Dorie Greenspan 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.
My guest today is someone near and dear to my heart, Dorie Greenspan. Dorie is an extraordinary baker, cookbook author, and part-time Parisian, and I am so lucky to call her my friend. She's been on the show to talk about choux pastry with me, and she's back today to talk all about sablé, the French shortbread cookie, and to do a deep dive with me into her world peace cookies, a chocolate sablé of sorts. We discuss Dorie's favorite childhood sweets from her years spent in Brooklyn, the night she nearly burned down her parents' kitchen, the first time she ever tasted fleur de sel, and the new book she is working on all about simple cakes. Then we dive into her world peace cookies, something I know we could all use right now. I loved catching up with Dorie, so 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. Okay, peeps, you know I'm all about easy-peasy baking, right? That's why I'm absolutely loving King Arthur's brand new bread mix kits. If you're looking to whip up delicious fresh bread in just one hour, King Arthur Baking's new line of bread mix kits has you covered. You can have focaccia, flatbread, pull apart garlic bread, or pretzel bites on the table without any fuss in no time because everything you need, including the yeast, is right in the box. These mixes will definitely have a place in my pantry this season and beyond. Visit kingarthurbaking.com to save 10% on these mixes with code bread.
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, golden 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, have you heard about Cherry Bombe Jubilee? It's our annual conference for women in food, drink, and hospitality, and it's happening Saturday, April 12th in New York City. I always love being at Jubilee and connecting with other bakers, pastry chefs, and cookbook authors. If you'd like to join us, you can snag early bird tickets at cherrybombe.com. They're on sale now until December 31st, so don't delay. And if you're an official Bombesquad member, check your inbox for special member pricing. I hope to see you there.
Let's chat with today's guest. Dorie, so excited to have you on She's My Cherry Pie again and to talk world peace cookies with you and so much more.
Dorie Greenspan:
I love being with you. Thank you.
Jessie Sheehan:
So I love asking guests about early baking or cooking memories, and you have famously shared a fantastic early cooking or frying memory of making french fries with your friends as a seventh grader, and I would love you to share that story with our listeners.
Dorie Greenspan:
Oh, that story. So let me just say that when my first book came out, “Sweet Times,” my brother said to me, "I looked at that introduction, and you didn't mention anything about the fries. And are you out of your mind? Who would trust me after that?"
So seventh grade, two friends and I wanted a snack, and one of them, Alan, I think, said, "Let's make french fries." I had never made anything. I guess they hadn't either. I'd never seen french fries being made. I only saw the box that came out of the freezer. So I took the box, didn't read the instructions because I didn't, and I put a pot of oil up to boil, and I put a cover on it because in seventh grade science I learned that if you cover water, it'll boil faster, and put the pot up to boil, lifted the lid and flames, flames, I mean, the kinds of gorgeous flames that lick the side of the pot and go up to the kitchen cabinets, the ones that were just renovated. Yeah, so that was my first experience. Can you imagine if I had put that in the intro to my first book?
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, my gosh. But I love your brother for asking that. He sounds like somebody I want to hang out with. That's hilarious.
Dorie Greenspan:
I did finally. Finally, I wrote about it. I think maybe it was in “Around My French Table,” and that was books into my career.
Jessie Sheehan:
So you felt comfortable admitting it?
Dorie Greenspan:
At last, yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
So I think I've read that that event kind of turned you off cooking until you were married and had no choice but to cook and to bake for you and Michael. But before I jump into those early kind of Dorie cooking and baking stories, I would love to hear about any sweets or baked goods that you recall loving as a kid growing up in Brooklyn. I literally mined your book, I mined all of your books that I have to find some, and I came up with the melody cookies, the bread from a bakery that your mom would buy that was near your house, but then she also would go get a box of butter cookies from a bakery far away.
Dorie Greenspan:
Oh, you are such a good researcher. It's funny because I'm working... I just finished the introduction for my cake book that will come out 2025, and I wrote about my mother and the baked things that were always in our kitchen. Not one of them was ever baked by her, ever, ever, ever. I've never seen her bake. But she had such a sweet tooth, and she loved cakes and cookies, and she made sure that there was always something sweet in the house. So the bread came from a bakery called Ratchick’s in Brooklyn, and that was the bakery the Julia Turshen's grandparents owned.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, my gosh.
