Bobbie Lloyd 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.
My guest today is Bobbie Lloyd, the CEO and CBO, that's Chief Baking Officer of Magnolia Bakery, the iconic New York City institution known for its desserts, especially its cupcakes, which Carrie Bradshaw of “Sex and the City” made famous, and its banana pudding. Bobbie's been with Magnolia for years and has helped grow the brand from a charming New York City bakery to an international sensation. She's also a celebrated cookbook author and just released a brand new book, “The Magnolia Bakery Handbook Volume Two: Icebox Desserts,” a book filled with nostalgic no-bake treats, perfect for warm weather and laid-back entertaining. Bobbie joins me to chat about her love of baking and the New York-styled cheesecake business she dreamed of starting when she was just a kid. Her now shuttered bakery in Brookline, Massachusetts, my hometown, that was very Magnolia-esque in its baked goods and vibe, and how she turned Magnolia from a cupcake shop into a banana pudding empire. Then Bobbie walks me through Magnolia Bakery's famous banana pudding recipe. Magnolia's banana pudding is, in my opinion, one of the best out there and is utterly delicious. I loved chatting with Bobbie, so stay tuned for our convo. You can find today's recipe at cherrybombe.com.
Peeps, did you know that we have a free She's My Cherry Pie newsletter that coincides with each new episode? It comes out every Saturday morning and shares insights about the guest, their recipe, and other fun tidbits and baking news like our Cake of the Week. To sign up, head to cherrybombe.substack.com or click the link in our show notes.
Let's chat with today's guest, Bobbie.
Bobbie Lloyd:
Hi.
Jessie Sheehan:
So excited to have you on She's My Cherry Pie and to talk banana pudding with you and so much more.
Bobbie Lloyd:
Thank you, I'm excited too. You're one of my heroes, so it's fun to be here.
Jessie Sheehan:
So first, can you share with us an early baking… it can be a baking memory, like you were making something, or it can be a baking or sweet memory, like you were eating something.
Bobbie Lloyd:
I believe I was around three years old 'cause you're not sure where your memories begin, but my grandmother, might've been my great-grandmother set me up on the counter, she was making pie dough. And I was watching her roll out the dough and she handed me a piece of pie dough and said, "You make your shape." And I played with it and it ended up being gray in color and I couldn't wait to take my little piece of pie dough and put it on the pan. She brushed it with melted butter and put cinnamon sugar on it. And it was mine, that was my first creation.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that, I love that. There's also a memory that I read about, maybe gathering strawberries at I think your grandmother's farm when you were little to make. Then you would make a strawberry icebox pie or bake a pie with your mom, and maybe it was even your great-grandmother's recipe that you guys were working from.
Bobbie Lloyd:
Yes, I think it was called the “Starlight Searchlight.” If you google it, you can see-
Jessie Sheehan:
It's called the “Household Searchlight Recipe Book.”
Bobbie Lloyd:
Yep. So, it was my great-grandmother's book, and you see her little pencil lines in the side notes. And the back of the book, which I did in this is the your own recipes section and she has her recipe for strawberry pie. My other grandmother had not a working farm farm but they had a farm that had a huge garden 'cause they love gardening and we couldn't wait for strawberry season because we'd go and pick our strawberries, come home and make strawberry pie, and of course, everyone's favorite strawberry shortcake.
Jessie Sheehan:
And the strawberry icebox pie, or is that the pie you're referring to, or was it more like a baked pie?
Bobbie Lloyd:
The strawberry icebox pie it's not baked so it's got a graham cracker crust or you can do a regular pie crust. And I always call it the goo 'cause that's what we called it as kids. It's the fresh strawberries but then you make the goo using a little cornstarch, cooking the strawberries with sugar and smashing them down. And that was kind of the fun part. From when you're a little kid, you're making this red goo stuff, a lot of people transition that to Jell-O 'cause it was easier.
Jessie Sheehan:
You would cook the filling on the stovetop, but you never actually baked the pie.
Bobbie Lloyd:
No, it's an unbaked pie.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love it, I love that
Bobbie Lloyd:
You just cook it for a few minutes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Right, to activate starch?
Bobbie Lloyd:
To sweat the strawberries and then to activate the starch.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep. I also read that when you were little icebox were a part of your life, that was something you would make with your mom or with your brother or somebody was making them for you. So, you go way back with icebox cakes.
Bobbie Lloyd:
I go way back with icebox and my dad was a junk food junkie so he just loved everything to do with ice cream and cream cheese and cheesecakes and kind of anything and everything. And we always had desserts. I come from a generation and I actually was signing some books yesterday where I wrote, "Eat more sugar." We had cake for breakfast, we had sweets for breakfast. I never had eggs, my mother never ever made eggs so it was always a homemade chocolate cake, chocolate pudding for dinner. So, all of these things that came out of a box, those recipes in the '50s and '60s that were the back of the box or the little booklets that came with your equipment, that's what we made.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. I grew up in a house where we ate dessert every single night. If you did not have dessert, there was something terribly wrong. It was never used as a punishment like you were naughty, no dessert. We just ate it. My brother and I had it every night. No one in my family baked or made anything from scratch so it was double-stuffed Oreos. And remember those Pepperidge Farm raspberry turnovers? I don't know if you've ever had one. They are amazing, but like Breyer's vanilla ice cream. And so, I can relate to growing up in a home where it's like, "Oh yeah, sugar, let's do it."
Bobbie Lloyd:
I guess my dad was a junk food junkie but my mom had her favorites that she loved. So, on Mondays, she would make a Texas sheet cake and every day you'd cut a little piece and cut a little piece with the fudge icing, and by Friday, there might be one or two pieces left. It would go in a bowl and dad will pour milk over it and that would be breakfast.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh my God, I love him so much. I have a note in here about your dad loving junk food, I love that. You mentioned cheesecakes and I do know that as a kid you were really into making New York-style cheesecakes. Tell me about that, it just came to you, what was going on?
