Nancy Silverton 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 Nancy Silverton, the iconic chef, baker, and cookbook author. Nancy is the co-owner of Osteria Mozza, Pizzeria Mozza, and Chi Spacca in Los Angeles. She founded La Brea Bakery back in the 80s and helped revolutionize the artisanal bread movement in the U.S. Nancy is the subject of a great “Chef's Table” documentary on Netflix. Her latest cookbook, “The Cookie That Changed My Life,” was just released earlier this year. Nancy joins me to talk about, you guessed it, cookies. We chat about her new book, the cookie that did in fact change her life, and what she'll be baking this holiday season. Stay tuned for my chat with Nancy.
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Nancy. So excited to have you on She's My Cherry Pie and to talk peanut butter cookies with you and so much more.
Nancy Silverton:
Aw, thank you.
Jessie Sheehan:
So, you write in the intro of “The Cookie That Changed My Life,” your fabulous new book that we will be talking about, that you have been baking for 50 years, which is just so deliciously and impressively mind boggling.
Nancy Silverton:
And when I think about that, I think, "Wow, I'm that old?"
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh my gosh. So you've been called the world's busiest chef, the woman who made sourdough bread a household name, described as having a perfect palette, and you were not only a guest on Julia Child's show, Baking with Julia, but she called your crème fraîche brioche tart with fresh fruit and sabayon a triumph and with literal tears in her eyes said, "That is the best dessert I ever ate." Can you please tell us about that experience of baking with her?
Nancy Silverton:
I got to tell you, when people ask me, "So tell us about the highlight of your career," I always go back to that story because it was the highlight of my career for many reasons. Firstly, just to let our audience know what that's all about, was that I was on, it might've been her last series of shows that she did without Jacques Pépin and it was a baking series. And she invited bakers to come into her kitchen and bake alongside of her.
She was one that liked to, even though they were recorded, she liked it to be as natural as possible, meaning time natural as possible. She wanted to do as little editing as possible. And so she said, "Look, we have, whatever it was, a half an hour to do this, and when we get towards the end when there's three minutes left, I'm going to tap you on the hip and that means cut whatever it is you're making and shove it in my mouth so I can taste it. And that's the only rule that I have." And so I chose to make this brioche tart with a crème fraîche custard in the middle, and it was with sauteed stone fruit in a hot white wine syrup and everything was going great until I got that tap.
And I got that tap just as the fruit was coming out of this warm syrup. So I needed to top my tart, add the sabayon and the spiced almonds, cut it and give her a bite. And I did that. And all of a sudden I look at her to see what her reaction was and there's tears streaming down her face and my initial reaction was, "My goodness, I just burnt Julia Child." And then she said, "This is a dessert to cry over."
So not only that, she loved it so much was why it's one of the highlights of my career, but also I was successful to do what food should do. And what food should do, besides it being delicious, hopefully what it does is it takes you back to some emotional place in your life and that obviously is what happened with her and it brought her to tears.
Jessie Sheehan:
I also have to say just for the listeners, I watched it, it's easy to find it now on YouTube I think it is. So please, please, everyone you have to watch. It's amazing. When describing your cooking, you've said that you take dishes that already exist and personalize them based on the flavors you crave. And I know salt and acid are important in your cooking. Would you say all of this is kind of true for your baking as well?
Nancy Silverton:
Absolutely. Early on, I developed whatever my baking style was to become, and that's sort of how it has remained, where the flavors are accessible. So they're never anything so exotic. They're never anything that's so technically challenging to make. I feel that when I bake, I bake with a smile. I don't bake with a furrowed brow because it's so intense and I can't get it right. But I think that I also bake the way I cook where I think of temperature, I think of texture, and certainly well-balanced flavor and a well-balanced flavor is not just sweet.
Jessie Sheehan:
You've said that when you were in pastry school, they taught you that creativity should not be part of the equation, but you have found pastry making liberating. Tell us about how it liberates you.
Nancy Silverton:
I think when I went to Le Cordon Bleu, this was in London in 1977, it wasn't that they had to say, "Don't be creative," but they did really enforce the recipes that you couldn't vary from them. So if something called for a certain amount of sugar, that was it, certain amount of eggs, that was it. So that I found that baking didn't seem like it left much up to any variables. And by luck, my first job after coming back from Le Cordon Bleu was at a kitchen at Michael's restaurant in 1979 in Santa Monica where the chef was Jonathan Waxman. He was who I got to work for, but I wanted to work with him on the savory side and there wasn't an opportunity, there was only on the dessert side. And so begrudgingly I said, "Okay, I'll take that," thinking as soon as I'll move over, I'll move over.
And I ended up working with this mad genius who, as I followed him in the kitchen trying to stay up with his pace, I watched that certain things, when it mattered, he measured, other times he didn't. He added flavors that were very unexpected to me, but also I saw that there really was a lot of room for personalizing desserts as long as you stayed within the boundaries of the chemistry. Because that's not going to change. If eggs heat to too high a temperature, they are going to curdle. And if you don't add sugar to a cake, it's going to be dry. There's certain things that you have to follow, but there was that room. I ended up loving, obviously loving that segment of the kitchen.
