Claire saffitz transcript
Kerry Diamond:
Hi, everyone. You are listening to Radio Cherry Bombe, and I'm your host, Kerry Diamond, coming to you from Rockefeller Center in the heart of New York City. Each week we talk to the coolest culinary personalities around, the folks shaping and shaking up the food scene. Today's guest is Claire Saffitz, one of the most beloved bakers around. Claire is a YouTube star and the bestselling author of the cookbook, Dessert Person. As a dessert person, I love that title, and Claire is on the cover of the latest issue of Cherry Bombe Magazine. More on that in just a minute.
Today's episode is presented by Kerrygold, the makers of beautiful butter and cheese made with milk from Irish grass-fed cows. I've been to Ireland with Kerrygold and have visited some of the small family farms they work with, and the care they put into their product every step of the way is amazing. I'm guessing a lot of you listening today are bakers, so you know the best ingredients, especially butter, can make a real difference in your baked goods. Whether you're making rich shortbread cookies, a luscious pound cake, or attempting something super ambitious, like a croquembouche, which I will probably never make, but happily eat, you want the best ingredients you can source. If you haven't tried Kerrygold, look for their butter and cheese at your favorite supermarket or specialty grocery store. Visit kerrygoldusa.com for recipes, product information, and a store locator.
We have some fun Claire Saffitz news to share. Claire is on the cover of the latest Cherry Bombe Magazine, how about that? You might not know this, but Cherry Bombe started as a print magazine back in 2013, and it is still the centerpiece of everything we do. And it's print only, meaning you won't find the content on our website. It's a little old school, but that's how we like it. The theme of this issue is beautiful baked goods, and you can purchase an issue at cherrybombe.com or at your favorite bookstore, magazine shop or specialty store like Golden Fig Fine Foods in Minneapolis, Bold Fork Books in Washington, D.C., and the Heath Newsstand in San Francisco.
Also, I hope you're sitting down for this one, are you ready for a Claire Saffitz donut? I don't know if any of us are ready for that. Fan Fan Doughnuts in Brooklyn is doing a special Cherry Bombe Valentine's Day donut box to celebrate our new issue. The box will feature donuts by six women in the issue, including Claire. The box is available for pre-order on the Fan Fan Doughnuts website, and could be picked up February 8th through 14th. Maybe I'll see you at pickup. Stay tuned for the donut reveal on social media and if you missed any of those details, you can find those on social media as well. Just check out our Instagram account, @cherrybombe.
One more update, tickets go on sale Monday, February 14th, Valentine's Day, for Jubilee, our annual conference that's the largest gathering of women and cool creatives in the whole entire food world. It's taking place Saturday, April 2nd at Javits Center in Manhattan. We have a lot of fun planned for the day and lots of special events throughout Brooklyn and Manhattan on Sunday, April 3rd. Visit cherrybombe.com for more.
Now, let's chat with today's guest. Claire Saffitz, welcome back to Radio Cherry Bombe.
Claire Saffitz:
Thank you for having me.
Kerry Diamond:
Thank you. It's so good to see you.
Claire Saffitz:
You too.
Kerry Diamond:
I feel like I see you a lot. I mean, you're on the cover of the magazine right now, so I feel like I see you on a daily basis, but it's very nice to see you in person.
Claire Saffitz:
You too. Thank you for having me. And I've not been in this studio, which is so cool.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, good. Well, welcome to Rock Center. We love recording here and our lobby just reopened at the 1 Rock Center. If any of you are walking through 1 Rockefeller, look for Newsstand Studios. We're right in there.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay, let's jump right into this. You are working on your second cookbook and you are almost done.
Claire Saffitz:
I'm so close. I'm so close. I am right in the stage where the mental breakdown is imminent. I can feel it. So I recently turned in the recipe manuscript. So all of the recipes, table of contents edited in order, chapter openers, all of that, which felt monumental and it took me... Everything takes me way longer than I think it's going to.
Kerry Diamond:
That is monumental. Give yourself some credit.
Claire Saffitz:
I did. I gave myself like a half of a day off, because I had to turn right back around.
Kerry Diamond:
Are there footnotes again?
Claire Saffitz:
So there aren't footnotes.
Kerry Diamond:
No footnotes this time.
Claire Saffitz:
No footnotes.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay.
Claire Saffitz:
But I have a version of them. I'm very excited about it. So Dessert Person has footnotes, which we've talked about, but it's like a lot of toggling back and forth on the page. I mean, this book I really was able to reflect on what I felt worked about Dessert Person and then change things that I thought didn't work as well. So with the footnotes, I decided to change it up and I have little indentation steps, little sides in the recipes, in the body themselves that say, potential pitfalls or optional upgrades, those kinds of things. So it's calling it out in the recipe itself, and overall these recipes are more streamlined, a little bit simpler, more approachable, also more classic in a lot of ways and cover a wider range of dessert types and categories.
So I felt like I didn't need the footnotes, but there is a little section at the bottom that says, can I...? And that came out of all of the questions that people would ask me about the recipes in Dessert Person like, can I have the recipe? Can I make it gluten free? Can I bake this in a different pan? All of those kinds of questions. It's basically like an FAQ for each recipe.
Kerry Diamond:
That's brilliant. So many substitution questions.
Claire Saffitz:
Yes. So many sub questions.
Kerry Diamond:
Yeah, I see. You can't help but see that when you look at recipes online, that seems to be the thing people love. Okay, optional upgrade and potential pitfall, I love that. I feel like that could apply to so many things in life, not just recipes.
Claire Saffitz:
Well, the pitfalls is like, don't do this or be careful if this happens, because I want to call this out and it's like you cannot put everything in a parenthetical in a recipe. That was another big thing. I've really been thinking so much about the craft of recipe writing, having just edited 105 or whatever recipes, and trying to think about the way that I use language and how do I want these recipes to read? And I want them to feel casual. My voice is there, but also very precise. So I decided to try to do less things in parentheses because it's like, if it's important, just write it in the paragraph. So these are a lot of the things I've been thinking about.
Kerry Diamond:
You are a student of cookbooks, which we'll get to later, but cookbooks over the centuries, not just cookbooks over the past few years.
Claire Saffitz:
Yes. I love them. I mean, I really love early modern cookbooks.
Kerry Diamond:
What period would that be?
Claire Saffitz:
Like the early 1700s, pretty much.