Dorie Greenspan:
It was their bakery. She writes about it. I just finished reading. She talked to her mother, Rochelle Udell, about the bakery in her new book, “What Goes With What.” So that was the bakery. So our bread came from Ratchick’s. We always had boxed cookies. We had Mallomars only in winter because you couldn't get them in summer. I think you still can't get them in summer. And melody cookies. We had butter cookies from Sutter's Bakery, and we had an Ebinger's, which was a legendary Brooklyn baker on the same street with Ratchick’s and Sutter's, and it was a great... And Di Fara Pizza, but the chocolate cake from Ebinger's, I tried to make it, never succeeded, but the Ebinger's cake that I almost recreated is what's on the cover of “Baking: From My Home To Yours.” So that was the chocolate cake that was for special occasions, for birthdays. There was always something sweet and delicious in my house.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, my gosh, I love that. First of all, that cake was my gateway to Dorie Greenspan. That's the first thing I ever baked of yours. I love that cake so much. And listeners, if you have that book of Dorie's, “Baking: From My Home To Yours,” there's this beautiful chocolate cake with the white-
Dorie Greenspan:
With a white... So the Ebinger's cake had a chocolate, almost pudding filling and chocolate all over, and it was called a blackout cake.
Quick funny story. I wanted to recreate the cake. I had tried, couldn't do it, couldn't do it, gave it up. My manuscript was just about... for “Baking: From My Home To Yours,” was just about ready to go in, and Michael said, "Do you want to try one more time?" He loved that cake, and I tried, and got the frosting all wrong, and I thought, "Okay, I'm going to put a white frosting on it." I thought, "Should I send it in? Should I not?" I included it in the manuscript at the very last minute, and it ended up on the cover.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, my gosh. And it's so delicious. I love that cake so much because it's marshmallow.
Dorie Greenspan:
It's marshmallow, of course.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, my gosh, and I love marshmallows.
Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back.
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Are you looking for that perfect gift for a foodie friend? Check out Cherry Bombe's holiday gift guides, which are filled with delicious ideas and suggestions for your nearest and dearest. There's something for everyone, from the pastry pros and beginner bakers to the mix masters and sporty spice lovers in your life. Or if you have a loved one who wants to build their community and network within the world of food, beverage, and hospitality, consider gifting a Cherry Bombe membership. Members get special perks like access to our virtual monthly meetings, plus they get specially priced tickets to our annual Jubilee conference that's happening Saturday, April 12th in New York City. To learn more about the membership program and to browse the gift guides head to cherrybombe.com. Now back to our guest.
Two other little sweets from Dorie's childhood that I mined from your books, the bird seed from your grandma's purse.
Dorie Greenspan:
Oh, so my grandmother, always she had two candies in her purse all the time. One was a raspberry hard candy that it took forever to suck your way down to the center, but when you got there, it was a little jammy. And so that came in cellophane they twisted on either side. And then she had, they were sesame, sesame and honey. I don't know, I was so young. And they were little squares, also wrapped perfectly in cellophane. You could lose a tooth on one of those, but I used to love those.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, and I just love the name, bird seed in your grandma's purse. It's just like so I love all of that together. And then the final thing that I know that you loved, which I loved, you loved mint chocolate chip ice cream from Howard Johnson's.
Dorie Greenspan:
Oh.
Jessie Sheehan:
I mean, Howard Johnson's was around when I was little. But mine was-
Dorie Greenspan:
I was going to say, you don't see old enough, but-
Jessie Sheehan:
No, but mine was Baskin-Robbins.
Dorie Greenspan:
Okay.
Jessie Sheehan:
I loved their mint chocolate chip.
Dorie Greenspan:
So I'm sure that the Howard Johnson's was filled with who knows what, but it was so minty, and the chips were great. They were kind of flat and sharp at the edges. Is this true? I don't know. In my memory, that's the way they were. And they were large enough that when you got them, you could chew on them. They were really there. It wasn't some little... I love that.
Jessie Sheehan:
So you married Michael at 19 and so began your sort of cooking and baking journey. Although your mom had not baked, Michael's mom had, right?
Dorie Greenspan:
Michael's mother was a good cook who decided by the time I met her, she didn't want to cook anymore, but she was good. And Michael has great memories of friends coming to the house and his mom would make pancakes, and she would use two skillets, and she'd flip them. Can you imagine?
Jessie Sheehan:
No.
Dorie Greenspan:
She did make french fries, and didn't burn down the kitchen, and they were great. She made them once for me. But when Michael was little, she would make them, and she would wrap them in a newspaper cone.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that, like he was at a fair at Coney Island or something.
Dorie Greenspan:
Right? Right?
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, I love that.
Dorie Greenspan:
And she also... I remember coming into the house. I don't remember whether we were... We must've been married because I had a kitchen, and she was making knishes, something I never thought could be made by humans. I was sure that they fell from the sky along with ketchup or something. And she gave me this little card with oil stains on it, and she said, "This is the recipe." She said, "Now feel the dough. The dough should feel like this. If it's too hard, add a little more oil. If it's too soft, add flour." And she sent me home. Two o'clock in the morning, I am in the kitchen, right? It's like The Sorcerer's Apprentice. The dough is growing too soft, okay, add flour. Never got it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, my gosh, I love that, I love that. And didn't she have kind of a, I don't know, infamous, but a rugelach recipe that she shared with you?
Dorie Greenspan:
Oh, she did, she did.
Jessie Sheehan:
And didn't you once put Triscuits in it, and Michael was not happy?
