Kelly Jacques Transcript
Jessie Sheehan:
Hi, peeps. You're listening to She's My Cherry Pie, the baking podcast from The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network. I'm your host, Jessie Sheehan. I'm a baker, recipe developer, and author of four baking books, including “Salty, Cheesy, Herby, Crispy, Snackable Bakes.” On each episode, I hang out with the sweetest bakers around and take a deep dive into their signature bakes.
Today's guest is Kelly Jacques, the co-owner and baker at Ayu Bakehouse in New Orleans. She opened the bakery in 2022 with Samantha Weiss, and since then the bakery has received national recognition for their innovative approach to traditional baked goods that incorporate local and international flavors. Kelly joins me to talk about King Cake, a ring-shaped pastry that's traditionally made with brioche dough and falls somewhere between a Danish and cinnamon bun. It's eaten between Epiphany, or Three Kings Day in January up until Mardi Gras. The cake is often associated with New Orleans, and at Ayu Bakery, Kelly and her team make three different versions. The one we talk about today features croissant dough and is filled with cinnamon cream cheese and raw cane sugar. I was lucky enough to try a slice and it is so crazy delicious. Kelly and I talk about how studying glass blowing in college actually comes in helpful at the bakery, her years working at Breads Bakery in New York City post culinary school, and how tough it was to put the bakery stamp on something as iconic as the King Cake. Spoiler alert, they succeeded. Stay tuned for our chat. You can find today's recipe at cherrybombe.com.
Cherry Bombe's next issue is all about love, and I think you're going to love the cover. It features Illona, Olivia, and Adrianna Maher, the sister trio that has won everyone's hearts for their positive message of confidence and self-love. The issue is full of joyful stories and recipes. The issue will be out on February 13th, aka Galentine's Day, aka our favorite holiday. To snag a copy, head to cherrybombe.com or click the link in our show notes. Or, visit your favorite bookstore or culinary shop to pick up an issue.
Let's chat with today's guest. Kelly, so excited to have you on She's My Cherry Pie and to talk King Cake with you and so much more.
Kelly Jacques:
This is such an honor. Thank you so much.
Jessie Sheehan:
First, I would love you to tell us about an early baking memory, whether it be an actual baking memory or like an early baked good eating memory experience.
Kelly Jacques:
I first started just baking chocolate chip cookies with my mom. That was really the start of it, and they weren't anything fancy. I am sure it was just the recipe on the back of the bag, but I think what I remember more so is I'd bring them to soccer practice and everybody would go bananas. That feeling became really, really special, really kind of addictive that you can provide something that you made and people get so happy. I'd bake for my coaches all throughout high school. I'd pay my friend to pick me up to give me rides to the high school by baking her stuff every week, and that was like our exchange.
Jessie Sheehan:
How old were you when you first started baking those cookies with your mom? Second, it sounds like you were an athlete when you were younger or maybe you still are.
Kelly Jacques:
Definitely not anymore but I-
Jessie Sheehan:
Well, it's athletic being a baker.
Kelly Jacques:
Totally, and I feel it all the time, mostly in my back. Yeah, I mean I was probably, well, I don't know, nine or 10 I think when I first started baking. My grandma was also a big baker. My dad's mom, she's from Indonesia, and so she would have these cakes that I had never heard of before. A spekkoek also called a lapis cake, and it was like you go layer by layer, you broil it under the oven, and then you brush it with butter and do another layer. That totally kind of blew my mind.
Jessie Sheehan:
What are you broiling? You're literally broiling like a regular cake?
Kelly Jacques:
It's almost like a pancake batter.
Jessie Sheehan:
Aah.
Kelly Jacques:
I remember I still have her handwritten recipe. She passed away a couple of years ago. It was like 20 eggs or something, insane for a small cake, and you put it down layer by layer. You spread it around, and spekkoek translates to bacon cake in Danish or something. There's like the colonies and anyways, and it's because when you cut into it, there's all these layers and it looks like the fat of bacon. You just sit it on your counter. Much like King Cake, you eat it little slice all the time, like every hour you go back to it and take a little piece.
Jessie Sheehan:
You had your chocolate chip cookies, you were sort of getting into baking both with your mom, and then was there also food TV happening at home? Were you one of those kids who was at soccer and then came home and watched The Food Network or no?
Kelly Jacques:
No. I came home and I watched MTV for like 24 hours a day. My parents were like, "What is wrong with you?" Yeah. No, I think maybe The Food Network was just beginning. I definitely know my grandma would have it on. I mean, she lived in Michigan and I grew up in Maryland, so I wasn't at her house all the time, but I remember she would have it on as like background TV all the time, and that's probably the most I really got into it. I think as I was getting into the pastry world, the TV version of it was just really starting outside of your Emerils and like-
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Kelly Jacques:
... all the early people. Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. What about an influential baking book? Was there like a cookbook back in the day that was kind of meaningful or that sort of you think of as something that introduced you to your journey in a way?
Kelly Jacques:
I remember my mom or my dad got me just like a Williams Sonoma cookbook or it was like a collection of cookbooks. I can't tell you the name exactly, but I would just kind of go through. It was actually those cinnamon doughnut muffins or something from one of those that was the high school ride currency. They were like gold. It was like printing money. I could just make these muffins and people would be like, "Sure. Yeah. What do you need?"
Jessie Sheehan:
I know that you made your way to New Orleans at first to go to college, and was that your introduction to New Orleans? Or were you already sort of in love with the city before you went to college there?
