Christina Tosi 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 the author of four baking books. Each Saturday, I'm hanging out with the sweetest bakers around and taking a deep dive into their signature bakes.
I'm so excited to have a very special guest back on the show today, Christina Tosi. Yes, I know. Christina is an award-winning pastry chef, the founder of Milk Bar, an author, a mom, a dog lover, and host of the Netflix show, “Bake Squad.” We all know and love Christina. She was on the show last year and we talked about her iconic birthday layer cake. Today, we've got a new recipe to discuss: her skillet cookie from her latest book, the fantastic “Bake Club: 101 Must-Have Moves for Your Kitchen,” which was just released. Christina started her Bake Club during the pandemic as a way to keep our spirits up and foster community during a very difficult time. I learned so much from Christina in this episode, including her recommendation that we drink failure for breakfast, her love of milk powder, and how Christina bakes at home. Spoiler alert: she doesn't use a scale. Stay tuned for our chat. If you'd like to follow along, you can find today's recipe at cherrybombe.com.
Today's episode is presented by King Arthur Baking Company. King Arthur's flours are some of the most beloved in the industry, and for a good reason. Whether you're a serious baker or just a newbie, King Arthur's flours are not only the most reliable, they always yield exceptional results whether in your professional or home kitchen. King Arthur also has a ton of resources to help you take your bakes to the next level. Picture this: your bread's crust is too soft, your cookies spread, your cake is dry. What do you do? Call the King Arthur baker's hotline. They have professional bakers ready and waiting to guide you through any baking challenge, seven days a week. Call 1-855-371-BAKE. That's 1-855-371-BAKE to try the hotline out for yourself.
This episode is presented by Kerrygold. Let's talk for a minute about butter, which is truly one of life's simple pleasures. Beautiful butters, like those from Kerrygold, are as good as gold to me and all the butter lovers in my life. Kerrygold butter is the most special of them all. It's made with milk from Irish grass-fed cows and has a rich flavor and creamy texture, thanks to its naturally higher butterfat percentage. This also gives Kerrygold butter that beautiful natural gold and yellow color we all know and love. Think about how many simple, delicious moments involve butter: making grilled cheese for a loved one. I mean, I can hear the butter sizzling in the pan right now. Can't you? Slathering butter on an amazing scone or banana bread that you spent your Saturday morning baking. Even just passing butter around a lively table when you get together with friends and family for a meal. There's a whole world of Kerrygold butters for you to discover and enjoy. Learn more at kerrygoldusa.com.
Peeps, guess who's on the cover of Cherry Bombe's holiday issue? It's the one and only Ina Garten. The issue is beautiful and features a special section dedicated to the Barefoot Contessa with heartfelt essays, some of Ina's favorite things and more. What else? Holiday gift guides and hosting tips, as well as recipes from the season's most exciting cookbooks, including some guests from our show like Paola Velez and Zoë Bakes. All of you Ina fans will love this issue, and the pink cover will look great on your bookshelf or coffee table. To snag a copy, head to cherrybombe.com or click the link in our show notes or visit your favorite bookstore or culinary shop to pick up an issue.
Let's chat with today's guest. Christina.
Christina Tosi:
Hi.
Jessie Sheehan:
So excited to have you on She's my Cherry Pie again and to talk skillet cookies with you and so much more.
Christina Tosi:
Oh, my friend, it feels like a long overdue reunion. You're my favorite person to talk with about dessert.
Jessie Sheehan:
So first things first. As I said the first time you were on, and I will now say again, I have always felt a dessert kinship with you. I believe we speak the same dessert, love language, and that you are nothing short of my sweet soul sister. And after reading your new fantastic book, “Bake Club: 101 Must-Have Moves for Your Kitchen,” which I did read cover to cover as one does, this sisterhood feeling is super strong if not stronger than ever. So first, please, please tell us how Bake Club, which inspired the book, was born.
Christina Tosi:
Oh my gosh. Rewind the tapes a few years, right? It's a pandemic story. We were stuck inside, and for me, I learned a lot about myself during the pandemic. The most important thing I learned about myself was that I love to bake, not just because I love dessert and not just because I love the feeling of creating. I always thought my love of baking was a more selfish pursuit. I really, really learned that I love to bake my way of showing up for people and with people. Literally, I had, she was a very small puppy at the time, but her name was Butter named after the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. Her birthday is Halloween.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love her.
Christina Tosi:
She and I were hanging on the couch just trying to figure out what... I felt lost. I felt like, how do I find myself in this and how do I do the thing that makes me feel the most like myself? And for me, it's always an act of service. I was raised with this sort of mentality of act of service, but baking is my act of service. And so I just went on Instagram one day and made a video with Butter and was like, "Hey y'all, all the things. I'm going to start a club. It's going to be a baking club." That was always what I did as a teenager when I was trying to find a way to find myself and fill my time, was to join a club. "I'm going to start a baking club. Do you want to join? What time works for you tomorrow?"
And of all the things that I ever posted, for some reason, it landed, and everyone was like, "Heck yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah." So 2:00 PM. And I started Bake Club one random day in 2020 at 2:00 PM with butter and we baked every single day for over a year, and now we bake weekly at 2:00 PM. The format is simple. My mentality was we talk ourselves in and out of things all the time as humans. All I did was I just post whatever random ingredients you need to make this thing. And by the way, because it was the pandemic, it was a perfect way for someone that loves to imagine basic pantry ingredients, or the lack of basic pantry ingredients as the case was then, to teach people to unlock their creativity and imagination, to not live in their minds of what I can or can't do or based on what I do or don't have or how I do or don't feel. And instead, it was just an invitation into cannonball, trust fall cannonball into something at 2:00 PM.
