Brian Levy Transcript
Jessie Sheehan:
Hi, peeps. You are listening to She's my Cherry Pie, the baking podcast from The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network. I'm your host, Jessie Sheehan. I'm a baker, recipe developer, and author of three baking books, including my latest, “Snackable Bakes.” Each Saturday, I'm hanging out with the sweetest bakers around and taking a deep dive into their signature bakes.
Today's guest is Brian Levy. Brian is a pastry chef, recipe developer, and author of the 2022 baking book, “Good & Sweet.” Brian honed his craft by working at several acclaimed restaurants in New York and France, and as a private chef. His book focuses on sweetening desserts with fruit instead of sugar, and he joins me today to talk about this unique expertise. Brian also guides me through his cupcake recipe with chocolate frosting, which uses prunes and dates to enhance the natural flavor of the ingredients. Stay tuned for my chat with Brian.
Thank you to Plugra Premium European Style Butter for supporting today's show. As some of you know, I've been a big fan of Plugra for some time now and was introduced to it at my very first bakery job when I was just a newbie baker. Fast forward to today, I'm a professional baker, cookbook author and recipe developer, and I continue to rely on Plugra for all my baking needs. My fridge is always stocked with Plugra sticks and solids. I especially love that Plugra contains 82% butter fat. The higher butterfat content means less moisture and more fat, and as bakers know, fat equals flavor. Plugra butter is also slow churned, making it more pliable and easy to work with. I do a lot of baking this time of year for work and for myself and my family. Comfy bakes like my pistachio chocolate anytime buns and cinnamon sugar buttermilk doughnut holes, and I always reach for Plugra unsalted butter. I've also been making a lot of yeasted breads lately, and I love the buttery flavor Plugra adds to my dough. Plugra Premium European Style Butter is the perfect choice from professional kitchens to your home kitchen. Ask for Plugra at your favorite grocery store or visit plugra.com for a store locator and recipes.
Let's check in with today's guest. Brian, so excited to have you on She's My Cherry Pie and to talk chocolate cupcakes with chocolate ermine frosting with you and so much more.
Brian Levy:
Thank you. I'm excited to be here.
Jessie Sheehan:
In the foreword to your fantastic book, “Good & Sweet,” James Beard award-winning cookbook author Amy Chaplin writes that you use fruit in your desserts in a beautiful, thoughtful and skilled way, and it is something no one has ever done before. I mean, can you please unpack what it is you do and why you are the first?
Brian Levy:
Well, first of all, I'm very flattered to hear any compliment from Amy Chaplin because I love her two cookbooks. They're two of my favorites. So when I started experimenting with this stuff and researching it, I looked for existing recipes that were sweet recipes that only used whole food or the closest thing to whole food ingredients possible to sweeten recipes, and I really didn't find anything. The closest stuff that I found was a couple books from the '80s that used fruit juice or fruit juice concentrate to sweeten things, and that wasn't at all what I was going for. And of course, there are books that use alternative sweeteners to cane sugar like maple syrup or honey and agave, but I wanted to try more of a challenge than that. I really wanted to use really flavorful ingredients that brought more than just sweetness to the table.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. I mean, you develop sweets that don't call for cane and coconut sugars. They don't call for stevia, honey, maple syrup. Those are all the things they don't have, but what they do have is fresh or dried or juiced fruit, nuts, grains, dairy, fermented products that I think as you write kind of harness the natural sweetness of whatever that ingredient is. Do you think it's fair to say that that has become or is your dessert style?
Brian Levy:
So I consider sweetening with whole food ingredients a long-term experiment. It's something that is definitely now a part of my repertoire for forever, and I always incorporate the kind of philosophy that went into “Good & Sweet” into my dessert, thinking about what flavors make the most sense in a given recipe rather than just what can add sweetness. But yeah, I'm always looking for the next thing to experiment with, I guess.
Jessie Sheehan:
Awesome. Before you were sort of experimenting with substitutions for sugar, let's say in baked goods, you dreamed of being an editorial assistant at Gourmet. You worked in Europe. You made traditional desserts under Gina DePalma at Babbo, where I love this, your favorite part of service was experimenting with new recipe ideas. So it's clearly been sort of a theme, then you went to architecture school. Can you talk about how this particular path led you to this I think genius decision to start making desserts sweetened by fruit and other unexpectedly sweet ingredients? And also, tell us about who Gina is for those that don't know.