Kerry Diamond:
So you're not talking to '70s people. 1700s.
Claire Saffitz:
Although I do love cookbooks from the 1970s also. Oh, I have a huge fascination with community cookbooks, like spiral-bound community cookbooks, which were a big point of inspiration actually for this book. My mom has several that I loved growing up. My parents lived in Cleveland for a while before I was born. My mom has a cookbook called Friends of the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra and it's called Bach's Lunch, but it's Bach the composer.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, that's clever.
Claire Saffitz:
And then there's the second version that's called Bach for More. So I've always loved the cookbooks.
Kerry Diamond:
They are clever back in Cleveland.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. I'm great with the puns. I mean, I love cookbooks of all kinds. From community cookbooks to ones in public domain on Google Docs, that are hundreds of years old.
Kerry Diamond:
Have you announced the title yet?
Claire Saffitz:
No, I've not announced the title yet because I don't don't know what it is yet. There're contenders. So right now the thing that I'm finishing is what they call the front matter, like the introduction and the other little sections that go at the front of the book. And I'm hoping that through writing, because I get ideas when I write, so I'm hoping that just something happens, like a little spark, where I write something I'm like, that's it.
Kerry Diamond:
Dessert Person is a tough one to follow up, title wise.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. Well, to me it's like Dessert Person is so much more than just the title of that book, because it's like an identity.
Kerry Diamond:
A lifestyle.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. A lifestyle. It's a way of living.
Kerry Diamond:
I'm speaking for myself.
Claire Saffitz:
Right. Yeah. Like that's who I am. That's how I go through life. I've wanted to incorporate that somehow into the second book and I also feel like, it's not a sequel at all. I mean, this is a standalone book, but I really feel like they compliment each other and they kind of go together. So I want there to be a nod to that, I just don't know what it is yet.
Kerry Diamond:
We eagerly await the announcement of the title.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. I'll let you know.
Kerry Diamond:
What would you say you learned about yourself working on the first book?
Claire Saffitz:
Working on the first book, I really learned to trust my taste on the first one. I think that's where I really developed my own style or I came to recognize really what my style is, because I spent so many years working in a magazine where it's sort of like, yes, you have ideas, but there is a story pitch and you're sort of fulfilling other editors ideas or what is sort of standard for the season or the issue or something. And this was when I could really decide like, no, I like this thing and I'm going to use it.
And so I really, I think, solidified my identity as a recipe developer in that book. I was like, however many years later. I think it came out one year ago, not that long ago, but I worked on the recipes for a long time. And when I see it, I still feel like those are ideas that I'm like, that's a good idea. Like I really like that recipe. I really learned my recipe process, but also my creative process. Definitely.
Kerry Diamond:
Great. Let's jump ahead and talk about the Cherry Bombe cover. First off, thank you so much for being on the cover. It's so much fun shooting you and all the cover girls.
Claire Saffitz:
Kerry, I told you this, I think multiple times, but it was like the best day of my life. It was so fun. I don't really do still photography shoots, I do video shoots. This was a shoot unlike anything I'd experienced where there was someone doing my hair, someone doing my nails, someone doing my makeup. They were all so fun and nice. Then Jen, the photographer. It was just like people standing around and telling you that you look amazing and that you're so incredible, it was the biggest confidence booster I have ever experienced. I seriously called my husband on the way out and I was like, "This is so much fun. Everyone should be able to do this." So I loved it and I could not have enjoyed it more. So thank you.
Kerry Diamond:
It was such a great day for us too. And all of you got along so well and everybody was so excited to meet each other.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. I mean, the other huge part of it was the amazing company to be with these other bakers who I've admired and followed their careers, and I felt super flattered and honored and like a real career high point.
Kerry Diamond:
And Fany Gerson brought donuts. She brought giant boxes of donuts for all of us.
Claire Saffitz:
You have no idea how fast I ate that donut. I was done with that donut before I got to the first floor in the elevator from the fourth floor I think. It was so good.
Kerry Diamond:
And Victoria Granof and the croquembouche. Okay, we have to talk about the croquembouche for a second. So Victoria Granof is a famous food stylist. She is legendary. She worked with the likes of Irving Penn back when he was alive, and we were so thrilled that she agreed to do the shoot. And we were tossing around some ideas, and we never really have complicated food on our covers. It's fashiony or it's an ice cream sundae, we've had great stuff, but we never attempted the kind of things that we did for this one.
And so I said, "I'm thinking about a croquembouche for Claire, because it's just so festive and it's the end of the year." And she's like, "Okay." And doesn't even blink. Right? And then day of the shoot, it's clear I have never made a croquembouche because it was so hard, they're covered in caramel and I mean, it was just crazy. And then I remember you get there and you're like, "I can't believe you all made a croquembouche. This is amazing." And then a few days later I read your recipe, all the way through to the bottom, and you basically were like, "God bless the people who even tried to attempt making a croquembouche. God speed." And I was like, "Oh wow. Maybe I should have read this before I asked Victoria."
Claire Saffitz:
You know, I'm not surprised that Victoria didn't bat an eye. I mean, I worked with her a couple of times when I was an editor at Bon Appétit, and she's such a master that it was like, I mean, not that anyone wakes up and just whips up a croquembouche or whatever, but it looked beautiful. And the great thing about a croquembouche is for anyone who doesn't know, it's like cream puffs covered in very hard caramel and stacked in this big, crazy hollow ring. They are super solid. Once the caramel has hardened, you really could take a baseball bat to it. I mean, it would break, but it's very sturdy. So I was swinging that thing around and I hope Victoria wasn't having a heart palpitation or anything, but it made the shoot so fun. And we had the rose petals and I loved the jumpsuit that I was wearing. This Caron Callahan, blue canvasy one.
Kerry Diamond:
I love it.
Claire Saffitz:
It was so great. It made me feel amazing.
Kerry Diamond:
I thought that was the spark of Victoria Granof genius. The roses on the top and the rose petals, that was great.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. So pretty. And very fun to play with because, where do the hands go when someone's taking your picture?
Kerry Diamond:
Well, thank you again, it was so much fun. And what also was fun was interviewing you for the cover story, because I thought I kind of knew a lot about you and it turned out I really knew nothing about you and what an interesting path you've had, and folks will hear what this path was over the next part of this interview. But I will confess that I just thought, okay, Claire's fabulous and successful and she went to Harvard and probably had an easy path through life. It took you a while to find out what your true path and purpose was and I took a lot of inspiration from that.