You don't know if an idea is going to be good or bad, you just love pursuing an idea, and this idea was just like, "I don't know, does anyone else want to bake together at 2:00 PM and call it a club?" It both had the high low spirit of all are welcome, age, whatever, time zone, what have you. Just come as you are, all are welcome, all are invited. You don't even have to bake. You can just hang out and be a loony with us. And also, when was the last time you joined a club?
Jessie Sheehan:
Well, also, I love that it taps into your nerdy, because I know all about your AP classes and the girl you were the girl you are, and I love that it tapped into that nerdiness with the club idea. Like, "Ooh, club."
Christina Tosi:
It's an extracurricular, girl. Put it on your college application, right?
Jessie Sheehan:
Right, right.
Christina Tosi:
Got round it out.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love it. I love it. And right away, were people participating? Did it snowball a bit?
Christina Tosi:
I don't know. All I did was I just showed up every day.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Christina Tosi:
I just showed up every day, and all of a sudden I was like, "Oh yeah, maybe we can't get flour. Cool. Do you want to know 10 other ways that you can take something in your pantry and make it into flour? Oh my God, you don't have butter. Right. Sure, let's talk about it. Oh my gosh, you don't have confectioners sugar? Did you know that you can grind sugar down 10 times and that's how you get to confectioners sugar? It's called 10X in the pastry line. Oh my God, also don't have sugar and milk, but do you have ice cream that you can melt down? Because that's sugar and milk, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Jessie Sheehan:
I also love that before each meeting, and you still do it today because I see it in my feed, you post the ingredients.
Christina Tosi:
I love it.
Jessie Sheehan:
I just think it's brilliant. I think it taps into your love of the grocery store and of the snack aisle and seeing the things that become something else. How did it come to you? Was it just like trying to make it clear to the people who might be participating that this is what they needed? I think that's so smart.
Christina Tosi:
It's so funny because no recipe does that, right? So in the cookbook it's the same thing: every recipe just starts with a photo of the ingredients you need. I just loved the idea of taking a risk, right? We were in this really totally different unsafe mindset, and I loved the idea of, "What could these four things be?" It's a little bit of a guessing game, like, "Guess who? Guess who's coming into your kitchen? Guess what we're making?" For me, it was really about showing people with their eyes, it's a low barrier to entry. It's four ingredients, but you can't guess what we're making, one.
Two, that's how I bake. When I'm in the kitchen, I sort of go like, "I don't know. What do I have?" And I love to make amazing things. Limitation breeds innovation. When I can't come up with something, I just remove ingredients. I go with the basics. How many different ways can you look at butter, flour, sugar, salt as the dorky pastry person? And then I just love that it's like, "Are you going to opt out of just showing up at 2:00 PM when there's four things you just have to bring that I know are in your pantry?"
It was the totality of the things that it represented. I love things with multiple meanings and doing things in a way that draws people in more than one way. I'm not a person that walks a straight and narrow path.
Jessie Sheehan:
Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back.
Today's episode is presented by California Prunes, the best kind of prunes out there. I am a big fan of California Prunes for two reasons. They're a great addition to your pantry when it comes to smart snacking and baking. You probably already know that prunes are good for your gut. You might even know that prunes are also good for your bone health, but what you really need to know is that prunes are absolutely delicious in both sweet and savory dishes. But don't just take it from me. Here's what some of the country's top culinary experts have to say: Chef Bronwyn Wyatt of Bayou St. Cake says, "Prunes have an earthy winy richness that pairs beautifully with the tart fresh flavor of berries." Chef Kat Turner from Highly Likely in L.A. says, "They are an incredibly versatile ingredient that strike a great balance between sweet and savory. They're incredibly sensual." Ana Castro from Akamaya in New Orleans says, "Prunes have a sultriness to them. They're very rich and like velvet." I like to use prune puree in my baked goods to give them great flavor and also to replace some of the sugar, eggs or fat in the recipe. It's super easy to whip up: just blend prunes and water together, and voila. For recipe ideas and more, be sure to check out the California Prunes website at californiaprunes.org. Happy baking and happy snacking.
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So tell us about this book. This is your ninth, yes? Counting your memoir?
Christina Tosi:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
How is it similar to Bake Club?
Christina Tosi:
Oh my gosh. So “Bake Club” the cookbook is an extension of Bake Club, so very similar spirit or the exact same spirit of it's me at home baking off the clock. It's the same invitation in, it's simple recipes that stack on top of each other, that can live alone. I don't want to call them more complicated recipes, but more involved recipes because after four years of doing this, it's fun. People will be like, "I want to learn how to make macaroons just as much as I want to learn how to make gummy bears or a graham cracker. I want to make something for this Thanksgiving or this Christmas," or whatever the big tabletop dessert celebration is, and we do that, but also, "I'm trying to bake for 100 people at work, so what should I make?" Sort of thing. So it's a little anything and everything for anyone on every occasion.
You get the photos of the ingredients first. It's really casual and convivial language and talk. I was really specific about that when I write every Bake Club recipe, and same with this cookbook, where maybe the Milk Bar cookbooks, they're very specific. I'm at work on the clock as a professional pastry chef. There's this very defined level of specificity. “Bake Club” is making magic in your home kitchen on a whim. There are no grams. It's all freedom measurements. There's a wild, wonderful world of recipe alts. So I teach my favorite classics and basics, but it really is just an invitation in to take your imagination and your pantry or your grocery store staples on the road.