Kelly Jacques:
Probably my real introduction was “Real World: New Orleans,” which I think came out a year back to that MTV. I think really that was probably my main introduction from a media sense. Otherwise, I just took a tour. My Mom had this fake rule that I could go anywhere east of the Mississippi for college because she didn't want me to trek out to California or something, and the Mississippi River just bends right around New Orleans where it's still up the east side, so it kind of checked that box and I came down for a tour and this was before Katrina. The person who was giving this tour just seemed so happy. She was walking us through the quad and there's Mardi Gras beads on all the trees and it was so sunny and beautiful. The school's ethos at the time was kind of a work hard, play hard mentality, which seemed really appealing to me. Yeah, I was done. Once I saw it, I was like, "All right, this is the place."
Jessie Sheehan:
You studied glassblowing at Tulane?
Kelly Jacques:
I did. Look at me now. I went in for pre-med, actually, and I was pretty dead set on it. My dad's a doctor and he kept telling me like, "You're not going to like it. It's not really a creative field. It's a lot of appendicitis and occasionally it's something else." I was like, "No, I'm going to like it," and then I got to organic chemistry and I was like, "Actually, I hate this. I hate every part of this." It just felt like, "Why am I spending all this time for this eventual thing that I might enjoy, but right now I really hate it?" It was actually I was in the dorm in our communal area. We were getting ready for winter exams and everybody was in there studying.
We're watching that movie “Stranger Than Fiction,” and there's this scene where Maggie Gyllenhaal's character, who's a baker, is talking about how she used to go to Harvard Law and then she started to bake more and she would bring stuff to study sessions. Then, soon she was baking more than she was studying. Everybody in the room turned around and looked at me and I was like, "All right, fine." Yeah, I went home that winter break and I told my parents, "I don't think I want to do this," and they were like, "All right, that's fine." I was like, "Well, there is this one class where you light things on fire for three hours a day," so I just tried that and I really loved it.
It was so visceral, so I still make things with your hands. I find a lot of similarities with what I do now, honestly. With glassblowing, it's working in tandem with the team, temperature and time sensitivity. Yeah, I'm a big believer that there's no time wasted. As long as you're enjoying what you're doing, it may not all come and button up perfectly at the end of your life, but I find threads carry through from very unexpected places.
Jessie Sheehan:
I couldn't agree with you more, and I feel like everything you do, you grab something from and take it with you, and so you wouldn't be able to do what you do now without all of those other steps that seem unrelated.
Kelly Jacques:
Totally. Even just we'd have to turn on the furnaces and it's all gas-powered equipment. I had definitely never done anything like this. I singed the top of my hair off doing it the first time, and now I feel really comfortable around gas-powered equipment and figuring things out. Yeah, it totally comes through.
Jessie Sheehan:
Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. Peeps, have you heard about Cherry Bombe's 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 get tickets at cherrybombe.com. If you're an official Bombesquad member, check your inbox for special member pricing. I hope to see you there. Now, back to our guest.
Tell us about the Bikery.
Kelly Jacques:
Yeah, sure. I mean, I had my glassblowing degree in hand and I was like, "I really love this. I don't know that I want to be a glassblower my whole life, so now that I'm done with school, what's the common thread?" It was really baking the whole time, and I'd been working at a cafe just as a server and they were closed on Thursdays, so they let me use the kitchen and decided to do this little pop-up thing. The idea was you put your orders in, and then we bike it around the same day to you the next day, and a lot of people ended up with just bags of crumbs and then refunds. We learned about that stuff the hard way, but it was definitely a lot of fun and it was, if nothing else, it scratched the creative itch and it told me like, "Oh, this is harder to actually run a business and make it not consume you and all of your money."
Jessie Sheehan:
I know you had a stint working for Emeril. Was that all around the same period of time right before you went to culinary school? Was that kind of when you had this idea like, "Hey, I think I want to do this professionally?"
Kelly Jacques:
Yeah, definitely. I was doing the Bikery and I was eager to learn more. I think it made me realize how much I didn't know, just like baking cookies, and we would do some breads and stuff, loaf cakes. Yeah, so then I started looking at pastry cook jobs in the city, and that's why I started at NOLA, which is one of Emeril's restaurants. Emeril was big and famous by then. I did not work side by side for him by any means, but it was a small little pastry kitchen inside this beautiful restaurant. It was really exciting for me.
I worked there for I think about a year or so, and it was like, "Okay, you know you're in the French Quarter, you're a pastry cook. You're doing bread puddings, you're doing crème brûlée, a few other things. I think I was really hungry for more, and somebody brought in Christina Tosi's first cookbook with the Milk Bar. It just seemed so cool. We were just talking about this the other day. The photos had all the team and it was inside the walk-in and it just felt like you got to see that, and she went to The International Culinary Center, my future school in New York. Then, I started to look at that, and then at some point I was like, "Okay, let's just do it."
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that Christina inspired you.
Kelly Jacques:
Yeah, totally, and then I ended up being a holiday extern when I first moved in for a couple months. I got to work with her team.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, she's amazing. She's been on the podcast a couple of times. I love her so much. It was at culinary school where you met the co-owner of your bakery and your partner, Samantha Weiss, and then you both ended up at Breads Bakery for a little while in New York City. For those that don't know, can you tell us about how special Breads is?
Kelly Jacques:
Yeah, totally. I started at Breads a week before they ever opened in 2013, and so I feel cosmically connected to it. I got to see it really grow to what it is, but they're this big bakery in New York that started as one little place and has expanded out. They do amazing laminated doughs and sourdough breads. I think they brought the chocolate babka back into the forefront. I think they can claim that, and now it's ubiquitous everywhere, but theirs is still the best. My desk, once I kind of moved out of production, was right across from the oven where they would bake hundreds of loaves of babka at a time, and so every time they'd open the door, the waft of babka smell would just take over me and it's like in my brain now.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, I love that. I wondered if you could describe your baking style.