Brian Levy:
Well, Gina was a really well-respected pastry chef in New York. She was at Babbo from the time they opened, which I believe was the late '90s. And she eventually wrote a cookbook of which won a James Beard award called Dolce Italiano. It's full of great dessert recipes. When I was looking to get experience with desserts because I didn't go to culinary school, after wanting to work for Gourmet Magazine, I thought that getting experience in a kitchen would help get me that job. So I interned at a restaurant in France. They call it staging. And then when I got back to New York, I wanted to focus on pastry, and so I just called the best pastry chefs in New York, and Gina was among them.
It was the experience in France that got me excited about pastry because I was in a small restaurant there and doing a little of everything, but what I was really drawn to was the macarons and the desserts, and I had always had a sweet tooth and been more drawn to baking. So when I was in New York, I called Gina and a few other pastry chefs. Gina had me come in, and then I started working there nights and weekends. I don't know how staging works now, but in those days it was usual to work for free. So that's what I did. While I had a full-time job in an office, I went into Babbo nights and weekends. And then eventually some months later, one of the pastry assistants left and I got her job.
Jessie Sheehan:
And do you think it was sort of working under Gina? You've said that working service, you were really interested in experimenting with new recipes and figuring out new and different ways to do things. Is that sort of maybe kind of where the seed was planted to think about making desserts without sugar or did that come years ago?
Brian Levy:
Well, I know mean it didn't explicitly come then, but there was definitely... I remember thinking back then, do we always need to be putting this much sugar and butter and everything? And that's not to be a little Gina's desserts, which were amazing, I just erred on the side of less sweet.
Jessie Sheehan:
Was that because you were a little bit of a health nut or was that just because you were a curious peep?
Brian Levy:
I think both. I was always a little bit of a health nut or semi-conscious of that. But then at the same time, at the end of my nights at Babbo, I would like guzzle the melted down ice cream. So I wasn't exactly... I mean, I was also in my early 20s and it was easier to do that.
Jessie Sheehan:
Guzzling ice cream is like a thing, whereas it maybe not so much now.
Brian Levy:
I would take some leftover cakes on my way home and be like, "I'm going to give these to my sister tomorrow," and I would eat them on the subway platform.
Jessie Sheehan:
So tell us about an experience you had eating a mango that maybe started you on this substituting sugar with surprisingly sweet ingredients.
Brian Levy:
I was eating a really sweet mango in my apartment, and this was like nine years ago. I was eating a sweet mango and thought that, yeah, I must be able to make a dessert out of... This is as sweet as I would want any dessert to be, so I must be able to make a dessert out of this without adding any sugar, and the first thing I tried making was a mango custard, and it worked. So when I first tried it, and this isn't the way it ended up in the book, it's much more like streamlined now, but when I first tested it out, I knew that the challenge was going to be reducing the water from the fruit because yes, the mango's sweet enough on its own, but once you start diluting it with other ingredients that takes away from the sweetness, so it will be less sweet than-
Jessie Sheehan:
So you need to concentrate its flavor.
Brian Levy:
Yeah. I cooked down the mango to probably a paste or at least a thick jam kind of thing, and then I might have also cooked down the cream and milk that I used and then baked it as a normal custard. Eventually, I figured out that using ingredients that are already have the water eliminated from them like nonfat dried milk powder or dried fruits like raisins would take that step away of having to reduce all the liquid from it and then not cooking the mango also gives it a fresher flavor.
Jessie Sheehan:
Did you pick custard because you thought to yourself, "Oh, like custard, you don't..." The mechanics of custard work without sugar so this would be a great recipe to try to make without sugar, harnessing the sweetness of the mango because I know whereas many recipes as we both know cake, et cetera, require sugar for certain things, custard actually doesn't. Was that part of your thinking?
Brian Levy:
Yeah. I think that was part of my thinking and that because of the liquid issue, I think starting with something that's semi-liquid, semi-solid seemed like less of a challenge than the cakes and cookies and things that I would eventually get into.
Jessie Sheehan:
So I want to talk about “Good & Sweet,” you're incredible book of desserts sweetened by fruit and other unexpectedly sweet ingredients. One question I just was thinking of as we were talking, when you were choosing the recipes for the book, were you like, "These are the recipes I love in the baking canon. I want them in my book. Here's the list. Now, I'm going to figure out how to sweeten them all," or were you like, "Oh, I think blank can be sweetened with this, so I'm putting that in the book"?
