Anne Byrn Transcript
Jessie Sheehan:
Hi, peeps. You're 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 four baking books, including “Salty, Cheesy, Herby, Crispy Snackable Bakes.” On each episode, I hang out with the sweetest bakers around and take a deep dive into their signature bakes.
Today, I'm joined by the wonderful Anne Byrn. Anne is a beloved southern baker, food writer, and the author of many, many cookbooks. You might know her as the Cake Mix Doctor, and Anne shares many of her cake mix doctoring tips in this episode, including the fact that you can substitute orange juice for water in said cakes, and that they always need a from-scratch frosting, which should be made with salted, not unsalted butter. But Anne's baking journey goes way beyond the boxed mix aisle. Before her cookbook career, she was the food editor at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and columnist for the Tennessean. She studied at La Varenne Culinary School in Paris, where she met Julia Child for the first time, and in fact attended a party for Julia and her “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” co-author, Simone Beck. Anne's most recent book, “Baking in the American South: 200 Recipes and Their Untold Stories,” explores Southern baking traditions and highlights cultural history and personal narratives from the region. Anne also has a Substack newsletter called Between the Layers. I know you'll want to subscribe after hearing our convo. Anne walks me through a delightful Southern staple and one of my all-time fave baked goods, coconut cake. We'll talk about the inspiration behind this new version, spoiler alert, it involves Tom Cruise, Anne's tips for turning it into an icebox cake, and the fact that she's been working on perfecting coconut cake for over 30 years. I loved chatting with Anne, so stay tuned for our convo. You can find today's recipe at cherrybombe.com.
Today's episode is presented by California Prunes. If you're a long-time listener, you know I'm a long-time fan of California Prunes. They're good for your bones, your gut, and even your heart, but most importantly, they're just a good snack, and I love a good snack. They're in my cabinet right now because they satisfy my sweet tooth at a moment's notice. Of course, I also love baking with them. They have such a complex flavor. They get even deeper when paired with chocolate or warm spices or nuts. Some of my favorite recipes are my famously delicious cream scones with chopped prunes, my sticky toffee pudding with prunes, and I've even added prunes to my chocolate banana bread. Each recipe has a hundred percent been better for it, but if you don't believe me, you can try all of these recipes for yourself at my website, jessiesheehanbakes.com. My big tip is that anything you'd bake with dried fruit, from oatmeal cookies to granola, scones, and muffins, is a prune moment. You can use them whole because they're so nice and juicy, or chop them up to spread the joy. They also help you hit some of your health goals, and if I can do that with a cookie, I'm happy. 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. There's a reason they've been on grocery store shelves since the 1800s. For more recipes and info, check out the California Prunes website at californiaprunes.org. That's californiaprunes.org.
Guess who was on the cover of Cherry Bombe's upcoming Italy issue? Chef Nancy Silverton of Osteria Mozza, Chi Spacca, and more in Los Angeles. And we have a special second cover star as well. It's Chef Missy Robbins of Lilia, Misi, and MISIPASTA in New York City. These two chefs have been steadily shaping the American perception of Italian cuisine for decades, and they join a lineup of inspiring women featured throughout the issue, pastry pros, cookbook authors, culinary tour leaders, bread gurus, and more. Inside, you'll find unsung wines, women-made olive oils, food-filled travel logs, odes to Italian classics, and of course, lots of pasta. The Italy issue will be out September 5th. Head to cherrybombe.com or click the link in our show notes for all the info.
Let's chat with today's guest. Anne, so excited to have you on She's My Cherry Pie and to talk coconut cake with you and so much more.
Anne Byrn:
Jessie, it's great to be here. Thank you.
Jessie Sheehan:
You started baking when you were about 10 or 11 experimenting with boxed cake mixes, which turned out to be so fortuitous, professionally speaking. Can you tell us about those early experiments?
Anne Byrn:
Right. Well, I was one of three girls, the middle, and neither of my other sisters cared much about cooking and food, but I thought it was fascinating, and they would eat anything that I made. So pretty much our kitchen at home was a laboratory and I just got in there and made things, and I found that when I didn't really know how to bake, starting with a mix was very easy. You just followed the directions on the back. It was science to me, and it was also a lot of accolades.
Jessie Sheehan:
Were there... I know, we all love the accolades. Were there particular experiments that you made or particular early boxed cake mix adventures that you had?
Anne Byrn:
Well, my father's favorite was the Boston cream pie. There used to be this mix for Boston cream pie. Do you remember that?
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes.
Anne Byrn:
Where it had the little packet for the cake mix and the little packet for the chocolate icing, and then one for the custard that went in between the layers. Yeah, that was probably a favorite.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. So your mother was an incredible baker and cook and homemaker, you've even compared her to Martha Stewart, and she actually came from a creative family of writers and cooks. Can you tell us about her family members, the writing and the cooking that was happening?
