Baking | The Dinner Special podcast

138: Alanna Taylor-Tobin: Behind the Pages of Alternative Baker

September 7, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Alternative Baker cookbook

I am so excited to welcome Alanna Taylor-Tobin of The Bojon Gourmet back to the show today. The last time we talked was over a year ago. And Alanna has been busy working on a bunch of awesome stuff. One thing in particular is her cookbook called, Alternative Baker: Reinventing Dessert with Gluten-Free Grains and Flours. I’m super psyched to have her here today to chat about her labour of love. And to learn about the process of putting her book together.

(*All photos below are Alanna’s.)

On Her Cookbook, Alternative Baker:

I really wanted to write a cookbook about rustic fruit desserts because that’s my favorite way to cook. It’s like using what’s in season and how do you take those perfectly ripe peaches and make them even better than they are on their own? And I’m gluten sensitive so I’ve been playing with different flours for the last decade or so. I think actually the thing that made me really want to write this book was my gluten-free pie dough, which I’m really proud of. It’s so delicious. I just wanted to really highlight that in the book. And how you can create these great flavours and textures from these alternative flours. The publisher was really excited about the alternative flours aspect of it so we sort of put the two together and we came up with this concept of alternative grains and flours, but also seasonal fruits and vegetables. It makes for this really vibrant, colourful, fun cookbook.

In October, it will be two years since the initial e-mail exchange. I started working on the book actually right when we had talked the last time in January of 2015 but it was brand new and I hadn’t told anyone about it yet. I had eight months for the recipes and manuscripts and then an additional month for the photographs after that. And then it was tying up things and doing editing. Then it’s been at the printer being printed.

So it will be almost two years from start to finish.

On Creating a Cookbook for All Skill Levels:

I didn’t really think about that at first. The thing that really made that become important to me was when I started sending my recipes out to testers. I ended up with I think 60 or 80 recipe testers, just volunteers or friends or readers. I really wanted to get each recipe tested by at least two different people because gluten-free baking is so finicky. And so I just really wanted to make sure at least two people could make each recipes before they went into print and went out to the masses.

When the testers started making these recipes I really realized like, this isn’t just a hypothetical person who I don’t know, who’s anonymous and who buys the book years in the future. This is my teacher from pastry school making this or this is an old friend of mine, this is a reader who I have a nice rapport with. I want to make this recipe really easy for them and make it as good as possible, and as streamlined as possible. I realized I was already asking a lot for people to go find these obscure flours to use and also seasonal produce that maybe was not in season or was hard to find. So I started to try to simplify things.

On an Instant Household Classic for a Beginner:

I have a few recipes. And actually, I have a full section in the book that lists the simpler recipes or the more complex ones. If you’re a flour child, F-L-O-U-R, then you can make these simpler recipes that don’t use many flours or these easy to find flours. Up to you. If you’re a grainiac then you can make these crazy recipes with more obscure flours. And so one recipe is a brownie recipe that is adopted from Alice Medrich who’s the goddess of baking, gluten-free baking and alternative flour baking. And her brownie recipe is just…it’s amazing. You whip the eggs with the sugar so you get the light and airy, but they’re really dense and fudgy, and chocolate-y at the same time. But it’s totally easy to make and you can use pretty much any flour in there. There’s so much chocolate and eggs to stick it together. The ones in my book have chestnut flour in them. It makes an extra earthy, rich brownie with this delicious buttery texture.

On Probably the Most Challenging Recipe in the Cookbook:

There is one recipe. I think it’s probably the most challenging recipe in the book. And it’s not necessarily hard to make. But it’s just sort of a pain in the butt. And it’s this trifle… When you make a chiffon cake, just add like a citrus flavor in the chiffon cake… And the chiffon cake is like, it’s just really easy to make. It just takes a little bit of technique that you have to whip the egg whites and then fold them into the batter so you have to know how to do that. And then you make a Zabaglione… Zabaglione is such an annoying dessert because first you have eight egg yolks and what are you going to do with those egg whites. That’s annoying just to begin with. And you put sugar and I put Lillet Blanc in it. It’s that aperitif…It’s a wine base that has these citrus, honey flavors in it. So delicious. So you put that with the egg yolks and then sugar. And you put it in a hot water bath. You have to whisk it and you have… You’re sweating and there’s steam coming up from the pot and it’s burning you, you have to just keep whipping and whipping, mixing by hand with the whisk until it get’s really frothy. And then you have to chill it. Then you have to fold heavy cream into it. It’s such a pain to make it but it’s just like nothing else. It’s just this super silky, fluffy, light sort of custard that is layered with the chiffon cake and soaked with more citrus juice and more Lillet, and then layered with winter citrus fruits, like oranges and grapefruits and tangerines. It’s this amazing really impressive looking dessert. But it’s really a pain to make.

On a Surprising Challenge That was Different From Blogging:

The thing that snuck up on me was that when I’m photographing for my blog, first of all, I do those process shots. And so I get to warm up…you don’t just go sprint out the door. You stretch and you start slowly and work up to it. When shooting for my blog, I realized shooting these process shots was kind of a warm up to get the final beauty shots at the end. And then with the book, it was only the finished shot. It kind of surprised me how much it helps me when I’m shooting for my blog to have this warm up period to the beauty shot. Also, just being creative under pressure was really hard for me.

With my blog, it’s free content, it doesn’t matter if it’s not perfect. But, with the book, it kind of put the fear in me. First of all, there was this intense deadline – all these other people are waiting on. For my blog if don’t post one week it doesn’t matter really. No one’s mad at me. For the book they had this deadline and I had to try to be creative and really think on my feet and just come up with interesting shots. At first I felt paralyzed. Because it was just so different and it just felt really difficult.

On If We Can Expect More Cookbooks in the Future:

I think I’m crazy enough to do this thing again. I don’t have kids but I would imagine, your first kid, is like you have no idea what you are doing.

It would be nice to do a second book to apply all of those things first of all. But also I love the whole process, making all these recipes that all fit together. For the blog, I do that to some extent on the blog, but it’s not the same as like having it all together in a book and pulling all these different influences and flavors and everything and having it all come together into a book. That was really satisfying and I’d love to do that again.

On How to Get our Hands on Alternative Baker:

Well it comes out September 13th. And it can be preordered through anywhere. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, your local bookstore, Books-a-Million, any retailers of books you can preorder it. And if you want to find out more about the book you can go to alternativebaker.com and that’s my cookbook page. I talk all about the book there.

125: Posie Harwood: A Career Cultivated from Growing Up on a Farm

June 1, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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600 Acres

Posie grew up on a farm that is just over 600 acres where here family had access to the freshest of milk, eggs, and harvests from their well-attended garden. On her blog, 600 Acres, is where she shares some of her memories as well as the new things she is cooking and trying in places far from her home. Posie had worked as a food writer and editor for Tasting Table, Food52, King Arthur Flour and she contributes to Sift Magazine.

I am so pumped to have Posie Harwood of 600 Acres here on the show today.

(*All photos below are Posie’s.)

On Growing Up on a 600 Acre Farm:

I look back and I think how lucky I was because we grew up drinking raw milk and my mom made everything from scratch. We didn’t have chips or any of that stuff. But I never felt like, “Oh man, I feel so deprived.”