Kelly Jacques:
My whole life, everyone's told me that culinary cooking, like savory cooking, is art and it's intuition and freedom and whatever, blah, blah, blah. Baking is science. You have to be so precise and da-da-da and that it doesn't resonate with them for that reason or something. I feel so strongly that both things are both, and you have to have a baseline science to any depth understanding of why things are working, like how to make a dough, just like you need to know how to cook meats. Otherwise, you can't be terribly creative that way if you're serving raw pork or something.
I think the same thing with baking. If you get some foundational skills, knowing what a good dough should feel like, or even maybe laminating, if you really want to push it, then the creativity can be layered on infinitely in the same way that I think savory cooking can be. I think that's kind of my approach. We do a lot of the basic component is whatever the dough is, so whether that's laminated dough, croissants, or a laminated brioche, or if it's like a sourdough bread or something, and then pile on flavors inside. Maybe you have to be mindful of water content or like the bake stability of the filling, but try a couple of things and you eat along the way, and then you figure out what works.
Jessie Sheehan:
Is there a baking tip that you could share with us? It could be King Cake-related, although we haven't started talking about the recipe yet, but it could be King Cake-related, or just something else. I feel like baking tips and hacks are kind of having a moment. People love to learn something from professionals, but I'm just curious if there's one you would share with us.
Kelly Jacques:
I mean, putting a thermometer in your oven is probably crucial because every oven I've ever had is like a hundred degrees off when it tells me it's ready. That really at step one, that and scaling your ingredients. Anytime I teach a baking class, I'm like, "Listen, I know you could do this in cups and spoons, but there's 14 steps to this bread recipe. Do you want to take one variable out of it? Let's just weigh everything with brands, especially if you think you're going to make it again and you really want to hone in on that, it's crucial." Then, otherwise, I would say what makes complicated recipes here, like the King Cake for example, what makes it doable is that we don't try to do it all in one day. Also, we have a big team of people who do this. We're going to mix the dough one day, we're going to laminate it the next day.
That can even sit in the freezer if you're at home up to a week or two. You could probably stretch it even longer, and then we're going to make the filling another day. Have that ready to go, and then we're going to compile it all together, and then we're going to proof and bake it. It's not like, 'Oh, do you have 18 hours available today to make this thing?" It's like, "Why don't you make a double batch of that dough, keep in in your freezer?" Then, when you get the itch of, "Oh my God, I just make this amazing pesto, what am I going to do with it?", you're like, "Oh, I had this dough. Let me pull it out, and now I have this thing and it didn't take over my life. I didn't have to call out of work to make this."
Jessie Sheehan:
I think that's so true because particularly recipes that have a lot of steps, if you can figure out a way to break it up, it is so much less stressful and becomes more accessible, so I think that's a great tip.
Kelly Jacques:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Tell us about Ayu Bakehouse. It's in New Orleans. It's described as a modern bakery. What makes it modern?
Kelly Jacques:
We didn't want to be traditional. Yeah, I mean, our approach was like, "Okay, we have these skills of laminating doughs, of working with sourdough breads, also on the front of house side coffee and espresso. We want to filter these flavors that are so fun to us or have family connection, a New Orleans connection, and showcase those through these skills that we have of laminated dough, sourdough breads, et cetera. That was our approach. We have actually a lot of things on our menu that you wouldn't find anywhere else. Of course, we have a chocolate chip cookie and the basics, but we also have the jalapeño cornbread cookie with a little bit of heat to it. We've got our kaya bun, which is a house-made coconut custard. That's like a Singaporean recipe, so something I had when I would visit my family in Singapore, and we layer that into a laminated babka dough and then make a pastry out of that.
Also, our Muffaletta breadsticks, we've all had the sandwiches. I worked at a café that made a billion of them, and my whole life I thought, "There's just too much bread, you can't east this sandwich, it's impossible," but all the components are good. All the cured meats and cheese, the olive salad." We're like, "Okay, we can fix this. Put it in a breadstick where you get to have more of the stuff and less dough." That was our approach to certainly our starting menu. Then, as we continue to develop, too, it's like, "It should be a little bit of fun. It should be something where you can't just take one bite, where you take the one bite and you're like, "I must have one more bite." Then, that keeps happening. If there was any word that was trying to be our North Star, it's joy. We're not saving lives. We are just trying to bring a little bit of joy into people's life, and so it should feel accessible. It should feel like something you're eager to dive into.
Jessie Sheehan:
I also think back to that word, "modern,' the aesthetic of the bakery. It's so beautiful. I cannot wait to visit.
Kelly Jacques:
Thank you.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, but it has kind of a modern vibe, so that certainly fits.
Kelly Jacques:
We worked with a local designer, Farouki Farouki, it's a husband and wife team. It started from Southeast Asian imagery and textures. We also use, maybe hard to tell from the photos, but the big red display from the side, it's the steps of a croissant. It kind of comes down like that, and so they were able to really take out in its simplest form the inspirations that we had, and they turned it into a physical space, and it's really such a joy to come in here every day.
Jessie Sheehan:
Now, we're going to talk about King Cake. First, for those that do not know, will you tell us what a King Cake is and what a traditional King Cake, both what it is symbolically or why it's important in New Orleans and other places as well, and then what it is?