Jessie Sheehan:
So I know travel inspires your cooking and baking, and I read that when you travel, or maybe I heard you say it, when you travel, you always want to return home with one idea, one thing that inspires you that you take home to play with. And in fact, you describe a fantastic one on your new podcast, Three Ingredients, listeners, you have to listen to Nancy and Ruth and Lori's new podcast. Is that kind of inspiration that you draw on when you travel, perhaps that's also an example of this creative nature and this liberating nature of pastry that you can be inspired by something, whether it's the dessert itself, like the panna cotta that you talk about in your podcast or whether it's just a flavor profile.
Nancy Silverton:
Yes, all the time though. You never stop. People always ask me, what keeps you going? What keeps your enthusiasm? And it's always that I can't stop thinking, with everything I look at, with every bite I eat. Like the other day I was looking, I think it was in the New York Times actually where they did a oval chocolate chip cookie, and I like, "Why did I not think of? Why does a chocolate chip cookie have to be round?"
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes.
Nancy Silverton:
And I just loved it. Something like that is inspiring to me. So I get my inspiration from every day and that's what keeps me going because it makes me want to go back into the kitchen and make an oval misshapen chocolate chip cookie.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes. I love that. And I feel like this is kind of a good segue, because I wanted to talk about obsession. In your “Chef's Table” episode on Netflix, I can't remember which person it was who was talking about you, but said that obsession is your mantra, that you obsessively tweak when you're developing and creating recipes. Can you unpack that? Is that sort of what you're talking about now that you-
Nancy Silverton:
Well, that's what I definitely did for this last book and the good and the bad of 2020 to 2023, or still whatever's happening in the world these days, is that I had a lot of time on my hands and I was able to spend that time baking these desserts over and over and over again until I got to the point where I said, "Okay, that's the best version I've ever had."
And rather than sort of let's say with a, well, let's say with a peanut butter cookie, rather than making a peanut butter cookie and saying, "Oh, that's delicious. Okay, one recipe done." Being able to really, really delve into everything that would make it be not just delicious, but the best version. And I really feel like I did that, even if it's something that's not my favorite.
An example is a lemon bar. I've never been a fan of lemon bars ever. They're too sweet. I really don't like the look of a lemon bar that is finished with powdered sugar where the condensation of the lemon kind of starts to melt that powdered sugar. Just the whole thing does not say to me, "Eat me." And wow, did I spend a lot of time with that recipe until I finally came up with a compromise.
And that was to turn one of my favorite French desserts, which is a lemon curd tart, into a lemon bar, meaning it wasn't ever baked in the oven. So it never got that weird sulfur-y taste that a lemon bar to me has, but it still has the crust on the bottom, but it was the lemon curd that was poured on top and it set and it cut like a lemon bar. So it wasn't that it was so far afield that you would be eating it and say, "But I really would like the original." It was close enough and yet it had all the parts that I didn't like out of it.And I put the powdered sugar on to order so it doesn't melt into the custard and get wet and unattractive.
Jessie Sheehan:
So this is an excellent segue into your fantastic new book, because “The Cookie That Changed My Life” is a collection of recipes for these perfect or platonic ideal of our most beloved baked goods. It's a New York Times Bestseller and I can't figure out, by my count, it might even be your 11th book-
Nancy Silverton:
It is.
Jessie Sheehan:
... but I know everybody's saying 10th, but it's the 11th, right?
Nancy Silverton:
You know why? Because I say it in the book. And somebody corrected me, said, "I counted and it's your 11th." And I'm like, "Oops. Okay. That's another mistake in the book."
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes. Yes.
Nancy Silverton:
Yeah, it's my 11th.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's what I thought. I was like, "Am I miscounting?"
Nancy Silverton:
No, I did.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes. Okay, good. This is so interesting to me, but you've said that each book that you've written, none of them are planned.
Nancy Silverton:
No.
Jessie Sheehan:
Can you tell us how this one came to be? It's a great story.
Nancy Silverton:
So, the story is that Michael, who I live with, Michael Krikorian, brought back a peanut butter cookie from a bakery in Los Angeles called Friends and Family, owned and baked by a woman named Roxanna, who actually used to bake with me at Campanile for years. She made a peanut butter cookie, that wasn't embellished the way that mine is by the way, but it was a great base, and I always like to say that I'm not competitive. I love when people do things great, but inside it's like, "How can she be making a better cookie, a better peanut butter cookie than I ever did? I have to fix this."
Now meanwhile, remember, we're at the end of 2020, beginning of 2021 where everybody's baking their way through sourdough bread, and I didn't feel the need to, for various reasons, but I didn't even feel the need to bake either. It was just that I ate this cookie and it was great. I had previously written a blurb for her book, so I had the PDF on my phone and I immediately looked it up, got that recipe, made a cookie and say, "How am I going to," I like to say make it better, but I don't really mean that. I'm saying that tongue in cheek because her cookie is great.
But I took that cookie and I decided to make it even more peanut buttery. So, I used her base, and that's in the book, that's exactly her recipe. And then I made a divot in it, filled it with peanut butter, put it in the oven, because I knew it wasn't going to be a sandwich cookie, but then I got that extra peanut butter flavor in it, so kind of set that peanut butter and then piled on toasted salted Spanish peanuts with the skin, piled them on top, put it back in the oven for a few more minutes, and out came what I think was such a delicious cookie.