When I got older and people started talking about organic food and all that kind of stuff, to me, I always thought, “What else is there?” That’s what I’d always known. Now I realize how lucky that is. Some people have to learn that or seek it out. So, it was a really cool experience. I think it is responsible for what I ended up doing.

On Her Interest in Cooking:

My mom, she cooked every night and we always had family dinner, but she is an incredible baker. She always made bread for scratch. Just watching her, I learned a lot of the things I’d love to make and cook and bake. And I also think I just watched her have that natural rhythm in a household and picked up on that.

I never went to culinary school. I didn’t start working in food until a little while after college. So, I just always knew that was what I wanted to do. And not even what I wanted to do. I just felt like, “What else is there?” That is just in me. I feel I don’t have a choice. I have to.

On Leaving the Farm:

I’d spend a decent amount of time in spaces away from home. And then, going to college. I went to college in New Jersey actually and then I moved to Manhattan. I think New York took a lot of getting used to for me. I am really not a city person. I love New York. I think it is an amazing place to live and there is lots of food.

But I have always missed open space and fresh air. I know I won’t stay in New York forever. That’s always been a hard thing to just get used to. It is a pro and a con. It is an exciting, huge place. But sometimes I want to speak to no one for the next four hours, but you can’t when you are in New York. It is an adjustment. It is always a little bit of a balance. Now I work for a company in Vermont. So, fortunately, I get to spend a lot of time up there, which is a really nice balance.

On a Dish That’s Special to Her:

I guess I would have to say baking is my one main love. I feel like the first thing that ever really made me excited about food was baking bread. As I said, my mom, we never had store bought bread. She makes everything from scratch. My favorite thing is just white sandwich bread that she makes. It is the most delicious.

When it would come out of the oven we had all my sisters waiting just like rabid animals and she would cut off the loaf, the heel, and give it to one of us and we spread it with butter, which we always would have because we had cows. And she would churn it. So it was this really bright yellow Jersey cow butter and she packed it in these little ramekins. So, she would take a big swipe and put it on the bread and eat that.

That is the ultimate, that is the best thing. Now, every time when I bake bread, which is a lot, I am always making just that white sandwich bread loaf. And I am like, “Ah, this is heaven.” The thing is it is so easy to make. I think a lot of people are intimidated by yeast bread, which I feel like it is the kind of thing if you make yourself do once, it is totally magical and you realize, “Oh, okay, that is actually easier than so many recipes cooking- wise.” I mean, what are there? There’s like three, four ingredients. It just is all a matter of touch and just getting used to what it feels like, bread dough, and how it should feel.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Top Chef. I’m obsessed with Top Chef. And The Great British Baking Show. Also obsessed.

What are some food blogs or food websites we have to know about?

I love Smitten Kitchen. I love Food52, former employee, I have to say that. I also love The King Arthur Blog where I work now because it is incredibly informative, super good step-by-step baking. If you ever want to learn how to bake, or frost a cake, or make sourdough, check it out.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook or Snapchat that make you happy?

I love following Molly Yeh.

Funny, playful, great flavors, love her farm life snap shots.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

Treasured item probably my stand mixer, I guess I have to say. It is bright red and I love it, and it does so much for me.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

Mushrooms. I used to hate mushrooms and now I eat them all the time. I eat scrambled eggs and mushrooms twice a week for dinner.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Definitely the Joy of Cooking. That is a huge one. Always referencing it. And probably, I have the Cook’s Illustrated Best Baking Cook Book. That is another go to with everything I bake.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I really like cooking to reggae music. I listen to Bob Marley a lot when I cook because it just makes me want to dance around.

On Keeping Posted with Posie:

Definitely my blog, which is 600acres.com and Instagram. I am always Instagraming twice a day. So you can always check out what I am doing in my kitchen there.

124: Robyn Holland: Baking Up a Whole New Way to Treat Yourself

May 25, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Sweetish.co

Robyn launched her blog in 2015 after a decade of dabbling in storytelling through writing, baking, and photography. She is obsessed with people and food, and her food experiences range from working in professional bakeries to teaching cooking classes to freelance baking and cooking for clients. Robyn firmly believes there is joy in treating yourself when you treat yourself well.

I am so excited to have Robyn Holland of Sweetish.co on the show today.

(*All photos below are Robyn’s.)

On A Whole New Way to Treat Yourself:

We played around with that tagline and that purpose a lot, and we would like to incorporate a lot more how-to on things for people to learn, so a lot of educational stuff, instead of just a recipe.

I think one of the big things that I wanted to do is bust through some of these food rumors, like what is really good for you versus what isn’t good for you at all. I know it seems oxymoronic,…I don’t know the right word…but ironically, even, because I do talk so much about desserts. But I’m very specific with the ingredients that I’ll use, and I would like to introduce produce and different flours, gluten-free options, just fun stuff like that into our everyday baking. So I really wanted to come at it from that angle and that approach. Sweetish to me, I wanted to create this online bakery, and bakeries don’t just have sweets, they have savory, too, incorporating that concept.

On Learning How to Bake:

The first dish I probably learned to bake were chocolate chip cookies. And my mom, she’s a really good cook, and my Grandma was a really good cook, and I just learned. I remember making pizza dough with my dad in the kitchen, just for fun, when I was little, six years old. And so we just were very much a family of food and always making things. And baking from scratch has just been a big part of my upbringing.

And then when I moved away for university, for college, I was like, “Okay, I’ve got to do this on my own.” That’s probably when I really fell in love with it even more because it was just me in the kitchen. I realized I could create all of these different things and started taking food science classes. I actually started working in a bakery. So it just escalated from there, really just wanting to learn.

On What it’s Like Baking Wedding Cakes:

Very terrifying, yes, very. I am not a culinary institute graduate. I learned from some amazing bakers at the bakeries I’ve worked at. But I felt very like, “Oh, my gosh. I don’t know how to do this.” So luckily the style of the cakes that they wanted were very much me, very, very simple and flowers here and there and different things like that, and they just wanted them to taste good and be pretty. So I’ve done freelance work like that. It’s super nerve-racking. The transportation of wedding cakes is the worst. It’s like, “Okay. Oh, my gosh. I forgot about this, and I forgot about having to drop them off somewhere.”

But that concept of just very simple, very, very simple and very homemade. Pretty, but very homemade, and that’s really the feeling I wanted to bring into Sweetish, very approachable, very homemade. There are some incredibly beautiful cakes and different things out there, and I’m just like, “Gosh, I’m so simple compared to that.” I really don’t want to hassle a lot with food or with baking. I want it to be easy, I want it to be really good, and I want to know what’s in my baked goods.

That approach was definitely taken into the wedding cakes. They didn’t have to do a bunch of sugar art or anything like that and just did really simple, beautiful.