Dorie Greenspan:
Oh, he was surprised. But you know, a girl's got to try everything.
Jessie Sheehan:
Of course she does. That's why he married you. But so she did share some baking recipes, or at least that one.
Dorie Greenspan:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do I remember her making them? She must have, but oh, I wanted to do everything. I still do, but everything was brand new. I didn't know. I thought she invented rugelach. I didn't know that cream cheese dough was everywhere and probably came off the back of a box or something. But she was really great, and she was funny too.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. All right, I want to touch on a few more Dorie things that I love before we talk cookies. So I want to talk a little bit about France. I read, and I'm not sure how old you were when this happened, but I read that at some point, I think you were little, you had said to your mom that you wished you'd been born there. And I just wondered, or maybe you were an adult. I just wondered who introduced you to...? How did it happen that you fell in love? Because did your parents take you when you were little?
Dorie Greenspan:
No, no, no. I think we went to Canada. I think that was...
Jessie Sheehan:
That was the trip.
Dorie Greenspan:
That was the trip. I got married when I was 19. I was a college student. Back in those days, you could get a really cheap charter flight with your student ID. And so Michael and I took a trip to London, Amsterdam, Paris. It was the first time I had been. I got a passport so I could do this. I got to Paris and thought this is where I was meant to be. I'd never felt that way. I had never... Well, before I hadn't gone any place, but even Canada, I didn't feel that way, but I'd never felt that way before. And I've been lucky enough to travel, and I've loved places. I've never felt that way again.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that.
Dorie Greenspan:
It was just something that touched me deeply.
Jessie Sheehan:
Does he also love France the way you do?
Dorie Greenspan:
He loved it, not as profoundly as I did, but it's grown on him.
Jessie Sheehan:
Good, thank goodness. That would be problematic if it had not. There was also this, I can't remember which book I read this in, but at one point when you were working with Julia Child, I think she put her arm around you, and she said, "We're just a pair of home bakers."
Dorie Greenspan:
She said that.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, my gosh, tell us everything.
Dorie Greenspan:
She always thought of herself as a home baker and a home cook. When people would say Chef Child or Chef Julia, she would stop them immediately and say, "I'm not a chef." She said, "I have great respect for chefs. I am not a chef." Now, she's trained at Le Cordon Bleu, but I don't think she ever worked in a kitchen. And I think the fact that she saw herself as a home cook and a home baker was part of the reason that she was able to communicate with us home cooks and home bakers so well because she really saw things from the home kitchen. The way she tested recipes, impeccably endlessly was because she had this real feeling for home cooks and bakers and wanted them to succeed.
Jessie Sheehan:
Another thing I was hoping you tell us about is just your notebooks. I assume they're still a part of you, but I feel like a lot of things I read you'd always like, you have your notebooks where you're jotting down things.
Dorie Greenspan:
I've got one in my bag outside.
Jessie Sheehan:
You do, ah. So are they recipe notebooks? Are they travel notebooks? Are they just Dorie notebooks?
Dorie Greenspan:
So they're everything. And what's funny is a couple of months ago, I guess, Joshua, my son, and Michael decided that they would collect all the notebooks that they could find and put them in a box in the hopes that I might one day sit down and look at them and put them together in some way.
So I always keep a notebook in my purse. I have notebooks on my desk. I take notes when I'm traveling, but it's my recipe notebooks that I like to use grid paper. I learned this the hard way. I date everything. I didn't for a long time. I have little codes for myself so that when something... I always do everything in pencil and paper, and then transcribe it, which is probably why there I miss the butter in a recipe, oh, please, because I'm transcribing, I just I think on paper. That's the way I do it.
And then if a recipe is good, it gets three purple stars, and when I've transcribed it, it gets a check mark, and then I can turn the page.
Jessie Sheehan:
Tell us, I don't know if it still has this name, but you do have this new cookbook you referenced coming out in 2025, I think or at least right now the working title is “Kitchen Cakes.” Can you tell us anything about it?
Dorie Greenspan:
I can tell you a lot about it except the title. Now we're not sure.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay, okay.
Dorie Greenspan:
Hello out there. If you have...
Jessie Sheehan:
Send Dorie a title.
Dorie Greenspan:
Right? Well, I don't know what the title is. The reading title was going to be “Simple, Simpler, Simplest.” So they're really simple cakes. Originally I thought I wasn't going to frost any of them, but really? There are loaf cakes and bun cakes, and I think a majority of the cakes can be mixed in a bowl with a whisk. They're really whim cakes. You could bake them on a whim.
I had so much fun doing this. And I realized, I keep thinking about the Coco Chanel quote about before you leave the house, take off one accessory. And I felt that way about these cakes that I'd start to think, "Oh, I could add this. Oh, I could..." And then I was, "Oh, I could subtract this. I could take this away. I could really build flavor in another way. I could really pay attention to texture." So they're very simple cakes.
