Caroline Schiff Transcript
Jessie Sheehan:
Hi, peeps. You are listening to She's My Cherry Pie, the baking podcast from The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network. I'm your host, Jessie Sheehan. I'm a baker, recipe developer, and author of three baking books, including my latest, "Snackable Bakes." Each Saturday I'm hanging out with the sweetest bakers around and taking a deep dive into their signature bakes.
Today's guest is Caroline Schiff, my buddy and the executive pastry chef at Gage & Tollner, the landmark Brooklyn Restaurant that first opened in 1879. The restaurant reopened to great acclaim in 2021 and featured on its menu a classic dessert known as the Baked Alaska. Caroline put her signature spin on the Gage & Tollner Baked Alaska, and it became one of the most popular desserts in all of New York City, no small feat. Caroline joins me shortly to talk all about this dramatic dessert, its different textures and components, what makes it such a crowd pleaser, and how you can make one at home. A little bit more about Caroline. Some of you might know her from Instagram where she goes by the handle, Pastry Schiff, or perhaps you know her from her debut baking book, "The Sweet Side of Sourdough." We'll learn more about this special talent in just a minute.
Thank you to Plugrà Premium European style butter for supporting today's show. You might be new to Plugrà Premium European style butter, but it's been a favorite in my fridge for some time. Summer is finally here. That means stone, fruit and berry season. Plugrà will be my go-to when making fruit pies, cobblers and more. I love that Plugrà contains 82% butterfat. Higher butterfat content means less moisture and more fat, which is precisely what you're looking for when baking. Plugrà European style butter is available in different forms and varieties for all your cooking and baking needs. They're salted and unsalted sticks and solids, and also Plugrà extra creamy butter with olive oil and sea salt, one of my faves. If you've learned of anything listening to She's My Cherry Pie, it's that ingredients matter. The next time you bake, reach for Plugrà and taste the difference it makes. From professional kitchens to your home kitchen, Plugrà Premium European style butter is the perfect choice. Ask for Plugrà at your favorite supermarket or specialty grocery store, or visit Plugrà.com for a store locator.
Dallas Bombesquad, thank you so much for coming to our Butter Up, Buttercup! event. I had so much fun meeting all of you and hearing from our guest speakers and panelists. We ate a lot of baked goods and it was a blast. Thank you also to our hosts at Bird Bakery and to our friends at Plugrà Premium European style butter for supporting our very first She's My Cherry Pie event.
Now let's check in with today's guest. Caroline, so excited to have you on She's My Cherry Pie and to talk Baked Alaska with you and so much more.
Caroline Schiff:
I am so excited to be here.
Jessie Sheehan:
You are a pastry chef, the pastry chef at Gage & Tollner in Brooklyn, one of my fave places on the planet, a restaurant where almost every table orders dessert, which is amazing and kind of unheard of and such a tribute to you. You describe yourself as a "restaurant person through and through." What does that mean? Why restaurant work versus bakery work? Talk to us about that.
Caroline Schiff:
I kind of... I've done it all. I've worked in bakeries, I've done freelance, I've... We'll talk about it more, but I've done a book and all this stuff. What I've learned throughout the 15 some odd years of my career is that I'm just such a restaurant person. First of all, I'm not a morning person. I know you are. I'm not one. I had to really set a few alarms for this morning. I'm not a morning person. I thrive in high pressure situations in terms of how I work. I love working under pressure. I love that sense of urgency that you have at a restaurant and just go. I also love the theatrics of it and the whole process of welcoming diners into the space, the whole process of the meal from the cocktails that they start with to the raw bar and the appetizers, and then going through all the way to dessert. There's just something so magical about it to me. You'll always see me in the dining room. I love walking out and saying hi to people and seeing people enjoying their meal. There's just a magic to it and I really love that energy.
Jessie Sheehan:
You are a New York City native with very famous hair and also a very famous dessert. I promise we're going to get to the dessert, but tell us about the hair only because... First of all, describe it for those that don't know what you look like. And then also, I think I read that actually since you were a little girl, your hair was part of your identity.
Caroline Schiff:
Yeah, my hair has always been a thing. I've always had a lot of it. It's really big. Since high school even, I feel like I've just been doing this swooshy updo that's a little vintage looking. It's very low maintenance, which people are always shocked to hear. Very, very low maintenance. It takes me 30 seconds to put my hair up into this updo. Really, it's just about getting it out of my way. Yeah. It's become my signature thing and I think it's a big part of, I don't know, who I am and my personality.
There's a connection between my hair and the Baked Alaska, which is that when I was trying to figure out how I wanted to plate it, I wanted it to be this big swooshy whimsical thing, Sohui and I were working on it, Sohui Kim, one of the owners of Gage & Tollner, and incredible chef and my mentor, playing with this. I was like, "I kind of just want it to look like my hair."
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that.
Caroline Schiff:
Which is a really weird thing to say, but it helped me visualize it.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. All right, now we're going to make a leap from hair to sourdough scallion discard pancakes. Now, this is not the subject of our chat today. We are going to get to Baked Alaska, but these pancakes actually led to a book deal, which is amazing. I love stories like that.