On a Dish That is Special to Her:

There are so many. I don’t know if I will even ever post about this, but one dish that we used to make growing up… We have a lot of Danish heritage, and we called it cream eggs on toast. We would butter toast, we’d get really good bread, and we’d just toast it, and every kid would have a fun job in the kitchen for preparing this meal. And it probably sounds really gross, but it was really good. We’d tear toast up, and then my mom would make this cream sauce, like a Béchamel sauce. And then we would have hard boiled eggs, and you would mix the white part of the hard boiled eggs with the cream sauce. And then you’d pour it over these little pieces of buttered toast, and then you’d crumble the egg yolk on top. That was some sort of Danish thing that my Grandma would make. I don’t even know.

It was a super cheap dinner, but we loved dipping our little pieces of toast in this cream sauce with egg. Even now, it probably wouldn’t even be half as good, but it was just such a special memory that we were involved and making this special dish growing up. There are so many more that probably sound so much more appealing than that.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I love Gordon Ramsay, his show. I’ve kind of been watching old shows, though. I love Cooked…That’s a documentary series…and Chef’s Table on Netflix, both of those. And then anything that has to do with Barefoot Contessa I watch all the time. Those are probably my top ones.

What are some food blogs or food websites we have to know about?

There are so many. There are a few that I have been obsessed with lately. I love Sprouted Kitchen. She’s probably my favorite blogger out there, and I’ve read her blog probably the longest. I love With Food And Love, I love Sherrie, what she’s doing…and I love Heartbeet Kitchen. That’s another one. She just has beautiful photography. You can just feel her sunshine through her posts. I love Hummingbird High. I think she does awesome bakery goods stuff, and I love what she’s doing. There are a bazillion.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook or Snapchat that make you happy?

I follow probably more people on Instagram than anything else. I love following Apartment Therapy for different things for kitchen ideas because I dream of having an amazing kitchen some day. I love Hey, Sweet Pea. They’re really fun and inspirational, and they’re a husband/wife team that have started their own business. They started the branding program that I had mentioned previously, so they’re super inspiring.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

I’ll go with unusual. I bought this super weird pie rack…I wish I could show it to you…but it looks like chicken coop circles. And I guess it was something that they used to cool pies on, and it looks like an empty wired cake pan. You’re supposed to put a pie to cool on top and then a pie to cool on the middle. I saw it at this cool store up in northern California, and I was like, “What is that?” They told me it was a pie cooling rack. So I don’t even know if it really is, but I had my eyes on it.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

Raw onions. I used to hate raw onions, and now I like them. If I’m putting them in sauces and stuff or dressings, it can’t be a ton, but I definitely have learned to like them more.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Barefoot Contessa at Home, it’s one of my favorite cookbooks ever. I love Huckleberry. That’s one of my favorite cookbooks. The Violet Bakery Cookbook. I love her stuff. Those are some good ones.

Barefoot Contessa, the original cookbook, is one of my favorite cookbooks of all time. That is the cookbook that got me cooking.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I love listening to the Lumineers. They’re my favorite. And then I love listening to The Black Keys, and sometimes I’ll put on The Beach Boys. That’s fun and upbeat to listen to. Those three are probably my favorite.

On Keeping Posted with Robyn:

Instagram is a great way, and I love comments and stuff on my blog. Email, I check regularly. So any of those platforms are really good. Keep an eye out for YouTube because we hope to have it up and running, and we will definitely post that on the blog. Sweetish.co, the actual blog site, is probably the best way to see what’s up and coming. And Instagram, too. I try to keep that up to day as much as possible.

120: Katie Wahlman: Finding A Creative Outlet In Baking

April 27, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Butterlust

Katie’s blog, Butterlust, allows her to combine her love of food with the need for a creative outlet. She is open and honest about everything she makes on her blog and believes that she could quite possibly be the messiest cook on the planet.

I am so thrilled to have Katie Wahlman of Butterlust with me here on the show.

On a Dish That’s Special to Her:

I would go back to that zucchini bread recipe that I was talking about because it is my grandma’s recipe and my mom grew up eating it and then I grew up eating it. Even my mom, who, like I said, isn’t a big cook, isn’t a home baker, isn’t a home cook, it’s one of those things that even neighbors growing up and my best friend’s moms and everybody would get so excited when my mom would bring over a loaf of zucchini bread.

It really is the first baking memory from scratch that I have. You have to grate all the zucchini – that would be my job. Then my mom would let me pour in the oil and do all the stirring. It doesn’t require a mixer. It’s a really simple quick bread. But it does have a lot of memories attached to it for me as well.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I don’t have cable. My boyfriend and I recently cut the cord and we don’t have a cable service, so I don’t watch a ton of food TV, but I do watch a couple food shows on Netflix. The Great British Baking Show is on Netflix now, and I’m still on season 1, but it’s absolutely adorable and I’m kind of obsessed with it. Everybody is so happy and supportive of one another, and they make really amazing things and you learn so much from it.

Sometimes while my boyfriend and I cook dinner, we watch Chopped reruns. It’s kind of an inspiration while we’re trying to make something out of what’s in the refrigerator. So we’ll do that. And my favorite thing that I rave about to anybody who will listen, is Chef’s Table on Netflix. The six-part series documentary is about some of the best chefs in the world. The cinematography is just so stunning. I’ve probably watched each of the episodes three to four times; I love it.

What are some food blogs or food websites we have to know about?

I follow like 200-plus blogs. There are so many inspiring bloggers out there. A couple of my go-to’s that I will check every once in a while if I’m in need of inspiration or just want to see what these girls are up to, I love Hummingbird High, Michelle Lopez.

Two Red Bowls, which is Cynthia. She makes these amazing beautiful dishes. And then My Name is Yeh. She’s Molly Yeh of North Dakota. She makes the most fun, just happy type of desserts, so she’s really an inspiration too.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook or Snapchat that make you happy?

Some of my favorite Instagramers are probably @ladyandpups. Her stuff is absolutely beautiful. Again, a lot of Asian inspired food but her photography is just really stunning. Beth Kirby of @local_milk. She’s kind of just exploded in the last few years. I can’t even understand how she can take such beautiful photos. They’re just absolutely stunning. And then I guess probably Eva Kosmas Flores from Adventures In Cooking, who I know that you’ve also had on the podcast. Her stuff’s beautiful as well. I love how moody and Pacific Northwestern it is. The lighting is just absolutely stunning.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

Does a couch count? I feel like my living room and kitchen are just basically like one big room. I don’t really have anything super unusual. I would say my most treasured items would be I have this antique teal-blue Pyrex bowl that belonged to my great-aunt Aggie who lived to be 102. So I have that, and I’m like, “Don’t touch it.” My boyfriend tries to use it to cook in and I’m like, “Don’t! If you break it, I’ll die.” Probably also my KitchenAid mixer. As a baker, your KitchenAid mixer is your best friend.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

This doesn’t necessarily apply to baking as much, but I used to hate, despise broccoli, and now I love it. I eat it everyday. It’s my favorite vegetable.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Well, like I said, I don’t have a lot of room for cookbooks. My collection is pretty slim currently, but the, Baking: From My Home To Yours by Dorie Greenspan is probably my favorite baking staple.