And, bum-bah-dah-dum-bum-bum, wait until you see... I mean, I can't wait to see everything put together. Nancy Pappas did paintings for, they're so beautiful, for each cake.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, my gosh.
Dorie Greenspan:
They are so-
Jessie Sheehan:
So no photography?
Dorie Greenspan:
No photography.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, my gosh, Dorie.
Dorie Greenspan:
These beautiful paintings. It's very exciting.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, my gosh, I can't wait. Tell us about you and cookies, because I've heard it described as, and you've said this, friends forever, you and cookies.
Dorie Greenspan:
Yes, yes. It's fun to talk to you about cookies having spent two years in cakes. It's kind of good to come back. I love cookies for, well, for a million reasons. As an eater, I love them for their oneness, right? All yours. Hold the little cookie, eat it the way you want, big bites, little bites. I love cookies for their possibilities.
When I was writing the cookie book, and when Joshua and I had the cookie shop, Beurre & Sel, just the ideas kept sparking. I would make a cookie, and I'd think, "Oh, this is a good base for, bum-bah-dah-dum-bum-bum, it could be so many things." The idea that cookies could be savory was really exciting when I was working. That cookies could be... Well, I stretch the definition of cookies. Brownies are cookies in the cookie book and brownies are cakes in the cake book. But I think it's the possibilities. I think for any of us bakers who love to play around, build, cookies are a great place to be imaginative.
Jessie Sheehan:
I think your son, Joshua, named himself, or maybe you named him, but he is a totally self-identified cookie monster.
Dorie Greenspan:
Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Which I adore for a mother-son situation.
Dorie Greenspan:
I think his Instagram still reads reformed. Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
There is a cookie monster, a mention in his profile. I did look.
Tell us a little bit about Beurre & Sel, which you had for about five years.
Dorie Greenspan:
And it felt like five minutes. Well, sometimes it felt like a lifetime. But butter and salt, Joshua and I had this little cookie business, which started as a pop-up. I just thought that every package that came out of that bakery was beautiful, just beautiful. Joshua did the design. We made our cookies so that they were all the same size. They were packed in cylinders, which really, it turns out it took us a long time to find them, but were the containers that you get for golf balls. And so we made little two inch round cookies that stacked in these cylinders. They were really beautiful.
One of the problems with the business was me because I couldn't stop thinking about cookies. So just as I said to you that I love cookies because they were possibilities. We were the teeniest shop. The shop was the same size as my cookie book, it was so small, and we filled it with our line of cookies. And then I would taste a cookie and I'd think, "Oh, but I could make this in coconut," and I would go, right?
So we learned a lot in the course of the business. One of the things we learned was for me to just stay within the bounds, color within the lines. And so it was after Beurre & Sel that I wrote the cookie book and I thought, "No more lines. I can just go crazy now."
Jessie Sheehan:
I can go crazy.
Dorie Greenspan:
And were all of them sablé? Most of them were sablé. We had a cookie called the chunker, which could not... So all of our cookies had to be two inches for the little cylinders and three inches for the shop. But the chunkers were uncontainable. They were just filled with, now, I don't remember, maybe four different kinds of chocolate and cocoa and cashews and cherries, and they were big, they were chunky. So those were not sablé. We made a cookie for Crash, graffiti artist, and those cookies were like oatmeal cookies. They were so good, and those were uncontainable. It was fun to kind of figure out. I tried to contain everything, and not everything can be made to behave, not everything wants to be contained.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes, those are words to live by, not everything can be contained. We try.
First of all, just describe sablé for us, for people that do not know.
Dorie Greenspan:
So a sablé is essentially a shortbread cookie. Sable is the French word for sand, and sablé is sandy. So they have palé, which are thicker. Some cookies in Brittany, Normandy are sablé, but they call them galette or they might be a little larger. So it's a short shortbread cookie sometimes with egg yolks, sometimes without. I mean, the classic shortbread does not have an egg.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, interesting. You said that they're as popular in France as chocolate chip cookies are in the United States, which I love to think about them that way culturally.
Dorie Greenspan:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
So I'm just going to go over a few of the tips, the general sablé tips, and then we'll see us using these tips as we go through our recipe.
Dorie Greenspan:
Sure.
Jessie Sheehan:
So first of all, you say, which is important in many cookies, but fresh butter, and you want it to be soft and not greasy. And I thought this was interesting. You said that the softness is actually what's going to contribute to the sandiness. And if it's too greasy or melty, you're not going to get your sandiness.
Dorie Greenspan:
You don't get the texture when... And this is pretty much true of really most cookies. You want the butter to keep its shoulders so that if you press it, you get an indentation. But it doesn't just... Keeps good posture.
Jessie Sheehan:
The goal here is not light and fluffy.
Dorie Greenspan:
No.
Jessie Sheehan:
You don't want to beat your butter and sugar until they're light and fluffy, because when you beat air into the cookies, they'll rise or they'll puff up while they bake, and then they'll collapse.