First, can you tell us, just for those that don't know, what sourdough discard is, and in so doing, you probably need to tell us what a sourdough starter is, just in case someone out there does not know.
Caroline Schiff:
Yes. I will try to be as concise as possible because sourdough is such a thing that can talk about it for hours. But sourdough is basically, it's a ferment. It is a wild yeast. It's basically flour and water that ferments over time. You feed it every day with more flour and water. It feeds off of the microbiome that it lives in and the wild yeast that's around us and just on all the surfaces in our homes and everything like that, and in the air. It's just all around us. You can use that to make bread.
When you feed the sourdough starter, you are feeding it more flour and water. If you just kept on doing that and you didn't take a little portion out every day, you would very quickly just be totally consumed by ridiculous amounts of fermenting water and flour. You always have this little portion that is perfectly good to eat and play with and use. It really struck me as a shame to be throwing it out.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's called the discard.
Caroline Schiff:
The discard is what you discard every day. This was really early on in the pandemic when flower was hard to get your hands on. There were shortages and supply chain issues. Also, it was a really... It was a very scary time for all of us. It was also a time of people were having trouble putting food on the table. It felt like a really awful thing to be throwing away, especially at that time. I still feel like that. Chefs are very, we don't want to waste anything.
This discard took on a life of its own in those early days of the pandemic when I was cooped up, along with everybody else, and wasn't going to work every day and was feeding the sourdough starter every day. The pancake was born out of that.
Jessie Sheehan:
Can you describe the pancake?
Caroline Schiff:
Yeah. It's really the easiest thing in the world. It can be whatever you want it to be. It's just a hot pan with a little bit of fat in it, oil, butter, whatever you want. You just pour in the discard. I would top it with anything. I think the thing that went viral early in the pandemic was I just put some chopped scallions on there and that was it. But I've put everything in it, like jalapeno cheddar. You can put blueberries in it, whatever. It's the simplest thing you can make with your discard.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love this story. It was actually a book editor who must have followed you on Instagram, seen the post and contacted you about the possibility of writing a book, which led to your amazing book, “The Sweet Side of Sourdough,” which came out in November of 2021. I just love hearing people's stories about how cookbooks come to be. I know you hadn't intended to write a sourdough book, but it's what came out of you at that time. That's what worked for the publisher, et cetera. But I just love those stories. Just a reminder to listeners, yes, book deals are hard to get, but they can come in funny and unusual ways.
Caroline Schiff:
Totally.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that.
Caroline Schiff:
Yeah. I wasn't necessarily ready to write a book, and I certainly didn't set out to write a sourdough book, but it all just came together in this really magical way. It just felt very true to the time and place we were in. I look back on it and it's certainly not. Now it's like, "Oh, I wouldn't write that book now." It really tells the story of where we were at. There's something very comforting to that.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. I love it that you described it as magical, because in my head I said it's just a dreamy story of how it came to be. There's something dreamy and magical, and just such a treat to have something so beautiful and special to come out of a dark time.
All right, now I would love to talk about Baked Alaska.
Caroline Schiff:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Now, first of all, for those that don't know, can you describe what exactly a Baked Alaska is?
Caroline Schiff:
Sure. Baked Alaska is a Victorian era dessert. Goes back to the 1860s, I believe. The story is that Antoine's in New Orleans, which is a very famous old restaurant, you should go if you're ever down there, invented this dessert to commemorate the United States purchasing the Alaska Territory from the Russian Empire. It is layers of ice cream that are then covered with meringue, toasted, lit on fire, blowtorched, whatever. I think it's obviously taken many iterations over the years, but essentially it's ice cream, just enrobed in toast and meringue.
Jessie Sheehan:
Was it originally, like at Antoine, served with cake? You have a unique component to the Baked Alaska that you make at Gage & Tollner that we're going to talk about, but I think of Baked Alaska has almost like a cake layer and then some ice cream and then some meringue. Yes, or am I wrong?
Caroline Schiff:
Yeah. A lot of times you'll see a cake layer. I'm not sure the original, if it had that cake layer, but oftentimes you'll see, yeah, a layer of some kind of cake.
Jessie Sheehan:
You've said that Baked Alaska is a hundred percent a labor of love. We will talk about that labor and that love, and also that you and Sohui, as we mentioned Sohui earlier, but she's the chef partner at Gage & Tollner, your mentor, my beloved friend. You said that the two of you decided to put it on the Gage & Tollner menu the first time you were even discussing whether you would be working with Sohui on the project.
Caroline Schiff:
Right. This was before a lease was signed. This was so just ahead of the game. It was... Basically, Sohui, her husband, Ben, and John, who is the third partner, the three of them had... This is probably in 2018 maybe. Way before Covid, everything. They had seen the space, Gage & Tollner. Gage & Tollner opened in the 1870s, closed in 2004, and the space remained intact because it's a land marked interior. We're very thankful for that.
They saw the space and they were talking about, I don't know, should we do this? Should we bring Gage & Tollner back to life? I had lunch with Sohui and she was like, "We're thinking about doing this. I don't know." I was like, "Well, I want to make the dessert, and I think there's a Baked Alaska on the menu." She was like, "Absolutely, yes."