Brian Levy:
It was a little of both. I had my list of my favorite desserts, and I kind of looked through my cookbooks and magazines to see what... I guess I needed a wide... I knew that there were going to be failures, so I needed to cast a wide net for things to test. So I did have a very long list of recipes to test, and it started with what I love, and then I found that there were lots of things from certain cuisines like Middle Eastern cuisines that just made sense because they traditionally use a lot of dates already for sweetening. So yeah, it was a combination.
Jessie Sheehan:
One thing I love about every recipe in the book, including the one we're going to talk about, which I think is just so helpful for the reader, you have a little kind of line after maybe the head note, which is what makes it sweet and I love that. So in each recipe that you see, you can just go there to see what is the sweetness going to be here, is it going to be dates, is it going to be prunes, is it going to be both, et cetera, et cetera. I thought that was really clever and really a nice... I wondered if that was like an editor choice or you-
Brian Levy:
No, that was my choice because I really want it to be... Yeah, I want it to be clear because some of the ingredients that are sweetening things are more surprising, so I want it to be clear to the reader or the baker what's making it sweet.
Jessie Sheehan:
I thought that was so smart.
Brian Levy:
And then I've also got the fruit files that are throughout the book where I highlight my star fruits that I use to sweeten things, which that's just like I like doing research and for my own reference, I guess my memory's not great, so it's nice to have all this information that I want in a book also like how do you distinguish between the two kinds of persimmons and which one is it that needs to be ripened until it's super soft and which one can be eaten when it's firm?
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. Before we get into your chocolate frosted cupcake recipe, I wondered if you would tell us about your recurring baking remix column with Nicola Lamb's Kitchen Project Newsletter, and also tell us who Nicola is.
Brian Levy:
Oh, well, Nicola is a really prolific newsletter writer on Substack. Her newsletter is called Kitchen Projects. She's London-based, and it's a popular baking newsletter where she takes deep dives into a baking topic each week. A while ago, she asked me to start contributing an alternative baking column, which we call Baking Remix. And each time I contribute, I take on a topic like gluten free something or vegan something, or I most recently did a whipped cream that's vegan that I really love. It's exciting when something really, really works well.
Jessie Sheehan:
And also I think you're launching a new Substack in March, is that right?
Brian Levy:
I am, yeah. It's called Formal Assignment.
Jessie Sheehan:
Formal Assignment. Oh, cute. I love, love, love, love. You've had a newsletter, but you've just never had one on Substack.
Brian Levy:
I've had a newsletter that I've dipped in and out of, but this is one that I'm actually going to have bi-weekly pieces published and with a real plan.
Jessie Sheehan:
We'll be right back. Today's episode is presented by California Prunes, the best kind of prunes out there. I'm a big fan of California Prunes for two reasons. They're a great addition to your pantry when it comes to smart snacking and baking. California Prunes are good for your gut, your heart, and even your bones. They contain dietary fiber and other nutrients to support good gut health and vitamin K, copper, and antioxidants to support healthy bones. I've started making myself a daily smoothie, which is a great vehicle for incorporating healthy foods into your diet. One of my favorite combinations right now is blueberries and kale with some prunes added for natural sweetness and depth of flavor when it comes to baking. You can use California Prune puree to replace some of the sugar, eggs or fat in a recipe. It's super easy to whip up, just blend prunes and water together and voila. You can also add California Prunes to any treat that calls for dried fruit like bread, scones, cakes and cookies. Prunes pair well with ingredients like chocolate, caramel, honey, coffee, even chilies. They also add sweetness and depth to savory recipes like chicken marbella, sauces, or stews. For recipe ideas and more, be sure to check out the California Prunes website at californiaprunes.org. Happy baking and happy snacking.
I've got great news listeners, Jubilee 2024 is taking place Saturday, April 20th at Center 415 in Manhattan, and tickets are on sale now. Jubilee is the largest gathering of women and culinary creatives in the food and drink space in the US. It's a beautiful day of conversation and connection, and I hope to see you there. You can learn more and snag tickets at cherrybombe.com. Now back to our guest.
So let's talk about Hugo's cupcakes with chocolate frosting. There's a cute little story about who Hugo is and why these were for him.
Brian Levy:
Yeah. My nephew Hugo, who's now eight, and that's how I kind of am able to remember when the whole-
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, thing started.