I also have this cookbook called, Vintage Cakes by Julie Richardson. She apparently found a box of old vintage recipes in the attic of a bakery that she bought or something like that, and tweaked them to make them a little bit more modern and created this vintage cakes book out of it, which kind of goes with the scheme of me really loving these simple, really rustic skillet cakes. A lot of the stuff in there is along those lines, and everything I’ve made from it has been totally spot on. So I actually really love that one too. I’ve been baking from it a lot lately.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Probably anything shamelessly poppy. I have a wide variety of likes when it comes to music, but when I’m baking, I want to dance around and have a good time in the kitchen. So, probably Taylor Swift’s, 1989. I think when that album came out, for the next three months, that was the only thing I listened to while I baked. I find myself listening to a lot of Hall & Oates and old pop music which is a lot of fun. So yeah, anything that I can dance around to and have fun with.

On Keeping Posted with Katie:

I’m probably the most active on Instagram, so my Instagram handle is @butterlustkatie.

105: Elizabeth LaBau: Making Candy and a Sweet Food Career

January 13, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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SugarHero

Elizabeth is a baker, photographer, writer, taste tester and chief sugar officer of SugarHero.com which she started in 2011. Elizabeth went to culinary school after college to learn about baking and patisserie, and worked for years in a number of Los Angeles restaurants and bakeries. She now makes her living developing candy and dessert recipes, writing for websites and writing cookbooks. Her first cookbook, The Sweet Book of Candy Making was published in 2012, and she writes for the About.com candy site and is a contributor to Better Homes and Gardens.

I am so pumped to have Elizabeth LaBau of SugarHero here on the show today.

(*All photos below are Elizabeth’s.)

On Discovering Her Passion for Baking:

My parents actually think it’s funny that I do this for a living because I would make a bee-line out of the kitchen whenever my mom wanted help. You would see the cartoon puff of smoke from Wile E. Coyote whenever she wanted me to do anything. So they still think it’s a little funny that this is my chosen career. But after college, I got married. I was working in a really boring office job. And I would just always be reading food blogs instead of working because that was how great of an employee I was, and I would print out recipes from these blogs and make them at home.

And so it was really the necessity of being out on my own, and having to cook, and then having all this extra time to really delve into the world of food writing and food blogs. They can have more adventurous or fun recipes than maybe your standard cookbook that I grew up cooking from. It really opened my eyes to all these people who were playing with food and making some fun things. Most of the blogs I liked reading were desserts because I have a huge sweet tooth.

That’s really where it started. It was just being out on my own in my own kitchen and finally playing with food instead of just making something my mom told me to make for dinner.

On Her Culinary School Experience:

I went in the evenings after work. I kept working while I was going to school. So it took longer, and it was a little hard to balance both things, but it was absolutely the right thing because I wasn’t committed to a culinary career. It was more like, “Well, we’ll see how I like it, and if I don’t end up wanting to do anything with it, at least, I’ll have some more skills.”

My primary teacher was someone who worked with Sherry Yard with various Wolfgang Puck restaurants. So she was really knowledgeable, and she really did a great job of breaking down the science of baking. Not just teaching us skills but really the theory behind it. So I found everything fascinating. I loved everything. I took everything we did in class, and I’d do it again at home on weekends trying to make it better, and I actually started a prototype food blog. It’s no longer existent, but it would just all be pictures of stuff that I learned in school.

It was so fun. I absolutely loved it. I actually get a lot of questions about going to culinary school, and in general, I don’t really recommend it unless you go to one that’s affordable for you. I think they are so expensive now. But the one I went to was pretty reasonably priced, and it wasn’t a huge financial burden. In that case, I absolutely recommend it because it was a blast.

On Working in Restaurants:

The first place I worked was a bakery in Los Angeles called Sweet Lady Jane which is still around. It’s an LA institution. It’s a very, very high quality bakery. And that’s really where I feel like I got my culinary education because there is the theory you learn, and then there is what actually happens in a kitchen, and I feel really lucky that I worked there. I worked there for about a year. I feel so lucky that that’s where I started because I just learned everything that I missed in culinary school. I learned how people actually do things in the real world.

I learnt to work fast and to work clean and to work in a tiny little space because you don’t have a whole bench of your own in the kitchen usually like you do in culinary school. It was a great bakery. They make everything from scratch which is very, very rare in bakeries, which is another thing I learned. I learned production work, high volume, fast-paced production work, and I also learned some cake decorating. So it was a little bit of everything. And it was really the best place I ever could have started. And then from there, I was able to find different places that would teach me different things.

On Deciding to Start Her Freelance Career and SugarHero.com:

It was really gradual. A few years after I started working in kitchens, I was at a job where I didn’t have full hours, and I was looking for something to supplement my income. And I on a whim applied for a job at About.com and ended up getting it.

I would just do that in the evenings and on the weekends, and as that took off, I was able to devote more time to it. And it was really over the course of about five years, I would work on About more, and then I would take on maybe a few other little projects. Eventually, I started my own blog, and then as I switched on, I would try to find a job that would be part-time where I would work maybe three days a week, so I could devote more time to my freelance stuff.

I didn’t end up going fully freelance until about four and a half years ago. By that time, I had been doing writing on the side for about five years. So it was nothing I ever planned. I didn’t know food writing was a thing in college. I didn’t know that was a career people had. People didn’t make money on the Internet when I was in college. It just really gradually developed, and I found that I really loved it.

On Her Book, The Sweet Book of Candy Making:

I was super pregnant when I wrote it. It was so stressful. I actually got contacted by the publisher, their acquisitions editor had been looking for someone to write a candy book. So it was really just being on the Internet in the right place, at the right time. I think she found me through the About site, and then she also got a recommendation from another person who had written a candy cookbook.

So it fell into my lap which I feel very lucky about because I know it’s not always easy to get a book. And it happened really fast. It was, I think, written in five months while, again, very pregnant. And actually, our apartment had a flood during that time, and we had to move out part of the time and live in a hotel with no kitchen.

So it is truly a labor of love. And I am hoping to write another one. I have an idea. I have an agent. It just has been a matter of carving out the time. But the book was really intended to be a one-stop shop for people who want to learn about candy making. So it has some basic recipes and then some more creative ones. But really, if you don’t know much about candy making, it’s intended to be your guide to getting started. That was the whole point, and I hope that’s what people take from it.

On Candy Making:

I think everyone thinks that about candy because you need a thermometer. It’s like as soon as you put a piece of equipment into the mix, they are like, “Oh no. This is too much. I’m going to buy a Snickers bar. I’m out,” and there are candies that are harder, but I think so many candies really are very approachable.

If you want to start making candies, start with truffles. You need cream, and you need chocolate, and that is literally all you need. And you don’t need a thermometer, and you need a whisk maybe, but everyone has one.

I think there are ways to ease into it before you’re having to pull taffy. You don’t have to start at the top. Start with something really approachable with a microwave fudge recipe. There are definitely things you can do to ease into it.

On Resources for Learning More About Candy Making:

Yes, so actually, I have a favorite candy book that I recommend to everyone. It’s by Peter Greweling. It’s called Chocolates and Confections, and there’s actually two versions. There’s a pro-version and a Chocolates and Confections At Home. He is an instructor at the CIA, the Culinary Institute of America, and it’s like the encyclopedia of candy.