It was so just one of those moments. Over the R&D process and the menu development, so many things came and went, but the Baked Alaska from day one was just like... I don't even think the flavors evolved at all. I think those were the first flavors that I was like, that's going to be it.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. We're going to talk about a version of the Baked Alaska that you serve at the restaurant that is great for home bakers, and we will get to that, but before that, I just wanted to talk a little bit about the process of making it in the restaurant, because I think that's... Well, I'll speak for myself. I think it's super cool to understand the differences between what makes it a plated restaurant dessert versus what we do at home, and I think maybe the listeners of She's My Cherry Pie may as well.
It's a three day process when you make it in the restaurant. Basically when I was learning about the process, in anticipation of chatting, it basically is like assembling an ice cream cake in the sense, if you have ever done that listeners, in the sense that the reason it takes so long, even for a home baker, is that each component, each layer of ice cream has to set before you can add the next. The assembly, although easy, is this drawn out process.
In the restaurant, day one of Baked Alaska, you're making your ice creams in house. You're going to make a dark chocolate, a fresh mint, and I know you've said you like to have both of those in the Baked Alaska because that's one of your fave combos.
Caroline Schiff:
The best.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love you for that because it's one of mine too. And then the third flavor is a vanilla that's swirled with a heap of boozy Amarena cherries. I wondered if first you could tell us, is that dark chocolate cocoa powder and melted butter? Is the fresh mint just mint leaves or is there some extract? I'm embarrassed, but what's a boozy... Am I even pronouncing it right? Amarena cherry?
Caroline Schiff:
Actually, they're not boozy. I think at one point I was playing with booze-
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay, good to know.
Caroline Schiff:
... in the recipe. Then I decided that I didn't want it to taste boozy. It wasn't what I was looking for. They are Amarena cherries.
Jessie Sheehan:
What's an Amarena cherry? Why is that special?
Caroline Schiff:
It's a cherry in syrup. It's a really fancy maraschino cherry, which I love a not fancy maraschino cherry. I could eat a whole jar of them.
Jessie Sheehan:
You need that. Even if you don't like maraschino cherries, you need it on your sundae.
Caroline Schiff:
You need it. You always need a good cherry. These ice cream flavors, people are like, "What's the inspiration?" I'm like, "They're just my favorite flavors of ice cream." That was it. I was just like, "What do I want in each bite of this dessert?"
The dark chocolate ice cream has both cocoa powder and chocolate in it that we melt through. It's super rich. That base is almost like chocolate pudding. You could just eat it like that. It's so good. It's a dark chocolate. We use a 66%.
Jessie Sheehan:
What's the brand you guys use at work?
Caroline Schiff:
I have different brands for different purposes.
Jessie Sheehan:
But in this ice cream.
Caroline Schiff:
But in this ice cream, it's Valrhona. Yeah, different, like the chocolate tort, I use a different brand. Anyway. That one is just... It's so fudgy, it's so rich, it's not too sweet, which I really like in balance with the other flavors.
Jessie Sheehan:
Is it a custard with eggs and yolks and cream?
Caroline Schiff:
Yes. Almost all of my ice creams start with milk, cream, sugar and egg yolks, and then the flavor. That's pretty much it.
The mint ice cream is handfuls of fresh mint that just steeps in the hot milk and the cream. Then we strain it out. It's the most clear mint flavor. It doesn't have that artificial peppermint flavor to it, which has its benefits in time and place, but for this, I wanted just a really fresh, clean mint flavor.
Jessie Sheehan:
Do you have to seep overnight, or is a few hours, or even half an hour?
Caroline Schiff:
No, not even. We do about 20 minutes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, great.
Caroline Schiff:
Yeah, you just bring the milk and the cream up to a scalding, just steaming with the mint in it, turn it off, cover it, so it just traps all that flavor in there, and then that's it.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that.
Caroline Schiff:
Yeah. It's so simple.
Jessie Sheehan:
The vanilla is basically your custard base, and then you're swirling those cherries throughout.
Caroline Schiff:
Yeah. We make just a really... I love a good vanilla ice cream, just good vanilla beans, just super simple. As the ice cream is being churned and coming out of the machine, we're swirling all those cherries through.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love that.
Caroline Schiff:
It's just the best.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's a product that you buy, the cherries.
Caroline Schiff:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Is that a brand that people could buy?
Caroline Schiff:
Yeah, they're Luxardo cherries in syrup. I'm not allowed to keep them at home because I'll eat the entire jar.
Jessie Sheehan:
I can picture the jar. Does it have a yellow...?
Caroline Schiff:
Yes, yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
It's such a pretty little jar.
Caroline Schiff:
It's such a great ingredient. It's one of those things that I just love having around, because the syrup you can use for stuff too. You can drizzle it on ice cream and just make yourself a very fancy Shirley Temple, that kind of thing. They're just a wonderful ingredient.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. Day one where we made all of these ice creams, basically we're just making the custard that day, and you're not churning that day.
Caroline Schiff:
Correct. I like to make all the ice creams and then let them sit. I let them cool, and then we chill them overnight because it helps them really thicken and get super, just rich and creamy.
Jessie Sheehan:
Makes sense.