Claire Saffitz:
When I was newly out of college and had just moved to New York, I had no idea what I was doing, and I had an internship, which then ended not long after. What am I going to do? I really meandered quite a bit. I temped for a while. I worked retail for a while. I really was like figuring things out. So I'm deeply, deeply sympathetic toward people at that stage in their life, in the kind of early mid 20s or even later, of like, I'm trying to figure this out.
I was also someone that was used to achieving and that felt like I wasn't achieving. That was really the first time in my life that I started to pull away from this model of goal setting and achieving that was a source of self-esteem or self-worth because I am worth more than just the goals that I achieve. So I actually think that was really important. It was important that I just like floundered for a little bit. But then I decided to go to culinary school because it was like I got to do something. And the only thing I wanted to do for the years that I lived in New York and I was just bouncing around, was cook. I maybe told you this during the interview, but my roommate used to come home and be like, "Oh, the good smells are coming from our apartment." So that was all I wanted to do all the time. And I was really serious about it, and I knew that it was not a passing interest. I knew like this is something I find really fulfilling and sustaining and I think I want to do something with it.
So I decided, I was 24, 25, I applied to culinary school. And initially I was going to stay in New York. I'm not a native New Yorker, I'm from the Midwest, but I really feel like it's my home. I love New York. So I was like, I'm going to stay here. But it was cost prohibitive. And a lot of people ask me, should I go to culinary school? And I have a really hard time saying yes. It worked for me, but it is insanely expensive, and I think it's really hard to go into debt at an early stage in your life, especially where their career path is so sort of it could just take you in a lot of different directions and you don't have a guarantee.
So I started looking elsewhere and actually my roommate had a distant, I think it was an aunt or someone who worked in the food industry, but I went and talked to her and she was like, "I don't know, think about culinary school in France or something." And I was like, "Oh, what a great idea." And I'd never been to France. Well, I had once when I was a very little kid. My parents took me there, but never as an adult. Julie & Julia had recently come out and so I had a very, very romantic, very American kind of notion of moving to Paris. It was more affordable.
I signed up for a program, it was at a trade school run by the French Chamber of Commerce. It's basically a high school. In France, it's the system where you sort of go to like the LISAA or you go into trade school at maybe 13 or 14 or something. So I went into an international program with other people in their 20s and 30s from all over the world, and it was us and a bunch of French teenagers and they never talked to us. It was affordable and I was like for what I could pay just for tuition in New York, I could go and live in Paris and go to this school. And it also had an externship tied to it that was paid.
So it felt like a smarter financial decision and then I got to live in Paris, which was great, and I spoke not one word of French, but I figured it out. And I'm glad I didn't think too hard about it because I probably would've talked myself out of going, but I went and it was the best year of my life.
Kerry Diamond:
Did you focus on pastry or baking?
Claire Saffitz:
So I signed up for cuisine actually. There was a separate pastry program, but I decided to do cuisine because I felt like it was more sort of generalizable and marketable, but it also had a pastry component. So one day a week we did pastry, which is of course my favorite day, but I'm really glad that I did cuisine. I learned so much. That's what really got me super interested in cookbooks as historical texts, because I started asking the question, why is French cuisine so codified? I mean, you literally can map it out in a spreadsheet of hot appetizers, cold appetizers sauces, hot sauces, cold sauces, cold emulsions, mother sauces. It's so-
Kerry Diamond:
And those were your classes, right?
Claire Saffitz:
Basically those were the units that we followed and it was like, there's obviously a historical reason for this and I want to know what it is. So then I went to grad school and basically to study that.
Kerry Diamond:
Tell us what it is.
Claire Saffitz:
I mean, a lot of it has to do with the professionalization of the craft and just also a very French attitude toward codification and classification. Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
So is it also the brigade system in the kitchen just made it easier for certain people to do certain things to put a dish together?
Claire Saffitz:
Yes, for sure. It was a division of labor and areas of the kitchen as well. A lot of what I studied was about the sort of exporting of French culture and food to other Western European countries and then of course to the U.S. And for decades and decades and decades, fancy food was just French food. So sort of looking at that evolution and also that evolution of the restaurant as a space. It's super fascinating and I loved it.
Kerry Diamond:
Let's talk about this year in Paris because I am a Francophile and Paris is my favorite place on earth and I haven't been there in years and miss it terribly. It's funny, when you think about culinary school in Paris, the one thing I have in my mind is the movie Julie & Julia and the teachers being kind of mean to Julia. Were your classes hard?
Claire Saffitz:
Oh, I thought they were so hard at the time. I thought they were so hard. It turns out they were not hard at all, in retrospect. They just made them seem hard because the chefs, it was kind of part of the culture of the place that they yelled at us, which was funny. None of us really took it seriously. But certainly in France, culinary school is about training students to go be cooks and work up through the brigade system and be a chef. People use the term chef kind of loosely, but especially in France, a chef is a title, it's an official position and you are a manager. You run the kitchen. The chef is cooking, but also doing people's schedules and payroll and those kinds of things.
So I was like, I'm not going to do that, I know that that's not what I want for myself. So I kind of took it all with a grain of salt the yelling about, go faster. And I was like, I'll go faster, but it's not really going to be that important for me in my career. But it was actually, it was important to have that experience. So they were kind of mean, but also kind of funny and made fun of us.
Kerry Diamond:
What was the culinary school?
Claire Saffitz:
It was called Ferrandi, like École Grégoire-Ferrandi in the 6th. I mean, it wasn't like the best. Such a great area. And I made friends with all my classmates because we were all foreigners-
Kerry Diamond:
You were all in it together.
Claire Saffitz:
... in Paris. Yeah. And the course was taught in English, just to clarify. The French chefs knew we might be placed in French kitchens, so they spoke to us a lot in French. So people are always like, "Oh, you speak French." And I'm like, "No, no, no. Absolutely not." I can get by in French, but I speak restaurant French. Like I could write and read a recipe in French. And it's not that hard to tell when someone's yelling at you to hurry up in French in a kitchen.
Kerry Diamond:
And you did wind up working in a restaurant kitchen in Paris.
Claire Saffitz:
Yes.
Kerry Diamond:
Tell us about that experience.
Claire Saffitz:
The program had a mandatory externship, and that was part of why I chose it. It was because I knew I didn't want to work in a restaurant as a career. I just knew that it was not a good fit for me.