Kelly Jacques:
Yeah, sure. The grand history of the King Cake is maybe disputed or just built from lore, some religious backgrounds or whatever, but basically from January 6th every year up until Mardi Gras day, which changes based on 40 days before Easter. For that period of time, that's anywhere between four and 10 weeks, let's say, you just consume as much King Cake as your body can possibly handle. Every party, every house you walk into is going to have a King Cake on the table with a knife still in the box. You carve out that little piece. It's like a ritual, and what's beautiful is every place, restaurants, cafes, bakeries, everybody produces a King Cake for the season.
It's so cool to see just the huge variety that exists and that everybody's putting out. Every year, people try to do different flavors, but the most traditional form, it would be like the McKenzie's King Cake from I want to say the '50s and '60s when it started. That's really kind of like a brioche dough, cinnamon sugar. At some point, cream cheese became a classic component, but the diehards are quick to tell me that there was no cream cheese in the originals. Then it's of course topped with a ton of icing and then the purple, green, and gold sugars on top. Importantly, there's a baby. It's turned into like a little plastic baby at this point for many places, but some little fève that goes inside, and if you get that slice with the fève, then you buy the next one for everybody.
Jessie Sheehan:
Aah, so it's not like it doesn't bring you extra good luck in the new year or anything like that.
Kelly Jacques:
Just more responsibilities.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, I love that. I had sort of read it's usually sweet, it's kind of shaped like a ring, a ring-shaped pastry, brioche dough, cream cheese, cinnamon, purple, green and gold. I read somewhere, which I thought was sort of fun, if a Danish and a cinnamon roll had a baby, like something in there.
Kelly Jacques:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
You have three King Cakes. There's the Croissant City Classic we're going to talk about today, and there's the Muffuletta King Cake, and then the Nutella Babka King Cake. The Croissant City Classic features a croissant-like texture because it's an enriched dough like a brioche, but then there's also this butter block and this laminating filled with cinnamon cream cheese, sort of a little more traditional. Tell us about the Muffuletta one and the Nutella Babka.
Kelly Jacques:
Oh, sure. Yeah, so the King Muffaletta, where actually this year we'll just have it for Super Bowl, which is coming up. We're having a Mardi Gras Super Bowl insanity. We took our muff sticks, I mean, we wanted to have a savory option, and it was like it's really right there in front of us, our Muffaletta breadsticks. We braid them together into like a big browned King Cake, and that's got the house-made olive salad. It's got provolone and Swiss, capicola, and salami. It's good.
Jessie Sheehan:
Sounds so good.
Kelly Jacques:
Yeah. The Babka King Cake, that's our nod to Breads. I worked there for almost a decade. Like I said, that babka smell is hardwired into my brain, so I'm sure I just was compelled to make it. It's nice because it gives you a slightly different option down here, and it's not too sweet. I think that's something we really go for is so many King Cakes can be so heavy with icing and everything, and we want everything to be like, "Oh, I want to take just one more bite of that. Can I get just a little bit more?" It's got to keep you coming back for more, and I think balancing the sweetness is really key to that.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, you guys sent me the Croissant City Classic and the Nutella Babka King Cake. They were both so delicious. Because they arrived in the mail, I did slice a slice from each one and then large slice, if you must know, and then I heated them up. Do you ever eat them warm?
Kelly Jacques:
I think that's a pro move.
Jessie Sheehan:
Then, the chocolate's a little melty.
Kelly Jacques:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
It was so good.
Kelly Jacques:
A little melty. Oh my God. Yeah-
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Kelly Jacques:
... and you kind of like activate that butter and the lamination-
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh-
Kelly Jacques:
... a little bit.
Jessie Sheehan:
... totally, totally. Oh my God, I loved them both.
Kelly Jacques:
Yeah, that was actually a big driver for us when we first opened. I don't know if you're familiar with “The Big Book of King Cake.”
Jessie Sheehan:
Well-
Kelly Jacques:
It came out of-
Jessie Sheehan:
... that was my next question about The Big- yeah. No, you tell us. Tell us about it.
Kelly Jacques:
Well, it came out maybe a couple months before we opened, and for me and Sam, kind of this moment of like, "Everything's been done and done well. Look, it's in a book. There's so much variety. We are not going to come up with some flavor that's never been done." Or maybe, but that doesn't feel special anymore because there's so many good things. Then, it came back to like, "When's the last time you had a hot King Cake out of the oven?" Maybe never for me, and because it's huge production that these bakeries and cafes are doing, and if it needs to be iced, it's got to cool and whatever. Also, it's going to sit on your counter for a week as you carve your way through it. That became what felt like something special that we could really bring to the table is we're keeping the flavors pretty traditional, but we are baking them throughout the day, every day, all the time. They're always kind of streaming out of the oven, and it's still going into your box just a little bit steamy, and for me, that's like a beautiful-
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Kelly Jacques:
... moment to have.
Jessie Sheehan:
Totally. Tell us what you guys put in your King Cakes.
Kelly Jacques:
Sam dutifully rolls... she uses her pastry school degree to dutifully roll little beans out of gum paste because fève originally in France, it's the word for faba, like faba bean, and so they would use the bean in their pithiviers or something. For us, it was really important. We try to be as sustainable as possible. Almost all of our packaging is compostable. We compost all of our kitchen scraps and everything like that so then throwing a plastic baby on top of it all, it didn't feel right. Yeah, so then we got to making the amount of gum paste.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love. All right, now we're going to talk about, duh-duh-duh-duh, the Croissant City Classic. The first thing we're going to do is we're going to make the dough, so we're going to combine whole milk, eggs, instant yeast, which I love. I prefer instant to active. Do you guys as well?