Caroline Schiff:
I'm never churning them the same day that I'm making them.
Jessie Sheehan:
Day two, the ice cream gets churned, and that would be when you'd be swirling in the cherries.
Caroline Schiff:
Yeah. I use these big square silicone molds. I'll get nine orders out of each one.
Jessie Sheehan:
How big are they? I picture a nine by nine, cake pan.
Caroline Schiff:
Yeah. I would say it's about it.
Jessie Sheehan:
A square nine by nine cake pan, ish, but with taller sides?
Caroline Schiff:
Yeah. Yeah. About, I would say three inches high. This dessert is a big dessert. It's meant to be for two. My mother got it once and said this is for four people. This is crazy.
Jessie Sheehan:
She's wrong. I'm into jumbo. I'm into this dessert. I get it every time I go. I practically... Well, I guess I need to share, but I can practically eat it by myself, but I have to disagree with your mom.
Caroline Schiff:
Anyway, we have these silicone molds, which just make the process of un-molding them really pretty easy. I have a really big batch ice cream machine. It'll churn three quartz of base at a time. It'll end up yielding five quartz of ice cream at a time, because as it churns, it fluffs up.
We start with the vanilla layer. As it's coming out, the cherries just get... We use an offset spatula, swoosh it through, and we'll get about three quarters of an inch to an inch of ice cream, then that goes in the freezer.
The reason why we can do it all within a few hours is because our freezers at work are very powerful. They're going to be colder than your freezer at home. I'll do all of the vanilla layers. I'll do about eight or nine square molds of ice cream.
Jessie Sheehan:
Each of those is making nine Baked Alaska, so about 81 Baked Alaskas.
Caroline Schiff:
Yeah, about. Each batch of ice cream that we make yields six quartz before it's churned. We're going to get more out of that.
Jessie Sheehan:
I just have one question. I know when we get to the recipe for the home baker, we have to let our store bought ice cream sit on the counter to soften it a bit. Ice cream that is fresh that you made from scratch, once it's churned is actually the perfect time to spread, correct?
Caroline Schiff:
Totally.
Jessie Sheehan:
Because usually after you churn ice cream, I like to eat soft ice cream so I sometimes eat it immediately at home if I make it, but technically-
Caroline Schiff:
So good.
Jessie Sheehan:
... you churn and then you freeze, and then you eat. Because freshly churned ice cream is cold, not soupy, but soft. Almost like soft served.
Caroline Schiff:
It's like soft serve. It's the most luxurious, delicious texture. If we're churning ice cream, sometimes people will just come by with a spoon and get a little fix. It's coming out of the machine and it's a very spreadable texture, but we have to work quickly because if it starts to melt and then goes in the freezer, that's when you start to get ice crystals. You really got to have a sense of urgency when you're on churning duty.
The vanilla layer, vanilla cherry layer is first. Putting it in the mold, running back and forth to the freezer. It's a very funny process.
The chocolate is the middle layer, about an inch of ice cream. Let it set in the freezer. Our freezers at work are usually 20 minutes I can get that layer set enough to layer on the next one.
Jessie Sheehan:
Should I picture a huge walk-in?
Caroline Schiff:
We have a huge walk-in freezer. The last layer is the fresh mint. Once that's set up a little bit, we cover it in these chocolate cookie crumbs because... You know a a Carvel ice cream cake?
Jessie Sheehan:
Of course I do.
Caroline Schiff:
With the chocolate cookie crumbs is the most nostalgic, delicious thing. I kept on thinking about that when I was coming up with how we wanted to do this.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that.
Caroline Schiff:
I was like, "I don't think I want cake. I think I want chocolate cookie crumb." It's a nostalgic thing that almost everybody can recall. For dessert, it's really... I love finding those little elements that make people just go, "Oh my gosh, this reminds me of...", whatever. Because I think dessert is so iconic. We use it to celebrate stuff. It marks special moments.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love. A question for you. Are you making tons of chocolate cookies, and are you doing them in sheets so that you can just crumble? Or are you literally making lots of cookies, shaping the cookies, I guess?
Caroline Schiff:
No, we're not shaping the cookies. We make this very simple chocolate cookie. I also, I wanted the dessert to be gluten-free because I just... I was like, "I just want everybody to be able to enjoy this." I wanted it to be... Obviously it has dairy in it, but it's gluten-free. The chocolate cookie crumbs I do with rice flour, which is awesome because it makes them really crunchy and crispy. Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that.
Caroline Schiff:
We just make a big batch of this chocolate cookie dough. We don't roll it out or anything. We don't shape it. We just bake it in these crumbles and sheet pan.
Jessie Sheehan:
What should I picture? You have your cookie dough, and then...
Caroline Schiff:
Large sheet pan with a piece of parchment paper, and then just drop.
Jessie Sheehan:
Drop pieces, plops of...
Caroline Schiff:
Plops of...
Jessie Sheehan:
Technical term here peeps.
Caroline Schiff:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Plops.
Caroline Schiff:
Yeah. The plop of cookie dough. We bake it. Once it's cool and crisp we just put it in the Robot-Coup. A Robot-Coup is just a very large industrial food processor. We just grind it up.