Brian Levy:
... mango thing started because I know my sister was pregnant when I was conceiving this idea. So for his first birthday, his parents were still not feeding him sugar. So I think it was just maybe my second recipe. After the mango custard, I came up with a chocolate cake that was made sweet with prunes and dates. And I think in the first version, I also had pear juice I think, but that's no longer in there. But yeah, it turned out well. I frosted it with whipped coconut cream.
Jessie Sheehan:
You've said that the cake's flavor was sort of reminiscent of a Cadbury fruit and nut bar with chocolate dominating, but the fruit kind of contributing some bright complimentary flavors. That was really-
Brian Levy:
Do you know the fruit and nut bar?
Jessie Sheehan:
I know the bar well. I won't lie. It would not be my choice to eat it being not a health nut from way back, nor a fruit and nut gal from way back, but I know exactly what that is. And the idea of a cake like that sounds delicious to me. So I love that what makes it sweet are prunes, which are dried plums, and I'm a big prune fan and dates. They work in tandem to create this complex sweetness that both enhances the chocolate flavor in both the cake and the frosting, which I love. So for the cupcakes, first things first, we're going to position a rack in the middle of the oven, preheat the oven to 350, line a 12 cup muffin tin with paper liners.
Brian Levy:
Favorite tin would be just a light-colored aluminum, not a dark-colored.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep. And do you like cups that kind of have more straight sides or more sloped sides?
Brian Levy:
Slightly sloped.
Jessie Sheehan:
Slightly sloped.
Brian Levy:
And I use compostable.
Jessie Sheehan:
Paper?
Brian Levy:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love you for that. So in a medium bowl, and I wondered, is there a type of bowl you like as a mixing bowl? I love glass Pyrex. Do you like metal from your restaurant?
Brian Levy:
I've always used metal.
Jessie Sheehan:
In a medium bowl, metal, we're going to whisk some all-purpose flour, some Dutch-processed cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda. So in a stand mixer fitted with your paddle attachment, and you have a special stand mixer, I believe. Is that correct?
Brian Levy:
Yes. Special sentimentally.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes, yes.
Brian Levy:
Yeah. I have the stand mixer that Gina DePalma gave me when I worked at Babbo. It has the original chef's name still. It's almost faded off, but his name and Sharpie written on the top.
Jessie Sheehan:
A KitchenAid?
Brian Levy:
It's a KitchenAid, a white KitchenAid. Mine is not too big, so it's probably a five quart.
Jessie Sheehan:
A five, yeah.
Brian Levy:
And I have had experience with when you have small appliances that are too big, it is a huge problem.
Jessie Sheehan:
Well, just because if you're trying to do as tiny bit of ingredients in there, the paddle is never going to do it justice because it's just the bowl is too big.
Brian Levy:
Yeah. I was using my food processor. The new one I have is too big.
Jessie Sheehan:
Like a Robot-Coupe situation or just the-
Brian Levy:
It's the same motor that goes in a Robot-Coupe.
Jessie Sheehan:
Magimix?
Brian Levy:
Magimix, yep.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep, I have that.
Brian Levy:
I did a half recipe of these Hugo cupcakes yesterday, and it was just when I was trying to grind the dried fruit, it was just too small an amount to... I mean, eventually I added the wet ingredients to it and that made it work fine, but-
Jessie Sheehan:
But it's true.
Brian Levy:
I once did a class in Boston where I was using all their restaurant equipment, and everything was just too big for the recipes I was making, so it wasn't working and it was very embarrassing, but so the size of your appliances really does matter.
Jessie Sheehan:
It's a really big deal. Yeah, which I don't think I quite realized when it came to stand mixers. So in our stand mixer, we are going to be a neutral... It's a neutral oil, but you suggest grape seed. Why do you like what's good about grape seed?
Brian Levy:
I think one of the less divisive vegetable oils, and it's just got a neutral flavor. And yesterday, I used avocado oil that I got at Costco.
Jessie Sheehan:
Nice. Costco and avocado oil for the win. And we're going to add... So we have our grape seed oil, we're going to add some room temp, unsalted butter on low speed to combine. Why do you like to use both? Why do you have oil and butter? For flavor and moisture or...
Brian Levy:
For flavor. Yeah, the oil brings a lot of added moisture, and it's a little lighter than if you think about... When I'm explaining why I use one or the other butter or oil in a recipe, I like to tell people to think of what both are like at room temperature and that's kind of the effect it's going to bring to the final product. So the butter is bringing richness and body, and it's going to be solid and the oil is going to be a little lighter and remain moist.