Anne Byrn:
Right. Well, I would say cooking, flower decorating and painting more than anything. She was the youngest of five women. She was born in the twenties. She was very young. They all were depression children and they grew up in the... My mother's father died when she was about 13, so they're very close, the sisters. They were called the Carr Girls, and they were very close and they all painted beautifully. Elizabeth watercolors, Jane oils. It was just magnificent. Mary Jo arranged flowers. Mary Jo did end up writing the society page for the Nashville Banner, the newspaper in Nashville. She could write beautifully about other people. I think they just were all real creative.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that.
Anne Byrn:
For whatever reason.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, I love that. You loved watching your mom make her fried chicken when you were little and watching her stir her chocolate fudge frosting on the stove top, so please, please tell us about her fried chicken. And also, when you say the Stove top chocolate frosting, should we be picturing a Texas sheet cake kind of frosting?
Anne Byrn:
Yes. To the chicken, she would soak the chicken pieces in salt water to draw the blood out. Then she would drain them well, she'd get a paper grocery sack, put flour and seasonings in there and shake one piece at a time. She fried the chicken in an electric skillet, and I remember her left hand on hip, right hand with the fork checking the chicken, and it just was divine. She drained it on more paper towels and we would all try to sneak a piece before dinner.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh my gosh.
Anne Byrn:
It was wonderful. And the fudge icing, she started with using granulated sugar then I think probably didn't have the patience for it because you have to watch that and make sure it doesn't crystallize, and so she gravitated to using powdered sugar through the years, but yes, it was like a Texas cake.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love, love. She also made, these sounds so good to me, frozen parfaits of vanilla ice cream, creme de menthe and homemade chocolate sauce, which she stashed in the chest freezer in the garage to serve at bridge luncheons.
Anne Byrn:
Yes, definitely. So we had a garage downstairs. You could come in in that entrance from the garage into we called it the utility room. At the very back was this big old chest freezer, white. We used to come home and see our parents, and I would just always go to... You could always open the chest freezer and see what she had been cooking or who she had had to dinner. And I remember one time opening it up and she froze the parfait glasses right there in the freezer, vanilla ice cream, homemade fudge sauce, and then that bright shocking green creme de menthe syrup.
Jessie Sheehan:
Chocolate mint is one of my favorites.
Anne Byrn:
Yummy.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then finally, can you tell us about her Coca-Cola cake? I feel like not enough people know about Coca-Cola cake.
Anne Byrn:
Coca-Cola cake. My mother, she loved Coca-Cola. I mean, she would bake hams in Coca-Cola.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, my God.
Anne Byrn:
She thought a Coca-Cola would cure anything that ailed you. Stomach ache, headache, whatever, just go have a Coca-Cola. And yeah, so the Coca-Cola cake has been in the south forever, and it's essentially a chocolate sheet cake but you're using Coca-Cola for some of the buttermilk, and that's it. So your liquids are Coca-Cola and buttermilk in the cake, and then you could put a little Coca-Cola in the icing if you want to.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yum. We'll be right back. Peeps, did you hear the news? Cherry Bombe's Jubilee conference is headed to Los Angeles this fall. It's taking place Sunday, September 28th, at Hudson Loft in downtown L.A. It'll be a full day of inspiring conversations, delicious food and drink, and incredible community. Since 2014, this one-of-a-kind gathering has celebrated the voices and talents of women across the worlds of food, drink, restaurants, and hospitality. Now it's L.A.'s turn and we can't wait to give the city the love it deserves. Tickets are sold out, but sign up for the waitlist at cherrybombe.com and be the first to know if more tickets become available. Now, back to our guest.
So when you were little, you loved cookbooks. Can you tell us about any that particularly stayed in your mind of ones that were your favorites?
Anne Byrn:
Oh, gosh, all the ones that were written like Better Homes and Gardens for Children, that kind of thing, yes. But I started working when I was in high school, started interning for the local newspaper and became good friends with the food editor, Barney Arnold there, and she found that I had a love of cooking and would just give me cookbooks. And I remember as a teenager reading cookbooks in bed at night.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that.
Anne Byrn:
I was a nerd.
Jessie Sheehan:
We all love a nerd. Because your mom was probably more like she had her recipes on her index card. She wasn't necessarily into a big cookbook collection. It was more something that you gravitated towards.
Anne Byrn:
I think that's true. I think in those days, those moms had maybe three or four cookbooks that they loved, and maybe it was the Junior League cookbook from their town, or a church cookbook or something that meant something to them and they knew the names or maybe they had contributed a recipe. But you're right, most of their recipes came off of index cards, and they shared index cards with their friends, wrote them down.