It’s so thorough. There’s a million in process pictures. He goes over everything from basics to really complex layered candies. It’s so smart, and it’s a little bit scientific if you’re interested in that, but it doesn’t have to be. You can skip all the science and just get to the recipes. It’s such a great resource. The home version is maybe a little more what home cooks might want, but it’s such a great book.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I watch hardly any. The ones when I do catch them, I actually really am old school. I like Alton Brown. I think he’s great.

What are some food blogs or food websites we have to know about?

I almost always read dessert blogs that these are all going to be sweet focused. I love Sprinkle Bakes. I think Heather is a genius. I really like The Sugar Hit. It’s so fun. Cleobuttera, she’s in Egypt hence the name. She just has the most gorgeous photos. I like The Cake Blog. They have a lot of contributors, so it’s like a compilation website, but they do really fun stuff. And then 10th kitchen, who I know, you’ve interviewed her. She is just the funniest, and I want to be her best friend.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook or Snapchat that make you happy?

I’m actually just learning how to use Snapchat. I had a 20-year-old teach me how because I’m an old person. I’m still figuring that out.

I follow The Actor’s Diet, Lynn Chen. She does some food and then some LA stuff that I like. I follow Hey Natalie Jean who has chickens. She’s great. On Instagram, again The Sugar Hit just has the most fun, explosive pictures ever. She really makes me happy.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

Oh, gosh. I have a marble rolling pin from my grandmother that I got when she passed away. And that’s really special for me. I don’t actually use it but it’s just laying in the kitchen, so I can always think of her when I see it.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

Lavender and flower flavors. I used to be, “Ehh,” and now I throw rosewater on everything and lavender and violet. It’s a sickness.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

There is a chain in Los Angeles called Lemonade. It does fresh salads and sandwiches. They have a cookbook that I actually love. They got me to eat Brussel sprouts all the time. It’s life- changing. The Lemonade Cookbook, I really like. For desserts, I have a really charming one called, The Bungalow Heavens Cookies cookbook. And it’s all cookie recipes from Pasadena which is where I used to live. Oh, and I just love the Barefoot Contessa. I think she’s awesome. I want to visit her house and have her cook for me. So I have a lot of her books.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Actually, I listen to my iPod all the time when I’m in the kitchen because otherwise, it’s really boring. I listen to Vampire Weekend a lot. I really like Kishi Bashi. I don’t know if you know him, but he’s a violinist who also sings, and he does some really amazing stuff. So I’d say Vampire Weekend and Kishi Bashi always get me in the kitchen.

On Keeping Posted with Elizabeth:

SugarHero.com, and I am on Facebook. Instagram. If you have questions about candy making or baking, send me an email. I try to respond generally promptly.

104: Jessie Oleson Moore: How Baking Led to a Healthier Relationship with Food

January 6, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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CakeSpy

Jessie is a writer, illustrator, baker, and founder of CakeSpy, which is a dessert detective agency dedicated to seeking sweetness in everyday life.

From write-ups on bakery visits and delicious recipes to art projects, Jessie encourages us to bake and live with sweet abandon. Jessie has authored two books, CakeSpy Presents Sweet Treats for a Sugar-Filled Life and The Secret Lives of Baked Goods. She is also an eating disorder activist.

I am so happy to have Jessie Oleson Moore of CakeSpy joining me here today.

(*All photos below are Jessie’s.)

On Starting Her Blog:

I was working at a refrigerator magnet company and I was actually the art director. It was the refrigerator magnet division of a greeting card company, and I know it sounds silly, but I had reached a point where I was not going to have too much more advancement in my job, so, I was feeling a little bit antsy, and I had wanted to start my own company for a long time.

At the time, I was reading a book called, The Purple Cow by Seth Godin, which is a fantastic book, I highly recommend it, but it gave a lot of great suggestions for how to start a business. And ultimately one of the things that I took away from it was that to start a business, you’ve got to start out doing what you love. So I was like, “Okay. Well, what would my ideal business have?”

It came to me right away. I was like, “Well, it would have writing, illustrating, and baked goods.” All awesome things, but how do you start a business with that? So I was like, “Well, all right, maybe I’ll start a blog and I’ll figure out what I want to do with the business.” This is 2007 when I could probably count the food bloggers on one hand.

So I started a blog, and I did not in any way think that the blog would become my business, but it had this beautiful fusion that allowed me to start a business doing all of the things that I loved. So I feel really fortunate that I’ve been able to do that.

On Her Journey and Relationship with Food:

Actually your question couldn’t come at a better time. I was at the conference of the National Eating Disorder Association, which was in San Diego this year, and that was a wonderful opportunity. There were over 600 attendees, and it was just a coming together of people who have suffered from eating disorders, people who have family or friends who have suffered, and also researchers and clinicians.

I suffered from an eating disorder from the age of about 12 until, I would say that I really actively began to become recovered in my late 20s and early 30s. So I’m 34 now, so that’s fairly recent. I think that eating disorders are something that, for one thing, nobody asks to have an eating disorder. Nobody aspires to that. And they’re rather insidious things because they insert themselves in your life so gradually, at least in my case and many other cases that I know of, that before you know it, it’s become part of you. Or you think it’s part of you.

And for me, who knows really what got me there. I believe that for me, it was not one thing that made me have an eating disorder, but maybe a few things. I think that to begin, maybe I had an anxious nature and a nature of perfection. And when you have that and you reach your tender teenage years where your body is changing, all of a sudden it becomes really enticing that in this world that feels really out of control, that your food is something that you can control.

So what began as kind of an after-school special type of worrying about food and dieting, escalated quickly into bulimia. And then when I stopped exhibiting bulimic behavior, I thought I was better, but secretly, somehow without realizing it, I had really just become anorexic.

So I suffered from a lot of food-related issues. And I think that actually my food blog, as funny as it might sound, was part of the gateway to recovery for me. I think that food is something that people with eating disorders have a very complex relationship with. But at first when I began to bake, I think that that was… even though it was before I really, truly, hardcore went into recovery, I think that baking was the gateway that led me to recovery.

Because at first, I think that I would only take the teeny, tiniest taste of anything that I baked, but it’s like I started to get to know my enemy. And all of a sudden, when you start baking, it’s like, “Whoa, there actually isn’t evil and the devil lurking in this cupcake. It’s actually just butter and sugar and flour and very real things. It’s not going to ruin my life.” So I think that by beginning to bake, that it helped me to, at first, maybe fear food less, and then to begin to understand it, and ultimately to have a much healthier relationship with it.

On What She Would Say to Someone Suffering from an Eating Disorder:

Number one, you’re not alone. You’re less alone than you think. Number two, this is a problem. You might think, “Oh, but I’m not anorexic so it’s not an issue.” It is an issue. If it’s affecting your life, then it is an issue. And it’s not okay, and it’s important that you get help.

And that leads into, get help. And what type of help you need, it will differ from person to person. I found that my best support was through an eating disorder support group, a physical, in-person group. I liked a group better than one-on-one therapy. I just felt like it had that aspect of connection, although I did have one-on-one therapy.

I was never hospitalized. Some people require that or benefit from that. But the NEDA.org website, National Eating Disorder Association, is fantastic. They have a lot of resources, and they also have a helpline that you can call and get resources.