Jessie Sheehan:
Is that true because I use a lot of... Because you know me, and I hate stand mixers and I like everything to be easy and whisked together or paddled together myself with my spatula or whatever, I always use melted butter, but sometimes I'll have melted butter and oil. I think it's still the same idea because at room temperature that melted butter is going to become solid again.
Brian Levy:
Yeah, exactly. And even if it's clarified butter, you're still going to-
Jessie Sheehan:
Eventually get that structure you're looking for.
Brian Levy:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Brian Levy:
Ghee is still solid at room temperature.
Jessie Sheehan:
Now, we're going to add some eggs to the oil and the butter, and we're going to gradually increase the speed to medium for about five minutes. Meanwhile, in our food processor, we're going to combine some pitted and chopped medjool dates.
Brian Levy:
When I was testing things for the book, I was constantly getting things from nuts.com. They're a very reliable source, and the things always came very quickly like the day after I ordered them. I've since gotten a Costco membership, and they have organic dates.
Jessie Sheehan:
Can I go on a Costco field trip with you sometime?
Brian Levy:
Sure.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay.
Brian Levy:
Are you a member?
Jessie Sheehan:
No. Well, am I allowed in?
Brian Levy:
They'll let you in with me.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Brian Levy:
That's why you have to flash your card.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay, that's why I want to go with you. Maybe I'm your wife or your little sister.
Brian Levy:
My niece.
Jessie Sheehan:
I'm your older wife. I'm keeping you.
Brian Levy:
I don't know if I'd ever been in a Costco before last year, and I started and I was doing a pop-up bakery, which you came to, and a friend advised me that I would save a lot of money if I bought ingredients at Costco, and he was right.
Jessie Sheehan:
He was right. So meanwhile, while we're five minutes doing our eggs and our butter and our oil in a food processor, we're going to combine the dates as I said, we're going to combine the chopped prunes, and we're going to combine some hot water, and we're just going to sort of let it sit in the food processor bowl to soften if it's firm. If everything is really moist and luscious, we can just move ahead and we're going to add some vanilla, not a lot of vanilla, which I noticed.
Brian Levy:
Vanilla's expensive and I love-
Jessie Sheehan:
So it's more about a price than a flavor thing.
Brian Levy:
No. I love vanilla, and I use pretty high-quality vanilla extract. I actually use my own homemade, which it's a sous vide made.
Jessie Sheehan:
Does that speed up the process?
Brian Levy:
It speeds it up and majorly speeds it up. It's nothing like just putting vanilla beans-
Jessie Sheehan:
In alcohol.
Brian Levy:
... in bourbon or vodka and letting it sit. There's a certain amount of heat, but you don't want to go over a certain temperature that extracts the flavor compounds from vanilla beans and when you use a soup... I've never actually cooked anything sous vide with my jewel wand that a friend gave me, but I use it for all kinds of things that you need to control temperature for like tempering chocolate and bringing sourdough starter to a certain temperature.
Jessie Sheehan:
So the vanilla you're using at home is one you made yourself. You love the flavor, but you're not one of those people, aka you're not me, who's like, "Oh, my God, I love vanilla. This is a chocolate cake. I want to pop the chocolate flavor. I'm going to put in two teaspoons. I'm going to put in a tablespoon." You're more like, "I think a teeny bit is going to do the job."
Brian Levy:
Well, now you're making me question it, maybe I should use more vanilla.
Jessie Sheehan:
No, not at all. I'm just curious.
Brian Levy:
No, because I do love vanilla. I guess it's just the recipes that I'm used to. I didn't realize that I was-
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, it's funny. It definitely runs the gamut, and I feel like maybe it's just a school of thought phenomenon. Does it really help so much with the other flavors that you want a lot of it, or is it detracting? I'll put it in a lemon cake just a teeny bit, but I want it to help bring out the lemon flavor.
Brian Levy:
For me with this particular recipe, the Hugo cupcakes. I think the other flavors are so strong that I like to think that I am thinking of the vanilla as a very subtle background flavor, and for it to even try to compete with the other flavors, I think I'd have to use a ton of it. So it's either just a little bit or a cup.
Jessie Sheehan:
Well, also the recipes you make are different. Sugar generally, which is why it's maybe boring and we all need to be thinking about other things to sweeten our sweets with is relatively neutral, whereas the things you are using to sweeten everything are not neutral.