Jessie Sheehan:
Do you want it to be fine?
Caroline Schiff:
I go pretty fine, yeah. We'll make eight quarts of it at a time.
Jessie Sheehan:
I assume cocoa powder. There's probably no melted chocolate.
Caroline Schiff:
No, it's just sugar, butter, cocoa powder, rice flour, a little bit of kosher salt and some egg to bring it together. That's it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Love it. Was there ever... I don't know why I'm obsessed with this, but was there ever any thought to do a little layer of that between each layer of ice cream?
Caroline Schiff:
I thought about it, but I liked when I sliced it how clean and perfect those layers looked. It's more of just one layer on the bottom, and then when we plate it, I put some more on the plate. As the ice cream melts and softens a little bit, the cookies soak it up and it's just, it's really delicious.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. Then that... We're still on day two. That's going to set, you've done your three layers of ice cream, you've pressed your cookie crumbs into the top. Then day three... And you stick that back in the freezer. Day three, you're un-molding from your nine by nine, let's say, silicone molds, portioning out. You're turning each one into nine Baked Alaskas. Under all of that meringue, because listeners, I'm not kidding. I can't even count how many Baked Alaskas I've had that Caroline has made, so many. But anyway...
Caroline Schiff:
I feel like you had some of the first too, because you were there right when we opened.
Jessie Sheehan:
I was banging on the door, "Is the Baked Alaska ready?" Should I picture, before they get covered in meringue, are they literal cubes?
Caroline Schiff:
Yeah. It's a square of ice cream.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that.
Caroline Schiff:
It's maybe... I guess after it's like... Stuff expands in the freezer. It's three by three, four by four, something like that. It's big. It's big. It's almost a pint of ice cream.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh my God. Yum. No wonder I can eat a whole pint of ice cream at home. I've been practicing with my Baked Alaskas. You say at the restaurant you make the French meringue that covers the Baked Alaska to order. Was it just did you try thinking if you could cover them ahead of time and then realized it didn't work?
Caroline Schiff:
We tried a whole bunch of different ways to do it and iterations. Sometimes the cook who would be plating the next day would say to me, "This method isn't working. Can we try this?" It was a real trial and error.
Originally I started with Swiss meringue, which real quick, meringue lesson. There's three kinds of meringue. You have French, Swiss, Italian. French is just you're whipping the egg whites, adding the sugar, and that's kind of it. Swiss, you whip the egg whites with the sugar over a double boiler until the sugar dissolves, and then you put it in the mixer and really whip it until it's stiff peaks.
Jessie Sheehan:
But also butter, no? For Swiss meringue?
Caroline Schiff:
Well, Swiss meringue, then that's Swiss meringue buttercream.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, you're right. You're right.
Caroline Schiff:
Which is the best buttercream.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes, it is.
Caroline Schiff:
Then there's the Italian meringue where you make, you're whipping the egg whites and you make a hot sugar syrup and you drizzle it in. We tried all different iterations of this. We tried Swiss meringue, we tried covering them with meringue ahead of time, leaving them in the freezer, then blowtorching them. We tried it in a piping bag, all these different things. Nothing was quite working for the full duration of service. We would make a whole bunch of meringue ahead of time. It would start to fall by the end of dinner service, because dinner service starts at five. You might get your last ticket in at 12:30. That's a very long time. Meringue will start to weep, all that.
What we landed on was actually making French meringue to order. It's actually the least fussy, easiest way to do it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Although I assume you meased... Folks just means that the chefs in the restaurant have set out ahead of time all of those cracked egg whites, so that it's...
Caroline Schiff:
Exactly.
Jessie Sheehan:
Are they all at room temp because it's easier to whip a room temp egg white, or no?
Caroline Schiff:
Yes. What we do is we scale out tons of portions of sugar, 198 grams of sugar, and we'll scale out like 30, 40 of these. Egg whites, we do 143 grams and we scale them out. I actually just... We have the egg whites in the low boy, and we just do it from cold.
Jessie Sheehan:
From cold and it's fine.
Caroline Schiff:
Yeah. In the restaurant, we're very careful with things at room temp and all of that. Just for food safety. I find that it's fine.
Jessie Sheehan:
Also, I bet the restaurant environment is also maybe even warmer than...
Caroline Schiff:
The kitchen's really warm.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes, so that helps.
Caroline Schiff:
I don't necessarily want the egg whites sitting out like that.
Ticket comes in. In the freezer you have portioned your squares of Baked Alaska, just on a sheet tray. Ticket comes in, dump the egg whites into just a regular size KitchenAid that we have on the station, start to whip it. They very quickly start to foam up and froth up, and we'll get to soft peaks, and then I start adding the sugar. That just whips for a minute or two, and that's it. And then the fun part, where you're swooshing and...
Jessie Sheehan:
Swooshing and torching.
Caroline Schiff:
Swirling.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love it.
Caroline Schiff:
Swirling and torching. The station has a blowtorch. We get just like a Home Depot blowtorch. It's really my favorite thing to plate. It's so fun.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Well, it's my favorite thing to eat. I don't think I would think plating was that fun, but the eating is very fun.
