Baking out loud: Fun desserts with big flavors

383 Pages·2012·8.29 MB·English

by  Hedy Goldsmith

Copyright © 2012 by Hedy Goldsmith
Photographs copyright © 2012 by Ben Fink, with the exception of this photo © 2012 by
Michael Pisarri and this photo © 2012 by Ryan Oswald
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, an imprint of the Crown
Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
www.clarksonpotter.com
CLARKSON POTTER is a trademark and POTTER with colophon is a registered trademark of
Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Goldsmith, Hedy.
Baking Out Loud / Hedy Goldsmith.
p. cm.
Includes index.
1. Desserts. 2. Cooking.
3. Confectionery.
4. Cookbooks. I. Title.
TX773.G56 2012
641.86—dc23 2011042268
eISBN: 978-0-77043341-3
Jacket design by Stephanie Huntwork
Jacket photographs by Ben Fink
v3.1

contents
INTRODUCTION
childhood treats
brownies, bites + bars
cookies + biscotti
custards, creams + puddings
pies, tarts + cakes
everything frozen
morning sweets
things that rock my world
SHOUT OUTS
INDEX

introduction
My mom was no Suzy Homemaker. She was a working mom who
actually entertained the idea of turning our kitchen into a library. If
fast food is at one end of the spectrum and slow food at the other,
the Goldsmith household in Philadelphia bolted ahead at a gallop. Our
pantry was always filled with the latest convenience foods:
SpaghettiOs, Pop-Tarts, Chips Ahoy! cookies. I grew up thinking that
everyone ate dinner out of three-compartment aluminum trays.
My earliest “cooking” adventures involved these supermarket
goodies, and the kitchen quickly became my playground, the Easy-
Bake Oven my babysitter. I remember at a young age dipping Charles
Chips into half-melted Hershey’s bars for a salty-sweet treat and
topping my vanilla ice cream with Cap’n Crunch cereal. I was a curious,
chubby kid who was drawn to the bright packaging of junk foods. I
would amuse myself for hours organizing all the mini pots and pans
and alphabetizing the boxes of cake mix. I should have guessed my
future then, but the only lightbulb that went off was the one cooking
my first batch of brownies. Then again, I was only six years old.
My mom had quite a sweet tooth. She and I would go on road trips
to Entenmann’s bakery outlet on Academy Road in the Far Northeast
of Philly to buy coffee cakes and pound cakes by the dozen. When we
ran out of our stockpiled goods, we’d walk hand in hand the two
blocks to Castor Bakery. Some moms teach their daughters how to
shop for just the right pair of shoes. Not mine. With my face pressed
against the glass counter at Castor, I learned how to scrutinize every
crumb on each Jewish babka to find perfection.
When I was in fourth grade, I became a Girl Scout, and cookies came
into my life in a big way. I wanted to be the Girl Scout who sold the
most cookies ever—and I did, at least in Philadelphia, which won me a
trip to Washington, DC. That’s the power of Thin Mints. By the time I
was in high school, I was making chocolate-covered pretzels for my
friends on the softball team—not your run-of-the-mill variety but the
triple-dipped kind.
I loved making people happy with food, but I never thought about
baking for a living. Instead, I went to the Philadelphia College of Art
and was a photography and film major with a minor in graphic design.
Then one day I stumbled upon Reading Terminal Market in downtown
Philly, a magical place filled with things I had never seen before, let
alone tasted. Suddenly I caught the cooking bug, and I knew I wanted
to do it for a living.
After graduation, I somehow landed an interview at a restaurant in
Center City. Though I didn’t really know what I was doing, I got a job as
a prep cook reporting to the kitchen manager, Melanie. After many
months of perfecting coleslaw and tartar sauce, I was finally allowed
to help Mel with desserts. She gave me a baking book to take home
so that I could study up. Maida who?
Every night, I would go home and try to follow one of the recipes in
that cookbook. The next morning I would get to work with note cards
in hand, on the off chance I would be asked to break out a dessert.
Finally, Melanie asked me to make something chocolate. To impress
her, I chose one of the most difficult cakes in the book: Queen
Mother’s Cake, a flourless chocolate cake with ground almonds. The
tricky part of this cake was whipping the egg whites just right and
folding them into the cake batter so as not to lose volume. Melanie
was indeed impressed. Maida Heatter’s Book of Great Desserts would
ultimately change my life.
It was soon after I discovered Maida that my mother died suddenly,
in her sleep, when I was way too young. My life was just starting, and I
had lost my best friend and my biggest supporter. My mom never
tasted a single dessert of mine, aside from the brownies from the
Easy-Bake Oven. It remains the biggest disappointment in my life that
I never got to bake for her. Heartbroken, and with nothing to lose, I
applied and was accepted to the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde
Park, New York, which had just started a new baking and pastry
program. I packed up my cookbooks and snow globe collection and
moved to Poughkeepsie.
In cake and torte classes, my creative mind started churning at
warp speed. Candy making and working with chocolate required such
patience, such focus, and I learned from the best in the field. And it
turned out that everything I had studied in art school gave me a
competitive edge in culinary school. My ability to look at the endless
possibilities of a blank canvas served me well when it came to staring
down a blank dessert plate.
After graduation, I took a job at the Waldorf Astoria in New York,
where I certainly paid my dues. We did a lot of high-volume
production, and I remember cakes baking in a deck oven that had
been built at the turn of the century. Five foot two and a hundred and
eight pounds, I could barely hold the heavy peel used to remove the
cakes, or, even on tippy-toes, see into the oven. And I had no help. My
coworkers were seasoned old guys who, frankly, enjoyed watching
me struggle. The job was hell. I loved Manhattan, the people, the
sights, the sounds, the food—but it was time to make a big change.
After a year and a half, I gave in to the lure of the beach. I vacationed
in Florida, loved it, and secured a job as soon as I could.
Funny, but I never knew my hair was wavy until I stepped off the
plane at Miami International Airport. I also never knew that in Miami,
Maida would reenter my life—though this time in person—to once
again guide my career.
I worked as the catering director at the glamorous CenTrust Tower
in downtown Miami before becoming the pastry chef at Mark
Militello’s restaurant, Mark’s Place, in North Miami. Maida happened to
live near the restaurant and loved coming for lunch. One day, she
asked to meet the pastry chef. I was so nervous at finally meeting the
undisputed Queen of Sweets! Maida was beyond kind, showering me
with praise during that first meeting. She invited me to lunch at her
friend Michael Schwartz’s new restaurant in South Beach, called
Nemo, and we had great fun chatting about all things pastry. Since
Maida knew Mark was moving his signature restaurant to Fort
Lauderdale, she asked what I wanted to do next. I didn’t hesitate to
say I would love working at Nemo, and not twenty-four hours passed
before I received a phone call from Michael.
Michael and I connected immediately. His approach to food is all
about pared-down simplicity and letting the ingredients speak for
themselves. It just so happens that by then my desserts at Mark’s
were going from overly sophisticated to simple, but with in-your-face