It's 101 recipes and it's organized by what we call occasion, but the occasion is pantry staples, or drop-off-able desserts, or baking for breakfast, or daily bread, or tabletop treats, or cookies every which way, because I'm obsessed with cookies. It's an invitation into my wild, wonderful world, and I'll air quote "sense of humor" because my husband sometimes thinks I'm funny and sometimes he's like, "You're the only one cracking up over your own joke." But it's sort of just an invitation to celebrate who you are alongside someone that's going to cheer you on because you need it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, your voice is so strong in the book and so fun.
Christina Tosi:
Thank you.
Jessie Sheehan:
You described the recipes as "unfussy" and "covering all categories of the baking universe," which is so Christina and I love it, but what does that mean to you? Describe for us what an unfussy recipe is to you.
Christina Tosi:
An unfussy recipe is something that is as simple as how to make flavored butter or as complicated as how to make a chocolate mirror glaze for your chocolate cake and it's giving you instruction and empowering you to not take it too seriously.
I'll tell you exactly where it makes a difference to be fussy, but most of the time, you don't really have to be fussy at all. I think a lot of times, baking's barrier to entry is the concern that it's scientific, which it is. It's not not scientific, but it's more that you're putting these ingredients together. Trust me, the ratios are epic. You're going to be happy. It's going to be delicious. Even if something does happen in the kitchen, so many of my greatest hits are happy accidents. So, so, so many, the corn flake, chocolate chip, marshmallow at Milk Bar, happy accident. Milk Bar pie, happy accident. All things that didn't go the way that I planned that ended up being amazing desserts that have stood the test of time, and so that's the unfussiness about it.
Jessie Sheehan:
You and I have been talking, and you talk about it in the book, there's a casual tone and format to the recipes. The measurements are just volume. We're talking store-bought ingredients, which I love. But I want to talk more about using volume. Well, I want to know what the publisher said. All of it is interesting to me, because as cookbook writers, we know that you get a lot of pressure to do grams as well as volume. Obviously, not everybody in the United States who's baking is using grams, but a lot of people are. So a couple of questions: do you consider scales kind of fussy? Again, not a bad word, not a good word. Does Bake Club use scales? And did your publisher push back or give you a hard time about it?
Christina Tosi:
Oh my gosh, I have such a fun relationship with this topic, believe it or not. So we call them weights and I call the volumetric measurements "freedom measurements," because in 2008, 2009, when I was writing Momofuku Milk Bar, the very first cookbook I ever wrote, I actually had to go to the mattresses about putting weights in the cookbook. It felt very disingenuous to write a cookbook then with all of our classic Milk Bar bakery recipes with freedom measurements, with volume measurements, because I was like, "That is not how we bake," and these recipes are so fine-tuned, you have to have the weights, and we really went back and forth about it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Did you win now?
Christina Tosi:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes, good. Yeah, I couldn't remember.
Christina Tosi:
It was a healthy conversation, a healthy push and pull. We did, and I think everyone that's baked anything out of that cookbook is better because of it, et cetera, et cetera. But in this cookbook, there was no conversation, because the recipes, I don't use a scale at home. Honestly, a scale would actually be less clean up because you don't have to measure things. You don't have a bunch of measuring cups and measuring spoons after the fact, but there's something about the clanking together, the ASMR, for me, of cups and spoons. When I pull them out and measure them, they make me feel closer to the women that taught me how to bake. It feels so old school and genuine, and honestly, I was just worried that a scale, one, for me, would put me into work mode as opposed to home mode, and I was worried that it would be a barrier to entry for someone.
And because the recipes are these great bases for so much more, the whole point, too, is you learn how to taste for yourself and think for yourself and make thoughtful substitutions if you're not being asked to measure down to a gram, which is very specific, dare I say, air quotes, "fussy," intentional, but fussy. And so no scale. It's literally baking the way that my grandma or great grandma, or great great great grandma, or however far back the origin story goes, would bake, and I love that.
Jessie Sheehan:
And I have to ask, and I'm going to call her Gigi. I hope that's okay.
Christina Tosi:
Oh, yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's Christina's mom. Would Gigi use a scale?
Christina Tosi:
I think she bought a scale after the first few Milk Bar cookbooks because she was like, "I got to do this the right way. My daughter's putting me on notice. I'm using margarine. I'm just kind of not following any of the steps." She has a scale now and she uses it, but I think it's because we've converted her.
Jessie Sheehan:
Understood. So not only do you give us these easy, unfussy recipes, but you also literally help us rethink baking itself. So I hope you will tell us about setting the record straight about baking. You have a theory about it being bits and bobbles. You have a theory about it being a skill, but you mean something different than, "Oh, you perfect it." So tell us all about that, because I loved that section.
Christina Tosi:
Thank you. Baking is expression. Anyone and everyone can do it. I love how many people bake. I love how many people started baking these past few years and have continued doing it. I find baking to be one of the greatest forms of creativity, but just there's a lose yourself, find yourself in baking. You turn on the oven, you decide to make something, whatever it is, and you just lose yourself in the niss of it.