Jessie Sheehan:
So I read that when you were in high school, you worked at the school newspaper?
Anne Byrn:
I was the editor of the school newspaper.
Jessie Sheehan:
And you were already interested in food writing, maybe because of your internship. Is that correct?
Anne Byrn:
I think, well, I got interested in writing for newspapers because I felt like there was always something new and you always knew what was going on, you were in the middle of the action, and it was fun and it was creative. And then you had to piece all of these bits of news together, and that was the old days before computers, et cetera, and we just had actual type to work with. And there was something creative and artistic about it as well as making it presentable, so yeah, it was all that.
Jessie Sheehan:
And you double majored in college in both journalism and home economics, and I think it was your home ec dean who suggested you apply for the food writing job at the Atlantic Journal.
Anne Byrn:
That's correct, and the home economics was as a default. I went to Georgia to study journalism, and then I realized that I was taking... Because if I had this double major, I could take some classes not in the journalism school, not about magazine writing or whatever. I could actually take a food nutrition course, and I thought that was fascinating and I wanted to do that.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that.
Anne Byrn:
It was great.
Jessie Sheehan:
And so you realized when you were writing about food for the newspaper that you needed to know how to cook, and so you went to Paris. I think you were in your late twenties at La Varenne École de Cuisine en Paris. We were just talking before we started recording. I guess Julia Child was around a bit at the school when you were a student there. Did you ever speak with her or were you more just observed her?
Anne Byrn:
Oh, yes, I did speak with her. I'll never forget, it was a Sunday. I don't know what year it was. It was a Sunday. There was an apartment in the 7th arrondissement. There was a view of the Eiffel Tower. It was near the school, near where La Varenne used to be, and it was a brunch in honor of Julia and Simca, Simone Beck. So we as students were just told, "You have to show up, you have to help. You got to help out in the kitchen and we've got to get this food out." We were not asked to make anything. I think that was at a much higher level, but it was like a pot-au-feu and maybe a green salad. I do not remember what was for dessert, but I do remember Julia Child coming in the door and seeing her in the plush for the first time and realizing how grand a woman she was in stature and just in her presence. She just brought life to that room and it was something that has stayed with me.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, I love that story. I love that. And as I understand it, much later on, in the United States, you had an opportunity in your role as a journalist to cook with her in her Cambridge kitchen before her 80th birthday.
Anne Byrn:
I did. So at the Journal-Constitution, that would've been in '92, Julia was about to turn 80, and my editors and I thought it would be a good idea to get an in-person interview with her, and she agreed. Her husband, Paul, was in a nursing home nearby, so she was just there alone in the house. I think she had people checking in on her. I was very nervous and I brought a peach from my kitchen counter. It was early August. I had a peach. I said, "Oh my gosh, I haven't thought of anything to bring Julia Child," so I wrapped up a peach in a kitchen towel and brought it with me, put it in my purse and flew up there. Got a rental car out of Boston, drove to Cambridge, got there super early and waited, waited at a nearby little cafe. But yes, she was so gracious. She cooked a roast chicken for us, a green salad, and we had the peach for dessert, and Sauvignon Blanc, of course.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, my gosh, yum.
Anne Byrn:
A bottle of Sauvignon Blanc was in the refrigerator. There you go.
Jessie Sheehan:
And I think at one point, also while working for the newspaper, you ended up interviewing Marcella Hazan.
Anne Byrn:
I did. I think I did several times. She was always coming through Atlanta, teaching classes at the Rich's Cooking School where Nathalie Dupree was in charge or other book projects. And then her son, he came through, and I did meet her husband as well. He was lovely, lovely person.
Jessie Sheehan:
All right. Now I want to dive into your cookbooks. I don't think you can interview Anne Byrn without talking about the fact that you are a Cake Mix Doctor.
Anne Byrn:
That's right.
Jessie Sheehan:
And I would love to hear a little bit about how the “Cake Mix Doctor” books came to be. I think it might have begun with cake mix cupcakes for your kids. Is that correct?
Anne Byrn:
Well, I was definitely doing that. I think everybody was at that time, those late nineties, but I was working part-time at the newspaper in Nashville after my second child was born and we were going on vacation and I had to file a story really fast. Actually, third child was born. And so I thought, "What can I file? What can I write about that's quick and easy?" And I thought, "Well, I'll just write about cake mix cakes." I could never write about this in Atlanta. Atlanta was far too hoity-toity for me, but nobody cares in Nashville. I can write about what I want. So I wrote about it and I shared one of my mom's recipes, and then I wrote about a couple of other recipes, an apricot nectar cake, maybe even a coconut cake. Definitely an easy caramel cake, strawberry cake. Well, I wrote it and then I put a little tag at the bottom and I said, "These are my recipes. I'd love to hear about yours."