Kerry Diamond:
Explain that for people who think they might want to work in restaurants or do something food related, but aren't sure.
Claire Saffitz:
I don't function well under high pressure environments. I like to take my time. I like to be analytical. I just don't thrive under pressure. I totally get the personality that loves that, I just don't have it. So I knew that that wasn't what I wanted for myself, but I wanted a taste of it. I almost just like wanted to confirm that I am right, this is not what I want to do. So I had a three or four-month externship at the restaurant Spring, which is now closed in Paris, but the chef Daniel Rose has several other restaurants in Paris, actually also now in New York.
Kerry Diamond:
Le Coucou, is one of his.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
Mm-hmm. But that was a major gig to get. For someone who wasn't sure she wanted to work in restaurants, you got placed right in the thick of it.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. I mean, the school had certain restaurants that it worked with a lot. The term is stacher, like an intern, which is an official position. So I got paid, I had a contract.
Kerry Diamond:
And one thing I should point out, because folks who are listening to this might be like, "Oh, of course Claire got to intern at Spring." But you didn't know anybody back then.
Claire Saffitz:
Oh, no. It wasn't like-
Kerry Diamond:
It wasn't like Claire of today folks. This was Claire who didn't have a million friends in the food world.
Claire Saffitz:
Oh, this was like super stress ball, type A, just tell me what to do and I'll do it. I know it sounds like it was competitive, but I just remember we had meetings with the head of our program and they would be like, where do you want to do your externship? And I picked Spring, A, because of their reputation and also to be completely forthright is because I knew we could speak English in the kitchen. I was a little terrified about the idea of going into an all French kitchen, but it was also just like I knew the kind of food that Daniel Rose made at Spring and really I felt like that was the right fit for me. But they were just like, "Okay." I think I was the only one that had requested Spring and they had a spot, so I was like, okay, just go to Spring.
Kerry Diamond:
That's amazing.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
Tell us about the foods that you got to make and the stations you were on, because you got to work with beautiful ingredients and make beautiful food.
Claire Saffitz:
That was so, I mean, it was a brief period of just a few months, but so formative and important. And I think about it all the time and I learned so much. And I think first and foremost what I learned is, is integrity of ingredients. Just Daniel got the most exquisite produce and we had butter and cream driven down from Normandy once or twice a week in these big blocks. And bread came from, I don't remember which bakery he used, down the street, warm in big paper sacks. So I worked there in the spring, which was a great time, and we would get just huge flats, like big cardboard boxes of just the fattest green asparagus you've ever seen. And actually one of my jobs was to snap off, not to peel them, but to snap off the tiny triangular leaves around the stalks of the asparagus so that they could basically be intact, but you wouldn't get the kind of more course, tough little spear. So I just would sit there in the prep kitchen in the basement with a little pair of knife. I actually kind of loved it.
I remember it was something I read, a quote from Claudia Fleming in an article. When she was interviewed or a profile of hers where she said that she likes doing things. I really relate. I was happy. So there was an open kitchen where there were guests sitting around you, and I was so happy to just be buried in the prep kitchen in the basement with the music on just doing my thing. But-
Kerry Diamond:
It's very meditative.
Claire Saffitz:
I found it that way. I mean, I just found it calming and kind of peaceful, especially when everything else was chaotic. But I did pastry there. So there was a pastry chef, but she was leaving as I was coming in, and so I kind of took over a lot of the prep that she was doing, but I would also sometimes jump on lunch service and then I would jump on dinner service. I worked sort of two stations, although it was really like one at a time because I would first do what Daniel called the aparatif, which was just a sort of little series of bites at the beginning of the meal. So there'd be like a fried oyster or a raw oyster or both, all sorts of little, what most people would think of like amuse-bouche or something.
Kerry Diamond:
Give us another example just to-
Claire Saffitz:
Some cucumber jellies, but I think that was for the oyster. I mean, they were really good. I remember at the end of night I would eat all the leftovers, which I did every night, because I was also too stressed out and busy to eat during the day. So I would eat either leftovers and or make myself a butter sandwich, and I would get in the little home with my little butter sandwich.
Kerry Diamond:
Wait, what was a butter sandwich? It sort of sounds like-
Claire Saffitz:
It was just like the amazing bread that they had for the guests filled with the amazing butter. Two slices, and then I could eat it with one hand on my little veiled on my way home.
Kerry Diamond:
So bread and butter aka a butter sandwich.
Claire Saffitz:
Butter sandwich, yeah. Yes. The eparatif is the first thing all the guests get when they sit down and then as the night would go on and they had two seatings, I would migrate over to dessert, which would be the last thing that people ate. And that was a similar structure. That course was also a series of smaller bites, like non compos. I wasn't slicing a tart and putting it on a plate, I was just composing small little bites of the number of different kind of pastry components. So like a little mini pavlova with these beautiful gariguette strawberries that we would have delivered a couple of times a week. It could be like a little canal of ganache or something with a sprinkle on top. A lot of ice creams. We did a lot of ice creams, like the most incredible Greek honey ice cream. He had this incredible chocolate sorbet that was vegan, but was so creamy and delicious that people didn't even know.
So lots of that. I mean, stuff really rooted in very classic French flavors, but also very kind of loosely interpreted, which I loved. I mean, I love that I wasn't having to do complicated plating, but every thing was so beautiful.
Kerry Diamond:
I'm very sad that I didn't get to go to that restaurant ever. One of the great things about you being over there as a student is you also got to run around and explore Paris. Tell us about a few of the places you loved.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. So I didn't even think about this, but this morning when I was getting dressed and knowing that I was coming here, I put on these boots that I'm wearing. These are like super old, actually it's a pair of Doc Martens, but these were my pair of shoes. Like on my days off, I would put these shoes on and I had like, it's so funny, I was thinking about this recently I had one outfit cause I would, I was wearing like kitchen uniform every single day. But on my day off I would have my Paris outfit, which like I thought it was very chic, but it was this sweater, this sort of trench coat looking and jeans and these boots, anyway. I love these boots and they make me think of Paris every time I wear them.