Brian Levy:
Right. Alice Medrich, she's a five-time James Beard award-winning cookbook author and her book, “Flavor Flours,” is all gluten-free flours, but the way she approached it... And I have no problem with gluten, I was just drawn in by the way she approached this topic. It's about what all these flours that we're not using bring to the table.
Jessie Sheehan:
In terms of flavor.
Brian Levy:
In terms of flavor and texture and all that like corn flour and teff flour and oat flour rather than thinking of them as substitutes for wheat flour, think of them as things on their own that have great qualities.
Jessie Sheehan:
I don't know if you've looked at Rose Wilde's new book, but that's like what Rose very much is in at camp of these are flavors. They're seasonal ingredients. You buy the flour because it's in season, and you buy it because it adds this flavor to that cake and that flavor to this cake and that flavor to that cookie, et cetera. Yeah. Once our prunes and our dates have softened, and we've added our little bit of vanilla, we're going to puree until very smooth and room temperature about three minutes. Now, we're going to add our dry ingredients to our oil and egg mixture in the stand mixer bowl, and we're going to mix on low speed.
We're going to increase the speed to medium and mix just until about a streak of flour remains unmixed, add our fruit puree, beat on low until fully incorporated, increasing our speed at the end for about 30 seconds to develop the cake structure, which I think is interesting. I never thought about that direction in so many cake recipes of that sort of last 30 seconds. I always think of it as more to maybe smooth out some little flour lumps or something. I never thought of it as you're actually trying to activate that gluten just a teeny bit to get that structure before you transfer it to your pan.
Brian Levy:
Yeah. Well, that's definitely something I learned from reading Rose Levy Beranbaum's “Cake Bible.” I know when I was first following her recipes, I was really surprised by that step. And sometimes, it's accompanied by the initial step of doing the reverse creaming, which inhibits the gluten development. But yeah, I think when you're thinking of a cake rising and needing something to hold it up in that position, having a little gluten developed.
Jessie Sheehan:
At the end?
Brian Levy:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
And was that on... I'm just looking, that was on Medium.
Brian Levy:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
So now we're going to divide the batter evenly among our muffin cups, and we're going to smooth the tops. Do you do that with a small offset or something?
Brian Levy:
Yeah. I mean, yesterday, I did it with my finger. You wet your finger with a little bit of cold water.
Jessie Sheehan:
Fingers are small offsets. And is there a brand of?
Brian Levy:
I think mine is from William Sonoma.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay. So we're going to bake until a tester inserted in the center of one of the cupcakes comes out clean about 20 minutes, two queries. What kind of tester do you like? Do a long skewer, a toothpick, a paring knife? And also we're rotating the pan from front to back at the halfway point. I am a rotator from way back, but a lot of people do not... They stick it in the oven. They do not go back. Is that from your days at Babbo that you became-
Brian Levy:
Yeah, Gina definitely made me a rotator. I do think everyone should.
Jessie Sheehan:
I do too because of hot spots. And also you just get a peek at what's happening, but some people... It's interesting, a lot of people don't. They're done. And which tester?
Brian Levy:
For some reason, I never trust skinny little testers, so I always use a paring knife.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay. Now, we're going to let our cupcakes cool for about 10 minutes in the pan, then place them on a wire rack to cool completely before we frost them. So to make the frosting, which is an ermine frosting, which I adore, like my favorite kind of frosting ever, and we'll get into what that is. We're going to whisk some whole milk, some cocoa powder. Now, here you didn't specify Dutch-processed or natural. Is that because it doesn't matter or because you want people to use natural here?
Brian Levy:
It's because it doesn't matter.
Jessie Sheehan:
Great. So we're going to add our whole milk, and we wanted the Dutch-processed cocoa powder in the cake because we have some baking soda in that cake, and that's going to help with structure, et cetera. So we're using all natural cocoa powder here, just a tiny amount, only four teaspoons, which I was really struck by, that seems... I'm surprised that that can give you the chocolate burst that you need.
Brian Levy:
Well, because the cake is so chocolatey, I like thinking of cocoa powder as a seasoning rather than having to be a really bold primary flavor.
Jessie Sheehan:
Nice.
Brian Levy:
So yeah, if you use a little bit of it, it gives more of a milk chocolate effect than if you were to use a ton of it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, nice. And we're going to add some tapioca starch. So I had a couple of questions about that. Why tapioca starch? Usually, ermine frosting is made with all-purpose flour. How come we're using tapioca starch here?