Well, we went on vacation and when I came back a week later, and I just had this little desk at the back of the newsroom because I was part-time, the entire desk was covered with letters from mostly women from Middle Tennessee sharing their favorite cake mix cake with me. I was blown away. I wrote some sequels about that. The title of the first one was “The Doctor Is In.” I went out and interviewed women in the middle Tennessee area about their cakes. Those stories were picked up, they went on the wire service, so all of a sudden I had my colleagues in Portland, Denver, San Diego saying, "Well, Anne, you're certainly writing a lot about cake mixes these days, and aren't you smart? Because those are our most requested recipes." The light bulb went off and I went, "Oh my gosh, nobody has written a book acknowledging this."
So I did some history on the cake mix. I dove into the story behind cake mixes. They did have a history in American baking. I thought, "This is culturally interesting." So I went through my agent, she loved the idea, and yeah, Workman published it. A very low-budget book to say the least. I had no media experience, although I was a member of the media, and all of a sudden, I went on QVC and sold 5,000 books in less than five minutes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, yeah.
Anne Byrn:
It was crazy, and I was thrust in front of cameras and radio interviews, and all of a sudden, I was the Cake Mix Doctor.
Jessie Sheehan:
So basically, just so people understand, you're taking a boxed cake mix. As I think your mom always said, “You can use a boxed cake mix, but you always must make the frosting from scratch.”
Anne Byrn:
Absolutely.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're talking about taking these mixes that we all know, zhuzhing them up, and we're going to talk about some tips you have for doing so, and then always making sure you have a homemade frosting on top.
Anne Byrn:
Always, always.
Jessie Sheehan:
I mean, I have always loved boxed cake mixes. To this day, on my birthday, I ask my children to make me a chocolate boxed cake with vanilla frosting. You're going to hate me. I don't mind the can for that occasion. I want all of that-
Anne Byrn:
Really?
Jessie Sheehan:
All of that nostalgia, but this idea of playing with them has never been in my head. I'm so interested by it all. Like the ones that you originally put in those early recipes, can you tell us about a few of those recipes?
Anne Byrn:
Yeah, I can tell them most popular was the darn good chocolate cake, which I renamed. It was my Aunt Louise's recipe. She called it the damn good chocolate cake, and I thought the “Cake Mix Doctor” was going to be real precious and I didn't want to use profanity in the book, so I called it the darn good chocolate... That turned out... That's the chocolate cake mix, sour cream, oil, eggs, chocolate chip recipe. It's a Bundt. That is the darn good chocolate cake. That was super popular. The strawberry cake, absolutely, white cake mix. Started with frozen strawberries but it evolved into fresh, vegetable oil. It was also known as the Wesson oil strawberry cake. Eggs, that's about it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Would the strawberry one have been one of those cake mixes that are already pink and flavored strawberry?
Anne Byrn:
No, in the beginning, it wasn't. No, you added the strawberries, and that's why I know that it did not start with fresh strawberries. It started with frozen, and that was the convenience factor, is that you took a box of this, a package of this, a cup of this, and three eggs, and done.
Jessie Sheehan:
And voila. That's right. So some of the tips that I picked up doing a little research, definitely adding a bit of sour cream for moisture, not just going with... I guess a box cake mix usually asks you for water.
Anne Byrn:
Definitely, yeah. The number one rule is don't use water, and use buttermilk, use orange... Orange juice is probably the best hack with a cake mix because somehow, not only does it improve texture but it just takes away any cake mixed flavor. And back to what mom said about using mixes and frostings, that was the whole deal, is that we came from a scratch cooking background, so for me to make a box mix, my memories were of pattern pound cakes and chocolate sheet cake. When I tasted a cake mix, I knew it was a cake mix. Now, a lot of people didn't think anything bad about it, but I always felt like, well, we got to hide this. This is not something you tell somebody, right? And so that's my background.
What I learned though, Jessie, was that we are constantly baking to relive memories of our past, and if you grew up with a cake mix, that is a nostalgic flavor to you so go for it. Keep making those cake mix cakes. I've had emails from chefs at very high levels saying that they cannot recreate a scratch cake that mimics the cake mix cake of their childhood. So there's sour cream. I read using melted salted butter for a richer flavor.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Anne Byrn:
I think salt, you got to watch. How much salt is in a cake mix? Definitely salted butter in your frosting, and again, all frosting from scratch. Always use salted butter like you're making a chocolate frosting. Absolutely.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, I love that.