I would spend a lot of time with the friends that I made in my program. And I was living in the Upper Marais, which was the most fantastic neighborhood, which I had no idea. I got very lucky that this was just the apartment where I was matched for the school. And it was so small and the pipes would freeze and it was a walk-up, but I loved everything about it. There was a poilane, like little outpost in my neighborhood. So we'd go and have little tartine sandwiches and I would often stop in there and try to time my visit to their warm apple tarts coming out of the oven. And to this day, one of the top five things I've ever eaten is a warm Poilane apple tart. It's just so good. There were some great little bistros in the area. There was this, I think it was called Café des Musées, is one of them in the Marais.
I remember I took my dad when he came to visit, and my dad is a huge, huge lover of French food. We had the best time. And then I hit up a lot of bakeries for sure. Which are like going to a museum because everything is under a cloche, it's like on display and then you're like, "I'll have a Tarte Tatin," and they'd come out with it in a little box and stuff. So I felt like the best eating in Paris. I mean, it wasn't really a lot of restaurant eating, although I went to some of the more affordable spots. Frenchie was really, it's still so popular, but really kind of gaining huge popularity. Rose Bakery. A number of expat places too. Bones was very new then. So it was nice to be tapped into the other cooks at Spring and sort of talk about, I didn't know anyone, but they were like, "Oh, this person just opened up a restaurant or whatever, go check that out."
Kerry Diamond:
Do you think you'll ever live there again?
Claire Saffitz:
When I left, I was like, I'm coming back. I'm coming back. I'm going to live here. It was a long time ago. So-
Kerry Diamond:
Your life has been a little bit of a whirlwind.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. I mean now I'm married and I feel like-
Kerry Diamond:
You own three cats.
Claire Saffitz:
And we have three cats, a couple of chickens. I knew that as time went on-
Kerry Diamond:
We need to talk about the chickens later.
Claire Saffitz:
I knew as time went on it would get harder and harder, but I have not given up. It just might be like another, not in this period of my life, but maybe later. Look, look, I mean, the dream is the Dorie Greenspan life.
Kerry Diamond:
That's the dream for a lot of us.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
You just reminded me, I need to write back to Dorie about something. Dorie is the best of both worlds.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. For sure.
Kerry Diamond:
New York, or U.S. and Paris. Exactly.
Claire Saffitz:
She emailed me recently and was like, "Kisses from Paris." I was like, "Dorie, it sounds so wonderful."
Kerry Diamond:
She's the best, she really is. So you're in Paris, you decide you are going to come back and go to graduate school. So we do need to flag that you are someone who obviously loves school. And you told me a funny anecdote from when you were younger, your mother would actually have to tell you to stop doing homework and go watch television or go outside. That's true?
Claire Saffitz:
That's true. And this is also something I've been thinking about recently because I've been so, I love television, I love it. And I've been so hard at work on my book that I haven't been watching it, but I miss it. I want it so bad. And I really think that that was formed in childhood. I was a very tightly wound kid and very into like I really liked rules and I really liked following rules and doing what was expected of me, which meant achieving in school. And so I never watched TV and now as an adult it just makes me an adult that wants to watch TV all the time because it means it signifies to me. I have psychologized this whole thing. It means to me like freedom or relaxing or something.
Kerry Diamond:
So Claire loves school, we've established that. You're in Paris, so you decide you're going to come back, but go to graduate school.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. I was applying for grad school while I was doing my culinary program because still, as a young adult, most of my life had been school and I liked it and I was good at it and I was like, I should just probably keep doing this. I also really loved the idea of a lifelong pursuit of learning, which I also realized I have a very idealized way of looking at that. Like my dad was a professor and so I had that model a little bit. I applied to grad school, I applied to PhD programs, I had shared this with you before. I didn't get into any of them, and I got into the one master's program that I applied for and I got a little bit of a scholarship. So I was like, okay, well, that was an easy decision.
Kerry Diamond:
Did it thraw you that you didn't get into the programs you wanted to get into, more of the long and winding road of Claire Saffitz?
Claire Saffitz:
I think I was okay with it because I felt like I had a purpose at least and I was a little bit used to rejection from a couple years of just wandering around New York being like, someone help me and give me a job. But I sort of was like, I don't know that I really wanted to go into a PhD program anyway. I just was like, I think this is kind of what I should do. It was wonderful that I ended up going to a master's program because it was at McGill in Canada and that is a one year program as opposed to the U.S. where it's usually two. And that was so perfect, like the one year. And then moving from Paris to Montreal was a neat transition and I loved my program. I loved the professor that I worked with.
Kerry Diamond:
Tell us what you studied.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. I worked with professor Brian Cowan who did and does a lot of work around the intellectual history of food in the early modern era. And I was interested in that period and wanted to work with someone who did stuff with food. And so I was in the history department and I got to just read cookbooks as texts, which was so exciting and fun to me and I still love reading them. And as I said, a lot of them are in the public domains. So you can go on to Google Books and look up a cookbook from 1672.
Kerry Diamond:
How do you do that? For folks who are listening to the show and they're like, I want to see one of these cookbooks. What do you have to search for on Google?
Claire Saffitz:
I think you have to know what you're looking for specifically, but if you Google cookbooks in the early modern era, you'll get all the titles. I mean, they were very famous ones. They were not that many, it was not like a ubiquitous genre. And really cookbooks started as instruction manuals written by professional cooks who worked for important noble families or royal families, and wrote these books to tell other professional cooks how to do it. How to run a big fancy house and throw banquets and make certain recipes. So they're fascinating.
It's nothing like a cookbook that we know of today with all the steps written out. It'll say things like, make a sweet crust, bake it in a low oven until this, and top with a stiff meringue or something like that. There's such an assumed knowledge because it's not for a wide audience. I love the being able to sort of find and pick up all of those little historical details and all of the recipes. And they're just super theatrical and hilarious.
I wrote a paper about this whole passage in a cookbook where it talks about stuffing live crows and live frogs into pies so that they can be burst out when you take them out onto the banquet table. And then you build a stag and fill it with claret wine and then you put an arrow through it so it looks like it's bleeding and the wine comes out. And then you used to fill eggs with rosewater so the ladies can throw it. I mean, it was like a whole thing.
Kerry Diamond:
That's more fun than the live birds in the pie.
Claire Saffitz:
It was all part of the same spread. So you do all of it. Yeah. So that was what I did in grad school. Great stuff like that.
Kerry Diamond:
Eggs filled with rosewater. Okay. Do they blow out the egg part?
Claire Saffitz:
Yes.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay. I like that. All right, I can handle that. Did you and Natasha, Natasha Pickowicz is also on one of the covers of the baking issue. Did you two know you had a Montreal moment in common?