Dorie Greenspan:
Yeah. So a cookie is not... I mean, for a cake, you want that air. For a cookie, you want to mix the ingredients. It's really, you don't see the expression cream the butter and sugar together as much as you used to, but that's really what you're looking for, that creamy texture.
Jessie Sheehan:
When we do add our dry ingredients, our flour, I love these adjectives for it, but we want to add it softly and gently, which is this is a make or break step, again, to get the texture, that sandiness that we want. We're going to add our flour all at once.
Dorie Greenspan:
So I started doing that. I still pretty much do that. I had this idea, I have no idea if it's right or wrong, and certainly you can't do it if you're making huge quantities. But I kept thinking about how when we add flour in gradually we keep mixing and mixing. And so the flour that goes in first gets mixed and mixed and mixed. And I had this idea that it would be better to just put all the flour in at once, mix it, and then if need be, finish it by hand. I don't know, because I took math and science for poets, I don't know if it's real, if it's proof, but it just made sense to me that with the cookies, it would be best to just get the flour in and spin it as little as possible.
Jessie Sheehan:
And you also even say to guard more against overmixing. Maybe at the end when maybe there's still a few streaks of flour, then take it off your mixer and do that by hand.
Dorie Greenspan:
Do you do that often?
Jessie Sheehan:
I do.
Dorie Greenspan:
Yeah, so I do.
Jessie Sheehan:
I do.
Dorie Greenspan:
I do it with most baked things.
Jessie Sheehan:
Even when I cake... Everything I do, I kind of want to stop moving things around when I can only see a streak or two left of flour.
Dorie Greenspan:
And also if you're adding nuts or chips or something, always good to stop at that point where you still see some flour. Put the add-ins and in if you're not going to add them by hand, and then finish spinning them.
Jessie Sheehan:
Would you ever add them...? Because I wonder about this in not necessarily sablé, in everything. What about adding with the flour since we don't want to overmix?
Dorie Greenspan:
Oh, that's interesting.
Jessie Sheehan:
Should we add them earlier, put our chips in to our chocolate chip cookies when we add our flour, put our nuts in?
Dorie Greenspan:
Have you tried?
Jessie Sheehan:
I have. I've seen no problems, but I think it's interesting that it's not typically... Also, it seems like-
Dorie Greenspan:
That's very interesting.
Jessie Sheehan:
And if you're talking about a recipe where you don't want that add-in to sink, maybe in a cake or a loaf, it makes even more sense because you're covering them in flour or you're dusting.
Dorie Greenspan:
Okay, I can't finish the interview. I have to go home and try this. Sorry. See you.
Jessie Sheehan:
Bye, Dorie. Thanks for coming. And then just two more little tips, chilling is super important with our sablés.
Dorie Greenspan:
Oh, so important.
Jessie Sheehan:
At least two hours. And I thought it was interesting. Makes sense, I guess. But it helps not only with flavor, but also with shape.
Dorie Greenspan:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. And then finally, which is also good to know because we all want to eat warm cookies, but you say you really think these are best at room temp.
Dorie Greenspan:
Go ahead, have a sablé warm if you want. But I think cooling is really part of the baking process in a way. One of the things that's so wonderful about a sablé is the texture. You don't get it when it's warm. You can get some of the flavor, you can get a little... you'll taste the salt, but you're missing the sablé-ness of the cookie.
Jessie Sheehan:
All right, so now we're going to talk about world peace cookies. They are chocolate sablé, but they do have some chocolate chip cookie elements, which we're going to talk about. Originally inspired by Pierre Herme's chocolate Korova cookies...
Dorie Greenspan:
Exactly.
Jessie Sheehan:
... that he made for the now defunct Korova restaurant in Paris. He took the chocolate sablé, but he added some chocolate chip cookie elements, like a little bit of brown sugar for chewiness, lots of chopped chocolate and salt, which you say is now everywhere, but back then, that was pretty special.
Dorie Greenspan:
I love this cookie.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, good.
Dorie Greenspan:
I love this cookie. And it's really, it's all Pierre's recipe. Pierre gave me this recipe in 1998, '99, but I met him maybe 1993, and at that time, he gave me fleur de sel, which is hand-harvested sea salt. He gave it to me to taste and to touch because it feels different from-
Jessie Sheehan:
You describe it as moist.
Dorie Greenspan:
Yeah. Fresh salt is moist, you can bite it and you can hear the little crunch, and it holds some of that crunch in baking. It's less salty than salt-salt. The crystals, it's a beautiful salt. I'd never heard of it, never tasted it. He gave it to me to taste because he was using it in pastry in 1993 when I met him. And I said salt. And at that time, people in general in cooking and baking, pinch of salt, everything was a pinch. He was measuring the salt, he was weighing the salt. And he said to me, "You use salt in pastry the way you use it in cooking, it's to season what you're baking." This seems like a commonplace now, but it was revolutionary. We were just moving away from the drop of vanilla, the pinch of salt, and coming into bigger flavors.