On Learning How to Bake:

I grew up in a household that was reverent to sweets. Everyone in my family loved sweets. And my mom is, while she was never a professional baker, she was a stay-at-home mom, but to call her an amateur baker would really not quite do it justice. She could have been a baker easily, a professional one.

For instance, my birthday cakes every year, I did not ever, ever have a cake mix cake. I basically had a wedding cake. My birthday cake every year was a three-tier homemade vanilla cake with pink frosting, and roses all piped on. And my mom would make this for me because it was my birthday dream. So for me, sweets have always been something that have been present in my life and that I have loved and appreciated.

And more than even just the sweets, but the culture around them. I can’t remember what I wore or what we had for dinner on my birthday when I turned six, but I remember the cake, and that is a happy memory. So that has always been present in my life. And I was always like a sous chef to my mom while she was baking, very intently interested on getting to lick the beaters at first, but I got more and more curious about the process as I grew up.

And I think that for a long time I felt like, “Oh, well, my mom’s the baker. That’s not really for me.” But it was funny because when I first started baking in earnest, which really quite honestly was when I started the website, I realized that I already knew more than I realized, I think just from absorbing it from years of watching her. So I’ve always had an interest in sweets, but I’m largely self-taught.

On Her Art and Illustrations:

I’ve always been artistic. My mom actually, while she was a stay-at-home mom, as soon as my youngest sister went to school, she pursued her dream of being a children’s book illustrator. So my mom, she is kind of famous, Margie Moore. So my mom is artistic, my dad is a super talented water colorist and painter. And once again, the culture that I grew up in, I was always artistic.

And I went to art school. That is what my training is in, and I studied illustration. I’ve always drawn characters, too. Actually, I was going through some old papers awhile back, and I actually found this drawing I had done of a cupcake and a muffin and they both had smiling faces.

On Her Cookbooks:

The first book, the nutshell story about that is that when I started my website and I started to gain some web popularity… and very early on, I was like, “You know what? I should get a book deal.” So a literary agent had approached me and I was like, “Yeah, I’m going to get a book deal. I’m going to nail this.” So I put together a book proposal, and every single person I sent it to rejected it.

Every single person. I was crushed. And my reaction was, “Screw you, publishing industry. You don’t want me? I don’t want you.” I put that to bed, and if anyone asked, I was like, “No, I don’t want to write a book.”

But then about two years later, actually one of the publishing houses, Sasquatch Books in Seattle who had actually rejected the book previously came back to me. All of a sudden, I guess the timing was right. So they asked me to come in for a meeting. I did.

And I had walked to the meeting, because at the time I lived in Seattle and I was maybe 15 minutes away. By the time that I got home from my appointment with them, they had sent over a contract.

So it’s funny because while it happened very quickly, it also did not happen very quickly. That book was put together largely from the archives of popular recipes from my website. And I actually wrote that book in about three weeks.

At that time, I had about four years’ worth of recipes. So while it was a tremendous amount of work to write headnotes that were cohesive and to format the recipes, I did have quite a bit of the work already done. And then I believe I had a leisurely five weeks to do all of the illustrations.

The second book, throughout writing on my website, I had become interested with baked goods with interesting backstories. My saying is that, “It tastes better with a backstory.” Even the most humble food can become far more interesting and rich when it has a great story behind it. So that book, I think, was born out of that love.

It was with the same publisher. And it was an idea that I had and they let me run with it. So the two books that I’ve written visually both in terms of recipes are quite different but I think that when you see them side-by-side that you see the common thread of the way that I write and my sense of humor.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I am embarrassed to tell you that I do not watch any food shows. The one that I used to watch though when I was in high school, which is not on anymore but I loved it, was the Sara Moulton show. It was so informative. I just loved listening to her voice. So I’ll say that in the 1990s I was all about Sara Moulton.

What are some food blogs or food websites we have to know about?

Well, if you’ve never seen my friend Peabody’s website, it is called, Culinary Concoctions by Peabody, and this is like my sister from another mister. If there’s a delicious, indulgent dessert it is probably on this website. Even indulgent desserts that you’ve probably never even thought of, they’re on this website. So I really, really highly suggest that one.

I also think there’s a lot of great foodie stuff on Craftsy.com, which is actually a website that I write for. That was how I first was exposed to them. But they have a lot of great food content on there so I’m often checking them out.

And I also love Serious Eats which is another website I previously contributed to but that’s not why I suggest it. I just think that they always do a really great job. So I love reading what they have to say.

Oh, and another one that I always get a lot of great information from is the King Arthur Flour Blog. They always have great information that gets into the nitty-gritty of the process of baking. So I always really enjoy it if there’s a recipe that is on their blog, I really feel like I get a full story from their site.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook or Snapchat that make you happy?

I follow this one called The Purple Pug that posts pug pictures and also party ideas. The party ideas are wonderful and inspiring but the pugs are my main draw. If you put a pug in a costume – I am on it. I love my friend The Domestic Rebel, Hayley. She posts a lot of really delicious photos. So she’s always inspiring me. And, oh my goodness, I love following Big Gay Ice Cream.

They’re an ice cream company but they post ice cream and unicorns and funny pop culture. So basically they’ve won my heart.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

Even though it’s maybe about six feet away from my kitchen, I think that my unicorn collection really sets my baking area apart from others.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

I would say tomatoes. When I was little, I had a real problem with as I called it, “tomato thingies.” If I got a slice of pizza and it was the kind of sauce that wasn’t totally pureed, if it had maybe little bits of tomato skin in it, I could not abide by it. I just could not do it. I would not eat it. But now I’m like, “Oh my God, tomato everything.” So I’ve had a real turn around with that one.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Probably my favorite cookbook on earth, aside from my own, is the Betty Crocker Cooky Book. And this is the early 1960s edition where cookie is spelled C-O-O-K-Y. And this book you can easily find it on Amazon. They’ve reissued it. But it’s wire bound and I just love this book.

It’s got all sorts of cookies but it’s got these adorable headnotes like, “Mrs. Martin Flowers of Omaha likes to make these cookies when she’s not attending to her hat collection,” and things like that. So it’s very amusing, very telling of a different era. And it’s got those weird Technicolor photos. So I love that book.

I also love any King Arthur Flour book. I always love their books. I love all of the cookbooks by the proprietors of Baked, the Brooklyn bakery. And I also have a deep love of any self-published church cookbooks, the type of things that ladies auxiliary committees will do. Those cookbooks are my favorite. I love those.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

In art school I felt like anything Velvet Underground made me want to create art. But I feel like for me, it’s got to be good oldies to make me want to cook. So that could be Bob Dylan, like, Blood on the Tracks or Tangled Up in Blue.

On Keeping Posted with Jessie:

Definitely on social media, I’ve been getting more into Instagram. I post lots of unicorns, pugs, illustrations, and baked goods, nothing not to love. So that’s a good way and via Facebook is a good way to keep apprised of what’s going on and of course the blog.

095: Tessa Fisher: Gluten-Free Baking with Whole Ingredients

November 30, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Salted Plains

Tessa is fascinated with turning her love of baking into creating gluten-free treats that taste good. On her blog Salted Plains she shares recipes of her gluten-free creations many of which are also dairy-free or vegan. Tessa strives to use whole ingredients and refrains from baking with refined sugar whenever she can.