Brian Levy:
Well, the important thing from the all-purpose flour that you're normally using in ermine frosting is the starch. So really any kind of starch can be used, any kind of starch that can withstand a little bit of cooking. And tapioca, it's something I always have on hand. And it's neutral in flavor. It brings a nice glossy finish to things. So it just seemed like a good choice for us.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we could all be making ermine frosting with tapioca starch or...
Brian Levy:
Yeah. You could use corn starch, arrowroot.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, interesting. And ermine frosting for people who don't know is like you start with a cooked paste of flour and milk, and then you let that come to room temp, and then you're whipping that with butter. And the combination of that to me is just this incredibly light, luscious froth. People don't always love Swiss meringue buttercream, even though I do. Maybe too eggy for people, I'm not sure, but it's that lightness that you get with ermine. I think it's incredible.
Brian Levy:
And it's important to find ways to bring lightness to things when you're using ingredients that tend to be heavier than cane sugar like using prunes in this frosting.
Jessie Sheehan:
This frosting. That's why you picked ermine as opposed to like... Well, you would never do American buttercream, but as opposed to a frosting that would be heavier.
Brian Levy:
And it brings some stability with the extra acidity and fiber that those ingredients are bringing.
Jessie Sheehan:
So in our saucepan, we have our milk. We have our cocoa powder. We have our tapioca starch. We have fine sea salt stirring frequently in a medium saucepan over medium heat till the mixture is simmering. Then, we're going to remove the pan from the heat. We're going to add some chopped prunes, pitted and chopped dates, some vanilla, and allow the fruit to soak in the hot liquid for five minutes. I love this because you're using that ermine concoction to be your hot liquid for your fruit. I think that is very smart.
Brian Levy:
I love when a step works out like that.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes, it's brilliant. It's brilliant. Then you're going to transfer the contents of the saucepan to a food processor and puree until extremely smooth and cooled-ish, doesn't have to be completely cool. And I loved this little tip for using your food processor. Once the ingredients stop splashing, you stop hearing that sound or you stop seeing it, then you're going to remove the sort of cap, the pusher cap at the top of the machine to let the heat escape. I think people with food processors, I guess it's true for a stand mixer too, but particularly with a food processor, maybe because you don't see it as well. I feel like the clues that you can hear when the ingredients are changing in a food processor are really important for folks to pay attention to because they really help when you're at the stage that you want to be at.
Brian Levy:
Yeah. Also, you definitely want to scrape down the food processor also.
Jessie Sheehan:
At this point. And you said that you had maybe a spatula that you love.
Brian Levy:
I do. GIR, Get It Right. They're seamless and dishwasher safe. They come in multiple sizes, and I feel like the best thing for kitchen tools is them being seamless and dishwasher safe.
Jessie Sheehan:
I agree. I love those spatulas as well. So we're going to transfer the mixture now to our stand mixer once it's cool-ish.
Brian Levy:
Because putting it in the stand mixer is going to cool it down eventually anyway, so that's why the temperature isn't that important.
Jessie Sheehan:
Totally. Once the ingredients stop splashing, we listen for that. We let them cool down a little. Now, we're going to add the butter. And it's cool enough that the butter is not going to melt at this point, correct?
Brian Levy:
It'll just soften.
Jessie Sheehan:
It'll just soften. So we're going to add the butter. We're going to blend completely into the puree. It's unsalted butter, yes?
Brian Levy:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep. Then we're going to transfer the whole mixture from the food processor into our stand mixer, fit it with our whisk, and we're going to whip on medium-high speed until the frosting has a fluffy whipped cream consistency, which ermine does, which I love so much, and is room temperature. And we'll scrape the sides of the bowl as needed. Then we're going to frost our cupcakes using a small offset spatula or a piping bag with a half-inch tip. Would you pull out a piping bag for this?
Brian Levy:
Probably not.
Jessie Sheehan:
Probably not.
Brian Levy:
I mean, if I were hosting a birthday party, I probably would.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. And it's a piping bag with a one half-inch tip. Do you have a preference for the kind of bags you like, the kind of tips you like?
Brian Levy:
From New York cake, I have some old bag that's reusable.
Jessie Sheehan:
Nice. I just wanted to talk about a few other “Good & Sweet” recipes that I just jumped out at me. Tell us about ricotta chestnut fritters with sweet cinnamon dust.
Brian Levy:
I might have two fried recipes in the book, and this is one of them. It uses some ingredients that I really love, which are those baked apple chips and chestnut flour.
Jessie Sheehan:
Why do you love those chips?