And so, what it did is that it inspired me to not only start to bake, to write another book, but with the thoughts of what everybody really wants is between the cover, a stack of recipes that they really want to make, the good and the bad of the internet. Now, in my days when I started cooking, let's suppose I said, "I need to know how to make a devil's food cake." So I would look at whatever my collection of cookbooks were and I would find a recipe. But now, you Google devil's food cake and you get 5,000 recipes and you're like, "Well, which one do I want to do?" So I wanted to eliminate that. I wanted to say, "If you trust me in my taste, then I'm going to give you the best devil's food cake that there is."
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. I love that. Do you feel like it's a book that you could only write in some ways after 50 years in the sense of your comfort? Let's go back to sort of, sounds cliche, but like a simpler time or simpler items?
Nancy Silverton:
Yeah. But also, I have enough confidence in what I do that I don't have to be creative or technical, all the good things as you get older.
Jessie Sheehan:
You write that you did not do anything weird to the peanut butter cookie, you just made it more peanut buttery that you weren't that creative, just a little bit of tweaking. But I actually, just for the record, I want to say that a pool of peanut butter on top of a cookie with nuts is pretty creative.
Nancy Silverton:
Well, it's a peanut butter cookie that thought it was a tart, or a tart that thinks it's a cookie. Something is-
Jessie Sheehan:
Exactly. We'll be right back.
Today's episode is also presented by California Prunes. I'm a California Prunes fan when it comes to smart snacking. Funnily enough, at the same time we started this podcast, my doctor told me how good prunes are for your gut, your heart, and even your bones. Prunes contain dietary fiber and other nutrients to support good gut health, potassium to support heart health, and vitamin K, copper, and antioxidants to support healthy bones. So prunes became a daily snack of mine. I have them in my cabinet at home, I put them in smoothies, and I bring them with me when I'm on the go because they're perfectly portable. Now let's talk about my true love, baking. California Prunes are a great addition to baked goods, especially this time of year. They work beautifully in recipes with rich and complex flavors, like espresso, olives, and chilies, and they enhance the flavor of warm spices, toffee, caramel, and chocolate. Consider adding prunes to scones, gingerbread, coffee cake, or any baked good that calls for dried fruit. If you're looking to make some holiday showstoppers, like a fruit cake you make ahead of time, keep prunes in mind when you're assembling the dried fruit you need. They add just the right texture and flavor. Be sure to check out the California Prunes website at californiaprunes.org for recipes and more. That's californiaprunes.org.
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 U.S. 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.
You've told us a little bit about the cookie origin story. I know Roxanna did some kind of interesting things like used the sorghum flour-
Nancy Silverton:
Well remember, her book was called “Mother Grains.”
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes, exactly.
Nancy Silverton:
Right. And so what I didn't want to do is I didn't want to change her recipe because that was the base recipe. Sorghum is a grain, right? And it's possible to make a gluten-free baked good using only sorghum, but that's not what she did. So, I can't say she had that sorghum in there because it's not gluten-free, this cookie because there's a wheat flour in there as well. So did she add it just for health reasons? Because it was part of her book, which is “Mother Grains.” I know it does add a little bit of chew to it, some flavor, but I wanted to keep the integrity of her recipe, so I didn't change it. I know that even one of my first edits was the editor asking me, "Do you mind if we eliminate the sorghum?" And I'm like, "No, you can't. That's not the recipe." Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, I love that. One of the main difference between Roxanna's recipe and yours is this delicious creamy pool or topping of peanut butter and nuts. You also say that you make the cookie slightly smaller than hers. Was that just a texture thing, the smaller, more chewy, less crispy edges? What was your thinking in making them smaller?
Nancy Silverton:
Well, I think that with the peanut butter in the center and all those nuts, it would've been too much. That's one thing. And then even though I have an appreciation for those giant classic cookies, like oatmeal and peanut butter and ginger, those very oversized, I'm not a fan of that size. I like a few less bites.
Jessie Sheehan:
And also this way you're guaranteed a little bit of peanut butter and a little bit of nut in every bite.
Nancy Silverton:
Exactly, yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
So the first things first, we're going to toast the peanuts and it's these red skin-on Spanish peanuts. But I wondered, usually I see them roasted. Are you buying them raw and then toasting them?
Nancy Silverton:
Yes, I'm buying them raw and toasted. And it's funny, because that's how we get them, right? And I'm changing it for the next edition because I'm going to say, untoasted or unroasted peanuts, because it doesn't say that in the book, it says Spanish peanut, not knowing that the average consumer buys them already toasted.
Jessie Sheehan:
Already toasted and salty like that.
Nancy Silverton:
Yeah. As far as the peanut butter, it's really just a generic brand. There's nothing special about any of the ingredients in this recipe except for the sorghum.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to position our oven rack in the center. We're going to preheat our oven to 350. We'll put our peanuts on a large baking sheet. Large, you mean half sheet, yes?
Nancy Silverton:
Yeah, yeah. Well, I like anything that is made out of a heavier material, though you get what you pay for. So if you go to the market and you buy a sheet pan or half a sheet pan or a cookie sheet for 2.99, you're going to stick it in your oven and it's going to warp. Things like cookie sheets or, I don't even know what, are they called cookie sheets? Are they called jelly roll pans? I always bake out of the ones that have that slight lip as opposed to something flat.
Jessie Sheehan:
Me too. Yeah.