Bobbie Lloyd:
I'm not 100% sure where it even started because I was fascinated by them and people thought they were so hard to make and they're not, they're easy to make. I've advised a ton of girlfriends too, they're like, "My cheesecake cracked," I was like, "Water bath, lower temperature, water bath." So, teaching people the basics so I had this idea that I was going to make my future fortune selling cheesecakes to restaurants and cafes and I was going to line my garage up with ovens, I don't like my crazy ideas. It didn't materialize until fast-forward, but I'm not sure why because in the Midwest, New York cheesecakes were considered really gourmet, maybe not so much in New York.
Jessie Sheehan:
Explain to me New York versus regular, what was special about the fact you were making New York?
Bobbie Lloyd:
That's a very good question. The New York style cheesecakes, which by the way I do not make, that's not what's in the book, are more cream cheesy. They're denser, thicker, heavier. I like cheesecakes that are more like a custard so I add cream, liquid cream, to my cheesecake batter and it's much lighter, it pours like heavy cream as the batter pours out of that texture. You have to bake it a little bit longer but the texture of it is like a souffle. It's absolutely delicious and it doesn't have that really intense cream cheese flavor.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. You know what? I actually love cream cheese, but I also love Basque cheesecake partly because it's so easy to make and I like easy, but also that creamy custardiness in the center of a perfectly baked Basque cheesecake.
Bobbie Lloyd:
That's it, that is what you're going to get with these. But not Basque style where it's cooked with a higher temperature but it's super creamy on inside. And people will say to me, "Oh, it's underbaked," I was like, "No, it's not. It's finished now." That might be the hardest part is to determine when it's done, but it's like you let it sit, then you put it in the fridge overnight and tomorrow it will be perfect.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep, totally, totally. And then, when you were thinking and preparing for your cheesecake empire, were you coming up with different flavors or was it just sort of classic with maybe a chocolate cookie crust or a graham cracker crust? Tell us.
Bobbie Lloyd:
It was classic. It was graham cracker crust with strawberries on top and the strawberry goo so that was it.
Jessie Sheehan:
The strawberry goo makes an appearance again. I love it.
Bobbie Lloyd:
The big ones so that you put them point up so it looked really beautiful and then the goo poured over it so it's nice and it holds it all together and keeps them shiny.
Jessie Sheehan:
I feel like food was kind of a focus of your family. There were food lovers in your family and I know your mom, you've described her as a wonderful baker and taster. Tell us about some of her specialties, I mean, you mentioned the pudding and you mentioned the strawberry pie. Tell us about other things that she loved to bake or that you loved her to bake.
Bobbie Lloyd:
My mother was such a great pie maker. We had tomatoes, asparagus, peach tree, which... in the Midwest, mulberries, grapevine in our own backyard. So, every fall we would make our own grape jelly. That was really fun.
Jessie Sheehan:
Were they like Concord grapes?
Bobbie Lloyd:
They were Concord grapes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh my gosh.
Bobbie Lloyd:
The kids would pick them, we'd each get a big brown paper bag, go out to the backyard, fill our bag with them and then come in the house and she'd cook them down with sugar. She would take a giant cotton cloth, turn a table or a stool or chair a stool upside down, tie that in the corners. I wish you could see me 'cause I'm doing it. So, tie to each of the four legs over a pot. And after they cook, then you strain it because there's so much and we would make jars and jars and jars of it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh my gosh.
Bobbie Lloyd:
But it was always the ice cream on the back porch with the old hand crank, with the rock salt and the ice. Pies, she was a wonderful pie maker and she had this beautiful, and you can Google it and find them sometimes on eBay, an old glass rolling pin that had a screw thing on the end and you'd fill it with water and freeze it.
Jessie Sheehan:
So it would stay cold while you're rolling out your dough.
Bobbie Lloyd:
So it would stay cold. And always the dough would get rolled between two cotton towels so it wouldn't get sweaty or wet, put some flour on it, put your dough in there and then she'd roll it out so it's nice and cold. So, it's doing it on a piece of marble.
Jessie Sheehan:
Right, right, of course. I love that.
Bobbie Lloyd:
I wish we had kept that thing.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, that's incredible. And as you said, your dad loved junk food. Did that influence you? Were you like, "Yum, Fritos," or were you like, "Dad, gross."
Bobbie Lloyd:
A little bit of both.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Bobbie Lloyd:
I had my things I loved as a kid but I did outgrow them because my mom wasn't a good cook when it came to dinners, everything came out of a box. And I was fairly young when I was like, I rebelled, I did not want that. I was 16, I was driving myself to school and to work and coming home and making my own dinner because I'd get home late and I started making fresh food. So, that set me on a path to sort of developed my culinary career.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, so cool.
Bobbie Lloyd:
And she even looked at me one time was like, "How do you know about liver? We've never ever made liver in this house." And I was like, "I don't know, I like liver."
Jessie Sheehan:
Right. I love that.
We'll be right back. Cherry Bombe's summer issue will be out in early June. Stay tuned for the cover announcement, but I did hear that there will be multiple covers, and I can't wait to see who's on them. To get this issue, subscribe to Cherry Bombe magazine so you'll be the first to receive it when it's released. Subscribe at cherrybombe.com or click the link in our show notes.
Peeps, have you tuned into Radio Cherry Bombe? It's the flagship podcast from Cherry Bombe hosted by founder Kerry Diamond. Every Monday, Kerry sits down with the most fascinating folks in food, drink, and hospitality from icons to rising stars. Don't miss her conversations with Ina Garten, Alice Waters, Padma Lakshmi, “The Bear's” Liza Colón-Zayas, and so many more. Listen to Radio Cherry Bombe on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. And be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Now, back to our guest.
I read that you attended or maybe you taught your first cooking class at age eight?
Bobbie Lloyd:
I attended.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay.