Caroline Schiff:
Oh, it's so fun.
Jessie Sheehan:
All right. Now I want to talk about how people can do this at home. This is a recipe of Caroline's that she created, I think for us, although maybe it's been elsewhere.
Caroline Schiff:
Yeah. No, no, I did created this just for you.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yay. But it's similar to what we just talked about, but a little bit different. We'll go through the differences in how people will make this at home.
For this recipe, you're literally buying three pints of ice cream. If you want to be the cool girls, aka Caroline, then you get cherry ice cream, chocolate ice cream, and mint. But you could obviously use whatever you wanted.
Caroline Schiff:
You could do any flavors you want. You know what? It works great with sorbet too.
Jessie Sheehan:
Ooh.
Caroline Schiff:
If you want to keep it dairy free, or you want to do a little bit of both. These are my favorite flavors, but use your favorite flavors of ice cream.
Jessie Sheehan:
Do you have a favorite brand of store bought ice cream?
Caroline Schiff:
I think Haagen-Dazs is really pretty good. It's really delicious. I think Van Leeuwen's great. I would say those are the two that I usually go with. McConnell's is really good, out of California.
Jessie Sheehan:
Next, we're going to place the ice cream in the refrigerator, not on the counter, to soften for about 45 minutes.
Caroline Schiff:
Yeah, it's going to depend a little bit on your fridge and the brand of ice cream. You certainly don't want the ice cream to fully melt, but you want it to be easily scoopable and spreadable. I like to put the ice cream in the fridge. I find that it tempers a little more evenly that way than the countertop.
Jessie Sheehan:
I think you're right, because I think I try, I'm not proud of this, but I'm always trying to speed things up, cut a corner. If you leave it on the counter because you think it's going to be faster, I feel like the outside edge melts, but the center doesn't. Maybe in the refrigerator, it...
Caroline Schiff:
It's a little more... Yeah, it's a little more even. You just want to soften the ice cream. This recipe works really well in just a standard loaf pan that you would bake your whatever.
Jessie Sheehan:
Now, are we talking eight and a half by... Oh, no, you said nine inch. Nine inch.
Caroline Schiff:
I think nine inch is the standard, but give or take.
Jessie Sheehan:
We have our nine inch loaf pan. We're going to chill the pan and we're going to line the pan in plastic wrap, correct?
Caroline Schiff:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Now, I just had a little trick to share, and I wonder if you've ever done this, but sometimes it can be hard to line a pan with plastic wrap because it clings, it sticks to your fingers, it doesn't... If you sprinkle the inside of the loaf pan with a little bit of water and then put in the plastic wrap, it will stick to the sides.
Caroline Schiff:
Totally. The other thing you can do is a little bit of pan spray.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep, which I also. I love water, and I love pan spray. Once our ice cream is softened, we're going to start with the cherry ice cream, aah la gage. We're going to use the back of a spoon or an offset spatula. Is there a brand of offset or a size of offset you would recommend?
Caroline Schiff:
I would say a smaller offset is going to be easy to get it into the pan. I'm not picky. I have a whole bunch of offsets at home. I think the ones I have at home are from Wilton.
Jessie Sheehan:
Nice. Back of a spoon if you don't have an offset, or an offset. I assume we're trying to get as even and...
Caroline Schiff:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. But it's the entire pint, so just go to town.
Caroline Schiff:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Easy peasy.
Caroline Schiff:
Just go to town. Whole pint.
Jessie Sheehan:
Great. Then we have to put that in the freezer. You said about 15 minutes?
Caroline Schiff:
Yeah. I think because you're working with ice cream. First of all, your pan has been chilled, and you're working with ice cream that is still pretty cold. We're not... The ice cream at work is coming out of that machine and it's soft serve consistency. Your ice cream is probably going to be a little firmer. It doesn't need to be rock hard. You can test it. If it's soft and soupy, let it freeze a little more. But if it's relatively firm and set up, you can go ahead and do the second layer.
Jessie Sheehan:
The issue is you don't want to... Well, first of all, you don't want liquidy because of what you described earlier.
Caroline Schiff:
It'll get icy.
Jessie Sheehan:
You don't want icy. But you also don't want... The reason I think we're setting it is we don't want, when we put the chocolate on top of the cherry, we actually want, as you've described, that great, very sharp line between the two flavors and the two colors. If the ice cream on the bottom is too soft, then the chocolate's going to get swirled in there, and it's going to be a little muddy.
Caroline Schiff:
Yeah. When you're tempering the ice cream, I actually think I didn't write this, you might want to stagger tempering the pints of ice cream in 20 minute increments or something like that, just so you don't, by the time you get to the mint, it's not soup.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep. That's smart. That makes sense. Then we started with our cherry, we put it into the freezer for 15 minutes or so. Those are the kinds of things...
Caroline Schiff:
Yeah. It depends.
Jessie Sheehan:
Everybody's freezer is a little different, depends on how full your freezer is. Then we repeat this step with the chocolate ice cream and then with the mint ice cream. The mint, which is our last flavor, does that need to set up for 15 minutes before we add the crumbs, or should we just add the crumbs before we stick it in the freezer?