Anne Byrn:
I think, yes, sour cream, any kind of enrichments you can add. The problem today is that the cake mixes are smaller than when I wrote the “Cake Mix Doctor.” So I wrote “A New Take On Cake” during COVID to readjust some of those recipes. It's a different playing field today because you've got the smaller cake mixes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, that's so interesting. I have noticed that. Also, I feel like some of them come in two sizes. Maybe it's just the brownies, but I feel like you can get the nine-by-13-inch box, but then you can also get an eight-by-eight with a smaller cake. I also read about maybe sometimes adding mashed bananas or cinnamon, coffee, yogurt.
Anne Byrn:
That'll take a cake mixed flavor away right there.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, you write, cures for the common cake, which I love. Okay, so now I'd love to talk about your most recent book, which is “Baking in the American South: 200 Recipes and Their Untold Stories.” This is fascinating. Within the book, only three of them are actually your own family recipes, and the rest you researched and found. Tell us about, you were at a book talk and someone asked you the question, what makes Southern baking so special? And I think I read that that inspired this book for you.
Anne Byrn:
It did. I was in North Carolina promoting another book with this book in my head, and someone said, "what are you working on next?" I said, "Well, I want to write about a book on Southern baking." And the woman raised her hand and she said, "Well, what makes Southern baking so special?" And I said, "Well, doesn't everybody know that? That was my natural response, and then the audience started coming to my defense. It was so interesting. And hands were raised and one woman said, "Well, it's what your mother made. Oh, well, it's the ingredients. It's where you come from. It's what you live. It's our flour." And I realized there were so many different answers to that question, but there was no one answer. So as a journalist, I was committed to finding out, what was the answer? Why is Southern baking so well-known?
And the answer is really, historically, it was the first and the finest style of baking in America. It set the standard because people in the South baked at home. It's very simple. In the North, the other parts of the United States, there were commercial bakeries. There were more people who came into the U.S. of immigrant populations who brought a style of baking here from Germany, et cetera, that settled in cities in the North. You have the baking heritage, you have bakeries, but people have so many memories. We'd all have that, but we have baking memories that came out of the home. And so a way that a mother made a pound cake would be the way that a daughter and her daughter and whatever, and I believe that is the difference and that's what made Southern baking distinctive.
Jessie Sheehan:
You consider this your most ambitious work, combining recipes with untold meaningful stories about people, places, and traditions. You talked a little bit about the traditions and the places. Can you talk about the people a little bit?
Anne Byrn:
Oh, absolutely. The South is not a monolith and I think that it's even more important for us to realize this today, that we aren't. We are like other parts of the country where... And if you look at the coastline of the South, think about how many ports of immigration there were. The Germans who came in through Galveston and the Czechs to settle in Central Texas, the Alsatian Jews who came into New Orleans, on and on. The Jews who came into Charleston, Savannah, and then went up to northern South Carolina and into North Carolina, and then the English and the Quakers down through Baltimore into Virginia. The Scottish Irish who came through the Appalachians into Kentucky and Tennessee, not to mention the Chinese-Americans, the Lebanese Americans, Indigenous people, and of course the Africans who came enslaved, who were forced to come to the South.
So yes, this was a very ambitious project because I wanted to tell an honest story of the South. The South is complicated. We are messy. I like to say sometimes the South is like your worst child. You love them, but you get so frustrated with them. I would ask that everyone give the South some grace because we are not all one people. We are this mixture people and that mixture people have settled in different places, and as a result, the way they bake really differs, and that's what I show in the book.
Jessie Sheehan:
I'd love you to tell us, before we jump into the coconut cake, I'd love you to tell us a little bit about your Substack, Between the Layers.
Anne Byrn:
Oh, wow. Yeah. So I started writing that about four and a half years ago or early '21, just on a lark. Never really gotten into blogs, I'd always been a journalist first, but then I thought, "Well, this will get me on a routine. I'll have to write something every week," and I liked that. So I have loved it. It has introduced me to so many other writers like myself who I never would've met. It's a beautiful way to carve your niche, but also for people who really love to write, it lets you write and you can write on a regular basis. And for someone who writes cookbooks, I think the challenge for writing Baking in the American South was how do I write this book and write a Substack at the same time? So my great experiment was how do I use Substack to help me write the book? And you can do it, you can definitely do it, and other writers do. You can talk about testing a recipe.
I even gave my readers the peach pound cake recipe in this book and said, "Okay, y'all go out and make it. Some of you make it with five, some of you make it with six eggs. Come back and tell us what you found out." It was brilliant, so I love Substack. I do.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. All right. Now we're going to talk about John's coconut birthday cake. You explained to me right before we began the interview, it's still a work in progress for you. You're still trying to perfect that perfect coconut cake. You also told me, which I thought was so interesting and some of the listeners may know about this, but Tom Cruise had this coconut cake recently. I can't remember, it was Instagram. I have no idea how it got popular, but actually this recipe of yours was inspired or based on or just came out of your friend Martie Duncan's version of Tom Cruise's cake. Can you tell us a little bit about that cake? And if you know the Tom Cruise story about why everyone started talking about it, I would love to hear that.