Bobbie Lloyd:
So, my mother worked part-time for the school district and when I was eight, I think it was about third grade, she came home and said she was going to start working full-time and that we had a family meeting and that the kids, my brother and I were a year apart, would have to start helping and what were we going to do? I was like, "I'll help cook, I want to help cook." So, they signed me up for a 12-week course at the YWCA in our town and it was called International Cooking. The first day it was hot chocolate and cinnamon toast. And by the 12th week-
Jessie Sheehan:
Yum, can I just say great way to start a class?
Bobbie Lloyd:
I don't remember all the other classes but I do remember the final one 'cause that was the invite the parents and it was International Cooking Day. And my little group, we made paella.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh.
Bobbie Lloyd:
I had never heard of paella in my life, eight years old. So, we learned how to make rice, we learned how to cook the chicken, we learned how to cut our vegetables and that also was a great way to say like, "I can do this."
Jessie Sheehan:
We touched on this earlier but you inherited this cookbook from your great-grandmother, the Household Searchlight Recipe Book, which is such a funny, weird name.
Bobbie Lloyd:
I know.
Jessie Sheehan:
I'm still trying to unpack it, which was published in 1934. She always was cooking and I know she had a diner. She was always working straight out of that recipe book, combining her own stuff that she wrote in the back of the book with the stuff that was printed. And then, when you inherited that were you like, "Oh my gosh, this is a treasure trove like my family," et cetera, or was that not your style?
Bobbie Lloyd:
Well, my mother didn't give me the book until not too long ago.
Jessie Sheehan:
Ah, there you go.
Bobbie Lloyd:
So, my mother just passed away two years ago and I knew about it but it had been shoved in the back of a drawer somewhere. And then, after my dad died, she pulled it out and said like, "I need to make sure that this book goes to you because you're going to appreciate the most." And then, I started reading through this, that old lady chicken scratch that you can barely read in pencil, all of the last pages were filled with her little recipes and the little side notes, the fingerprints, the greasy fingerprints from turning pages.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, I love it. And I suppose it's savory obviously probably with the dessert chapter or something?
Bobbie Lloyd:
Big dessert chapters. And the thing I learned and I think you probably would appreciate this enormously, things don't change. You might evolve in change ingredients, but techniques don't really change.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Bobbie Lloyd:
Maybe you have a hand mixer, and now you've got a stand mixer.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep.
Bobbie Lloyd:
The equipment might change a little bit but things don't change that much. Braising is braising, sauteing is sauteing.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Bobbie Lloyd:
You might incorporate a few more instructions than the older cookbooks did, but there's still a lot of the same exact type of instructions.
Jessie Sheehan:
I also would think 'cause I wrote a book about old-fashioned vintage baking recipes, which you talk about in the intro to your icebox cakes book because it's about those little tiny recipe booklets that were purchased or given to consumers who bought a refrigerator or bought a freezer. But I was also struck with, at least for those of us that love nostalgia and nostalgic desserts, those old recipe books.
Bobbie Lloyd:
I have a stack of them like that.
Jessie Sheehan:
Are such inviting and you kind of, I mean maybe not every single thing that's made with Jell-O, but you want to make so many of them. I can imagine a dessert chapter in that book of your grandmother's must have been like, "Oh my God."
Bobbie Lloyd:
Yeah, and a lot of it's pudding too because they had a lot of pudding back then. And really, I don't know if Jell-O and the instant puddings were around yet in the early '30s, but as it started to evolve, you'll see more recipes made with a lot of the instant stuff. One of my mother's favorite ones is the frozen lime one that's in the book because you just you open a few cans and you throw things together and it's done.
Jessie Sheehan:
I still use my grandmother in her chicken scratch on an index card her chocolate pudding recipe, which is just a cornstarch-based pudding. I think maybe there's an egg yolk but it's not a whole tempering egg situation, it's so simple and I love it so much. So, in your third year of college, you made the decision you were going to follow your dream, you're going to become a chef, does this imply that you dropped out?
Bobbie Lloyd:
I did.
Jessie Sheehan:
How did your family feel about that?
Bobbie Lloyd:
I did drop out and that was early '80. God, the years kind of you forget, right? Maybe 1980. It was like, "You're going to do what?" I learned very quickly, one of the things I always did was take summer school classes or night classes in college because it's like three hours you're done. Not one hour a day, three days a week. It's like, "Just let me learn it, I'll get it done and I'm good. I felt like I was ready to go. And by quitting and going to culinary school, and it was a one-year program, it was also, "I don't need four years of culinary school, I don't need two years of culinary school. I'm going to work, I'm going to get in a kitchen, I'm going to work my patootie off and I'm going to learn everything I can possibly learn."
So, it was more of at that time, you're a woman going into an industry that at the time was considered not a career path, it was really more of a trade. I'm sure you may have gone through the same thing as I did is trying to get a job in a kitchen in the late '70s and the early '80s, that was not easy. And a lot of my girlfriends who are chefs say the same thing it's like, "We had to fight our way in."
Jessie Sheehan:
So, you went to school in Newton but you went to the Boston area and you actually ended up opening up a restaurant and bakery in my hometown of Brookline, Massachusetts.
Bobbie Lloyd:
I love that.
Jessie Sheehan:
And I love that you wrote that actually the bakery part of your restaurant really reminded you when you first were introduced to Magnolia. You were like, "What? That's mine."
Bobbie Lloyd:
It's like, "She stole my recipe."
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, exactly. So, tell me about the bakery that was part of this restaurant.