Kelly Jacques:
Sure. Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Kelly Jacques:
We actually use fresh yeast for almost everything and then add tolerant yeast for our high sugar dose, but I find them interchangeable, instant yeast or fresh yeast. It's just a muscle memory, I think.
Jessie Sheehan:
Great. Combine whole milk, eggs, instant yeast, all-purpose flour, granulated sugar, and then fine sea salt. Why not kosher? I feel like a lot of people use kosher salt.
Kelly Jacques:
Yeah, there's like a big drama around the salt that we use. It was what we could get consistently and we built all our recipes around it. It's fine, so it dissolves really easily. That's really it. Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
We put all of those ingredients into the blow of a stand mixer, and then with the dough hook, we're going to mix on medium speed until the ingredients come together. Start to form a ball about three to five minutes. Then, we're going to turn the mixer up to medium-high speed and knead the dough. Adding butter, is the butter unsalted?
Kelly Jacques:
Unsalted, yeah-
Jessie Sheehan:
Unsalted.
Kelly Jacques:
Room temp, unsalted butter.
Jessie Sheehan:
Add the butter unsalted in four different increments, just allowing kind of traditional making of an enriched dough kind of situation, allowing-
Kelly Jacques:
Totally.
Jessie Sheehan:
... the previous addition of the butter to incorporate before you add the next, and then you'll continue kneading until all of the butter is incorporated into the dough and is homogenous. What are we looking for at this point in terms of feel and also visual?
Kelly Jacques:
Yeah, visual is like you don't want to see any butter chunks that are still in there. Certainly by that point, all the other ingredients should be well-mixed in like the eggs and everything. It might have like a little greasy look to the outside, and you can always give it a scrape and a little dusting of flour. We'll take care of that, but otherwise, it should come together as kind of like a brioche dough, pretty basic ball. It might be a little slack, but that's okay. You still build in a lot of gluten with the lamination.
Jessie Sheehan:
Is it sticky at this point?
Kelly Jacques:
It's a little sticky, yeah, especially we're making this at huge scales, giant mixer, so it's made it a little easier for us to handle or we're just used to it, but it is quite sticky. It shouldn't be a mess, but it is a little difficult.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to remove the dough from the bowl onto a floured surface, form it into a rectangle about eight by six inches, and then wrap the dough well in plastic and refrigerate for like two hours or up to overnight. Then, we're going to make our butter pocket for laminating, so we're going to cube cold butter, I assume again it's unsalted-
Kelly Jacques:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
... and mix that in a mixer with the paddle attachment until it's smooth, but still cold and firm. We're going to scrape it out onto.... We have a piece of parchment paper in front of us. We're going to scrape it out onto half that piece of parchment paper, like the short end of... We're not making a long piece of butter where it's on-
Kelly Jacques:
Correct.
Jessie Sheehan:
... yes, so it's on the shorter end of the parchment paper. We're going to press that down into like a rough rectangle. Are we using the paper? Are we folding the paper over-
Kelly Jacques:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
... to press it with our hands?
Kelly Jacques:
Exactly.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay.
Kelly Jacques:
Mm-hmm, or a rolling pin.
Jessie Sheehan:
Then, we're going to fold the top half of the parchment back over that flattened butter that we put into a rough rectangle, and now we're going to use a rolling pin to kind of evenly spread the butter into a 6 X 6 rectangle. We have two pieces of parchment covering our butter so it won't get greasy on our rolling pin. Is there a particular type or brand of rolling pin that you guys like to use?
Kelly Jacques:
That's a humble brag, but my dad made us a rolling pin-
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh. I love a humble brag-
Kelly Jacques:
... so get to-
Jessie Sheehan:
... when it involved a dad.
Kelly Jacques:
... yeah. Yeah, he made us the cool French-style rolling pin. That's what we use mostly, like those tapered ones.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep.
Kelly Jacques:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Rolling pin to evenly spread the butter into this 6 X 6 inch rectangle, and then we'll set it aside in a cool spot-
Kelly Jacques:
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
... but we're not putting it into the refrigerator at this point. We're not chilling it.
Kelly Jacques:
Ideally, no, because you don't want it to get too cold. If it goes back to being like fridge hard, then you end up playing this kind of never-ending game of trying to get the butter and your dough back to the same texture, especially if you're making this in the winter, King Cake season, usually like a cool spot in your house is kind of perfect for it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Perfect. Now, we're going to remove the dough from the fridge. We'll unwrap it onto a floured surface. We'll roll the dough out to about 7 X 12 inches rectangle. We'll take our butter packet from the parchment and place it in the center of the rectangle. Now, should I picture the butter is 6 X 6, so the butter is like a square, but we're placing it down on a rectangle?
Kelly Jacques:
Exactly. Yeah, so you should have overhang on the left and the right.
Jessie Sheehan:
And the right, so we're placing it in the center of the rectangle and the long side of the rectangle is facing us?
Kelly Jacques:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Okay, good. Then, we are going to fold the two long edges of the rectangle of dough tightly over the butter so that the ends meet in the middle of the butter square and we've completely enclosed the butter. I love this, with the heel of our hand, we're going to press down along the seam and then repeat along the rest of the dough to adhere the butter and dough together. Is the heel of the hand like a special Kelly trick? Or does every... I've never heard it described that way. I love it.
Kelly Jacques:
You mean as the heel?
Jessie Sheehan:
Just like the idea of the tool being-
Kelly Jacques:
Oh.