Anne Byrn:
There's a bakery, and I've forgotten the name of it, but it's in the L.A. area, and that bakery made that coconut bun cake that has white chocolate in it. And Tom Cruise, and I think he was still married to Katie Holmes then, they would go in. I think she gets credit for finding this cake. Well, anyway, he got the cake after the divorce and so he gives this cake to all of his friends for Christmas. I believe that's his gift. And so it became known as the Tom Cruise white chocolate cake, coconut cake and people tried to copycat it.
Martie Duncan put it on Instagram that she thinks she had nailed it, so I tried Martie's recipe and I thought, "Oh, this white chocolate is so sweet. Wouldn't this be a great coconut cake without it?" So I got rid of the coconut, I baked it as a Bundt, and my husband tasted it, my husband John, and he is obsessed with coconut cake. His birthday's in December. Honestly, I feel like I've never given him the coconut cake of his dreams, and he said, "Oh my God, this cake was fabulous. Will you make this for me in December for my birthday?" And I went, "I'll make it now. Let's try it." So I tried it in the layers and it works great and the crumb is just fabulous. The frosting and how you stack it, I think that's what I'm still in the process of refining.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep. Love, love. First things first, we're going to grease and flour two nine-inch round layer pans, cake layer pans. Is there a brand of cake pan that you like?
Anne Byrn:
I am still using my Williams-Sonoma pans, shiny. I think any brand is great. Shiny pans, shiny pans, not dark.
Jessie Sheehan:
Are the Williams-Sonoma ones the Gold Touch ones? Are they gold?
Anne Byrn:
They are not. This was before Gold Touch.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, wow.
Anne Byrn:
I take good care of my pans. I bought myself a set of three nine-inch from Williams-Sonoma when I was writing the “Cake Mix Doctor.” That was my present to myself, so that was 25 years ago. My pans have never gone in the dishwasher. Never put them in the dishwasher. They'll stay beautiful. Take care of them. Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're going to grease and flour to nine-inch round layer pans that we've never put in the dishwasher, and we're going to grease them with either shortening and flour or butter and flour. Is that right?
Anne Byrn:
You can. If you're super in a pinch, you can use vegetable oil and flour.
Jessie Sheehan:
What about parchment? You're not a parchment person?
Anne Byrn:
Oh, you can definitely do parchment. Yeah, absolutely, and parchment is a great way to go for so many layer cakes because then you don't have to worry. So the parchment round, the cakes that have a little bit of a higher sugar ratio will stick, so I still to the sides. I know it's good for some eggy cakes to have that bare sides to cling to when they go up, but I'm talking about to get the cake out of the pan. I've stopped using Crisco, but I use the chosen avocado shortening, which I love.
Jessie Sheehan:
You can also make this cake. We're doing it in layers but it is a cake that can be made in a Bundt, it can be made as a sheet cake and it can be made as cupcakes. We're going to heat our oven to 350 with the rack in the middle. Recently, I heard about the phenomenon of baking cakes low and slow, like at 300 or 325, the idea being if you do that, they won't dome. What do you think about that?
Anne Byrn:
I think that's fine for cakes that are baked in a Bundt or a tube pan, but layer cakes, you can absolutely bake a layer at 325 and a nine-inch. You don't need to. There's no real purpose there. And even if they dome a little, this cake doesn't dome. This cake does not dome, it bakes flat. If you go up to a 10-inch pan, you need to reduce the temperature to 325. So I think 350 is the standard for nine-inch, for eight-inch layers. If you're going to go with a 10-inch, 325. If you're going to go with a Bundt or a tube pan, 325.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay.
Anne Byrn:
And absolutely, for some pound cakes, you can start them in a... They're called cold oven pancakes. Start them in a cold oven and then heat it to 350.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, okay. So now we're going to whisk together cake flour, baking powder, and kosher salt, and you say that we can use either Swans Down or King Arthur. I have found them, at least when making a pound cake, not to be very interchangeable. Do you find that to be true?
Anne Byrn:
Swans Down is bleached and King Arthur is not. I try to use them interchangeably. I try to use them because I like both and I can't always find Swans Down. And I think I've learned, and you probably have to, after the pandemic, I think we've all had to get more resilient, more adaptable when it comes to ingredients, and especially flours, because you go into your store and they don't have it. I can find King Arthur cake flour more often than I can find Swans Down, which is more regionally available.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're going to whisk this in a medium bowl, and do you have a special kind of bowl that you liked? Do you like Pyrex? Do you like metal?
Anne Byrn:
I like stainless steel bowls. It's easy.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then why are we using cake flour here?