I don't go into the science of baking because, yeah, of course there's science. There's some chemical reactions in leaveners and, and, and, but we're short-changing, baking if we put it in that box. Baking is joy. Baking is happiness. Dessert shows up. Think about dessert, right? Dessert has a habit of showing up for any and every occasion. Why does cake always arrive on someone's birthday? It's always cake. I mean, these days people think a little bit more outside the box, but there's always dessert. You bring dessert and you drop it off at someone's doorstep when, I don't know, they've been away for a while, or when you have too many things in your kitchen, you're trying to get rid of them, or you want to say happy holidays. Or dessert shows up when someone's graduated or a job well done, got a new job. Dessert also shows up when something sad or bad or deep or dark happens. Dessert shows up.
So baking is just a way to bring the spirit of like, "Hey, I'm here, I got you," to life. And what I love about it is it's the ultimate way of saying, "I thought about you. I spent time doing this thing." Dessert's not on the food pyramid, right? It's a totally opt-in course, and that's such a joyful crowbar way into just the bullseye center of someone's heart on so many different levels. And what I love about it is it's also about the person baking and it is a way for you to make something and feel good about yourself and feel accomplished. You can bake the classic, you can go wild and totally off the map, but no one is mad when someone shows up with dessert.
Jessie Sheehan:
I also wanted to talk about dispelling misconceptions, and particularly I love yours about equipment, because in the end, I think you and I feel similarly: you aspire to wash as few dishes as possible, and basically every move I make in the kitchen is about, "How can I not have to clean everything up at the end?"
Christina Tosi:
We got life to live girl.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, hello.
Christina Tosi:
Except for if I'm at your house, I'll clean every single day. I'll give you a whole kitchen a detail. But in my home I'm like, "I got life to live." Also, I live with a minimalist and the equipment's all put away. I do it to myself, too. We tell ourselves these things and these stories, I'm like, "I don't want to...," then I have to get it out and then I have to put it away and then I have to wipe it down." And I love the power of a Ziploc bag and a rolling pin. Ooh, girl, we joke. I'm like, "All I need for Bake Club are my cups and my spoons, a big bowl, a spatula, if I need a smaller bowl, I'll go get a cereal bowl or whatever it is."
But I will say, my other real kitchen sidekick is, well, you need a sturdy baking sheet, right? We call it a half sheet pan in the book. If you need nothing else, you need a microwave safe bowl, microwave safe spatula, a whisk, get some Ziploc baggies. You don't honestly even need a rolling pin. You can use, I don't know, your olive oil bottle or wine bottle or whatever it is. One half sheet pan for anything and everything, parchment paper. I think that's one of my biggest call-outs in this book that I was just like, "I'm doing it, man. I'm ripping off the bandaid."
It's the easiest clean, but really for anything that you have to roll out, so like the pie crust for Payday Pie, classic pie crust, these cutout cookies, the brown sugar wafers, chocolate wafers, anything. I think a lot of people don't get into that space of home baking because, think about it: we've been leading you astray this whole time. It's such a pain. You make the dough and then you put it into a square and then you refrigerate it and then you pull it out later once it's rested and it's this rock hard thing, and then you have to dust the surface, but you don't want to add too much flour. You don't want to overwork the dough. Parchment paper. Parchment paper, man. Roll it out between two sheets of parchment paper once you're done mixing, before you chill it and rest it and your life will be forever changed.
Jessie Sheehan:
I do everything between two sheets of parchment, but I also sometimes forget that thing that you don't even have to chill first. Roll first, then chill it between the two pieces of parchment.
Christina Tosi:
That's it. That's it. And parchment paper, you can get a box of half-sheet pan parchment paper. I don't know. There's 100, there's 500. I don't even know how many sheets are in it. I never run out of it. I put it on top of my fridge or just to the side of my fridge or freezer and it's just always there. It doesn't take up any space and your baking game is going to be next level. But also use it for storing. You can use it for so many different things. If parchment paper had a chief marketing officer, I would apply for the role.
Jessie Sheehan:
Tell us about the ‘Do You Bake Club’ sidebars, because I love those.
Christina Tosi:
I love the Do You Bake Club. So ever since day one, the recipes I bring to “Bake Club” are my favorites. They're my tried and trues. They're starting off points. That's all they are. They're also finishing points. They're certainly finishing points in my kitchen, but they're starting off points and my greatest joy is when a classic, like a Bake Club recipe goes out... The Bake Club recipe is not a Milk Bar recipe, so if this were Bake Club, it would be like Go-To Chocolate Chip Cookie, which is a recipe in the book. Drop-Off-Able Desserts. I see you. It's not the Cornflake Chocolate Chip Marshmallow Cookie or the Compost Cookie, or, or, or, it is an amazing chocolate chip cookie. It's my Go-to chocolate chip cookie recipe.
And from there, what I love to see and what I encourage in all of these Do You Bake Club moments is it's a little bit of a sidebar. Let's have a little huddle on the side of your kitchen while you're pulling your ingredients out. Are you out of chocolate chips? What other chips do you have? I wonder if you didn't use all semi-sweet chips, but you used, I don't know, like butterscotch chips and then dark chocolate chunks, what would happen? Okay, you're not like a chocolate chunk person. What about texture? That could be fun. Oh, okay. You're not. Okay, well what about... I mean, what if it's not vanilla? What other fun extracts do you have in your pantry?
It's a sidebar. It's like a little coaching sidebar, but more of thought bubbles of, "What else could you do that could be amazing to really, again, make this recipe one of a kind?" And then also in Do You Bake Club are my shout-outs to some of my favorite Bake Club bakers that have done things that have inspired me. My favorite moments are when I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I didn't think of that." Or, "Why didn't I think of that?" Or, "I'm so inspired by that thought. I'm going to try that in my home kitchen next time." So it's this beautiful full circle infinity symbol. As a math major, I love the infinity symbol. It's the gift that keeps on giving.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. There are photos of the Bake Club members' baked goods in the book and their IG handles. I just thought that was such a beautiful tribute to your people.