Jessie Sheehan:
... as part of your hand.
Kelly Jacques:
Oh yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
I feel like people are like, "Pinch it with your fingers," or they're like, "Use a rolling pin."
Kelly Jacques:
Interesting. Oh no, my heels of my hands do all the work here.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that.
Kelly Jacques:
Yeah, with like shaping dough, everything, I also measure with my hands, so if you just kind of get your wingspan from your thumb to your pinky when you outstretch it, I know that's about eight inches. I can measure something so quick and-
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh.
Kelly Jacques:
... and you never have to go reach for a ruler.
Jessie Sheehan:
Honey, that should have been your baking tip.
Kelly Jacques:
Yeah, I know.
Jessie Sheehan:
Use your hand as-
Kelly Jacques:
Right.
Jessie Sheehan:
... a measuring tape, but just so you guys know, since you can't see what Kelly is doing, you're sticking out your pinky and your thumb, and then you're folding over your free middle fingers and whatever, seeing what that measurement is. That is so smart.
Kelly Jacques:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
I got to measure mine.
Kelly Jacques:
I think my Dad taught me that.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh my God, the doctor and the woodworker is-
Kelly Jacques:
I know, I know.
Jessie Sheehan:
... a genius.
Kelly Jacques:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
I'm going to measure my hand when this is over. Now, we're going to roll the dough out to approximately 10 X 18 inches. It's got this butter inside of it with the seam parallel to the long edge. That-
Kelly Jacques:
And-
Jessie Sheehan:
... confused me.
Kelly Jacques:
... maybe I'll say... Yeah, I mean, trying to like-
Jessie Sheehan:
I know.
Kelly Jacques:
... read out lamination-
Jessie Sheehan:
I know. It's-
Kelly Jacques:
... was like, "Yeah."
Jessie Sheehan:
... really hard, but basically the butter is in the center, so the seam is perpendicular to us at this point. It's an-
Kelly Jacques:
Correct. Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
... up and down seam, and we're rolling it out. We're not changing its position. We're just rolling it out-
Kelly Jacques:
Sure.
Jessie Sheehan:
... into-
Kelly Jacques:
Correct.
Jessie Sheehan:
... a 10 X 18 inch.
Kelly Jacques:
Yeah, I think maybe the way to feel less intimidated by this is that the actual dimensions don't matter down to the point. If you're like, "Oh, I was a little bit by a 7 or something," it's more the relationship of the size of your butter to the size of your dough.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep.
Kelly Jacques:
You want to ultimately, like if you did this lamination perfectly, you'd have these layers of dough, butter, dough, dough, butter dough, and dough, butter, dough. You want the butter to reach all the way out to the edge of the dough-
Jessie Sheehan:
I get it.
Kelly Jacques:
... and so that's why you try to line it up, and then when you go to actually roll, you want to always work the gluten in the opposite way. It just worked, so we started with that rectangle with a long edge parallel to us, and then those edges got folded over over into the butter. The long way used to be left to right, and now when you go to roll again, you're going to go away from you so that the long way-
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going in the up and down-
Kelly Jacques:
... perpendicular direction.
Jessie Sheehan:
... yeah. Love, and now we're going to complete a butter fold, so we're going to fold the two ends to meet anywhere in the middle of the two longer ends, rectangular ends we'll meet. Well, that doesn't make any sense, rectangular ends, but people know what I mean. Fold the two ends to meet anywhere in the middle of the dough, and I think you say anywhere meaning we don't have to be crazy precise right now. We want them-
Kelly Jacques:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
... to come and meet in the middle, and then we're going to fold the dough again in half like a book, and then we're going to rotate 90 degrees and do this again. My question is, why is it a book fold and not a letter fold? Does it matter? Are the two things interchangeable?
Kelly Jacques:
I mean, in theory, they're ultimately doing the same thing of creating layers. It's just how many layers they create, so if you do a book fold, as you can imagine, those ends come in and then it gets folded again, you have four layers of butter. If you do a letter fold, you have three layers of butter.
Jessie Sheehan:
Got it.
Kelly Jacques:
... and then that will expand exponentially as you then roll again. If you're folding over three and three, now you have nine altogether, and if you're folding four, then you'll end up with, what is it, 16?
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep. Yeah, so I never realized that, but a book fold actually gets you more layers than a letter fold.
Kelly Jacques:
Sure, and different recipes will call for... Some will do a three and a four, like a letter and a book fold, or two books or two letters, and really at the end it's like how thick and precise you want your layers to be. If you want to have super defined layers that kind of flake off like a page of a book, then you'll do letter folds. You'll get less folds altogether. If you want those folds to kind of all blend in and you still get that flakiness, but you're not peeling off individual ones, which is what we're going for here, then you do more layers.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to roll the dough again into 10 X 18 lunches as we just discussed. We'll roll the dough out in the opposite direction so our short side gets long this time. Then, we'll do this is it three total book folds?
Kelly Jacques:
Two total book folds.
Jessie Sheehan:
Two total book folds. Okay, I wasn't sure if we were done at that point or there were two more. Then, we're going to wrap the dough in plastic wrap, refrigerate it for four hours or up to overnight, and then we're going to make the filling. We're going to combine some raw cane sugar or you can use regular granulated.
Kelly Jacques:
Yeah, but I would say the cane sugar to me is what makes this King Cake what it is.
Jessie Sheehan:
Aah. Good to know.