Claire Saffitz:
We figured that out pretty early on. So I actually ended up interviewing her, I do not know what year it was, but it was several years ago. When I was still up on Bon Appétit, she came on the podcast and that's when we talked about it. So it's wonderful to share that connection and in her work I see some of the little bits of Montreal in what she does, and everything that she does is beautiful and so creative and like very Natasha.
Kerry Diamond:
Yeah. It's funny though you two definitely diverged. I mean, you went to this very classical French culinary school and she got her start at this kind of punk rock deli in Montreal.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. I mean, Montreal has such an interesting and varied food scene and I think it's really cool that that's where Natasha started. I think I could totally see how it informed her approach to pastry.
Kerry Diamond:
At some point you decide in your head that you've got all these different interests and maybe the answer is food media. That's where they can all come together and flourish.
Claire Saffitz:
Right. Yes. So I was about halfway done with my program in grad school, really liking it, but also really missing cooking and cooking for people. I would bake for my seminar classes and bring stuff into class and I just decided at a certain point, I think I would rather be making food than reading and writing about it exclusively. So I started to think about, okay... Also, I had sort of feelings about being in the quote unquote academy and feeling like if I'm going to write about food... I was just more interested in sort of a broader audience and something that wasn't so, I want to say rigorous, I guess. So I started thinking about it, like is that possible? And then I literally remember being in my apartment in Montreal one day and being like, oh my God, magazines. Someone has to write a food magazine and there's a recipe. Who makes that?
Kerry Diamond:
And it's so funny because you never thought of that before.
Claire Saffitz:
I never thought about that. I read Martha Stewart Living my whole childhood, but it truly never occurred to me that people had to make that magazine. And I think part of this is a commentary on four-year colleges. It was like, do you want to go to law school or medical school? Work in consulting or finance? We can help you. And other than that it was like, you're on your own.
I had never really thought about media. Never really pinpointed this thing called food media, but then all of a sudden it was there. I was like, oh, right. And that time I was like, oh, this would be so perfect and I love the idea of recipe development and writing recipes for popular audiences and I think I'll be good at it. I felt like I already was a recipe developer. That was what I would do in my free time during grad school. It was like, I'd think about something I wanted to make and then research it and then start making it and make it again and tweak it. And so it came naturally, I think.
Kerry Diamond:
What was the first job you were hired to do at Bon App?
Claire Saffitz:
So I was hired on a two months contract as a freelancer to recipe test. I mean, I think at this point a lot of people are familiar with the idea of a test kitchen, but it was a facility in the offices where the food editors cooked all of their recipes and tested them and they were tasted. Once they were tasted and approved by all, they would go to me. And I was the kind of last line of defense against errors and inconsistencies and other issues. I'm really good at following directions, so this was a role that I took to very, very easily and with great enthusiasm.
And then after two months they were like, "Okay, do you want to stay longer?" And then I became permalance and then an assistant editor job opened up. So that was how I kind of slid my foot in the door at Bon Appétit and I just really felt like I had this great opportunity and I'm going to work really hard because I really love this work.
Kerry Diamond:
And things were starting to gel. All the twists and turns of the past were starting to kind of make sense.
Claire Saffitz:
Yes.
Kerry Diamond:
When was the first time they asked you to do video?
Claire Saffitz:
The very, very first video I did was what we would call back then a hands and pans video. So you could not see, there was no personality or face involved in this video. It was just my hands doing things. And it was to make this pastry called kouign amann, which was a Belinda Leong recipe from her bakery in San Francisco. And I just showed up. I had no idea how to make a swap to prep your ingredients. I was just like, okay, I'm doing this. And no one told me. No one like, here's what you should do. It was kind of like a lot of things happened there. It's like no one told me.
Kerry Diamond:
It sounds like life.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. But we made it work and actually I think you can still see the video. It turned out pretty well.
Kerry Diamond:
I think I've seen some of those hands only videos.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. They're just like how-tos. Like I'm going to show you how to make this thing. And then eventually they became more like hosted style videos. So the real, I think, first hosted video I did was a cookie decorating video. The approach went from more produced to less produced, which suited everyone, including me.
Kerry Diamond:
When did you start to enjoy video or maybe you still don't.
Claire Saffitz:
I enjoy it very much now. I mean, now I do video at home. I would say now. I would say within the last six months. I mean, that's not to say that I didn't enjoy video when I did it at Bon Appétit, I just really, really loved the crew. We had so much fun. It was annoying when we had to shoot. It was like, but we're hanging out. The shoot is getting in the way of us schmoozing. So that was really just about the environment and just how much fun the crew had together. I loved them.
Kerry Diamond:
I found some of those videos stressful to watch, because their projects were so bonkers that you would have to do.
Claire Saffitz:
They were kind of stressful to live through because I would wake up in the morning and be like, I don't know how I'm going to do this.
Kerry Diamond:
And it was clear you took the challenges really, really seriously.
Claire Saffitz:
Yes. That's the like, I don't know how to not do my homework.
Kerry Diamond:
Now that all makes sense to me because I would watch those and I would be like, why is she putting herself through this? So you said you love it now, how big is your crew now?
Claire Saffitz:
The crew is three people.
Kerry Diamond:
Including you?
Claire Saffitz:
No four, including me.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay. Plus a cat.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah, plus our mascot. She's only recently stopped hissing at everyone on the crew. It's been over a year. So it's very small and we do it in my apartment.
Kerry Diamond:
I was just going to say, how do you fit three people plus your pussycat in that tiny kitchen?
Claire Saffitz:
Plus all the lights and stuff and all the equipment, it's very tight. I mean, I live in a one bedroom apartment. So for the however many days they're there shooting, which could be four days or five days, we just live top of the equipment, which is fine. And Maya doesn't love it, but she deals. It's very fun. It is really just like hanging out with your friends and making something delicious. I love the crew. Two of them have kids and so I love sending them home with stuff and then they come back the next day and they're like, oh, so and so loved the cake and the cookie not so much or something.
Kerry Diamond:
Your little critics.
Claire Saffitz:
Right. Yes.
Kerry Diamond:
How much prep work do you have to do? Because now we know also you don't wing anything.
Claire Saffitz:
Right. I don't wing anything. I make swaps. And I try to always sort of make a call about like, can we wait for this thing to cool or do we need another one? Because we don't want to be here all day. So it's like a judgment. A lot of times I prep dough the night before. I'll make an extra pie crust. Sometimes I'll just bake a version off so it's cooled for the next day.