Christina Tosi:
The amazing Lexi and Tom were like, "Okay." We were like, "This is really important. We want a killer index. We will be shooting photos of just the basic raw ingredients." And then we were like, "There must be a section called Do You Bake Club, where we take what is user generated content and we shout these people out." Looking at one great picture of a carrot marshmallow roll-up is awesome, but seeing three different people's take on it and how they did it and how they imagined it based on the ingredients that they have in their kitchen, for me, that's next level cookbook and that's what “Bake Club” is.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love that so much. I read this article that you had done for Fortune. You talked about letting failure energize you by literally drinking it for breakfast and that to be a chef, you have to be, and I think you used three reallys, you have to really, really, really be in love with failing. I thought that was so interesting. Please unpack that.
Christina Tosi:
Unpack it. So anything that you choose to do in life that you want to be good at is a practice. Making a great recipe is a practice. Building a business as a practice: the more you do it, the better you good at it. And it's not because the more you do it... If you want to be a great basketball player, guess what? Everyone that wants to be a great basketball, they start out being a really bad basketball player, and then they probably get better and then better and then better and then good, and then good for the context. But then if you want to really level up, et cetera, baking and building and running a business is the exact same way and you have to be great.
We get everyone that's sort of made it somewhere in life gets lauded for whatever their recent accomplishment was or their accolade, or, or, or, but we're never celebrated for the long and winding road. Of all the icons on the Milk Bar menu, I love to laugh. I'm like, "Oh my gosh, there's probably 50, 60 icons on the Milk Bar roster." We've had great menu items that aren't even icons. Great seasonal stuff. 16 years of Milk Bar. Do you know how many binders of failed recipes, what I still think are great ideas, but didn't really work out? I mean, it's dizzying, right? They're storage rooms and storage rooms of those recipes.
Every time you bring a recipe into the kitchen, you have to be prepared to not know how long the road is. You don't know how long you're going to be in that... You don't know how many times you're going to measure out two cups of flour, a quarter cup of sugar. You don't know how long. And you have to be really in love with the sort of Sisyphean pursuit of like, "I'm just going to roll this boulder up the hill today. I'm going to do it again tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow."
The micro things that happen are the things you fall in love with. Ooh, I figured this out. Ooh, that worked. Ooh, that didn't work, but you want to know what? I'm excited that didn't work, because now I know that that's not actually the path forward. You have to learn how to not think about failure as failure, or how to rebrand failure, right? Failure tells you you're taking risks. Failure tells you you're taking chances. Failure tells you you're making progress and that you're getting somewhere. If you're not failing, you're not growing, you're not learning, you're not pushing.
I'm recipe testing, of course, like, three different recipes at home right now, and my husband calls me. I talked to him at midnight. He's like, "What are you up to?" I'm like, "Making muffins." And he's like, "Oh, we're still making muffins?" And I'm like, "Yeah." And he's like, "When do you think you're going to be done making muffins?" And I'm like, "I don't know." How many muffins have my children eaten for breakfast? So many muffins, but I love the failed muffin approach. One, I look at the failed muffins and I'm like, "Ooh, what could you be? Are you bread pudding? Can I dry you out? What else can I do with these failures that I can learn from?" But I love the pursuit of being like, "Okay, that's not it." I go to bed at 2:00 AM, and I'm like, "Okay, well, I know what my plan's going to be tomorrow to get closer to success."
And I think it's really just about rebranding and redefining what failure and what success is, because you get to say. But if you're not good at failing, get good at it. Rebrand it and remind yourself the truth of the matter is that it's the only place. It's the only place that tells you you're on the right path to growing and becoming whatever it is, a great muffin recipe or otherwise.
Jessie Sheehan:
All right, so now I'm very excited to talk about the skillet cookie in the book and when we were choosing the recipe for this episode, I love this. You suggested this one because it really embodies the adaptability of the book and the overall spirit of Bake Club. Love that. Why does the skillet cookie do that?
Christina Tosi:
The skillet cookie for me, it's a one bowl wonder and it's a one pan wonder, so you need a bowl, a spatula. Ideally, you have a skillet. If you don't have a skillet, I mean, I'll take a nine-inch round, but it's about transforming something that you can make with a few simple ingredients in a single bowl with a little arm muscle and a spatula wooden spoon. You could take your own journey, your riffs on, what do you flavor it? Do you add texture? Do you put chips in it? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Personify it based on the season. You can give me like a cinnamon sugar, cozy, et cetera. It's one batch of dough that's really easy to come together. You put it into a skillet, you bake it, and all of a sudden there's no scooping. There's no like, "Oh my God, my cookie spread." So it kind of hides anything that you're worried about. "Oh my God, it didn't puff, it didn't bake, it spread too much, it didn't spread enough," et cetera, et cetera. Don't worry. The skillet hides all.
You put it in the oven and when you pull it out, you have this warm, gorgeous, freshly baked skillet cookie. You use that same spatula to portion out pieces, which is so beautiful and crackly in all of its ways. You can put it on the table. You can scoop ice cream on top of it, you can serve it for breakfast, you can serve it for evening, you can bring it over to someone's house. It can be the centerpiece of your dinner, your dessert. It's always a crowd pleaser. It always crushes.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love skillet cookies so much, but I never thought about them that way, Christina. You've opened my skillet cookie eyes. Like you say, it's a great party dessert. It's this great kind of high low, because it's just a cookie, but with the presentation, it's kind of not.