Kelly Jacques:
This is actually... it's from Louisiana. Louisiana has a big cane sugar industry, and my neighbor actually, who's from out by the bayou, one day she came by my house in her van and she was like, "I have a ton of raw Louisiana sugar back here." This is before the bakery opened, and she was like, "My Dad just pulled up and he gets these coolers filled with sugar before it goes to the refinery. Do you want some?" I was like, "Of course I want this." Then, it was just sitting in my pantry. It was just like burning a hole in the shelf. Something has to happen with this. It's so good.
Then, finally when the bakery opened, we couldn't get it from anywhere. We would just drive out for two hours and go to the same place and they would fill up our bin. It's this golden color. It's coarse. It has these caramel notes to id where it doesn't taste quite as sweet as if you were just tasting granulated sugar, and it's the step before it goes to like the Domino plant to get refined.
Jessie Sheehan:
Is it similar to like turbinado sugar?
Kelly Jacques:
Yeah, I think sugar in the raw-
Jessie Sheehan:
You could so something like that, you know-
Kelly Jacques:
... yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
... like that brand and that.
Kelly Jacques:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, so that would be something you could probably use if you couldn't get-
Kelly Jacques:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
... cane sugar. We're going to combine raw cane sugar and cinnamon in a bowl and set aside, and I assume we can whisk them together or use your fingers.
Kelly Jacques:
Fingers. Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Kelly Jacques:
Yeah, and you put those hands to work.
Jessie Sheehan:
Hands are your best tool in the kitchen, and now I've even learned they can be a ruler, so I'm extremely happy. Then, in a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, we're going to beat some cream cheese. Is it room temp cream cheese?
Kelly Jacques:
Yeah, that's easy if it's room temperature.
Jessie Sheehan:
Beat the room temp cream cheese. Is it granulated sugar at this point?
Kelly Jacques:
That's granulated.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep. Some sugar and some fine sea salt until smooth. Then, we're going to scrape down the sides. Add egg yolk and vanilla, mix until combined. Is there a brand of vanilla that you love?
Kelly Jacques:
Do you know what I love? My neighbor brought us back some Mexican vanilla extract when she went on vacation. That's what I love, the stuff that has a story to it or something. Otherwise for the bakery, we get this very nice alberona vanilla extract that we can get from our vendor. I think, yeah, whatever you can get or you can make it yourself. That's a favorite thing to do for the holidays. All your split beans and some bourbon or something, that would be amazing.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to transfer this to a piping bag or a Ziploc bag that you've snipped the corner, refrigerate it until needed. This was my question. If you need it right now, can you just start? Or do you want it to be chilled?
Kelly Jacques:
It may be a little looser if it's at room temp as opposed to fridge temp, so yeah, probably it'll take you a little time to roll out your laminated dough. Even if you're working with it immediately, probably throw it in the fridge just to make it a little easier.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay, so we're going to unwrap our dough book onto a floured surface, roll it out another time to an 18 X 18-inch square. This time it's a square, and then we're going to lightly brush the surface of dough with water to make it slightly sticky. First of all, is there a brand or a type of brush that you like?
Kelly Jacques:
We use a Teco. Those seem to hold up. Our brushes get abused-
Jessie Sheehan:
With like-
Kelly Jacques:
... used and abused.
Jessie Sheehan:
... the hair as opposed to-
Kelly Jacques:
With like the floor. Yeah. Honestly, sometimes I just use my hands and I just brush it all around. I think whatever you have is fine. Don't go out and buy special brush just for this. You're just trying to make the dough tacky.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're brushing on the water so that the cinnamon and sugar will stick to it. I saw you do this on TV. I thought that was such a cool trick. That seems like a little baker trick. Again, a tip. You know what I mean?
Kelly Jacques:
The water?
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. I've never-
Kelly Jacques:
Oh yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
... done that.
Kelly Jacques:
Oh yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love that.
Kelly Jacques:
It's just like the alternative would be like, "Oh, you spread a pastry cream on it or something," but it's-
Jessie Sheehan:
More butter.
Kelly Jacques:
... like if you don't want to actually, or butter, yeah, but if you don't want to make it more rich, yeah, just a little water and-
Jessie Sheehan:
Love it.
Kelly Jacques:
... like yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love it. I also was thinking of like a spritz bottle.
Kelly Jacques:
Oh yeah. Totally.
Jessie Sheehan:
You could spritz the dough. Then, with a knife or a pizza cutter, we're going to divide the dough into four even strips. We're making two cakes with this recipe, so that would be two. If you were just doing one cake, it would be two strips, and then you're going to pipe a finger-thick line of the cream cheese filling down the center of each strip using up all the filling. Basically what we're making is two or four long tubes filled with cream. We're going to gently roll up pastry dough around the filling to create these long filling-filled tubes. For whatever reason, I found that hard to understand until I saw you do it on some New Orleans TV station, but it makes perfect sense.
So then with a knife or a pizza cutter, we're going to divide the dough into four. Even strips. We're making two cakes with this recipe, so that would be two. If you were just doing one cake, it would be two strips, and then you're going to pipe a finger-thick line of the cream cheese filling down the center of each strip using up all the filling. Basically what we're making is two or four long tubes filled with cream. So we're going to gently roll up the pastry dough around the filling to create these long filling-filled tubes. For whatever reason, I found that hard to understand until I saw you do it on some New Orleans TV station, but it makes perfect sense once I saw it.