Jessie Sheehan:
The other thing you've said, which I love, is that this Korova cookie, this world peace cookie was like as important a culinary breakthrough as like our Toll House.
Dorie Greenspan:
I really think so because once again, I come back to the salt. It's funny, there's really... I've forgotten half a teaspoon or a quarter. I mean, there's not much, there's not much. And yet you recognize that there were salt. It was present in a way that it hadn't been present in other cookies. And it's a funny looking cookie. I think it's beautiful, but it's not reliable in terms of what it looks like. They all look different. It's unexpected when you look at it. I don't think you expect that texture, which because of the brown sugar is a little chewy, but still has the sandiness of a sablé, and you don't expect that salt, which just lingers enough to make you want another cookie.
Jessie Sheehan:
So as you just said, the dough can be a teeny bit finicky, it can be different from batch to batch, but a good note for folks is it's best to mix the dough for as long as it takes to get big moist curds that hold together when you press them.
Dorie Greenspan:
This took me a while to come to because I was so afraid of overmixing it. I think the brown sugar gives you a little leeway. The dough can be crumbly, it can be frustrating. It's a dry dough, but if you mix it enough, it comes together, and it does form curds, and you can then knead it.
Jessie Sheehan:
But I did love this idea of the curds and also kind of the kneading of the dough afterwards to bring it together.
Dorie Greenspan:
Yes, it needs to be kneaded.
Jessie Sheehan:
You also say not to use mini chocolate chips, but really it's important to chop your own. When we do chop our own chocolate, are we kind of looking for mini chip size?
Dorie Greenspan:
Yeah. Well, I don't like to be precise about chopped chocolate. I like when they are all different sizes because then each bite is something different. I like to include the dust from chopping chocolate. So all that little delicious dust, chocolate dust. Of course you can use chocolate chips, but chocolate chips melt in a very specific way, and they also firm as they cool. So you get a bite of chocolate, and it's nice. But I think when you have chopped chocolate and it's all different sizes and you have the dust, it adds to the chocolate-ness of the cookie. It's just the different pleasure in every bite.
Jessie Sheehan:
The cookie is interesting in terms of how it can be assembled because we can use two-inch rings, which we're going to talk about. This can be a slice and bake, and it can also be rolled out and cut with a cookie cutter.
Dorie Greenspan:
Yes. The way it's made, I think this is even the way Pierre Herme still makes the cookie is a slice and bake. That was the original recipe that was given to me was slice and bake. I rolled and ringed for Beurre & Sel, but it's really a slice and bake cookie, which I mean, what could be better? It means that you've got a world peace in your freezer at all times, at all times.
Jessie Sheehan:
And you do say if you're making the slice and bake version, kind of the classic version, well, you just need to check that your logs are really solid as you're shaping them because they can have those funny holes in them, and then you slice, and you're like, what happened?
Dorie Greenspan:
Yeah, you've got to feel them. And it's how many years have been making these cookies? I've finally gotten over the idea of overmixing it to get the dough right and of over... I'm making this motion like I'm making cookie logs, but of rolling the logs. It's more important that they're solid, then don't worry about having to do it a second time or so.
Jessie Sheehan:
So for the recipe, the first thing that we're going to do is we're going to sift together some all-purpose flour, some cocoa powder. It's Dutch processed cocoa powder?
Dorie Greenspan:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're sifting all-purpose flour, Dutch processed cocoa powder, baking soda together. Then in a stand mixer with our paddle attachment.
Dorie Greenspan:
Time out. May I just say something.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dorie Greenspan:
So I'm lazy, and I like to whisk my ingredients and avoid sifting whenever I can. But confectioners' sugar and cocoa need to be sifted, so yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
But that makes a lot of sense because it's almost always... Unless it's fresh, fresh, fresh from the bag...
Dorie Greenspan:
There's a lump.
Jessie Sheehan:
... always lumpy.
Dorie Greenspan:
Yep, yep.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're sifting because of that cocoa powder. That's such a good tip and note.
Then with our stand mixer fitted with our paddle attachment, or we can use a large bowl with a hand mixer, we're going to beat unsalted room temp butter that we earlier described it's soft, it's not greasy, with some brown and white sugars together. Little bit more brown than white. And I'm assuming that's for that chew we're after.
Dorie Greenspan:
That texture. Right.
Jessie Sheehan:
Then on medium speed, we don't want to get too high because again, we're working against fluffy. We're going to beat or cream until soft, creamy, homogeneous, about three minutes. Do we need to scrape the bowl?
Dorie Greenspan:
Yes, yes. So having just reread my manuscript for the cake book, I've gone back and added scrape or don't forget to scrape or you must scrape. Yes, you should scrape.
Jessie Sheehan:
I thought this was so interesting, there are no eggs here.