Christina Tosi:
It makes you look so good. Not that it's about what other people think about you, but like, there's no cookie scoop. There's no, "Is it even?" And I love it because you can just like, "Oh my gosh, the holiday season's coming up." Get some peppermint extract in there, get some candy canes in there. I don't know. You could peppermint bark it. You could put some white chocolate chips and some pretzels, or I don't know. I love the CT, the Cinnamon Toast Crunch end of it, which, by the way, you can make Cinnamon Toast Crunch from scratch. The recipe's in the book. But it's white chocolate chips that you just spray a little like pan spray on, sprinkle some cinnamon on, boom, you have cinnamon white chocolate chips. Put those in, put some CTC, maybe put some marshmallows, under-bake it over-bake it. No one's mad. You over bake it? Put three scoops of ice cream on top. That melted ice cream will seep in, and then all of a sudden, the over-baking will seem super intentional. Under-bake it, and really, no one's mad at it.
Jessie Sheehan:
I know. I love that. You say it's insanely gooey nearly under-baked, which is basically like my love language. So we're going to heat the oven to 350, and I love that in the recipe you write "heat the oven" and you don't write "preheat the oven" because that's a pet peeve of mine in recipe writing.
Christina Tosi:
Yeah, thank you. Thank you.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're heating an oven, we're not preheating it. That would be what we were doing when we were thinking about turning on the oven. Anyway, but we heat it, I love this, with a seasoned eight or 12 inch cast iron skillet. Two questions. First of all, brand? Are we talking lodge? Do you have a...
Christina Tosi:
Love a Lodge. Also, Yeti just came out with a great cast iron pan, by the way. The beauty of the cast iron is it's going to create a really nice crust at the bottom so you have texture so that when you under bake the skillet cookie, you've got a nice thin layer of crust and then a nice gooey center.
Jessie Sheehan:
Do we preheat the Lodge pan so that bottom cookie starts to bake right away?
Christina Tosi:
You can, but you don't have to.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay.
Christina Tosi:
Depends on how much you do or don't want from a bottom crispy standpoint.
Jessie Sheehan:
I know, but if you want that, that's what the heating is for?
Christina Tosi:
If you want it, that's what the heating is for.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, I love that so much.
Christina Tosi:
Also, you can put it on the grill. The summertime, put it on the grill.
Jessie Sheehan:
I also love we can bake it on an outside fire. So great, so great. Also love that the recipe is assembled in a bowl with a spatula. Yay. But you could use a stand or hand mixer if you wanted to.
Christina Tosi:
100%. 100%, you could use a stand mixer or a hand mixer. I just find, I'm like... You also don't have to use cold butter. You can use cold butter If you know what cold butter is going to get you, which is going to be sort of like a lighter, fluffier, less chewy cookie, go for it. 100%. If you're like, "Girl, I just did arms this morning. I did my arms workout. I'm not trying to get any more muscle on my right or my left arm," put it in a stand mixer. We call handheld mixer, I call it the granny mixer, because that's what my granny used. Any way you bring cookie dough together is right for you and works here. I melt my butter in my big microwave safe bowl, my one single microwave safe bowl. I melt my butter and then I bring the rest of the stuff together because when I love to bake at home, I like to make it quick, because again, I love to do the thing, but I also love to get out and live life and spend time with people.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's the other beauty of the microwave safe bowl that you love, which I also love. I always have a big Pyrex just so that I can do that first stage of melting butter or a melting chocolate in the microwave.
Christina Tosi:
Exactly.
Jessie Sheehan:
Is your microwave safe usually glass?
Christina Tosi:
My microwave safe is glass or ceramic.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah,
Christina Tosi:
I have two little kids, so we've had a few casualties.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Christina Tosi:
Sometimes glass and sometimes ceramic.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay, great. So in a large bowl using a sturdy spatula. When you say sturdy, should we picture the white top and the red handle from Restaurant Supply?
Christina Tosi:
Those, I'd say, are my biggest go-to spatulas at home because they just are the sturdiest. There are some amazing heatproof silicone spatulas out there. I'd say if you're not spending eight or $10 or more, it's not going to be sturdy. It might be heat safe for how long? And then it might not be that sturdy, because this is your paddle, your whisk and your dough hook. Just imagine, that is how sturdy you need this spatula to be. But yeah, Restaurant Supply, white top red handle is the go-to.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're going to mix together. We can mix together softened butter because we can just do that by hand. And you said we can do melted butter and I love this idea of having softened butter. Whenever I think about softened butter, I associate it with a stand mixer, but I love this idea that we can soften our butter and just mix it up by hand.
Christina Tosi:
That's it. That's it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Love.
Christina Tosi:
It's like a half microwave. It's a half melt of your butter. You can either leave the butter out overnight. If I know I'm going into a weekend, I usually just pull a pound of butter out. I always leave salted butter softened for my family for toast or what have you. At WD-50, we would always keep a four quart container of softened butter just for ease, because you're going to go through it enough that it's not going to go bad. But yeah, you can also just give it, if you normally melt your butter in the microwave for a minute, just put your butter in the microwave for 20, 30 seconds. That will be soft. Give it a little go round with that heat safe spatula and she's softened.
Jessie Sheehan:
So now we're going to add some white and light brown sugar to our butter. Assume that dark would work.