Bobbie Lloyd:
So, American Accent was the name of the restaurant and it was a combination of bakery, cafe and restaurant, full service, we did lunch and dinner seven days a week. But you came into the building and the first thing you had was a retail bakery. Our concept was if it's on the table, we've made it. So, it's the bread, it's the desserts, it's ice cream but it was all, my partner and I had a lot of home-style desserts. She was Jewish from Westchester so it was the recipes she grew up with her family. And I'm not Jewish and I'm from the Midwest, it was the recipes I grew up with my family combined together. And it was really special, it really was. We had such an enormous following of customers because everything was made with the best ingredients and again, if it was on the table, we made it. We made mustard, we made our own ketchup, we made our own sauces, jams, jellies, butters, we were nuts.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh my gosh. So then you moved to New York City, you ended up, you were Calvin Klein and his wife's private chef for a while, you were the service manager at Union Square Cafe. That service manager, I assume means sort of in charge of the service staff?
Bobbie Lloyd:
Front of the house, yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep. And then, you opened and co-founded It's a Wrap. And since 2006, you've been the President and/or Chief Baking Officer of Magnolia Bakery, which kind of has brought your love of baking full circle. When that happened through your partner and people in the industry who brought you onto the Magnolia project, I know you were there when it first began, were you missing baking when you took that job? Was there a hole in your heart like, "Why am I not working with butter and sugar?"
Bobbie Lloyd:
Oh, absolutely, I missed it so much. I still baked at home and I had other restaurants where I incorporated baking. So, even It's a Wrap, all of the desserts that we made, we now do at Magnolia Bakery. But my carrot cake, my brownies, blondies, cookies, more that American-style desserts, again, I incorporated all of those into the menu. So, I had opportunity without me having to be the chef or be the person in the kitchen every day at every moment.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. So, tell us about Magnolia Bakery, I know it opened its doors in 1996. Is it true that it was sort of catapulted into national attention with “Sex and the City?”
Bobbie Lloyd:
Not just national, global.
Jessie Sheehan:
Holy.
Bobbie Lloyd:
Absolutely.
Jessie Sheehan:
Tell the story for those that don't know. And first describe the bakery just in case people don't know.
Bobbie Lloyd:
Gosh, it's this cute little bakery, 643 square feet on a corner in the West Village of New York City, absolutely adorable space. Tiny, tiny, tiny, and we do all the baking there and it's really intense. Everything's made fresh daily throughout the day so it's constantly being baked. So, you're getting a fresh cupcake at 10 o'clock at night as well as at eight o'clock in the morning. A lot of bakeries don't do that. A lot of bakeries will bake overnight and then have everything for the day and when they run out, they run out. We do it differently, we'll continue to bake all day long. If you need more, we can make more. So, it's very simple. But yeah, Magnolia Bakery introduced the cupcake craze where the media tells the story that we introduced the cupcake craze. I like to say cupcakes have been around forever. I had them at my wedding in 1997.
Jessie Sheehan:
I had them at my wedding.
Bobbie Lloyd:
What year did you get married?
Jessie Sheehan:
2002.
Bobbie Lloyd:
So, was the cupcake thing was just starting.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Bobbie Lloyd:
'97 it wasn't. So, I had cupcakes at my wedding, I did carrot cake cupcakes at my wedding.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, we did Ina Garten's coconut cupcakes.
Bobbie Lloyd:
Nice, so those are good.
Jessie Sheehan:
They're so good.
Bobbie Lloyd:
They're really good.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Bobbie Lloyd:
My mother had cupcakes, I had cupcakes at my birthdays when I was a little kid. My great-grandmother had cupcakes. But the craze bringing it back to the public, but the “Sex and the City” thing was kind of how, and people still talk about it.
Jessie Sheehan:
What year was that, do you remember?
Bobbie Lloyd:
2001. It was a scout, they put cupcakes on a little bench in front of the bakery, and then Carrie and Miranda sat on that bench talking to each other, eating a little vanilla cupcake with pink buttercream and a daisy. We actually sell a cupcake called the Carrie Cupcake.
Jessie Sheehan:
I read that you kind of brought that, I think that's brilliant.
Bobbie Lloyd:
It's cute.
Jessie Sheehan:
I think that's brilliant.
Bobbie Lloyd:
But people talk about it worldwide. When we opened our first location internationally, it was in Dubai in 2010, I was there for the grand opening with the chairman of the board of Bloomingdale's 'cause we're inside a Bloomingdale's store and it was a huge press event and Bloomingdale's was shrouded. It was going to be the big unveiling, drop the curtain, everyone was going to go crazy. The curtain drops and there must have been, I don't know, 200 women standing out in the mall entrance and they screamed, "Oh my God, it's Magnolia Bakery." And we looked at each other like, "Okay, this is global phenomenon. Who knew?" I didn't know that reaction. I thought people were not going to know who we were in Dubai.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, that is incredible. The Magnolia Bakery has 40 stores worldwide.
Bobbie Lloyd:
45.
Jessie Sheehan:
45 stores worldwide.
Bobbie Lloyd:
It changes every day.
Jessie Sheehan:
Right, 45 stores worldwide in Manila, Bangalore, Dubai, Washington, et cetera, et cetera. And you were kind of responsible for scaling the business and launching the e-commerce. Tell us about your title, which I know you gave yourself, Chief Baking Officer.
Bobbie Lloyd:
So, I have two titles, I'm CEO now and CBO.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay.
Bobbie Lloyd:
I gave myself the CBO title because people just didn't get that if you're a president or now CEO that you would be a baker. They didn't understand that connection to it. And so, I thought, I'm going to wear that hat when I need to talk about baking." It's not official like I don't sign contracts that way, but it is my title of who I am, my heart and soul, how I live.
Jessie Sheehan:
Well, also what's so interesting is to have you be the business side boss, but also the boss who actually knows everything about baking and ends up writing the baking books that the company produces because you are equally knowledgeable about running a business as you are baking.
Bobbie Lloyd:
I'm a little insane. It is well-known in my company I'm a little insane because it never stops, things are always going and you have to do them if it's always going. I can't just be like numbers all day long. I have to sit down and say, "No, I want something sweet." My brain is saying, "Let's make whatever it is," I'm coming up with something creative and I already know, and I'll bet you do this too. You kind of know what it's going to taste like before you've actually made it 'cause you've done it for so many years, now it's just putting it together.