Nancy Silverton:
But you need to buy it from a kitchen supply store where it's a heavy aluminum that it won't warp in the oven. That is the worst. And we've all been through that where we open the oven to peak to see how we're doing, and you see it all warped and everything into the middle and yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Now we're going to drizzle the nuts with some grape seed oil. And I wondered about your choice of grape seed. You also offer safflower. Is that just-
Nancy Silverton:
Yeah, just a mild oil.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's just what you like to-
Nancy Silverton:
Yeah. And that's so that the salt clings to it.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then we're going to sprinkle with some Diamond Crystal kosher salt. And I love it that you add the brand name because people don't understand Morton's and Diamond Crystal, so different.
Nancy Silverton:
And the worst is when you measure, because the volume is different. So you have to say in a cookbook, Diamond kosher salt, so people realize that a half a teaspoon of Diamond kosher salt is not the same as a fine sea salt or a Morton salt. It's going to be twice as much and it's going to be very salty. People don't read that, and it's very frustrating as an author when you write down the specific things that really matter, and then they'll come to you and say, "I made your cookies, but they're way too salty." It's like, "Well, what salt did you use?"
Jessie Sheehan:
And I love that there's a generous amount. I think it's like one and a half tablespoons to three cups of nuts, which is-
Nancy Silverton:
Right. But you need, because you need that saltiness, and that's what makes those cookies taste so good. And it's funny, as soon as that book came out, I don't see these comments, but they go right, I think, to the publisher where somebody has a question or thinking there might be a mistake. So as soon as that book was released on November 14th, comes in right away, which is, "I'm going to make the peanut butter cookies, but I think you have an error. You're asking for two tablespoons of vanilla paste." And it's like, "Yep, that's not a mistake."
And that's another thing. Once I thought about this book, and once I thought about baking, and once I thought about, I'm going to make the perfect versions, I looked at every single ingredient and the one thing I looked at is like vanilla extract. I don't care what anybody says, if someone's going to have a half a pound of butter and they add a half a teaspoon of vanilla extract, you are not, I don't care how good your palate is, you are never going to taste a half a teaspoon of vanilla extract, especially when at least a quarter of it gets stuck on the spoon. Right?
Jessie Sheehan:
So true.
Nancy Silverton:
So, I don't think I've ever, in any recipe, there's less than a tablespoon of vanilla extract and sometimes more. And if you're going to use an expensive product or a good product like vanilla paste, which I ask for because I love all the flex of the bean, then you really should either don't use it at all, or if you're going to use it, use it so you can taste it. And I think either people are too afraid to say, "Well, I've never read before that there's more than a teaspoon, so I'm not going to be the first one that does that." But now the world's going to open up to, just like the first person that thought about salt and caramel, how delicious it is, and nobody makes a chocolate chip cookie anymore without flaky sea salt on top, right?
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. We're going to toss to coat the nuts with the salt and with the oil, are we just using our hands-
Nancy Silverton:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, I use my hands too. Then we're going to spread the peanuts in an even layer, toast them on the center rack till a dark mahogany.
Nancy Silverton:
Yeah, because they don't toast on top. They're only in the oven for, the second bake is like four minutes. It's not enough to toast them and untoasted nuts do not have the flavor that they should, and so it's going to be fully toasted.
Jessie Sheehan:
There's so much flavor in that brown, and I actually, I can't remember which guest it was, but somebody had a great tip, it's a little fussy, but it had to do with cutting a nut in half and making sure you are seeing the inside of your nut is brown.
Nancy Silverton:
Yeah. Yeah. I always bite as... Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, exactly. Yes. You don't need to-
Nancy Silverton:
The worst part of an improperly made salad is that underdressed or overdressed. Same with nuts, under toasted or burned, you don't want either.
Jessie Sheehan:
So true. So true. And because of this, because we want these really well toasted, it's 18 to 20 minutes, we'll shake the pan occasionally, rotating the pan halfway to brown evenly. And I just had to ask because I'm a rotator, I learned it back when I worked in a bakery, I rotate everything.
Nancy Silverton:
Me too.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay, I love that.
Nancy Silverton:
I rotate front to back and top to bottom.
Jessie Sheehan:
So now we're going to cool our nuts to room temp. And I love this, this is a great tip. You say that if you feel like maybe you went a tiny bit too far, they're on the verge of being over toasted as it were, just immediately transfer them to a plate so they don't continue to brown and cook from the residual heat of the pan.
I also thought this was an interesting instruction. We're going to turn the oven off now since the cookies are going to need to be made and then rest. I feel like often people forget that step when they write recipes and the oven's just on continuously. So I thought that was a great step. So now we're going to make our dough. We're going to grab a whisk.
Nancy Silverton:
For the cookie though, if there's a whisk that's just in combining the eggs and the vanilla.
Jessie Sheehan:
Exactly.
Nancy Silverton:
I like to just do that whisking with the eggs and the vanilla into something that has a spout because it's then, to pour it into the bowl of the freestanding mixture, which most people have rather than a handheld, it's so much easier.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes. I was curious about this. Why are we whisking our eggs now? Why don't you just want the mixer to do that? You know what I mean? Usually often people are cracking eggs into a cookie dough and letting a mixer or their whisk. Why do you like to do it ahead of time just with the vanilla at this point?