I am so happy to have Tessa Fisher of Salted Plains joining me here on the show today.

(*All photos below are Tessa’s.)

On Her Interest in Baking:

Baking was something that I always did growing up. My mom was a really great cook, she was always creating new things for us at dinner but she didn’t do a whole lot of baking. That was something that I always really liked experimenting with, probably putting weird combinations together when I shouldn’t have been. But it’s always been something that I’ve really just enjoyed doing.

I’ve always felt more comfortable baking than cooking and from preparing meals for sure.

I think the idea of just creating something sweet, I kind of have a sweet tooth, and then being able to share those things with other people, has always just been a lot of fun for me.

On Being Gluten-Free:

About middle school, high school, I started getting severe migraines and they would just put me out for a whole day and then make me pretty sick, very nauseous, dehydrated, just really awful. As I went through high school they kind of became more frequent. In college, they were very frequent, and so I tried everything. I did acupuncture and saw a chiropractor and saw ear, nose and throat doctors, and allergies and all sorts of things to try to figure out what was going on and no real an answer. Some things helped calm symptoms a little bit but nothing really ever got rid of them. I just became okay with the idea that I was always going to have migraines but at the same time when a special event was coming up, I’d get nervous that one would come and it would just ruin the day.

So I really came to be gluten-free because I had a friend mention that they had read that there was a connection between gluten and migraines and maybe I should check it out. So I did. I did some reading and I decided to cut gluten out for a couple of months just to see what would happen. I really didn’t think anything was going to change and I started feeling better and so I kept going and the migraines lessened. I’ve been a few years migraine free now, so kind of life changing.

On Baking Gluten-Free and Being Self-Taught:

My biggest adjustment, I think, with the absence of gluten–that kind of glues everything together–is just figuring out, “Okay, so how does that work exactly? And what do you use to replace it?” Just the very basics, really, of it. That was probably the toughest part for me and a little bit overwhelming.

When I went gluten-free and I started seeing the positive effects for me of that, I then also at the same time realized, “Oh, so that means no cookies and cake and all the stuff that I loved.” I was okay with maybe not having bread so much, but the other things seemed kind of dire so I started looking things up online. That’s how I became acquainted with bloggers that were dealing with being gluten-free and that kind of thing and really just did a lot of reading online about it.

On Some Good Resources for Gluten-Free Baking:

The blogs that I was going to initially over and over again for baking gluten-free and cooking gluten-free were Gluten-Free Girl, I learned a lot through what she was doing. Also Against All Grain, Danielle Walker’s site, I learned a lot there. Tasty Yummies, I went to all the time.

Against All Grain and Tasty Yummies are both, I think, more Paleo-based, but obviously grain free, gluten-free and so I learned a lot through reading their blogs.

On Baking Without Refined Sugar:

One of my favorite substitutes for just regular granulated white sugar would be coconut sugar. You can use it as a one-to-one substitute, it’s also a lower glycemic but it also has a little bit more nutrients than just regular white sugar so you can feel a little bit better about using that. I really like coconut sugar. I use honey a lot; I also use maple syrup a lot. Those three are probably my top unrefined sugars.

Usually honey and maple syrup are pretty interchangeable. It will change the flavor a tad bit, but for those recipes that could be converted to vegan, obviously maple syrup would be a great way to go.

I have some recipes on my site that are using coconut sugar and people try to use maple syrup or vice versa, the liquid, the granulated, usually don’t always transfer very well.

Coconut sugar is more similar to brown sugar, it has a more caramel-ly taste to it which I really like. I think it gives a whole different depth to your baked goods. So that’s something I wasn’t initially thinking about when I started using it. Now I will purposely use it in something that I think could use that flavor. Sometimes I use sucanat also, which is a little bit lighter. It doesn’t have so much of that caramel-ly flavor but is also unrefined.

Learning those little nuances with the sugars has helped a great deal.

On Her Blog:

I was riding myself ragged with my full-time job and I was also coaching swimming. That schedule in general was pretty intense. Early mornings, working all day and then late evenings and weekends. I was feeling just totally worn out which wouldn’t make you think, “Let’s start a blog,” but I was feeling the need for something creative, something to look forward to, to cause myself to learn about something on daily basis. It really was born out of that. I had started playing around with gluten-free baked goods by then, taking them to our weekly girls’ night and getting really good feedback and I thought, “Well, maybe this is the way to go for now and just see what happens.”

A lot of inspiration I get from just the seasons – the fruit and vegetables that’s out there seasonally, but also just what I’m craving a lot of times goes into what’s the next thing that I’m going to work on. Or, what have I not attempted yet that I think other people might want to have a gluten-free version of? Or, what not gluten-free grain could I use that I haven’t really played much with? That kind of dictates what I do next.

The Bojon Gourmet, I love her blog, her photography, what she does with her food I think is amazing, always getting really good ideas from her. The cookbook Flavor Flours by Alice Medrich is fantastic and she has chapters on, maybe seven or eight, different grains–gluten-free grains–and how to use them. So I go to that a lot to get ideas on the texture and what you can use for cakes, and what’s good for cookies and that kind of thing.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I don’t really watch a whole lot of TV and I don’t have a particular food show, but if I turn on the TV and I’m flipping through and there’s something related to food on, I’m going to stop and just watch.

What are some food blogs or food websites we have to know about?

Well, one quick blog that I came across recently that I loved is called Appeasing a Food Geek and Kelsey is the writer of the blog. She breaks things down from a scientific point of view, how things work and react and because I wish I knew more about that, I love that she does that.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook or Snapchat that make you happy?

I guess Instagram is probably my favorite. I love seeing photos from Food Stories. Also Adventures in Cooking–Eva Flores. She just does beautiful photography. There are so many and I love also following travel photographers on Instagram. Alex Strohl is a travel photographer and he just goes to amazing places so I would have to say those are my top.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

Well, this is pretty simple. But my Silpat that you use for baking on your cookie sheets. It’s a reusable replacement of parchment paper, but I use it over and over and over again and it’s great. It cleans super fast and it’s always handy.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

Well, one food for sure is brussels sprouts. Never liked them growing up and now they’re probably one of my favorite foods.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Well, this is not a cookbook but Ratio. The book Ratio has been really helpful for me. My Paleo Patisserie that came out this last year has been fantastic and again I think I mentioned Flavor Flours, one of my all-time favorite cook books.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Well, Josh Ritter–he’s coming out with a new album and one of his new singles is Getting Ready To Get Down. That pretty much gets you ready to do anything I think, so love that song.

On Keeping Posted with Tessa:

I really love Instagram, I’m on there a lot. Also on Pinterest and Facebook, and those are all @SaltedPlains. Those are probably the best places to find me, and Twitter.

086: Samantha Seneviratne: Cooking Up A Career in Baking and Food

October 19, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Love Comma Cake

Sam has been a food editor at Good Housekeeping, Fine Cooking, and Martha Stewart’s Everyday Food. Today, she’s a freelance recipe developer and food stylist and recently released her first cookbook called The New Sugar and Spice: A Recipe for Bolder Baking. She was also a Finalist in the 2015 Saveur Blog Awards for Best Baking and Desserts Blog.