Anne Byrn:
Lower protein, softer flour, higher starch. The lowest you can go, and I talk about all that at the front of the book, on the protein and flour, to try to get the lowest you can go, because picking the right flour is the most important decision you'll make in baking a cake.
Jessie Sheehan:
Because the tenderness in that low-protein flour?
Anne Byrn:
Correct, yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Often, in a recipe, you'll see that cake flour needs to be sifted, but for this cake, you're okay with just whisking it?
Anne Byrn:
I am. Believe me, I will work around sifting any way I can. I'll sift out lumps, but other than that... And I also use the scale, and I think that's another reason that I love stainless steel bowls, because then you can just plop them on, zero it out and use the scale. And in the baking book, I give both measurements, both cups and grams.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're going to whisk together now some buttermilk, some coconut milk and some oil and some extracts in either a large measuring cup or a medium bowl, and I just wanted to mention a few things. With the coconut milk, you give a great tip, which is that often with coconut milk, the fat is going to be on top of the can, the liquids on the bottom, so you recommend warming it on the stove top just to distribute that fat evenly with the liquid?
Anne Byrn:
Definitely. It's weird. Some brands, it's never an issue, and then some cans you open up and there's the fat sitting on top, and I usually just use Trader Joe's. I'll get four or five cans of coconut milk at a time and put it in my pantry.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep. There's also the oil that we're putting into this mixture right now. You say it can be vegetable oil or it can be a light olive oil.
Anne Byrn:
Or a coconut oil.
Jessie Sheehan:
Or a coconut oil. I used to always use a light olive oil, and I forgot about that baking olive oil. It doesn't really have a flavor so it's almost like using a vegetable oil, but it does have a different, I don't know what the right verb is, the texture feels slightly different.
Anne Byrn:
The crumb?
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Anne Byrn:
The crumb is a little bit more coarse or dense.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. When you use olive oil versus vegetable oil.
Anne Byrn:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Is there a brand of either vegetable or baking olive oil that you like?
Anne Byrn:
No. I just look to my pantry and see. If I see a light olive oil on the shelf, I'll buy it for baking, because you don't always find them. Everything is extra virgin, so I think finding one, I keep it. I try not to use canola oil. I do keep avocado oil for lots of cooking. So I am a cook, at the same time, a baker, so I am going to be an adaptable baker because I want to use ingredients that are already in my pantry.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're also going to add both coconut and vanilla extract so I did want to ask about a brand, and I also just wanted to mention that I also often add a little bit of coconut extract to coconut cakes and coconut frostings, and you get a little pushback. Not everybody likes to add anything more than vanilla. Is that always a move for you? You have no problem grabbing a little coconut extract?
Anne Byrn:
No. The Southerners have no trouble adding coconut extract. I think, but you have to be careful how much you add. You don't want to over-add because then it starts to taste like suntan lotion. You don't want to go that far. I love Rodelle extracts. They're beautiful.
Jessie Sheehan:
So now, we're going to place some room-temp, unsalted butter and some granulated sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer. We're going to mix on medium speed until creamy and also fluffy I assume, about three to four minutes. Then with the mixer on low, we'll add eggs, one at a time mixing to incorporate, and then we'll add egg whites. So I had a question about that. Often, you'll see egg whites whisked separately in a separate bowl and then folded in. I love that we're just throwing them in because it's easier, but tell me about why there isn't an extra step of whisking those whites and folding them in.
Anne Byrn:
You could definitely do that if you want to, but they are not there for volume. You've already got your baking powder in the cake. That's going to take care of it. Your cake is going to rise. They are there as a swap out for yolks. They're there to keep the cake lighter in color because they don't have any color, and also to keep the cake lighter in texture.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep. And then one more question I just thought of when you mentioned baking powder. We're using buttermilk in this recipe but we're not using baking soda. Is that-
Anne Byrn:
I know. Isn't that what you-
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Anne Byrn:
Interesting. Again, the baking powder is there for a reason. It's doing the work, and the eggs to some extent. The buttermilk is there for moisture. I definitely think it would be fun to try this with... So you could definitely try this cake with soda, but you risk a soapy taste I think, and that's what baking powder gives you. You know that taste of adding soda to a cake.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep. So we're going to increase our mixer speed to medium-high. We're going to beat the mixture until it's a light lemon color and nearly doubled in volume, about two minutes, and then we'll turn off the mixer. We'll scrape our bowl. Now we're going to add our flour mixture in three installments and then we'll add our buttermilk mixture after each installment in thirds. We'll give a good stir with the rubber spatula making sure to stir from the bottom up. I feel like a lot of recipes are written like, "Dry, wet, but make sure you end with the dry."