Nancy Silverton:
I think that when the yolks and the whites are whisked together, it combines better and more efficiently into the butter and the sugar.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we've got our vanilla paste, which we talked about why you love with the flecks.
Nancy Silverton:
With the two tablespoons of vanilla.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes, I know I have that. I actually have it, generous with vanilla, two tablespoons, for the flecks I imagine, also for the flavor. And then we're in a measuring cup, which I love.
Nancy Silverton:
Yeah, I'd rather-
Jessie Sheehan:
Which I love. And we're whisking our eggs and our vanilla. And then this is interesting. Now we're going to be mixing up some of our dry ingredients. And you say to stir the AP flour, the all-purpose and the sorghum together with a whisk. Is the stirring with a whisk different than whisking with a whisk? Is it just a-
Nancy Silverton:
Yeah, because I'm not whisking to get air into it. Usually a whisk and only because you have a whisk anyway. It could be a wooden spoon, it could be your hands. When you're writing, you have to pick a utensil.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes.
Nancy Silverton:
I think that if I had to say what flour can everybody get and get online, probably King Arthur is a good source.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. And is the sorghum something that you get from a farmer's market? Or-
Nancy Silverton:
No. The sorghum flour I get from Whole Foods even-
Jessie Sheehan:
Your distributor.
Nancy Silverton:
... sells it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh. Good to know. Good to know. That's maybe for some chewiness. Now, because as I said, on that “Chef's Table” episode, you were described as having a perfect palette. Could you describe for us what sorghum flour tastes like?
Nancy Silverton:
I don't really know if I could say what the taste is. Same thing, if I was developing, let's say, a recipe and say, "Well, I don't really want to use all white flour." Let me look at some things. Do I want spelt or do I want raw? Then I would've delved more into it. This is the only recipe in the book that has sorghum. And again, it was only because I wanted to use her recipe as the base because that was the talking point, or the whole reason behind the book. So I wanted to respect that.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. So now we're going to put cold, unsalted butter into our stand mixer. And I wondered why cold, often a cookie has room temp.
Nancy Silverton:
That's a great question, and I'll tell you why. Because I've seen it too many times, and I know it's happened to me too many times. So when you're creaming butter, you want to soften it, but what you want it to be is still creamy, but not greasy. And from creamy to greasy can happen really quickly. And depending upon where you are in the world or in the country, you don't want room temperature butter because the ambient temperature is too high. So once you start to cream it in the machine, it becomes greasy and then your batter does not hold together or your dough does not hold together.
So I find it easier, just take the butter out of the refrigerator, cut it up into small pieces. What I will do, which I didn't write in the recipe, but I have before because I just thought it would complicate people, is what I used to do is I would put cold butter in a big mixing bowl, because I'd be working in bulk, and I would take a torch and I would warm the outside of the bowl with the torch. And as soon as that outside of the bowl would start to just melt a little bit of the butter. But as soon as you whipped it, it came back together, and you still ended up with a well creamed butter that was still stiff and could hold on to the liquids that you were going to be introducing.
What you could do at home, and what I've suggested when I teach, I say this, is take your mixing bowl, run it under hot water, dry it, and then add your butter, your cold butter to that already warm mixing bowl. And that will help it break down. But again, it won't melt the butter because as soon as it starts to whip, the butter is going to cool down and it'll all come back together.
Jessie Sheehan:
I think that is so smart. It's just we're so programmed to think that we need room temperature butter-
Nancy Silverton:
Room temperature butter. Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Stand mixer. Do you have a KitchenAid? You have-
Nancy Silverton:
Yeah, I use KitchenAids, but one thing I don't use is that I find for home use, I don't use the KitchenAid mixer that they call the Professional. I think it's seven quarts. I think it's too big for the home use unless you're making bread or something like that because a recipe like this will get lost in that bowl. I think a five quart standing mixer is as high as you want to get. None of the recipes in this book at least-
Jessie Sheehan:
Require anything.
Nancy Silverton:
... require a seven quart mixer.
Jessie Sheehan:
So our mixer is fitted with our paddle on medium speed. We're going to mix our butter until it's softened, but still cold, about three to four minutes, we'll scrape with our rubber spatula.
Nancy Silverton:
Yeah, I really am a big fan of the heat-proof rubber spatula is one that you could actually even stir a caramel if you needed to and it wouldn't melt. But also the size. I don't have many recipes. I try to stay away from whisking egg whites and folding egg whites into a batter because I find that to be also very intimidating. And it's hard for people to understand how to properly whip an egg white so it's not snowy, but that it actually is dense and creamy. It's kind of like when people don't know how to steam milk for a cappuccino, it's all foamy rather than dense. But I'm saying this because once you have your egg white properly mixed, you need a large rubber spatula. And that's what these heat-proof spatulas are to combine the egg whites into your batter. So, if you're only going to have a couple of spatulas, have that large heat-proof rubber spatula.
Jessie Sheehan:
Now, we're going to add our Skippy peanut butter or Jif or something that is not, this is not your natural PB, artisanal PB moment.
Nancy Silverton:
No. You want a peanut butter that really tastes like peanut butter.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. And we're going to add some granulated sugar, some dark brown sugar. First of all, why both? And also, why dark? Is that for that more molasses? What about the dark brown sugar is better for you than the light?