Kelly Jacques:
It really racked my brain trying to put all of this into words-
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, you did a really good job, but it did help me that I'd seen you do it because I watched that. Then, we're going to put the tube seam side down, and we're going to kind of create this twist or this braid or this because these King Cakes are traditionally round. We're going to take two tubes and make an X with them so that they cross in the center, and then with our seams down, and then starting at that intersection and working left first, we're going to crisscross the pieces over each other like three or four times, always ensuring that the seam stays down, but leaving a little bit at the end of our two tubes that is not crossed. Then, we'll do the same thing on the right side. First of all, when you say left, do you mean that we're taking the tube and putting the tube to the left each time? Then, on the other side, we're putting the tube to the right each time?
Kelly Jacques:
I guess I'm thinking like, okay, you have an X still in front of you.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep.
Kelly Jacques:
At the intersection point, draw a straight line down. The two halves that hang off the left side, that one's twisted.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, that's my question. It's not so much you're doing some lefty or righty twist. It's that you're just talking about which side of the X we're starting on, we're starting on.
Kelly Jacques:
Yeah, don't overthink it. It's just the twist, right?
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Well, I'm an overthinker, so I can't help myself. Then, we are going to bring one end around to meet the other end to form a circle, and then we're going to sort of connect those end pieces that aren't crossed by sort of crisscrossing them over each other and pressing them firmly to seal. Just so it looks like it's a uniform circle that has no beginning and end.
Kelly Jacques:
Exactly.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to have proof and bake, so we're going to preheat our oven to about 350. We're going to place the King Cake in a warm spot, cover loosely with plastic bag or plastic wrap, and allow it to rise for approximately three to four hours or until almost doubled in size.
Kelly Jacques:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Then, we're going to make a simple syrup. Basically, we're going to bring water and sugar. Is this granulated sugar?
Kelly Jacques:
That's granulated, yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
To a boil for two minutes. Can I ask a question? Why does that have to be two minutes? Can't you just-
Kelly Jacques:
Honestly, I don't know.
Jessie Sheehan:
... because once it's boiled, is simple syrup done? Once it's boiling, there's no more sugar in there.
Kelly Jacques:
I've always been told two minutes-
Jessie Sheehan:
I know.
Kelly Jacques:
... so I just-
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. No, I like-
Kelly Jacques:
I just absorbed that.
Jessie Sheehan:
... yeah. No, I feel the same way, but it just struck me like, "Do we have to wait?" Does it become better flavored with the two minutes?
Kelly Jacques:
I mean, certainly the longer it goes, we've forgotten a pot of syrup on the thing and it will turn darker, more caramelized and presumably become thicker. Maybe not noticeably so. I always took the two minutes as insurance that all the sugar-
Jessie Sheehan:
Sugar has melted.
Kelly Jacques:
... has melted, surely dissolved. Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Then, we'll let it cool. We'll bake our King Cake. We can make this while the King Cake was baking, but we're going to bake the King Cake for about 40 to 50 minutes or until deeply dark brown all over. Are you a rotator? Will you rotate things halfway?
Kelly Jacques:
If it needs to, yeah. I mean, what I like to say is don't rotate until you've gotten some color. Don't rotate too early because everything's very unstable before that crust has kind of set. So if it totally blonde, you don't really want to touch it, you don't really want to open your oven, just let it be. Then, once you start to see some color, if it's uneven, then give it a quick rotate.
Jessie Sheehan:
Is that your rule as a baker generally in terms of rotating cookies, in terms of anything you don't want your staff or you yourself will not rotate. You won't say like, "Oh, it's a 20-minute bake time," so at 10 minutes I will rotate. You won't do it unless there's color?
Kelly Jacques:
Yes. Yeah. We actually bake exclusively out of a deck oven, so I'm sure it behaves slightly different than a convection oven would, but yeah, basically all of our... We've got a big team of bakers, but all of our times will be, let's say for our Boudin Boys, which is like a sausage-filled croissant, you'll set it for 20 minutes and it's maybe like a 26-minute bake time total. By that time, we know pretty consistently it's going to have color on one side.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, it's complicated. Rotating is complicated because often I do it because my ovens are so uneven, so if I don't-
Kelly Jacques:
Totally.
Jessie Sheehan:
... do them and if I wait too long, then I'm just going to have a really dark side and not-
Kelly Jacques:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
... yeah, but I do think that's just a good reminder about not playing around with baked goods too early in their baking process.
Kelly Jacques:
Yeah, you can really deflate them, especially something that's leavened like this. Even cookies, if we rotate them too early, you see they fall down-
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Kelly Jacques:
... which sometimes is the intention and sometimes not.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, so we're going to pull the King Cake from the oven. When it's still warm, we're going to generously brush it with the syrup. We're going to decorate the top of the cake with colored sugar as desired. You guys, I assume, just do, well, at least what my King Cake looked like, like a third of it's purple, a third of it's gold, and then a third of its green. I noticed you did not put the sugar on the Nutella Babka.
Kelly Jacques:
It's sweet enough. It doesn't need it, and the way the layers are kind of revealed in the babka, it didn't want to be touched, you know?
Jessie Sheehan:
Then, you let it cool and then you share with your friends and you leave the knife out because will come back for more. I mean, you said that you'll put the King Cakes a little bit warm into boxes for customers. If someone comes in and gets a slice at the bakery, would you ever serve it warm?
Kelly Jacques:
I mean, we can heat it up, but we would wait to cool before slicing.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay. Yeah. That was so, so, so good. Thank you so much for chatting with me today, Kelly, and I just want to say that you are my cherry pie.
Kelly Jacques:
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. This was so fun.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's it for today's show. Don't forget to follow She's My Cherry Pie on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen, and tell your pals about us. You can find today's recipe at cherrybombe.com. She's My Cherry Pie is a production of The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network. Thank you to Good Studio in Brooklyn. 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.