Anne Byrn:
I know, it's so funny. When I was writing this for you, I was thinking, "I know she's going to ask me this question." You always begin and end with dry ingredients, right? I mean, who in the heck told us that, right?
Jessie Sheehan:
It's so true. There are so many-
Anne Byrn:
This cake works out fine.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, there are so many things like that.
Anne Byrn:
So we broke a rule here, Jessie.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love it. So we're going to pour the batter into our prepared pans. We'll bake for 35 to 40 minutes or until an instant-read thermometer reaches 200 degrees. Is that always a cake temp? 200?
Anne Byrn:
It's a pretty good cake temp.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay, great.
Anne Byrn:
I think if I was a super duper pastry chef, I would probably have a more exact temp. It might be 199 for layers, 201 for buns or something like that, but it has become my gold standard. And I don't really need it with layers, but I wanted to give it. I definitely use it for pound cakes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, and Bundt cakes maybe.
Anne Byrn:
Yes, yes. But pounds where you just think, because you have so much on the line with a pound cake.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, and you just never know.
Anne Byrn:
And you're making that call. Oh, I think it's done. I think it's done. It smells done, whatever. You're pressing on it. You don't know and you don't want it to fall, so having that thermometer really helps.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's a really good tip for Bundt cakes and loaf cakes. That's a really good tip. You also say you can use a wooden skewer. I'm very fond of long wooden skewers myself. We'll insert in the center until it comes out clean. I am always looking for a moist crumb, or when I write a recipe, I always want a moist crumb because I hate overbaked cakes or dry cakes.
Anne Byrn:
I do too. I do too.
Jessie Sheehan:
So then we're going to let the cakes cool in the pan for about 15 minutes. We'll run a small metal spatula, like an offset spatula around the edges of the pan. I love this. Give the cakes a good shake or two to loosen them. I have never heard of the good shake, but I will be-
Anne Byrn:
A good shake.
Jessie Sheehan:
I will be good shaking from now on.
Anne Byrn:
And I didn't add, a quarter turn good shake, a quarter turn good shake.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, love, love. Then we're going to invert the cakes onto the rack and let the layers cool before we frost, about 45 minutes. The frosting here is going to be a cream cheese frosting, so to make our cream cheese frosting, we're going to place room-temp butter and cream cheese. Now this time, the directions are a clean, large mixing bowl, but we could still be using our stand mixer if we wanted.
Anne Byrn:
Yes, definitely.
Jessie Sheehan:
And with an electric mixer on medium-low speed, we'll beat the butter and cream cheese until creamy and combined, about one minute. Then we'll add some kosher salt and a cup of powdered sugar, beat until combined. And then we'll keep adding a cup of sugar, beating and then adding, beating and then adding. Then we'll increase our mixer speed to medium and beat one minute so the frosting gets fluffy and light. We'll use a little bit of coconut milk to thin out the frosting if we need to, but you may not too. Correct?
Anne Byrn:
Don't really need to, I think. So much depends when you make icings like this, the temperature of your ingredients and also the temperature of your kitchen. Summer cakes are tricky with any kind of buttercream frosting because you've got to really work with the heat of your kitchen and get the cake in the refrigerator to set, things like that.
Jessie Sheehan:
To assemble, we're going to frost the top of one layer. Then we're going to generously sprinkle with coconut. I assume it's a sweetened shredded coconut.
Anne Byrn:
It is. Most of them are all sweetened and shredded. You can buy some. You can still buy unsweetened shredded coconut at a few places, yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
And what's the brand that you like of shredded coconut?
Anne Byrn:
Well, usually I use Baker's, and I was looking recently and Baker's is hard to buy now and it's just store brand, so I don't know what's going on with Baker's.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. So then we're going to place the second layer on top of the first, frost the sides of the cake, add frosting to the top, re-frost the sides. Is that right? Just for an extra-
Anne Byrn:
Yes. For more... But the first was more like a crumb coat, just-
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep. And then if our kitchen is warm, we're going to place the cake in the fridge for 20 minutes to chill. Otherwise, we will pat coconut generously on the top and sides of the cake. We can slice it once, or either because your kitchen is warm or just because it's a little easier to slice, we can refrigerate briefly.
Anne Byrn:
Yes. Perfect.
Jessie Sheehan:
Sounds good. Well, thank you so much for chatting with me today, Anne, and I just want to say that you are my cherry pie.
Anne Byrn:
Aw, thank you, Jessie.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's it for today's show. You can find today's recipe at cherrybombe.com. Thank you to California Prunes for supporting our show. Don't forget to follow She's My Cherry Pie on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen, and tell your pals about us. She's My Cherry Pie is a production of The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network. Our producers are Kerry Diamond, Catherine Baker, and Jenna Sadhu. Thank you so much for listening to She's My Cherry Pie, and happy baking.