sifted confectioners' sugar
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup ground or finely chopped pecans
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter on medium speed for 1 minute or until creamy. Add 1/2 cup of the confectioners' sugar and the vanilla; mix for 1 to 2 minutes or until creamy.
2. In a large bowl, combine the flour and salt. With the mixer on the lowest speed, add the flour mixture to the butter, 1 tablespoon at a time. Add the nuts with the final addition of the flour and mix just to combine. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and chill for 2 hours, or until the dough is firm.
3. Preheat the oven to 345°F.
4. Form the dough into 3/4-inch balls by rolling small pieces between your palms. Place the balls 1 inch apart on an ungreased baking sheet. Place the sheet on the middle rack of the oven and bake for 15 minutes until the edges of the cookies turn a golden color. Rotate the pan front to back halfway through the baking process.
5. Put the remaining 1 cup confectioners' sugar and the cinnamon in a large bowl. Remove the cookies from the oven and, while they are still warm, put the cookies into the sugar mixture and cover completely. Allow each powdered cookie to cool on a wire rack set on a pan to catch the sugar. When the cookies are completely cooled, dust them again with the sugar mixture. Store the cookies in an airtight container at room temperature.
Miguel Ravago's dedication to the cuisines of Mexico in their authentic preparations have made him an authority on the regional dishes of Mexico. He began his culinary knowledge working with his grandmother, a native of Sonora, Mexico, and continued to refine his understanding of Mexico's culinary heritage during his twenty-eight years in the restaurants he co-founded with Thomas Gilliland--San Angel Inn in Houston and Fonda San Miguel in Austin--and other Mexican food authorities in consultation with Diana Kennedy and Patricia Quintana. With Marilyn Tausend, Miguel co-authored Cocina de la Familia, which won an IACP/Julia Child Cookbook Award.
Elizabeth Falkner's
Browned Butter-Walnut
Tea Cakes
I love to eat and bake with all kinds of nuts. Hazelnuts, pistachios, pecans, peanuts, macadamias, almonds, walnuts--they all have a place in our baking and the savory food at Citizen Cake.
A couple of years ago, I was invited by the California Walnut Board to teach some California-style pastry classes throughout Japan. The Japanese love and consume loads of walnuts (they've long been aware of their nutritional properties), but their taste in sweets is very different from the typical American's. Japanese confections are usually consumed with tea, and they are less sweet and more subtle in flavor than Western desserts. Traditional Japanese confections are rice crackers or baked goods with various bean pastes or sweet potato rather than frostings or buttercream. Even fruit fillings are more delicate. Also, most of their baked goods are finely textured or flaky, with a buttery richness; a crusty baguette was never as popular as a smooth Wonder Bread-like bun. (And the Japanese can't fathom America's jumbo bags of cookies or grand samplers of candy; their treats are packaged individually or in small clusters, with miniature boxes or wrappers that add that extra element of expectation.)
But around the middle of the last century, the Japanese fascination with Western-style baking and pastry-making became a passion, and talented chefs began to showcase classic European baked goods. The country also began to plant decorative walnut trees. (California is their preferred source of consistently superior walnuts.) And I heard a story there about how the Japanese crows, too, came to love walnuts. I know this sounds like folklore, but I was told many stories about these wise birds around several dinner tables. The crows have figured out how to get the meat from the walnut's very hard shell: They drop the whole nuts into busy intersections where cars are waiting at red lights. The car tires crack the shells when the traffic rushes ahead at the green light, and then, when the light changes to red again, the crows hop into the road with the pedestrians and pluck up the shattered nut bits.
Among the two dozen recipes I created for this new niche were Rocky Road Brownies with homemade marshmallows, milk chocolate chunks, and walnuts; a Walnut-Cheddar-Olive Shortbread; and a Citrus and Walnut "Salad" with a chocolate crottin and espresso-walnut vinaigrette.
But I especially love the idea of these tea cakes, which afford just a single bite of cake. Like a truffle, each one possesses a single burst of flavor, but with less intensity. I think of them as modern, California-style petits fours that don't need the fondant and jam, and they were a big hit in Japan. The subtle taste of brown butter, which is more typical in a savory or sauteing application, really enhances the richness of walnuts. They're an ideal treat for Japanese or Western teatime.
Elizabeth Falkner's Rhubarb-Strawberry-Rose Pie and her biography begin on page 98.
Browned Butter-
Walnut Tea Cakes
Makes 3 1/2 dozen tea cakes (see Bake Sale Tip)
32 tablespoons (4 sticks) unsalted butter, browned and cooled to room temperature (see page 253 on browning butter)
1 3/4 cups sugar
6 large eggs
2 cups ground walnuts
2 1/4 cups pastry flour
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1. Preheat the oven to 325°F. The recipe will make 3 1/2 dozen tea cakes, so lightly butter as many 12-cup small muffin tins or madeleine pans as you have and make the tea cakes in batches. You may also use one 12 1/2 x 17-inch rimmed baking sheet, lined with parchment, and cut the cooled tea cakes from that one large sheet.
2. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the browned butter and sugar on medium speed for 1 minute. Reduce the speed to low and add the eggs all at once. Mix for 1 to 2 minutes. Scrape down the inside surface of the bowl.
3. In a medium bowl, combine the walnuts, flour, and salt and add to the egg batter; mix on low speed just to combine.
4. Transfer the batter to a large pastry bag fitted with a wide plain pastry tip and pipe into the molds, or spread the batter evenly across the entire baking sheet.
5. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes or until the tea cakes are firm to the touch and have pulled away from the sides of the pan. Allow the cakes to cool slightly and then invert the tins. (If using a baking sheet, you may need to extend the cooking time another 5 to 7 minutes. Cut the cake into small squares after the sheet has cooled.) Transfer the tea cakes to wire racks and cool completely. Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days.
Bake Sale Tip
Making many small tea cakes would be ideal. But this batter will also fill one rimmed baking sheet, so you can bake the tea cakes in one "batch" and cut them into small squares.
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