Nancy Silverton:
Sometimes I use light and sometimes I use dark. And again, it's for that molasses. And if it is that dark, then it would be Roxanne's recipe, because I use both.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes. And now we continue to beat on medium until light and fluffy, about three to four minutes. We'll scrape the bowl as needed. Now we're going to add the baking soda, the baking powder, some more Diamond Crystal salt. This is maybe a Roxanna question, but why are we using both leavenings?
Nancy Silverton:
They both do different, and you find that often in chocolate chip cookies too, that you need the two. But there's also something that I allowed to stay in this recipe that I don't do with my own recipes, and that's this. A few books ago, I questioned the idea of why is the baking powder and the baking soda, meaning the leavening, and the salt and spices, why are they always added with the flour, where the flour, you never want to overmix? I always question, does that leavening really get mixed in?
And so I've started to, and always do, I cream my butter always with the leavening, the salt, and the spices, and there's no reason not to. Again, I think it's a carryover from whoever wrote the first recipe and sifted the flour with the dry because it's part of the dry. And from then on, throughout the generations of writing cookbooks, that stayed. I only did it again for this because this was not my base recipe.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we've added our soda, our powder, our salt, we've beaten. We're going to stop and scrape and then add that vanilla-egg mixture, which we have in that, let's say two cup liquid measuring cup, which is brilliant so you can pour it right in until it's incorporated. Now we add our flours, this is brilliant, listeners, because all you're doing is adding the two flours, and if you're using a scale, it's not an extra bowl. It's perfect.
Nancy Silverton:
Right. And you don't even have to have that bowl. You can weigh it. I'll tell you how I like to add flour, and I didn't do that in the book. Some of the things I held back because I thought that it would make the home baker feel that things are too complicated. And sometimes they think that. So, what I do at the restaurant is I put my dry ingredients directly on a piece of parchment paper and then I fold it up like a funnel. And to add the flour to the bowl of the freestanding mixer is so much easier when you pour it out of that sort of funnel rather than from a bowl where it inevitably gets all over the counter.
Jessie Sheehan:
What do you think about taking the bowl off the mixer, putting it on your scale, pouring the... Or do you like the flour to be put in gradually?
Nancy Silverton:
No, you can do that, but not everybody weighs.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes. It's true. But I also love that parchment tip because you can then use that piece of parchment to line your pan.
Nancy Silverton:
Right, exactly.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. No, I love that. So we stop and scrape, we add our flours, and then you say to go about 30 seconds low speed till there's no flour visible. I often write recipes, what do you think about an instruction that says until you see one or two streaks? Sometimes I worry that if people take it all the way, it's too far.
Nancy Silverton:
Yeah. And I do that sometimes, especially if there's going to be another step that involves a mix, then why not? In this case, I think you want to combine, but that's it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes. Yes. You just have to be mindful. Now we're going to cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate until-
Nancy Silverton:
Or take it out the mixture, out of the bowl, wrap it up in plastic-
Jessie Sheehan:
Plastic wrap and stick that in the fridge for about 30 minutes. You know the whole cookie thing, everything is better if it rests. Is it a better cookie if we rest it longer than 30 minutes?
Nancy Silverton:
Not this one.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, good.
Nancy Silverton:
I've noticed in my chocolate chip cookies, they're much better when they sit overnight. But in this, no, this is just so it's firm enough to handle, otherwise it's so sticky.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep. So now we're going to adjust our oven racks to the top third and the bottom third, preheat our oven to 375, slightly higher.
Nancy Silverton:
Does it say 375?
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Nancy Silverton:
Oh.
Jessie Sheehan:
Slightly higher than a typical cookie. And then we're going to line two large half sheet pans with parchment paper, maybe using one that we used for our funnel. And then we'll finish the cookies in the bake. We'll pour some and bake them. We'll pour some granulated sugar into a small bowl. Remove the dough from the fridge, remove our plastic wrap. And I love that you tell us to reserve the plastic wrap. I thought that was great.
We're going to scoop our dough-
Nancy Silverton:
I think it's a tablespoon and a half is what I'm asking for. So I just do it to eye, but if someone doesn't have that confidence, there's the varied size of ice cream scoops that you can get.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes. I love those. You roll that into a ball, then we drop our balls into our sugar, coat them, place 12 cookies on each sheet, and we recover with our piece of plastic wrap, our remaining dough, return it to the fridge. And then tell us about what happens now. We're going to make a little-
Nancy Silverton:
A divot. I do it with my thumb. You could do with your, what's this finger called? Your forefinger.
Jessie Sheehan:
Forefinger. I was going to say first finger.
Nancy Silverton:
Yeah. To make a divot and kind of enlarge it so it's wide enough to hold the peanut butter. Now, I think in the book, I say spoon it in because I'm being respectful of the home cook that might not feel comfortable with the pastry bag. It's just a way of getting the peanut butter into the center of the cookie. So you can do it with a spoon, but with each spoonful, you're going to scrape it off with your finger. Or you can use a pastry bag with either a small tip. Or you can use a Ziploc bag and just cut the corner of it. It's just to squirt that peanut butter into the center and that it doesn't go all over.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love it. Is it crazy that I just think it's so genius of you, I don't know why, but I think I would've thought that peanut butter just exposed like that in my oven would burn. But you just knew it wouldn't?