Jessie Sheehan:
So, the other thing, which is very apropos of the recipe we're discussing today, banana pudding, is that you put banana pudding back on the map if it had ever left, which think it had or maybe it was never on the map, and you turned this cupcake shop into this banana pudding empire, which I kind of missed that memo. I didn't realize the banana pudding became Magnolia's, I mean, I know that I loved it and I remember my kids were in elementary school and we were having some kind of school potluck 12 years ago, 15 years ago, and somebody brought this enormous banana pudding from Magnolia. And the school was very close to the bakery and I was like, "What? This is incredible," I had no idea. Tell us about that move that you made from cupcakes to, I know you didn't intentionally do it, but tell us about how that happened.
Bobbie Lloyd:
It actually was intentional and I think this is a good story because Allysa Torey had it on the menu, it was always part of the menu, but it was kind of this sleeper dessert that when it was gone, it was gone, they'd only make so much every day. So, when we bought the bakery from her in 2006 we're like, "Whoa, this is good stuff. Why don't we make more?" So, we kind of worked out a new system in the bakery where we could make more throughout the day all day and have it ready. It has to sit for about six hours. So, you assemble it, technically you could eat it right away but the wafers are hard.
And people really like it when the wafers get softened, that takes time so we just came up with a schedule. It's like every two hours, make a few pans of pudding. And we saw that the more we made, the more we sold. And it just kept happening and we'd made more and it sold more and we made more and it sold more so we're like, "We're onto this, people love this product." It is now 30% of our sales.
Jessie Sheehan:
Wow. What are cupcakes?
Bobbie Lloyd:
So 30%, they're pretty much even.
Jessie Sheehan:
Even-steven.
Bobbie Lloyd:
But when we bought the bakery, it was over 50% for cupcakes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Fascinating.
Bobbie Lloyd:
Maybe even 60.
Jessie Sheehan:
Even back in the day, like that kind of paper pint container that you put the pudding in.
Bobbie Lloyd:
They did, yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
They always did something like that 'cause I always thought that.
Bobbie Lloyd:
I think it was one size, maybe two sizes, I'm trying to remember but 18 years ago-
Jessie Sheehan:
And as I was researching you and looking at videos you've done and things like that online, every time I saw one of those pints I was like, "I need a banana pudding right now."
Bobbie Lloyd:
I did not bring some today. Oh, no.
Jessie Sheehan:
I know, it looks so good to me. And so, now I think originally it was just the straight-up banana pudding and then you began to riff on the classic, I think maybe chocolate?
Bobbie Lloyd:
Chocolate.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then, peanut butter banana was at your 20th anniversary, now they're like 35 to 40 flavors of banana pudding that you're kind of rotating throughout the year?
Bobbie Lloyd:
Yes, it's never-ending, any combination you can think of. And there's also the banana-less versions.
Jessie Sheehan:
Right.
Bobbie Lloyd:
So, we've added other fruit, adds even more recipes to the mix.
Jessie Sheehan:
Right, I love that, I love it. And then, there're even internationally, there's Choc Nut banana pudding in the Philippines and Lotus banana pudding in the Middle East.
Bobbie Lloyd:
And we just did the Dubai chocolate pudding in the Middle East.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, amazing, with pistachio?
Bobbie Lloyd:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh my gosh.
Bobbie Lloyd:
It's too expensive for us to do it here. We really wanted to but then I started looking at the ingredients so then I go, "Oh my God, one pint is going to cost somebody 18 bucks."
Jessie Sheehan:
Right, not worth it.
Bobbie Lloyd:
So, we can't pass that on.
Jessie Sheehan:
You also kind of created a banana pudding holiday and there are banana pudding cookies in stores. So, it's clear that your job as Chief Baking Officer and lover of sweets and baking is actually a lot of recipe development. It's not just running the business side of the company. What would you say the percentage of your time is spent actually developing recipes going into your test kitchen, et cetera?
Bobbie Lloyd:
Maybe 10, 15%. We don't introduce a lot of new things all the time and so I can create something basically in my head. I call it the test of five. It'll be in my head, I'll go to my test kitchen, I'll do the recipe. I think it's perfect today, love it, don't have to go any further. I might need to do a few more tests here and there. Then I send it out to my team and we then go to five different bakers, one internationally, one in our commissary and three, Chicago, L.A., and one in New York. I ask for their feedback, "I want you to make it, does it read right? Does it follow?" Then take pictures or send it to my office so we can all taste it. Great, now we all agree it's perfect.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Oh, I love that.
Bobbie Lloyd:
And it launches.
Jessie Sheehan:
Tell us about where your test kitchen is.
Bobbie Lloyd:
So, it's literally outside my office. I have a glass wall from my office and then there's my test kitchen. Sometimes when I'm on video calls, I'll turn my camera around they'll say, "Where's your test kitchen?" It's like, "Right there."
Jessie Sheehan:
I love it. And it's just yours.
Bobbie Lloyd:
I let other people do things that if they need to make a lunch for themselves or something, but all of the equipment in it, I'm a little anal about where my stuff goes. If you borrow a spatula, you better put it back.
Jessie Sheehan:
All right, now I want to talk about the book, “The Magnolia Bakery Handbook Volume Two: Icebox Desserts.” What gave you the idea to do an icebox cake book?
Bobbie Lloyd:
So, my first book, “Volume One, The Magnolia Bakery Handbook,” I'm supposed to be 150 recipes, 50,000 words. And you've written books, you know that you get a little carried away sometimes and I ended up with 200 recipes and about, I don't know, 80,000 words. So, I was like, "Oh no, I need to cut this back. What do I do?" So, I just chopped out the whole cheesecake chapter to begin with and I was like, "Oh, I need to take a few more things out. What else?" So, because it's about categories, every category is in that book from cakes to pies to scones, muffins. So, I just reduced the chapters and a lot of them came out of the icebox and I said, "There's my second book."