Brian Levy:
I would never snack on them personally, and they're marketed as a snack as far as I know. But when you grind them up, they're so useful if they have a ton of apple flavor, and they have a lot of natural sweetness.
Jessie Sheehan:
So you could almost use those if you were making an apple cake, just even put a tablespoon or two of that ground up into the batter and it would pop that apple flavor of the cake.
Brian Levy:
Oh, yeah. Absolutely.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, that's so cool, Brian. That's such a great tip.
Brian Levy:
But they're apples, so it has tons of fiber in it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Fiber. Yeah, which it gives you structure.
Brian Levy:
Does not give you structure.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, tell me what fiber gives you.
Brian Levy:
Fiber kind of pulls away from the structure.
Jessie Sheehan:
So is it the softness you're looking for, a moisture you're looking for? Why do we want fiber?
Brian Levy:
Oh, I'm just saying for health reasons. Oh, it states makes you feel-
Jessie Sheehan:
It makes you feel full.
Brian Levy:
Yeah. One thing that I like about using these ingredients in these desserts is that they kind of feel like eating more. It feel more like eating real food.
Jessie Sheehan:
I got you.
Brian Levy:
It actually satisfies your... And then chestnut flour has so much flavor and chestnut flavor, it's kind of like a smoky, nutty flavor. I love chestnuts and they are surprisingly sweet. They go really well with apples. Chestnuts and apples are a great combination.
Jessie Sheehan:
So you kind of make a fritter dough using those ingredients.
Brian Levy:
Mixed up with ricotta and some flour, and then they're fried and the dust is again made from the apple chips that are pulverized along with cinnamon.
Jessie Sheehan:
So smart, so instead of a cinnamon sugar apple cider donut.
Brian Levy:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
My God.
Brian Levy:
Thanks. So part of the thing about desserts is it's not just the taste. Usually, you want them to be pretty and have certain signals like powders on them that look like powdered sugar that usually is powdered sugar.
Jessie Sheehan:
It makes your mind be like, "Yum."
Brian Levy:
Yeah. This is going to be sweet. This has some fairy dust on it, and there are other powders you can use that aren't powdered sugar, for instance, the ground apple chips.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love this. I love this. I might have to make something with those chips because I'm just very intrigued. Okay. Now, we need to talk about your cover girl, the recipe on the cover of your book, which was really an exciting moment for you when you realized you could make this particular recipe using your technique, sticky toffee pudding cake. Tell us about that, and it's one of your favorites.
Brian Levy:
It's one of my favorites. It long has been. And it's such a sweet, sugary dessert traditionally, but it always contains some amount of dates, and I just amped up the date content to fully take over the sweetness along with the flavor that it brings. And then I bring the caramel toffee flavor. There's miso and milk powder, and yeah, this was one of the... I'd say this is maybe the first really successful cake recipe that I had after-
Jessie Sheehan:
The Hugo.
Brian Levy:
Well, this might have come before the Hugo. This came after some custards and yeah, I think of it as one of the most decadent, sometimes sickeningly sweet desserts. And to be able to make it with just fruit ingredients as the sweetening agents was an exciting thing.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's really cool. Tell me what you top it with. I mean, in the picture on the book, I see almost something looking, I guess with creamy but almost burnished slightly, or maybe that's-
Brian Levy:
It's whipped cream with coffee powder. Yeah, like instant coffee powder.
Jessie Sheehan:
And is there espresso coffee in the toffee pudding as well?
Brian Levy:
Yeah, there is. Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
And is that an ingredient because coffee plays beautifully with dates? Is it something that you're adding because it's part of your genius to make it seem like a toffee pudding?
Brian Levy:
Because it's part of my genius.
Jessie Sheehan:
Just call a spade a spade.
Brian Levy:
It plays beautifully with dates, and it brings some of that acidity, and I don't know, it kind of evokes caramel.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love. Thank you so much for chatting with me today, Brian. And I just want to say that you are my cherry pie.
Brian Levy:
Thank you.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's it for today's show. Thank you to Plugra Premium European Style Butter and California Prunes for their support. Don't forget to subscribe to She's My Cherry Pie on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen and tell your baking buddies about us. She's My Cherry Pie is a production of The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network and is recorded at CityVox Studio in Manhattan. Our producers are Kerry Diamond and Catherine Baker. Our associate producer is Jenna Sadhu, and our editorial assistant is Londyn Crenshaw. Thank you so much for listening to She's My Cherry Pie and happy baking.