I’m so psyched to have Samantha Seneviratne of Love Comma Cake here on the show today.

On Baking and Sweet Things:

I think I knew I was going to be a baker from when I was a really little kid. I told my family that I was going to be a baker and a librarian when I was five. I always loved dough and sugar and butter. I always loved working with those things. So as soon as I knew that people needed jobs to keep afloat, I realized that dough was probably the way I should go. So I think it’s in my blood.

I went to culinary school and I studied both savory and sweet, and I worked as a food editor at different food magazines. So in doing that, I pretty much have to do both sweet and savory, and these days I do some styling and recipe development both sweet and savory. I do both. I love doing the baked goods. That’s what I really want to do all the time.

On Finding Her Career in Food:

Well, it took me a long time to figure how I was going to do it. I went to college. I went to a liberal arts college, and I studied Latin American studies, and Spanish Literature, and then I got a job after school in public television, and then worked for a different non-profit. I had a bunch of other things that I was directing my life towards. Then, all of a sudden, I just realized what I really loved to do is cook, and that I should just go to culinary school and make it happen. But it took me a while to figure out how to do it because I’m not really a restaurant chef. I have great respect for restaurant chefs but that’s not what I do, and I knew that wouldn’t be my path. So it took me awhile to figure out exactly how I was going to make a living cooking. And magazine test kitchens were the place for me for awhile and that worked out well.

I had a friend who worked at the magazine, and she played on a soccer team with an editor at Gourmet magazine. So I told her I was interested in food and she said, “Well, why don’t you meet this guy. He’s a food editor at Gourmet.” And he took me on a tour of the gourmet test kitchen and showed me what he did, and I thought, “That looks like a good job. That looks like exactly where I should be.” So after that visit with him, I went to culinary school and that’s what I did.

On Her Food Heroes and What She’d Make for Them:

I mean the baking heroes like Dorie Greenspan and David Lebovitz, and there are so many, Rose Levy Beranbaum. There are so many baking stars, so many classics.

I’m really into fried dough. Lately, I’ve been really making donuts and just this morning we made apple fritters and funnel cake. I think fried dough is what I’m really feeling these days. It’s not good for you, but it’s fun to make.

The thing is the difference when you fry it and then eat it right out of the oil, toss it in sugar and then eat it. It’s a whole other ball game. It’s so much more delicious than anything you can ever buy because it’s a timing thing. So I’d probably make some fried dough of some kind.

On Her Blog:

I wanted to get more of an online presence that was just me. I was working at different magazines, and I love working in magazine test kitchens because you’re really part of a team, and you’re all creating this food in this vision and under this brand name.

I wanted to have a body of work that was mine, and that I could contribute to and that was 100% my voice. Just exactly what I wanted to make whenever I wanted to make it and so that’s what I did.

I just was craving a place where I can have complete control over everything I did. So that means any whim that I had I just was able to do it.

On Simple Rules of Thumb for Baking for Greater Success:

I think people are more scared of baking than they need to be. There’s a little more flexibility than people think there is. Things could vary slightly depending on how warm your butter is or something like that, but your disasters are rare, right? So measuring flour is important, temperatures are important. I think measuring flour is number one. Once you’ve learned how to measure flour, things are going to improve greatly, or get a scale, also, a really good way to go.

(On baking with cold eggs.) You can totally warm them up. There are little tricks like you can keep your eggs in some warm water and that’ll heat them up. Or you can even if you crack them into a bowl and then let them warm up that way. That also works. You can warm up your butter by pounding it with a rolling pin or sometimes I even microwave it on a low 20% power, 50% power, you can warm your butter up. Which a lot of people don’t recommend because it’s easy to go from cold butter to melted butter and then you’re kind of screwed. But you can do it. It works. But I think measuring flour is number one.

On Her Cookbook, The New Sugar and Spice:

It was a long process. I probably started a proposal for that book four years ago. It took me a long time to write the proposal. I wrote a proposal for a book I wasn’t that happy with, and then I scrapped it and then wrote a new proposal, and it took a long time to get the proposal in good shape. And then I shopped around with agents. Then she helped me work on the proposal and then we pitched the book. It’s a long process, but I always had the dream of writing cookbook. So just finding the book that felt right and it took me a long time to get there, and I think I did. I like it.

It’s basically a baking book and I use spices and the chapters of the books are all organized by spice. The general idea of the book is that I try to use a little less sugar. I don’t like overly sweet desserts, and I think that it’s easy to fall to that trap. I think sugar can be a crutch. So I try to develop recipes that were a little bit less sweet and used spices to amp up the flavor in a more complex and interesting way. That’s not to say they are low sugar or diet or anything like that, but they seem to me to be a little less sweet and a little more interesting.

I also wrote a lot of history. I got into researching the history of certain spices and how that related a little bit to my family history because my parents are from Sri Lanka. I started digging into the history of cinnamon, I realized that my great grandmother grew clove trees in her yard, and my great grandfather grew vanilla beans. And I learned that my family’s history was intertwined with spices in that fun way, so I wrote a lot about that.

I had fun writing the intros that were all about spice history and my family history and having really personal head notes about my parents, and my brother, and things like that. That felt unique, and fun, and special to me because, as a food editor for a magazine, you don’t ever get to just write about yourself or write about why you like something. You don’t get that opportunity very often and so I took it in the book.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I don’t have cable television so I don’t watch anyone.

What are some food blogs or food websites we have to know about?

I have a lot of food blogs that I love. It’s going to be hard to list them. I love Brooklyn Supper, and I love Two Red Bowls. And I love The Fauxmartha. Those are three right now I’ll tell you that I love.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook or Snapchat that make you happy?

The only thing I do out of all those things is Instagram. So I would say, I think David Lebovitz is really funny and his Instagram account makes me laugh.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

I have a little dowel that I got at a hardware store. I had them cut it down so it’s like a four-inch dowel. I don’t know what they’re for when you buy them at the hardware store, but I use it to roll out little pastries, and I love it. It’s the most useful tool in the world and it was a dollar.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

I’m into anise seeds now and I didn’t think I was into it before. Actually the book, writing that book, I have a couple of recipes for anise seeds in a biscotti and in a pear tart, and I think they’re both delicious. I’ve really come around on anise seed.

I hate liquorice like so many people, but I didn’t realize that if you use anise seeds sparingly and if you pair it with something delicious, it can work in combination with other things. I just hadn’t figured that out yet, but I like it.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Regan Daley’s In the Sweet Kitchen is one of my all-time favorite books in the whole world. I think that book is super smart. There’s a lot of information at the beginning. It’s a baking companion, and there are glossaries and flavor pairing charts and things like that, that make baking really easy and inspire you to do good things. And then the second half of the book is all these wonderful recipes. I think that book is genius. That book makes my life better.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Oh my gosh, anything. I just like Beyonce, Taylor Swift, and all those guys. That kind of music, I love it.

On Keeping Posted with Sam:

Instagram probably. You can find me at @samanthaseneviratne, and you can follow me there or you can sign up to receive all updates on my blog Love Comma Cake.