Jessie Sheehan:
Amazing.
Bobbie Lloyd:
I knew that I had enough in there, just in what I'd already pulled out to get to 50. So, “Volume Two” is 100 recipes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Now, we're going to talk about Magnolia Bakery's famous banana pudding. I understand that originally banana pudding, like maybe before the 1920s was made with a sponge cake instead of vanilla wafers. I also wondered, and I was just googling this before you came, it's an unusual recipe. I mean, the pudding part is not unusual, it happens to be from a box, which is great. I can't wait to talk about that because no shame for things that come from a box, but the recipe also calls for sweetened condensed milk, which we will definitely be talking about as we go through the recipe. Is that traditional?
Bobbie Lloyd:
No, that's what sets it apart at Magnolia. If you do the back of the box recipe, it's basically the instant pudding, add water or add milk so they keep it pretty simple. But I've dealt with this a lot where people will say to me, especially if they're from the south, "Well, my grandma's pudding is better," and I was like, "I don't mess with grandma. Yes, I'm sure it is." And most likely it was a custom scratch recipe and layer. I had a funny experience one time with, I'm going to name his name, Bill Telepan, famous chef. Our kids went to the same school and you know how you do your fundraising events?
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Bobbie Lloyd:
And one of them was the potluck dinner thing where people pay a ticket and they come to your tables and they eat and taste things. I brought Magnolia Bakery pudding and Bill, who's a good friend, made his own pudding and they put him right next to me and he just looked at me like, "Why did I not think to talk to you?" He goes, "I figured you'd be bringing cupcakes." And of course, nobody went to his table, they all came over to Magnolia Bakery. I think it's just this evolution over time of what people now expect of banana pudding because it's been around probably since the '50s or '60s that back of the box recipe, especially vanilla wafers became a thing and then of course the instant pudding.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep.
Bobbie Lloyd:
Because anybody could make it, prior to that you had to be a grandma who could make pudding.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, the intro of the sweetened condensed milk is confusing 'cause there are other recipes out there that have it that I think are old, although they could have copied Magnolia. But I thought that was interesting. And I just wondered because I once developed a banana pudding for Bon Appétit online, I wanted to take what I loved about Magnolia but make it homemade. I still use sweetened condensed milk, I think I might've folded in whipped cream too. I did something, I did some things that were different, but I made my own pudding. Have you ever done that? Have you ever made the banana pudding recipe but with your grandma's cornstarch-based vanilla pudding?
Bobbie Lloyd:
I love that question because when we bought Magnolia Bakery, one of the things that was important to me was to elevate. It had been around for 10 years already. People loved the desserts, but I wanted to elevate by incorporating better quality ingredients, better chocolate, better whatever, homemade pies instead of pie filling. And one of them was the banana pudding. And even though it was a sleeper dessert I was like, "Oh my God, not from a box," I was being a purist. And so, I made my own and I brought it in and we did the side by side and everybody was like, "Nope, you got to keep it like this."
Jessie Sheehan:
Did you put the sweetened condensed milk in yours?
Bobbie Lloyd:
Yep. They were all like, "No, we want this."
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh my gosh.
Bobbie Lloyd:
But did you make the Magnolia version?
Jessie Sheehan:
I've never made the Magnolia version.
Bobbie Lloyd:
So, the Magnolia version you-
Jessie Sheehan:
But I've eaten it a million times.
Bobbie Lloyd:
Yeah, you make the pudding from the box mix and we call it pudding part one, and you make it very, very thick. So, it's literally it'll hold up and not even drip or anything.
Jessie Sheehan:
It doesn't have a lot of liquid.
Bobbie Lloyd:
It's super thick. It's the whipped cream that lightens it up, now so it's the water and sweetened condensed milk with the dry pudding mix. Pudding part one. And then, you can make that ahead of time, stick it in the fridge, that's what creates the right texture. And I've had people say to me that the recipe from the book isn't exactly like the bakery and they are correct in only one reason. In the bakery, we make it in really big batches, so we do it by weights, but I want the home baker to be able to buy one box of vanilla wafers, one box of Jell-O, one can of sweetened condensed milk. So, the ratios are just slightly different, it is a little creamier.
Jessie Sheehan:
If you make it at home?
Bobbie Lloyd:
When you make it at home.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. So, first things first, we're going to place our instant vanilla pudding and the brand you love is Jell-O pudding into a four-quart bowl. Do you like a glass bowl? Do you like a metal bowl? I mean, in the bakery, I'm sure it's metal.
Bobbie Lloyd:
It's metal, yeah. At home I use glass because I just like to see everything.
Jessie Sheehan:
Me too, I love my glass Pyrex, and you'll set that aside. And then, in an eight-cup large liquid measuring cup or a medium bowl, preferably with a spout, the spout is the thing here. We're whisking together some sweetened condensed milk and some ice-cold water until smooth. So, a couple of questions. What kind of whisk do you like? Are we talking a balloon whisk? Are we talking something thin here?
Bobbie Lloyd:
I even literally say whatever you have at home. During COVID I did a lot of Zoom classes teaching people to make banana pudding, and one of the biggest issues was people didn't have the tools. So, if they had two forks, I'd teach them how to do it with two forks. The balloon one is going to be hard to get into that bowl.
Jessie Sheehan:
The corners.
Bobbie Lloyd:
So, you can even do a small one. And if you can't do that, the goal is to get it completely homogeneously mixed together so it just pours like liquid.
Jessie Sheehan:
And tell us why ice-cold water, why do you need cold water when you're making this?
Bobbie Lloyd:
The back of the box says cold water and Jell-O. I've never tried it with warm water, so I always use ice-cold water. I think it's the way it blooms, the pudding, the way it accepts the water differently, maybe it helps to dissolve it in a different way because hot water's going to melt it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Melt it almost. Yeah.