Caroline Schiff:
As long as your ice cream is not getting soupy, you can do the crumbs right away, but if you want to give it a little bit of time in the freezer, it's... Give it...
Jessie Sheehan:
Either way.
Caroline Schiff:
Yeah, either way.
Jessie Sheehan:
But we kind of want to pack them in just so they really adhere. They're going to adhere, but just so they really adhere.
Caroline Schiff:
Yeah. But you can use any chocolate cookie that you like,
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, I was going to say that my go-to is Nabisco, but I think there might be a shortage right now.
Caroline Schiff:
Oh my God.
Jessie Sheehan:
You could make a chocolate cookie.
Caroline Schiff:
Totally.
Jessie Sheehan:
I also wonder, this is a little extra, but it's kind of very me, you could even maybe grind up Oreos.
Caroline Schiff:
Oh, totally.
Jessie Sheehan:
It'd be so good.
Caroline Schiff:
Totally.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love Oreos.
Caroline Schiff:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
I had written this, but now I know. I was imagining that maybe it was almost like the crumbs you make when you make a cookie crumb crust.
Caroline Schiff:
Absolutely.
Jessie Sheehan:
I was imagining melted butter and this, but really, this is just crumbs. You don't have to do anything.
Caroline Schiff:
This is just crumbs. If you want them a little coarser because you want some textural variation in there, go for it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep. I love that. We're packing our crumbs on top, and then we're going to freeze for at least six hours or overnight.
Caroline Schiff:
Yeah. You could make this, if you want to serve this at a dinner party, you could do this a few days ahead and just leave it in the freezer.
Jessie Sheehan:
At this stage.
Caroline Schiff:
At this stage.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Perfect time. When you're ready to serve it, you're going to make your meringue. You're going to whip six egg whites into foamy soft peaks.
Caroline Schiff:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Two questions. Is there a particular speed on the stand mixer? We talked about the room temperature issue for the restaurant, but would you tell folks at home to bring you those egg whites to room temp?
Caroline Schiff:
Yeah. Yeah. You can bring them to room temp. You want high speed. You're really trying to get them, really get some air in there.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay, great. Once we have soft peaks on high speed, we're going to start to add about one and a half cups of granulated sugar, two tablespoons at a time, whipping constantly until all the sugar is incorporated, but doing so slowly. Yes?
Caroline Schiff:
Yeah. If you add it all at once, it's going to just deflate your meringue. You want to add it a little bit at a time so it can incorporate and remain really stable. Once it's all incorporated, you'll want to keep whipping it for another minute or so to make sure that sugar is getting dissolved, in the meringue.
Jessie Sheehan:
Do you do that test where you stick your fingers in to see if it's gritty between your two fingers?
Caroline Schiff:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Also, we're looking for stiff peaks. You're probably now at this point, you just look in the bowl and know. But for people at home, take off the whisk attachment from the mixer, stick it into the meringue, bring it out and turn it upside down. If it stands up straight, we're good to go.
Caroline Schiff:
You're good to go.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love.
Caroline Schiff:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Now we're going to un-mold. Invert our loaf pan onto our serving platter. Using a blowtorch, you said, to release the cold pan from the cold ice cream.
Caroline Schiff:
Totally. The one thing you're going to need for this is a blowtorch. I really think it's such a fun tool to have around. Why not invest in one? They're not expensive. You can get just one of the little culinary ones is fine. You don't need... The one I have at work is pretty big.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. I have a little culinary one.
Caroline Schiff:
I know. I love the one that Zoë has.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh my gosh. Zoë Francois.
Caroline Schiff:
She's amazing.
Jessie Sheehan:
She was on season one of She's My Cherry Pie. We talked blowtorches, of course.
Caroline Schiff:
She's a Baked Alaska aficionado queen, but she has this giant blowtorch that cracks me up.
Jessie Sheehan:
Hilarious. I also thought that if one did not have a blowtorch, one could, at least to get the pan off, you can run a dish towel under hot water and rub the pan and that will usually allow it to...
Caroline Schiff:
To release.
Jessie Sheehan:
To release.
Caroline Schiff:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Now we're going to use an offset spatula again, or a large spoon. Could we use the back of a large spoon?
Caroline Schiff:
Large spoon. I actually even just like a regular spatula.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, great.
Caroline Schiff:
When I do it at work, I kind of use both a regular spatula and then an offset.
Jessie Sheehan:
To get all those swoops. Is there a brand of flexible spatula that you like?
Caroline Schiff:
I love GIR. Yeah. I have those in every color. They're so fun.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. I have a pale pink one. We cover the loaf with the meringue. You might use a combo of your offset or a spoon, and then your big flexible spatula. You create dramatic swoops and tufts of meringue.
Caroline Schiff:
Yeah. Have fun with this. Make it as dramatic as you want.
Jessie Sheehan:
Is there a technique, like a wrist flick, or something you do to kind of..?
Caroline Schiff:
It's kind of similar to frosting a cake and getting those swoops and swooshes. I always think, just upwards strokes, so that your meringue is creating these peaks that go up.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love it. You said that for this recipe that folks can get on the Cherry Bombe site, you said there may be some leftover meringue, which I was really happy to hear that, because I will be eating it.