Christina Tosi:
Dark would work. In the TMI section of sugar here, any sugar will work, right? If you're like, "I want mine to be like a maple cinnamon," or, "Ooh, no, I want mine to be like maple coffee skillet cookie," great. Use maple syrup instead of some of this sugar. Replace some of it. If you want to go super-duper sultry, gingersnappy, molasses and dark brown sugar. These sugars are interchangeable based on the flavor story that you want your skillet cookie to be.
Jessie Sheehan:
You have us use a little bit more light brown than granulated, and that's for sort of a little bit of moisture.
Christina Tosi:
It's moisture. I love a light... For me, light brown sugar gives context and flavor. If I'm putting chocolate chips in something, there is light brown sugar in the recipe. For me, dark brown sugar is a little too dark and moody, so I reserve my dark brown sugar... Believe it or not, my palette is very sensitive to the different sugars. I love a dark brown sugar, but only if we're going into deep sultry gingerbread gingersnap land. Otherwise, it distracts, personally, my palette for a chocolate chip cookie spirit, and a classic chocolate chip cookie starting place always has light brown sugar, and it always has more light brown sugar than regular sugar.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're going to stir the butter and the sugars together for about two minutes until fully combined using our sturdy spatula, wooden spoon, and then we're going to add an egg that doesn't need to be room temp. Is that right?
Christina Tosi:
It can be cold. My theory is, and the way that I've baked these past few years is: I usually take my butter, I put it in the microwave because I didn't have the foresight to pull it out before, it's melted, it's soft, so my butter is already sort of warmer than it needs to be. It's totally fine that it's this temperature, but I add a cold egg because that helps temperature balance the total mixture Before we add the drys.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we have our egg, we're going to add vanilla, and I know from just because I know you that this could be supermarket variety McCormick's. This could be fancy if fancy is your jam.
Christina Tosi:
Could make a creme brulee skillet cookie, scrape some vanilla pods, bring in vanilla paste. That would slay so hard. But for, again, a classic chocolate chip cookie, it's like the dark vanilla extract that you found in the kitchen of somebody that came generations before you.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're going to mix in the egg, we're going to mix in the vanilla and sort of combine until fluffy about one minute. Then we're going to measure our all-purpose flour and our milk powder. So we need to pause here, bow down to the God that is Christina that introduced us to milk powder and just tell us everything. I think of it as a Tosi thing, and you say it adds depth of flavor and chew to marshmallow treats, to cookies, anything. How did you discover it? When did you discover it?
Christina Tosi:
This is like the whole discover, rediscover your pantry. I worked in pastry kitchens for decades on my way up and whenever I was trying to figure out what to make or if I had downtime or you're cleaning a case of butternut squash in the fall, that takes a second. You're trying to get it done as quickly as possible and not cut your finger, but at some point you get into a rhythm. I just liked to look around and I just kept seeing milk powder. Milk powder is not that milk powder. It's the solids of milk and we typically use it in professional pastry kitchens to make ice cream to add more solids so there's more weight, heft, roundness to ice cream essentially. It also adds a depth of flavor, which I always thought was interesting that no one ever spoke about in ice cream land, but it was kind of just one of those, if you didn't study the makeup of ice cream, it was just always the ingredient that you added when you were making a big batch of strawberry ice cream for chocolate souffle night or whatever it was.
And I just always stared at it and went, "What is this?" My folks were separated when I was growing up, and my dad always had non-fat milk powder in his bachelor. Always had it. I think probably to be like, "Nah, I have kids when they needed milk, I got milk," sort of thing. I don't know if you've ever tried to make milk with non-fat milk powder. It's not tasty to my palate. But this ingredient had been with me always. I just started playing around with it one day off the clock in professional kitchens and being like, "Oh, this is interesting."
I had an idea when I started making desserts at Momofuku, Momofuku means lucky peach, and so I was like, "I'm going to make a peaches and cream cookie." That's how I'm going to sort of bridge my Americana baking-ness with this very authentic but all over the map dining adventure. Lucky peach, great. Peaches and cream. And I was like, "How am I going to get cream into a cookie?" Because you wouldn't add heavy cream to a cookie. It's going to make it fluffy and not dense and fudgy the way I like a cookie. And I was like, "Oh, milk powder." And so I started adding it to many failed, may I add, recipes, and what I discovered in it was I wasn't getting exactly what I wanted from a "and cream" element to the peaches and cream cookie, but what I found was this crazy amazing like umami but for dessert depth of flavor and this insane chew. And so I really backpocketed that finding and really took it on the road when I started R&Ding for the Milk Bar opening menu
And now I use it in everything and it's so easy to find. I knew that you could get it obviously in the grocery store because of dad days, right? Bachelor dad days. And so I was like, "Well, this is such an easy thing that everyone should be using in their own home kitchen." Literally any recipe you have, specifically cookies, but it would work great in cakes and muffins, et cetera. But cookies, I think, are where it shines the most. Do me a favor: whatever your favorite cookie recipe is, just add two tablespoons of non-fat milk powder. You can get it in the drink mixy section of the grocery store. Sometimes now you even find it in the baking aisle. Just add two tablespoons, add it with your dry ingredients and just tell me what you think.
Jessie Sheehan:
I always have it in my pantry. I love it so much because of you. We have our flour, we have our milk powder, baking soda, kosher salt, diamond crystal for you?