Kerry Diamond:
Do you do the entire run through?
Claire Saffitz:
Yes. We just basically do it one time through and I'm always-
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, just one time through. So you don't do like a rehearsal run through?
Claire Saffitz:
Nope.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay.
Claire Saffitz:
Basically most of the recipes come from Dessert Person. The run through was like-
... testing it for the book. Yeah. Although we've started to do more, just like other recipes that I've kind of cobbled together and I'm more nervous doing those. Because it's like we're doing this one time and I kind of haven't totally made it this way yet, but I think it'll be fine. And it is fine.
Kerry Diamond:
Because they do seem very authentic. I don't feel like you've rehearsed it before.
Claire Saffitz:
Right. I'm fortunate and also glad that what looks the most authentic is also the least amount of work for me. We make two episodes a day. We tape one in the morning and we have lunch and we do one in the afternoon.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, you do? Okay.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. So it's like we pretty much just run through and we have good editors and Cal and Vinny who are on cameras and they're getting the shot in the bowls with a close up. There's lots of things. It works out great. It's on YouTube. I like the episodes that are 15 minutes. We're not making feature length films here. So keeping it kind of relatively short and sweet, I think, in these nice little packages has worked out really well.
Kerry Diamond:
And you attempt a wide variety of projects. I know the gingerbread one that was not your favorite. You've done the chocolate chip cookie. You did a croquembouche one, right?
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. I did that episode with my brother-in-law. He ate the croquembouche when I was testing it and was like, "This is the most incredible thing I've ever had." And he was like, "I want to make one," but he'd never baked before. And I was like, "Oh, that would be funny if we did it together." Skip to the end of the episode, you'll see what his looks like. He really did a great job for having basically never made anything in his life and he gave it to the neighbors. It was fun.
Kerry Diamond:
I have to confess, when I asked Victoria to do it, I didn't think she would go all the way. I thought there was an element of faking it that you could do that had involved maybe like pins that you stuck the cream puffs onto.
Claire Saffitz:
Oh, like a form? No, she did it. It's not on a form.
Kerry Diamond:
I fully thought we would do like semi fake.
Claire Saffitz:
Right.
Kerry Diamond:
Yeah.
Claire Saffitz:
Yes. I've had people tell me, "You're really crazy that you don't do your croquembouche a form." It comes out a little wonky, but I kind of like it.
Kerry Diamond:
So when you see the one on the cover of Folks, that is the real deal.
Claire Saffitz:
Yes, absolutely. Yes.
Kerry Diamond:
No food styling trickery.
Claire Saffitz:
We try to always do a variety and we try to think about like, what do people want to see made? So it's like a chocolate cookie, for sure, that's going to definitely be popular. But then also try to do stuff that's like a little weirder or a little unexpected and it's super teaching focus. That's really the point. I'm here to teach you how to make this thing if you want to make it, and just make it feel accessible.
Kerry Diamond:
Is there a holy grail item you'd love to make on video?
Claire Saffitz:
Oh, there are definitely layer cakes that we have not done mostly because I'm just like, that's too much work. I was just thinking about this cake the other day, there's a preserved lemon meringue cake. So it's made with preserved lemon that you blend with yogurt and it goes into the cake and then you split the layers. So you have like-
Kerry Diamond:
So the salty preserved lemons?
Claire Saffitz:
Yes. And it gives it that minerally bitterness, but also very lemony flavor, which I love and it really offsets the sweetness. And then it's filled with lemon curd and covered in a meringue frosting and then torched. That is a project, we haven't done that.
Kerry Diamond:
That sounds great.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
So now you're on your own essentially. Like you are your own business, your own business manager. How has the transition been going from working for a company to now working for yourself?
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. I mean, in general, very good. I love having that control and that autonomy. That's so important to me. I really cannot imagine going back and working at a big company again. I love routine. I love showing up to an office every day.
Kerry Diamond:
Paid vacation.
Claire Saffitz:
Paid vacation. Excellent healthcare, which let me tell you, it's rough out there. So it's like that's what you lose is dealing with all of those things yourself. And I have sort of officially been on my own since middle of 2018, but I still feel like I am very much trying to organize and run and establish the business part of it. It's like I don't know anything about business, you know?
Kerry Diamond:
Do you have a business team? I know you have an agent.
Claire Saffitz:
Yes. I have an agent. I have a number of people that help me. I have an attorney, and my book agent David Black, who is I probably talk to more than I talk to my own mother.
Kerry Diamond:
He's like Yoda.
Claire Saffitz:
Oh yes. Thank God for David Black. And then my husband Harris, who's the entrepreneur and runs restaurants and does restaurant operations. He helps me also. I have fantastic accountants who I call all the time and I ask them questions and then they tell me, "Your question doesn't make sense." And that's because I don't understand what I'm talking about or what I'm asking.
Kerry Diamond:
And I'm not implying that I think you need all these things, I'm just curious.
Claire Saffitz:
Oh, I need.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, you do? Okay.
Claire Saffitz:
I do. I do.
Kerry Diamond:
Because I'm just curious, I know how much work goes into your videos and you produce them at a regular clip and your books are no small undertaking.
Claire Saffitz:
The central tension is I love doing everything myself. I'm so detail-oriented, I just really like doing tasks. I just want to do everything myself, but it's impossible. So in the future, I want to continue to write books and I want that to totally come from me. But you have to delegate and delegating-
Kerry Diamond:
We should never start a business together. We would die.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. Oh my God. It's so hard. Delegating is probably the thing that I'm worst at and need to work on the most. As a one person business, it's insane how many people you need to help you.
Kerry Diamond:
When you didn't set out to be a business person, having to learn how to navigate the worlds of law and accounting and all those and taxes, it's just dizzying.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. I love my accountants.
Kerry Diamond:
You know before Cherry Bombe, I owned some restaurants and I did not know that before you do a single thing, you really need to make sure you have a great accountant. And I did not have a great accountant in the beginning and paid the price for it. And if your accountant is a disorganized human being, run the other way. You really want someone who is buttoned-up.
Claire Saffitz:
Yes. You want someone who's going to bug you.
Kerry Diamond:
Mm-hmm.
Claire Saffitz:
Right. Totally.
Kerry Diamond:
Yeah. Exactly. Let's talk about some heroes of yours and some folks you admire in the industry.