Nancy Silverton:
No, I didn't. I tried it, but I can't remember back why I decided to not add the peanuts right then and why I decided to only bake it, half bake, pull it out. It kind of set, the cookie started to spread, so it gave me the room to pile on those peanuts and then return it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Maybe you knew they would burn if they were in the oven?
Nancy Silverton:
I don't know.
Jessie Sheehan:
Because that's exactly right. After the divot, we put in our peanut butter, we bake for four minutes, pull them out.
Nancy Silverton:
Finish the... Yeah. And you know what was just so satisfying? I just did the “Today Show,” and I didn't give them any tips, it was just they read the recipe and I walked in and I thought, "Now, what if I walk in and cookies are just completely spread and they're crisp or something?" And I walked in and they were absolutely textbook perfect. And it makes me feel so good when my recipes work or when someone follows them and they work.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. So now we return the baking sheets to the oven and we're switching our racks, we're rotating our sheets, and we're baking the cookies until golden brown. They probably will puff up slightly around the edges and then are just beginning to collapse about four or five minutes more, which makes sense. It's basically a nine or 10 minute bake in total. And I love this because I love an underdone cookie. Cookies should be slightly underdone, feel soft to the touch, but they firm up when they cool.
I also loved this tip of yours. If the cookie is misshapen at all after the baking, you can cup your hands around the edges.
Nancy Silverton:
Yeah, I do that.
Jessie Sheehan:
Have you seen this tip that is running around the internet, I guess, but people taking either a large biscuit cutter and putting it around the cookie and kind of scooting the cookie to-
Nancy Silverton:
No, I haven't, but that's what I always do with my-
Jessie Sheehan:
You just do it with your hands.
Nancy Silverton:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. And if the cookies spread so much that there are gaps between the peanuts, you encourage the addition of a couple of peanuts.
Nancy Silverton:
Yeah. Or pile them back on. Sometimes, depending upon how your oven reacts, it can throw the peanuts off a little and so just pile them back on.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. And now we're going to allow the cookies to cool completely before we remove them from the sheet. Is there ever a cookie that you would remove right away? Or is that always sort of the residual heat of the cookie? I won't lie. Usually I just leave everything on. If I think of it, I take them off.
Nancy Silverton:
Yeah. I'm trying to think. Macaron, you need to take off. When I learned how to make the classic French macaron, as soon as it came out of the oven, you would lift the corner of the-
Jessie Sheehan:
Parchment?
Nancy Silverton:
Parchment paper and pour a little water to steam it. But I'm trying to think. I don't think I ever-
Jessie Sheehan:
Take them off right away.
Nancy Silverton:
Take them off right away.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. And then we bake off the remaining cookies. I love this recipe so much, I can't wait to make it, but I wanted to talk about a couple of other recipes from the book. Your banana bread. I love the genius tweak, there are two tweaks that I love, and the pan size. The topping-
Nancy Silverton:
Yeah, the pan size was the biggest.
Jessie Sheehan:
Talk to us about that.
Nancy Silverton:
Okay. The first time I made the banana bread that I made, and I'm talking 30 years ago with my last book, and I thought about doing the whole slices of banana on top. I really liked the look and I liked the flavor of that banana cooked on top of the bread. So, again, rethinking how would I take this banana bread, because you have to have a banana bread in a book, and do something to it that makes it better? Besides re-looking at the recipe, re-seasoning it, and tweaking with that. I thought about how much I like the banana and I thought about the scale of when you bake a banana bread and put the banana on top in the traditional loaf pan, when you do the slice, you get such a small amount of banana. But to bake it in what I call a brownie pan, so a square cake pan and serve a square of this banana bread, then you get surface to surface a lot more banana.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. And talk about the cinnamon sugar. Is that always something you put on banana bread?
Nancy Silverton:
That, I had put on before.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. And I love that. That's just literally before. Do you do the bananas first and then just a sprinkle of cinnamon sugar?
Nancy Silverton:
Yeah, because what it does is it caramelizes a little bit on top of that banana and gives it a little shine. Again, focusing in, trying to make it the best version so you don't say anymore, "I love your banana bread. I wish I had more banana."
Jessie Sheehan:
We've talked about it, it's these simple tiny tweaks. It's a pan size that allows for more banana on top, and I think the genius is the cinnamon sugar, but it sounds like that was your genius from long ago. But still, and I love the photograph in the book is so beautiful of that bread because you see, before I read the ingredients, I looked at the picture and I was like, "What is giving it that almost shiny caramelized?" It's that sugar and that cinnamon on top-
Nancy Silverton:
And I love serving it in the pan that it's baked in.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. And I also love, I think you say in the head note, can we just all agree it's banana cake? So it's in a snacking pan. I also, because this is one of my faves, can you tell us about the yellow cake with chocolate frosting?
Nancy Silverton:
Yes. And that was really challenging.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Nancy Silverton:
First of all, I didn't grow up on that cake, but I know it's always been a favorite. And I'm more a tart person, by the way, than a cake person, just because I love the texture of the crust. Tarts tend to be really low, cakes seem to be very high. I'm all around a tart person. But of course, you have to have what you would call a birthday cake in the book. And I like how I decorate it just with a few little sprinkles on top.
And I didn't grow up on it because my mother never baked cakes, and so I certainly never got one.
Jessie Sheehan:
Did she bake when you were little?