Christina Tosi:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Diamond crystal. And I love this: what we do is we've got our wet ingredients in our bowl. We're going to put all of these dry ingredients just one at a time mixing with our, obviously we have our cups and our tables, et cetera. Put that on top of the mixing bowl and we're going to toss those dry ingredients together just first with our spatula, kind of mix them up a little bit on top and then we'll fold them into the wet ingredients.
Christina Tosi:
This is my lazy baker love. I've been baking my whole life. I'm going to tell you, when you need to be fussy, do not pull out another bowl and measure your dry ingredients, at least not in my recipes, because they're foolproof this way. I'm not going to tell you to pull another bowl and then add all the dry ingredients to it and then whisk those around to make sure they're evenly combined. Literally just mix them on top and then just do a little boop, boop, boop, boop at the top with all the dry ingredients, get them tossed enough, and then start mixing it into the wet below. Your life will be forever changed. I can't vouch for every recipe, but I can vouch for every “Bake Club” recipe, this works.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're going to mix everything together until combined, we're going to stir in some chocolate chips. I also love that you're chocolate chip girl. You can use a bar, chop up a bar.
Christina Tosi:
If you've got fancy chocolate, bring it out. If you've got leftover Halloween, bring it out. Whatever you got, bring it out. But I'm just a chocolate chip girl. Every recipe in the “Bake Club” cookbook, from peppermint patties, PB cups, the fanciest chocolate dessert you can imagine, it's just chocolate chips because I think they're just the easiest accessible ingredient. Fancy chocolate? Heck yeah, bring it on. But even I don't keep fancy chocolate at home. I ate the fancy chocolate.
Jessie Sheehan:
Same.
Christina Tosi:
I also the chips.
Jessie Sheehan:
And I eat the chips. So we're going to carefully remove the hot skillet from the heated oven. We're going to spread the dough evenly to the edges. We're going to bake for about 16 to 18 minutes until the cookie's golden brown in the top, just set in the center. We'll remove the skillet, let it cool on a rack or on a potholder for like 10 minutes before using a clean, sturdy, heat-safe spatula to sort of indent and probably scoop.
Christina Tosi:
Slice. Yeah. How many slices do you need? This is the money moment, too, because we, with our eyes and with our nose before we decide and commit to this dessert, and it's a warm cookie, so your kitchen's going to smell like heaven. You're going to check the box of the smell test, but if you take that heat-proof spatula, so cast iron, no abrasion, that means no knife is allowed anywhere near that cast iron pan. Use that heat-safe spatula and while it's still warm, just start to... You're not slicing yet, you're just indenting. You're suggesting where eight or 10 slices look, and what you're going to get is this beautiful puff and crackle indentation that will... Your eyes are going to want to eat the whole thing. And then when it's time to serve, you can scoop it the rest of the way. But I'm very bullish on it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh my gosh.
Christina Tosi:
Of all the things that I learned, that is how to make the skillet cookie. It looks beautiful on its own. You can decorate the edges once it comes out of the oven. You could drizzle some chocolate. You can put some more decor on top that maybe didn't make sense to go in the oven. It might over-bake or burn or you can amp up the flavor story, as well. But before you do any of that, heat-safe spatula, indent however many slices you think you need, and the visual texture that it gives is just next level.
Jessie Sheehan:
I also love a skillet cookie just placed in the... You have to like the people you're eating with, obviously, but you just place it in the center of the table and give people spoons.
Christina Tosi:
Can I also say, though, even if you sure about your dining company, my favorite thing to do is to eat dessert with people just because it is the ultimate... I mean, I always start... A little bit like introductions are awkward, so the best thing to do is just stick your hand out and just start, just do it. Just be the first one in. I love the dessert course even with people that I don't know really well because I'm like, "We're about to get really close and you don't even know it, and I will eat more dessert than you, and it will be an invitation in, I know it's not a competition, but I will because I love to do it," and I just think it is a really beautiful lowering of the guard and you'll find something you like about whoever it is that you're sitting with, skillet cookie on the table or otherwise.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we already mentioned a couple of these things, but I just wanted to talk about the, Do You Sidebar for this one.
Christina Tosi:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
You say you could use any flavor of chip, you could use a different flavored extract, like that peppermint situation. Maybe you're using a teeny bit of peppermint extract. I love that you say, "Some white chocolate chips for regular, add CTC, add Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal and marshies or marshmallows."
Christina Tosi:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
You say, once cooled, you could drizzle with melted chips. And I also love, this is the best, but I love that you tag two different tweaks for the skillet cookie from two different Bake Club members.
Christina Tosi:
That's it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Again, back to honoring your peeps.
Christina Tosi:
That's it. I love it. Also, the skillet cookie is, if you're making it with multiple people or for multiple people, I'll be like, "Yeah, what's your favorite cookie?" And someone's like, "Ooh, I'm a peanut butter cookie person." "Ooh, I'm an oatmeal cream person." You could take that dough and just start adorning pieces of the skillet cookie or a third of the skillet cookie gets a swirl of peanut butter in it and the other one gets some oats and the other one and the other one. It's such a forgiving recipe to make people feel seen and fed and loved in all the right ways. And it's the ultimate, "Take this recipe and make it yours." It's awesome as is, and it will be awesome. Whatever you're inspired by and decide to do.
Jessie Sheehan:
Thank you so much for chatting with me today, Christina, and I just want to say that you are my cherry pie forever and ever.
Christina Tosi:
Infinity. Thank you for having me.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's it for today's show. Thank you to King Arthur Baking Company, Kerrygold, California Prunes, and Ghirardelli for supporting this episode. 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 CitiVox 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.