Dorie Greenspan:
No. I get questions from people all the time. I'm about to make the world peace cookie. Is it a mistake that there are no eggs? No eggs. Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
So now we're going to beat in our fleur de sel, which I have all these notes. What is it, moist, brand? But we talked about, but I will ask, is there a brand that you love?
Dorie Greenspan:
So I buy the fleur de sel that comes from Guerande, from Brittany. At the time that I started, that was, you couldn't get anything else. But now there's fleur de sel from everywhere in America that has...
Jessie Sheehan:
Salt?
Dorie Greenspan:
No, but you want... Sometimes you can't see it in the supermarket. You can get these little boxes from the Camargue, and that salt is good, but you can't see it. If you can find some place where you can actually see the salt and you can see if it's just a little moist. That's what you want.
Jessie Sheehan:
You say you can use fine sea salt, but it sounds to me like...
Dorie Greenspan:
You can, but you-
Jessie Sheehan:
... this might be a good purchase for this cookie just because it's really sounds so special. And then we're going to add a little vanilla. I can't remember if you're a make-your-own vanilla girl or if you-
Dorie Greenspan:
No.
Jessie Sheehan:
What's your brand?
Dorie Greenspan:
So I love the Sonoma Syrup. It's called Vanilla Crush. It has three different kinds of vanilla in it. I love that.
Jessie Sheehan:
Now we're going to turn off our mixer, add all of our dry ingredients, and we're turning it off because of course we don't want it to balloon in our faces.
Dorie Greenspan:
But also it's a good idea to put a towel over your mixer.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes, yes. Important step, we're doing it all at once, again, for our sandy texture and to not overmix. And we're going to pulse a few times to start blending. And then when our risk of flying... I love the way you write recipes, so sometimes I have to include your language. But when the risk of flying flour has passed, we're going to turn our mixer to low and beat until the dough forms these big moist curds that'll hold together when pressed, as we mentioned.
Dorie Greenspan:
Right. You have to reach in and touch it and see how it feels.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to toss in our chopped bittersweet chocolate pieces, but also some of the dust, maybe a little bigger mini chip size and mix to incorporate. And as we've said, it's a little unpredictable. Sometimes crumbly, sometimes comes together clean side of the bowl. I thought that conversation about cocoa powder is so interesting. Sometimes we make choices about ingredients as a home baker not recipe writer, not realizing how it impacts the outcome.
We'll turn our dough out onto a work surface, gather it together, kneading it to bring it together, divide it in half, shape it into two logs. I love this too. We're shaping it into one and a half inch diameters. And you say, do not worry about the length, just get the diameter right. Which I always find that I do that when I'm writing recipes. If people have one of the measurements right, they're going to be totally fine.
Dorie Greenspan:
Exactly, exactly.
Jessie Sheehan:
You don't need both.
Dorie Greenspan:
Now years later I will say that you can, because I do this sometimes, make three logs and they're smaller.
Jessie Sheehan:
A little easier. Yeah.
Dorie Greenspan:
I sometimes do that if I've got a lot of people coming.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, yeah. And if you get like a hollow spot in the log, you can just start over. Just need to keep checking...
Dorie Greenspan:
Exactly.
Jessie Sheehan:
... as we discussed. We'll wrap our logs in plastic wrap. We'll freeze for two hours, refrigerate for at least three for flavor and for shape.
Dorie Greenspan:
And for baking because they need to go into the oven cold.
Jessie Sheehan:
Cold, so they don't spread too much.
Dorie Greenspan:
Right.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. When we're ready to bake, we'll have our center rack in our oven. And I thought this was interesting. We're preheating to 325. Is that a little low?
Dorie Greenspan:
That's lower than normal for cookies, which are 350-some, 375. But it's so important. If you go higher, you'll end up with lace cookies. This is a cookie, and I made a little note to myself to remember to tell you this, don't go higher. This cookie really needs that temperature.
Jessie Sheehan:
Well, line with parchment paper or silicone baking mat. I wondered if you had a preference and if you have a brand of mat that you like.
Dorie Greenspan:
I was using Silpat. I'm now using parchment more often.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to work with one log at a time, use a long sharp knife, and slice your dough into half-inch thick rounds.
Dorie Greenspan:
Not so easy to slice when they've come out of the freezer, and they may...
Jessie Sheehan:
Crumble.
Dorie Greenspan:
... crack and break. Just squeeze them together. In fact, if I could write the recipe over again these years later, I might say pull it from the freezer and wait just five minutes or something to get started cutting. They get hard.
Jessie Sheehan:
And freezer or refrigerator?
Dorie Greenspan:
Well, I usually freeze it.
Jessie Sheehan:
You do.
Dorie Greenspan:
I mean, but it can be refrigerator.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, yeah, you did write in the recipe, the rounds might crack as you cut them. Don't be concerned, just squeeze the bits back onto each cookie.
Dorie Greenspan:
When you're making slice and bakes and you're slicing them, do you roll?