Claire Saffitz:
Mm-hmm. I mean, it's a long list. I really have a huge affinity for a lot of the pastry chefs that worked, especially in New York, in kind of like the '80s and '90s, like the Claudia Flemings and the Geoghegans and Emily Luchetti. I just love that era of desserts. And actually a lot of the new book that I'm trying to finish is kind of inspired by desserts of that era. And of course, Dorie Greenspan, I feel like Dorie has been very generous with me and we've developed a nice sort of friendly relationship over the last couple of years, and Claudia Fleming too. I mean, really Kerry actually you're responsible for this because we first met at, sort of talking together on a virtual Jubilee event and stayed in touch and-
Kerry Diamond:
That's right. Jubilee 2.0. Mm-hmm.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. And she also has been very generous with and has been, I mean, it's not so much of like a mentor, but just sort of like a sage kind of presence and I've followed her career forever and just such an admirer of everything she does. So yeah, I love that period of New York restaurants and the pastry chefs that really flourished I think during that time.
Kerry Diamond:
Best piece of advice you've ever gotten or given.
Claire Saffitz:
That's a hard one. There's a couple. Can I share a couple?
Kerry Diamond:
Absolutely.
Claire Saffitz:
Well, it's really advice, I mean, it probably came from my therapist, but it's advice that I tell myself and it's a lesson I learn over and over and over again, which is just like slow down. So many things can be fixed if you just slow down and I'm not. I'm not really liable to do that. I have to really tell myself. It's kind of like the clenched fist metaphor. If your fist is clenched so tightly because you are trying so hard to get something done or accomplish something or do something, you actually need to do the opposite and relax a little bit.
Another great piece of advice a friend told me is never give somebody a story to tell about you, which I think is pretty true. That was like an actual piece of advice.
Kerry Diamond:
My version of that is, don't do anything that's going to put you on the front of the New York Post on a slow news day.
Claire Saffitz:
Right. Right. Either the front of the New York Post or page six or anywhere. Yeah. Right. Stay out of the Post for sure. Yes.
Kerry Diamond:
Time for the speed round folks. Treasured cookbook, which I feel like we've asked you a hundred times.
Claire Saffitz:
Yes. But I have a new answer, which is Classic Home Desserts by Richard Sax. Iconic.
Kerry Diamond:
Great. Well, look it up. A song that makes you smile.
Claire Saffitz:
Well, I have to admit the first thing that popped into my head was Tom Petty, The Waiting. I love Tom Petty and that's always a favorite song. And then I thought about Lizzo.
Kerry Diamond:
Which song?
Claire Saffitz:
Well, I like her newest song, Rumors, which is just like a fun anthem.
Kerry Diamond:
Favorite kitchen tool.
Claire Saffitz:
Small offset spatula.
Kerry Diamond:
Footwear of choice in the kitchen. I know you have something very specific.
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. I prefer Dansko clogs, my go-to.
Kerry Diamond:
Color?
Claire Saffitz:
I have such a variety that I really love.
Kerry Diamond:
Got a little rainbow of Dansko?
Claire Saffitz:
Yeah. But my favorite ones, I have a shearling pair. They are very fluffy and I love the way they look.
Kerry Diamond:
You talked about TV earlier. What are you streaming? Not that you have a lot of time, but-
Claire Saffitz:
No. Currently I'm streaming nothing because by the time I can turn on the TV, I cannot pay attention to anything. But recently I streamed, I watched Squid Game, because I was just like, maybe for once in my life I should try to watch something when other people are watching it and not five years later and then try to talk about it. I'm very excited to start Only Murders in the Building, and that's been on my list. So once the book is done, that's my treat.
Kerry Diamond:
That's a cute one. Dream travel destination.
Claire Saffitz:
Oh, I am dying to do an American Southwest road trip. I have not really been in that part of the country very much and it just looks so staggeringly beautiful, and I would love to hit up so many of the places in New Mexico and Arizona and West Texas. So I want to make that happen.
Kerry Diamond:
If you would be trapped on a desert island with one food celebrity, who would it be and why?
Claire Saffitz:
Wow. Immediately I just thought about Padma because she's just so soothing. I feel like I would feel nurtured if I were with her. Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
Good answer. She's so badass. Padma.
Claire Saffitz:
I'm sure she would figure everything out.
Kerry Diamond:
Yeah. And she's just brilliant. She's a good person to be trapped on a desert island with. When I was originally writing these questions, I wrote dessert island. I caught my typo, but I was like, that would be the best Claire Saffitz TV show ever, and I imagined something like Survivor meets the Great British Bake Off.
Claire Saffitz:
Or could it just be instead of a competition, could we just be a bunch of people eating desserts? Like in a tropical locale.
Kerry Diamond:
Of course you would say it doesn't have to be a competition. It might have to be a competition. Who would you want on that show?
Claire Saffitz:
I mean, immediately I would just want every person on the Cherry Bombe cover, but then I wouldn't want to be in competition with any of them, which would be incredible to see. Yeah, I think.
Kerry Diamond:
I would love to pitch that show, but my hunch is you would need so much sunscreen, it would make a desert island show very difficult to produce.
Claire Saffitz:
Oh my God, I would have to wear sunglasses and a hat in every shot. So I feel like that would not work well. Oh yeah, me and the sun, we do not get along.
Kerry Diamond:
We'll figure out another twist on that one when you're back on the show.
Claire Saffitz:
It could be like an island, not tropical, I don't know. Like Manhattan's an island. I don't know.
Kerry Diamond:
Manhattan's an island. Exactly. Okay, we're going to end on that. Claire, you're the best. Thank you for coming back on the show.
Claire Saffitz:
Oh, thank you for having me. Always a pleasure.
Kerry Diamond:
That's it for today's show. Thank you so much to Claire Saffitz for joining me. I love talking to Claire. Be sure to check out her cookbook, Dessert Person, at your favorite bookstore. And, head over to cherrybombe.com to snag a copy of the Cherry Bombe Magazine with Claire on the cover. Thank you to Kerrygold for supporting today's show. Visit kerrygoldusa.com for more. Radio Cherry Bombe is a production of Cherry Bombe Magazine. Our theme song is by the band Tralala. Thank you to Joseph Hazan, studio engineer for Newsstand Studios. And thank you to our assistant producer, Jenna Sadhu. And thanks to you for listening. You are the bombe.