Bobbie Lloyd:
Whereas you don't want to melt it, you want it to be mixed together.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, interesting, interesting. So, we mix that all together, the sweetened condensed milk, the ice-cold water, then we're going to slowly pour that mixture into the bowl with the pudding mix and we're going to be whisking constantly using that same whisk or two forks, whatever we have, until thoroughly combined. And then, we're going to make sure that we scrape the bottoms and sides of a bowl maybe with a spatula. Do you like a-
Bobbie Lloyd:
Rubber spatulas.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, do you have a brand that you like?
Bobbie Lloyd:
Again, because so many people they don't know what they're getting in their homes I'm always like, "Use what's good for you." I don't like, and I don't know if you do that, I don't like spatulas that are too bendy.
Jessie Sheehan:
Bendy at the top.
Bobbie Lloyd:
I want mine to be semi-firm, but too firm, they crack. But I don't look so much at brand at home as I do the act how is it holding together? How is it attached to the stem? Is it a piece of wood? Has it got something that wraps around it? And then, if it's too floppy, you can't really scrape your bowl, just semi-firm.
Jessie Sheehan:
We are going to scrape the bottom side of the bowl with our semi-firm spatula, we're going to stir until smooth, and then we're going to cover with plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator for a minimum of 30 minutes and a maximum of 24 hours. Is there a sweet spot?
Bobbie Lloyd:
You know what? I like to do it overnight.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay.
Bobbie Lloyd:
So, if I'm making, I know I'm going to do pudding the next day, I make it before I go to bed stick it in the fridge. And I do make a lot of pudding to take to my friend's homes so it's always the same as I do that the next morning I get up, I whip the cream, I add them together, I assemble. When I come home from work, it's done, ready to go. But I have one more tip for that too that I really like is you only have two hands, and I usually put a towel under the bowl with the pudding mix so that it keeps the bowl in place and I don't have to hold onto that one so I can whisk-
Jessie Sheehan:
At the same time, you're pouring.
Bobbie Lloyd:
While pouring slowly.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, that's a great tip. So, that's 30 minutes or 24 hours. Then in a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, we're going to whip heavy or I'm assuming a hand mixer.
Bobbie Lloyd:
Or a hand mixer or a whisk if you don't have either, but your arm's going to hurt.
Jessie Sheehan:
Then we're going to whip heavy cream on medium speed for about one minute until the cream starts to thicken. Then we'll increase the speed to medium-high and we'll whip until stiff peaks form but we don't want to over whip. With the mixer running on low, we're now going to add that cold pudding mixture from the refrigerator like a spoonful at a time, mixing each until well-blended and no streaks of pudding remain scraping the bottom and sides of the bowl. So, basically we're adding that mixture to all of this whipped cream whipped cream a little bit at a time. Once the whipped cream is done, can you fold it in by hand?
Bobbie Lloyd:
It'd just take longer. You can because that pudding part one is really thick. It's almost, it's gelatinous.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Bobbie Lloyd:
And it doesn't really-
Jessie Sheehan:
Want to cohesive-
Bobbie Lloyd:
Yeah, it doesn't pour in, it's super thick. I'm trying to think of what it would compare it to. Almost like jelly or jam, like a really thick texture. So, you kind of need that whisk or that mixer, not the paddle, something to really incorporate it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Cut through it. Now we're going to assemble. So, you can use a trifle bowl or you can use a wide glass bowl. You can do this in a nine by 13-inch pan. With each of these, the number of layers you have is going to vary so you just have to think about if it's a trifle bowl, it's going to be fewer layers than if it's nine by 13. But we'll do it as if we're doing it for a trifle bowl. We're going to spread about a quarter of the pudding onto the bottom of the bowl and layer with one-third of our vanilla wafer cookies. When you do that, do you want every single cookie covering? You don't want any pudding poking through, are we breaking cookies to make a cohesive layer of cookies?
Bobbie Lloyd:
It doesn't have to be completely filled with no pudding but you want to make sure your cookies aren't one on top of the other. Make sure they're spread out because if they're one on top of each other, the cookie won't be able to absorb the cream. So, it's all about how the cream gets absorbed.
Jessie Sheehan:
Next, we are going to cut our bananas and you give us a great tip. You say that you do not cut your bananas ahead of time because bananas get brown so quickly that you are literally cutting as you described it in the palm of your hand as you go and putting those pieces of banana down on top of the cookie layer.
Bobbie Lloyd:
Bananas have a life, they turn brown, they turn brown in the fridge. They'll get slimy if you cut them too far ahead of time and you might not need all of them so if you've cut them all you're like, "Oh, I don't really need six I only need four."
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, that's so smart.
Bobbie Lloyd:
Just cover your layer and they should be about a quarter-inch thick, but if you like them fatter-
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, go for it.
Bobbie Lloyd:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
And basically again, same thing, we wanted to really cover that layer of cookies so we might even break up a banana coin to fill in a little hole or something like that. For the trifle, we're going to repeat the layering twice more so we have three layers total, and we'll end with a final layer of pudding. That's what goes on top. And then, we'll garnish the top with additional vanilla wafer cookies or cookie crumbs. Do you ever put a layer of whipped cream on top or you don't even need to get-
Bobbie Lloyd:
I don't because then you got to get whipped cream out and make whipped cream.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep.
Bobbie Lloyd:
But one thing I do that I've been doing a lot myself lately because so many people ask me to bring banana pudding for parties, is I've got all of my pudding, all of my wafers, all of my bananas that I've sliced and I throw them all into a big bowl and I mix. And I throw it into whatever, not a trifle bowl 'cause it won't look as nice, but if I'm doing it in a stainless steel bowl or a ceramic bowl that I'm taking to the party or even a pan, I don't really need to layer it 'cause they're not going to see the layers anyway.