Nancy Silverton:
No. The only thing she ever made, she made two things, she made apple pie, and what she loved about making her apple pie, which was not in a very deep dish. It was a Pyrex pie, but she loved the fact that you didn't have to roll it out, this is her pie dough, you didn't have to roll it out and make it perfect. You could roll it out and just patch it all together. And she loved that rustic approach to the apple pie. The other thing that she loved is Mexican wedding cookies.
Jessie Sheehan:
Those little kind of white-
Nancy Silverton:
Yep, and I have them in my book with a different name. I just called them wedding cookies in my book. But she loved those also. And that's the only two things she ever made. So I didn't grow up on that. But I know that people have such a nostalgia for, you ask people their favorite cake, they'll say, "A yellow cake with chocolate frosting." So a couple things that I wanted to make sure happened with this cake.
One thing is that yellow cake, and I can't tell you how many versions, I mean yellow cake is still a yellow cake. I guess what you could say is, should it be butter or should it be oil, right? That was one choice. We know it's going to have eggs, but what do you want out of it? And I wanted a really soft, moist cake. And that was not easy. I think I must've made that cake more than any other cake. A yellow cake was something that I had to pull from somebody else because I didn't have one in my repertoire.
So, I started pulling a recipe for yellow cake from sources that I thought were very reliable and wow, did they ever vary? And I became more and more critical of what I wanted and what the crumbs should be like till I finally came up with them and then came the frosting.
So, I did feel like from the pictures that I've seen of old school birthday cakes or yellow cake with chocolate frosting, I knew that it shouldn't be a bittersweet chocolate frosting, that with the yellow cake, it needed to be more in the milk chocolate palette. That I could just tell. But the other thing I thought was really important, I could have said to people, "Once you make the cake and you frost it, always leave it at room temperature," because the cakes don't have to be refrigerated. But for some reason, people love to refrigerate their cakes.
And so, given that, I wanted to come up with a frosting that, once you had leftover cake and you refrigerated it, you can take it out of the refrigerator and cut it and eat it rather than that frosting crack, because the frosting solidifies in the refrigerator. So, it was really challenging coming up with the right texture where I could frost that cake and it would hold its shape, but would not get hard in the refrigerator.
Jessie Sheehan:
And was that the golden syrup that you use?
Nancy Silverton:
Yeah, exactly. And you'll notice that it's two layers, not three, and I didn't frost the sides, but I did a nice amount inside and a nice amount on top.
Jessie Sheehan:
I actually love oil-based cakes. I know sometimes people miss the butter flavor, and it's the perfect combo if you can do both, because the oil-
Nancy Silverton:
And it really did, it really changed it. But I worked really hard on that yellow cake and I'm waiting for somebody to come back and say, "I love that yellow cake," because all yellow cakes are not created equal.
Jessie Sheehan:
No. Some of them are so dry.
Nancy Silverton:
Yes, so dry.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. I also love that you did that for the frosting. It's funny, I hate cold cake. It's like a pet peeve of mine. I don't understand it. I don't understand the refrigerator and cake, but I love to know about this frosting, if I have to or if something-
Nancy Silverton:
It doesn't get hard.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes. That's brilliant. And then finally, I love this apple crisp with golden butter. So two things, just tell us about the crisp and tell us about golden butter. And there's a tip you give us about when you can make an apple crisp and when you cannot, which I thought was awesome. Can you tell us?
Nancy Silverton:
Yeah. Well, there's certain things, for instance, say a carrot cake. So a carrot cake, year round, because carrots taste the same all year round. An apple crisp is not one of those. It's seasonal. And it's seasonal for a few reasons. One is that you need to use an interesting variety of apples for your crisp to make it taste complex. But the most interesting combination is when you can get a variety, hopefully, of heirloom varieties of apples, because each bite gives you different textures, which I love.
So, I say very specifically, this is a fall dessert. I use golden butter. I look at butters as kind of three stages. One is just in solid form, which goes into most of the recipes. And then there's two other forms of melted butter. Well, then there should be for the clarified where you're just removing the milk solids, but no color or anything like that. And then there's golden butter, which just has a deep gold color, a lovely flavor, but not the same flavor and the same result as a brown butter. And I use golden butter where I make it, I solidify it, and then I re-whip it and use it in some of my cookies, some of my cakes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Is golden butter, is it different than just melting butter? It's melting it and taking a little bit farther, but not far enough that you're seeing those milk solids brown?
Nancy Silverton:
Right, exactly. And it adds a really wonderful flavor. And I think so many people make these apple crisps that are so dry, and I mean apples have to have a little texture at the end so it's not mush, but they shouldn't remain cubed or it needs to start to fall apart. But it needs to be glossy and syrupy and the crisp topping needs to be also buttery, but also have a texture. But I love it when the apples poke through and the syrup bubbles up, the natural syrup from the apples themselves and the butter and the sugar that you've added. And I love serving that apple crisp family style in a beautiful, say copper pan.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. And I also, it's just such a great example of the whole book. It's these simple, iconic American desserts, but with tiny tweaks like just knowing, actually it's seasonal, and then also this golden butter, it's elevated.
Thank you so much for chatting with me today, Nancy, and I just want to say that you are my cherry pie.
Nancy Silverton:
Aw, thank you.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's it for today's show. Thank you to Plugrà 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.