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes, yes, yes. Do you want to tell us about that? Well, or you can, but yeah. The idea being that you want... Because you don't want to get a flat side on your cylinder, each cut, turn the cylinder a teeny bit, take another cut. Maybe even running it along the counter once or twice to make sure that you're keeping it round.
Dorie Greenspan:
Exactly.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Dorie Greenspan:
These are so frozen that sometimes that's hard to do. But yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. We're going to arrange our rounds on our baking sheets, leaving about two inches between them. If we're baking off all of our cookies, so we've cut both logs, we're going to keep one baking sheet in the fridge while we bake the other.
Dorie Greenspan:
I like to bake one at a time. You too? Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
100%. Now this is an alternative. So that's the slice and bake. Or we can roll our dough between two pieces of parchment.
Dorie Greenspan:
I always roll between two-
Jessie Sheehan:
We can roll our dough.
Dorie Greenspan:
And roll it straight from the mixer.
Jessie Sheehan:
Right. Which I love. Such a good tip. So the idea, listeners, is that you're not chilling it and then rolling it. You are rolling it right when it comes out of the mixer between two pieces of parchment to a thickness of about three-eighths of an inch.
Dorie Greenspan:
They have to be thick.
Jessie Sheehan:
Ah, interesting.
Dorie Greenspan:
Right? I mean, we would normally roll cookies to quarter and inch. Yeah, no, these have to be thick.
Jessie Sheehan:
Be a little thicker. Refrigerate or freeze as you would the logs. And then if you have two-inch baking rings, and I wanted you to tell us a little bit about rings. Is there a brand, where do we purchase, and should we be picturing a cake ring except it's tiny and it's for a cookie.
Dorie Greenspan:
Right.
Jessie Sheehan:
Or is it like a biscuit cutter kind of?
Dorie Greenspan:
No.
Jessie Sheehan:
No, okay.
Dorie Greenspan:
So when I had this idea for Beurre & Sel that I wanted the cookies to all be the same size, I really needed that because we wanted this packaging, and I couldn't find a way to develop the recipes to be that. We bought Ateco rings. This is an expensive way to start a business. So they are... How high are they? The Atecos were kind of high. I think they may have been like an inch and a half high or so. Sometimes they're called entremet rings. They're used to build desserts. We eventually had these made for us.
They're, I guess, about an inch higher or so. For the world peace cookies, ringing them is not that important, and they grow in a way that the other cookies didn't. So with our ring cookies, we were able to cut the dough with the ring and go directly from cut to the baking sheet and bake in the ring. The world peace cookies need a little space. So you cut them slightly smaller than the two-inch ring and put them in the center.
Tim from Lottie and Doof, when he saw the rings, said to me, "Why can't we bake these in muffin tins?" And I thought, "You brilliant guy." And so while we never did this professionally, it's what I do at home all the time. You can cut two-inch cookies, put them in the muffin rings. You can do that for almost all of my sablé, but not world peace. They just don't bake right. I haven't figured out why.
Jessie Sheehan:
For this cookie, your best bet is rings or...
Dorie Greenspan:
Slice and bake.
Jessie Sheehan:
... slice and bake.
Dorie Greenspan:
And I would opt for slice and bake.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Dorie Greenspan:
Yep.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to bake the cookies for about 12 minutes. We're not going to open the oven, which I thought was interesting because I always rotate.
Dorie Greenspan:
Well, I mean, if you have a really serious hotspot. My feeling about rotating cookies is if you can avoid it, do, because you've preheated your oven, you're opening it up, you're putting the cookie sheet in, you're closing the oven, so you've lost some heat. Every oven cycles differently. Now six minutes later, you're going to open the oven door, fiddle with the baking sheet, turn it around, close it again. I don't know what's happening in there in terms of heat. Better to hold still.
Jessie Sheehan:
So when our timer rings, they may not look done, they won't be firm, and that's exactly right. We're going to transfer the baking sheet to a cooling rack, let the cookies rest until only just warm, at which point you can munch them. But you recommend room temp because you say the texture is more interesting.
Dorie Greenspan:
The texture really is you won't get the sandiness, you won't get the difference between cookie and chocolate. Have a cookie, but then have the rest of them later.
Jessie Sheehan:
Well, thank you so much for chatting with me today, Dorie.
Dorie Greenspan:
Oh, I love you, I love talking to you, I love cookies, baking. This is just such a treat. Thank you.
Jessie Sheehan:
I just want to say that you are and will always be my cherry pie.
That's it for today's show. Thank you to King Arthur Baking Company, Kerrygold, California Prunes, and Ghirardelli for supporting this episode. You can find today's recipe at cherrybombe.com. Don't forget to follow She's My Cherry Pie on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen and tell your pals about us. She's My Cherry Pie is a production of The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network. Our producers are Kerry Diamond, Catherine Baker, and Jenna Sadhu. Thank you so much for listening to She's My Cherry Pie, and happy baking.