Jessie Sheehan:
I feel like if you're doing it in a nine by 13-inch pan, you could do everything but the final layer of pudding and then put that on top and it'll look like-
Bobbie Lloyd:
Exactly.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then people dig in and they wanted to know.
Bobbie Lloyd:
They'll never know.
Jessie Sheehan:
Do you break up the cookies?
Bobbie Lloyd:
No, I just keep them whole, I throw them all in and mix it in the bowl.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love it.
Bobbie Lloyd:
Makes my life easier.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay, so then we're going to garnish the top with additional vanilla wafer cookies or cookie crumbs, cover tightly with plastic and refrigerate four to six hours or do you like overnight?
Bobbie Lloyd:
Four to six hours minimum.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay.
Bobbie Lloyd:
It can go longer, but it's kind of an alive item, it's about the texture of the cookie. So, if you stick a knife in there, the tip of a sharp knife and it's like al dente, the knife goes through but you got a little bit of give, it's okay, you can eat it like that. If you try to scoop it and they're hard, you're going to get a whole cookie in your mouth.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Bobbie Lloyd:
Nobody wants a whole giant cookie in their mouth.
Jessie Sheehan:
No, no.
Bobbie Lloyd:
And you also don't want to go to all the time of trouble to break all the cookies 'cause it's a big box. And so, that's really the goal. But the longer it sits, it will continue to change. So, at four hours, six hours, 12 hours, the cream will continue to absorb into the cookies and the texture changes. Sometimes people call it banana bread pudding. So, I've heard that a lot from customers, "I love your banana bread pudding." By day two, 24 hours later, it's a completely different animal.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Can you still eat it?
Bobbie Lloyd:
You can.
Jessie Sheehan:
If you hadn't dug into it yet, I assume it starts to weep.
Bobbie Lloyd:
It doesn't weep, it's the bananas turned brown.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Bobbie Lloyd:
Bananas turned brown from refrigeration. The bananas will start to look funky, they're still edible there's nothing wrong with them. I think by the time you get to 36 hours, sometimes the bananas get slimy, but if you haven't cut into it at all and the bananas haven't been exposed to any additional air, you probably could go easily go 24 hours.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Interesting. I have this note, cookies should be tender when poked with a knife. Is this true? Dessert best served within 12 hours of assembling? Was that the ideal?
Bobbie Lloyd:
We like to say if you're making it in the morning, serve it tonight because it continues to change. So, after 12 hours, it'll start to actually get denser because now the cookies have absorbed almost all the cream, the cookies kind of disappear. If you cut it like if you're thinking of a cake, you won't see the demarcation between cookie and cream. They all become one. So, I think it's best at around 12 hours just knowing that it's going to change.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep.
Bobbie Lloyd:
It will be different 24 hours later.
Jessie Sheehan:
All right, now I want to talk about a few additional recipes. I want you to tell us about the puddings that you had to make for the banana haters in the world who were like, "Please no more banana pudding." Tell us about some of those recipes.
Bobbie Lloyd:
Including my mother. Actually, the roasted strawberry pudding was really for my mom 'cause she loves strawberries, and so thinking through the different flavor profiles, I also like texture in my pudding so I like to add things that have a little bit of crunch because the cookies going to soften and bananas are soft, and I think that's actually why my mother didn't like bananas because she said they're mushy. So, it was really about this incorporation of things that can be banana-less. So, for example, one of our most popular ones is pumpkin spice with cookie butter swirl, we do that in the fall. And then, we do apple crisp with crumb topping so it's like an apple pie, apple crumb pie with the pudding layers in between.
Jessie Sheehan:
And you put the apples into the pudding?
Bobbie Lloyd:
It's an apple filling.
Jessie Sheehan:
How big are they?
Bobbie Lloyd:
It's literally you cook an apple filling.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, so it's cooked? Oh, I was imagining something crispy.
Bobbie Lloyd:
No, it's like total cooked apple filling. So, you cut your apples about the-
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, so almost like a chutney or-
Bobbie Lloyd:
A little bigger than that even, so just like you would for an apple crumb pie.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, okay.
Bobbie Lloyd:
It's literally the same filling that we do in the bakery, it is the same filling.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then it's layered with vanilla pudding, the same vanilla pudding, the same whipped cream. The strawberry one, are you cooking the filling? Are you making a strawberry goop?
Bobbie Lloyd:
We're making actually roasted, oven-roasted strawberries so you can use fresh. I actually prefer the frozen ones because frozen ones, you're kind of guaranteed to have a certain flavor profile. No added sugar, maybe just a little sprinkling on top of them, but frozen strawberries they have a really intense flavor. You oven-roast them until they become like a jammy consistency.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then that's what goes in?
Bobbie Lloyd:
And then you cool it, and that gets folded into the pudding part two with the whipped cream in it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh my god.
Bobbie Lloyd:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Tell me about, so apple strawberry, tell us about another flavor.
Bobbie Lloyd:
Peach crisp pudding is really good. I know, it goes on and on.
Jessie Sheehan:
How about this one spoke to me just 'cause I'm from Boston? Boston cream pie banana pudding.
Bobbie Lloyd:
So, think of Boston cream pie, what makes it Boston cream pie? That layer of chocolate fudge.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. So, that's in the pudding.
Bobbie Lloyd:
Yep. So, it's the classic pudding and we do a layer of chocolate fudge and this one is good you must layer it because you want to see that layer between the three of them, it's really good.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh my gosh.
Bobbie Lloyd:
And it's that fudgey icing kind of texture.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, so it's like a little chewy almost.
Bobbie Lloyd:
Yep.
Jessie Sheehan:
Well, thank you so much for chatting with me today, Bobbie and I just want to say that you are my cherry pie.
Bobbie Lloyd:
Oh, thank you, it's really been fun.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's it for today's 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. You can find today's recipe at cherrybombe.com. She's My Cherry Pie is a production of The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network. Thank you to CityVox Studio in Manhattan. 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.