Caroline Schiff:
Yeah. You can eat it with a spoon.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh my God, I love meringue so much.
Caroline Schiff:
You might have some leftover meringue. It depends on your egg whites and all of that and how you shape it too. But don't be scared to pile it on.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Yum. Then we're going to blowtorch the meringue, but I had a question. If you do not have a blowtorch, but you're dying for Baked Alaska, how do you feel about sticking this cutie under the broiler?
Caroline Schiff:
You can totally do it. It's not going to be as even of a toasting.
Jessie Sheehan:
Right.
Caroline Schiff:
But you can do it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Would you do... Watch very carefully, obviously. Maybe don't even close the oven.
Caroline Schiff:
I wouldn't even close the oven. I would rotate it a little bit carefully.
Jessie Sheehan:
Probably a minute or two?
Caroline Schiff:
Probably not even.
Jessie Sheehan:
You think less?
Caroline Schiff:
I bet it would go really quick. You might have trouble getting the toasting on the sides, but listen, it's still going to be delicious.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep, yep. I love that. You can serve this right after you toast. You don't...
Caroline Schiff:
Yeah, because what I find happens is by the time you've un-molded it and gotten all the meringue on it and toasted it or blowtorched it, the ice cream starts to temper a bit. It should be a really nice texture for serving.
Jessie Sheehan:
Nice. Also, I forgot to mention, with these cookie crumbs that we're buying, we're just going to either grind those up in a food processor or we can put them in a zippered plastic bag and whack them with the rolling pin.
Caroline Schiff:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
I know you said you do this for the restaurant, but it might be nice for peeps at home to when they're plating that dessert for their family and friends, put a little extra crumb on the plate.
Caroline Schiff:
Yes. Yeah, because it's just nice texture. Like I said, the ice cream kind of melts into it and it's delicious.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love it. I love it. Also, when slicing the loaf, serrated knife, chefs knife?
Caroline Schiff:
I use a chef's knife. You could use either.
Jessie Sheehan:
Dipped in hot water and dry it?
Caroline Schiff:
I like to dip it in hot water and dry it, just because it makes it a little easier to slice through. You should get these beautiful slices.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love.
Caroline Schiff:
And just plate them up.
Jessie Sheehan:
But I did want to mention a couple of the other things at Gage & Tollner that you do which are so great, and that people love. The coconut cake. Can you describe the Gage & Tollner coconut cake?
Caroline Schiff:
Ugh, I love the coconut cake. She is 11 layers. Six very thin cake layers made with coconut milk, like a chiffon layer cake. Then there's layers of coconut cream that we make with... It's a coconut pastry cream that we make with Cocoa Lopez, which is one of my favorite ingredients ever. It's so good.
Jessie Sheehan:
Mine too.
Caroline Schiff:
There's one, the center layer, just one layer of lime curd in the middle. It gets some Swiss buttercream, some toasted coconut, a little bit of cashew pink peppercorn, brittle. We changed the fruit garnish seasonally. Right now, I'm still using candied kumquats. We've put blueberries on it and raspberries. It's just... I love that cake so much.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. Can you tell us about the cheesecake?
Caroline Schiff:
Oh, yes. I love cheesecake, obviously. I didn't want to just put a classic New York cheesecake on the menu. I just was thinking that... You know what? I wanted to do something a little different. Down the block from Junior's, they're very famous for their cheesecake. I've always loved using goat's cheese in cheesecake because it's really bright and lemony and tart. It's a little bit lighter than cream cheese. There's something just really bright about this cheesecake.
It's also an amazing canvas for seasonal fruit. The cheesecake is always on the menu, but the garnish changes all the time. Right now it's with rhubarb and pistachio. It had citrus on it for citrus season. I've done it with roasted pear, plums in the summer, cherries. I love that dessert so much because it is very true to the season. I also really see myself in it. I love goats cheese. It's just a very unique special cheesecake.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. Finally, maybe even I love these as much as the Baked Alaska, but I'm not sure. Tell us about your Parker House rolls.
Caroline Schiff:
Oh, the Parker House rolls. Those I worked on a lot with Chef Adam, our executive chef, Adam Shepherd. We did so many tests with how to bake them and serve them and all of that, how much butter and all of these things. But they are super fluffy and butter rich. We bake them in these cute little cast irons. They get bathed in butter four times throughout their life cycle. They come out piping hot with some flaky sea salt on them. The butter just pools right in the center. They're the best way to start a meal.
Jessie Sheehan:
I actually, I wish I was eating them right now. I feel like they're the best way to end a podcast.
Thank you so much for chatting with me today, Caroline. I just wanted to say that you are my cherry pie.
Caroline Schiff:
You're the best.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's it for today's show. Thank you to Plugrà Premium European style butter for their support. Don't forget to subscribe to She's My Cherry Pie on your favorite podcast platform, and tell your baking buddies about us. She's My Cherry Pie is a production of The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network and is recorded at CityVox Studio in Manhattan. Our producers are Kerry Diamond and Catherine Baker, and our associate producer is Jenna Sadhu. Thank you so much for listening to She's My Cherry Pie, and happy baking.