Lisa Donovan 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.
I am so excited to have Lisa Donovan on the show today. Lisa is an award-winning writer, pastry chef, and food columnist for the New York Times Magazine. She's the former pastry chef behind Café Margot, City House, and Husk in Nashville, places where she redefined what it means to be a Southern baker. Her memoir, “Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger,” is a deeply personal and powerful account of her culinary journey, how she reclaimed her own story, and the narrative of women who came before her. I just finished it and adored it. If you have not read it, please do so, stat. Lisa and I talk about her childhood abroad spent on military bases with her family, about the food she ate there and back home in the South over the summers, we talk about her grandmother's tortillas and how Lisa enjoyed them as a little girl, spoiler alert, with butter, honey, and salt, and about her kitchen notebooks where she took copious notes while teaching herself to bake in a variety of kitchens, a place that always made sense to her. Then we talk about one of Lisa's most beloved bakes, her strawberry cake. We chat about church cakes, aka Southern layer cakes, and the stories they hold, and about how strawberry layer cakes might just have the richest tales of all. If you've ever swooned over Lisa's sweets or been moved by her writing, you won't want to miss this one. Stay tuned for our chat. You can find today's recipe at cherrybombe.com.
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Peeps, did you hear the news? Cherry Bombe's Jubilee conference is headed to Los Angeles this fall, and tickets are now on sale. It's taking place Sunday, September 28th at Hudson Loft in downtown L.A. It'll be a full day of inspiring conversations, delicious food and drink, and incredible community. Since 2014, this one-of-a-kind gathering has celebrated the voices and talents of women across the worlds of food, drink, restaurants, and hospitality. Now it's L.A.'s turn, and we can't wait to give the city the love it deserves. Head to cherrybombe.com to learn more and get your tickets. I hope to see you there.
Let's chat with today's guest. Lisa, so excited to have you on She's My Cherry Pie, and to talk about strawberry layer cake with you, and so much more.
Lisa Donovan:
It's so nice to be here with you. This is the sweetest thing.
Jessie Sheehan:
So you are a self-proclaimed army brat. And you spent a lot of time as a child living in Europe on military bases, summering back home in the Southern U.S. And I think it is fair to say that that time abroad was truly the beginning of your love of food, or your introduction to one loving food. I read about many different things that you ate and loved, but European chocolate, the bread that you ate, the dense and rich cakes in Salzburg, I think, while you guys were living in Germany. And then the almond bonbons filled with booze.
Lisa Donovan:
Oh, my God. First of all, I love that you called it summering. That makes me feel...
Jessie Sheehan:
Trying to make it sound very fancy.
Lisa Donovan:
It didn't feel like summering, but I really, I'm going to think of it like that from now on. Yeah, it was really fortunate. I mean, my mother hates when I talk about these things in this way, but I say it from a place of love. And we grew up in this very '70s, '80s household, and my mother was very much doing the best thing a mom could do at that time, which was buying the cool packaged products.
We were a Little Debbie house, we ate Hershey's chocolate. These weren't the kinds of things that we had in our home, even when we lived overseas. I was born in Panama, we lived in Germany, we were traveling Europe my whole childhood. So when I started to wander off of the army bases, in Bamberg in particular, because I was pre-teening in Bamberg. And I was starting to wander and take the bus to the Schwimmbad, and hang out with the Germans, and make friends with Europeans, and then I would just eat with them. So that's kind of where it started.
We would hit the bakeries, and we would get brotchen, and we would go get ice cream, which is, even the ice cream is different than the ice cream I'm used to. It just has a different flavor. It's served in a different portion size. It's on this very little baby cone, compared to what Americans are used to. So I was getting this really fun, but super normal, not fancy, nothing out of the ordinary experience with German food in particular.
Jessie Sheehan:
It feels like the combo of this artisanal bread and beautiful dark chocolate, combined with Little Debbie's and Hershey's, very much had a profound influence on your palate. All of that is very much part of you and your eventual baking style.
Lisa Donovan:
Yeah, for better or for worse, it's all very nostalgia-based. And I know that's like a crutch all chefs fall back on. But it is. I mean, I think most chefs of my age, and maybe in general, but I know my peers best, and better than younger chefs coming up or older chefs that came before me. My peers, I feel very confident saying, we all bake, or cook, or have taken to kitchens, in a lot of ways, not all of us, but a lot of the people I cook with, we're all trying to find something from our childhood.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Yeah. I also loved reading about your mom. And you say that she doesn't love it. I'm in no way saying anything derogatory at all about what your mom was making, and you said her food was the envy of the neighborhood.
Lisa Donovan:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
But her fried bologna finger sandwiches. This one made me freak out. The frozen balls of watermelon floating in Sprite?
Lisa Donovan:
Oh yeah, she used to make this punch. She would freeze fruit and she always had a ginger ale punch. She hosted a lot of things. She was a great hostess, which I learned so much watching her welcome people into the home.
My dad joined the army, he dropped out of high school, joined the army as a private, and we were very scrappy enlisted people, until about when we moved to Bamberg, and then we were all of a sudden officers. So we spent a great deal of our time just being soldiers in the army, and then all of a sudden we were officers, which meant my mom had to host coffees and events. And that, I was always helping her with those. She just would come up with these incredible of the time, very accessible, but delicious treats, like spinach dip situations, you know?
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, I get it. I still crave all of that.
Lisa Donovan:
Me too.
Jessie Sheehan:
And want to replicate it in its sometimes homemade and sometimes not. I'll go to my grave saying, "I do love Cool Whip."
Lisa Donovan:
Oh, dude, yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love to make something that doesn't have Cool Whip-
Lisa Donovan:
Seriously.
Jessie Sheehan:
... but I like Cool Whip.
Lisa Donovan:
Same.
Jessie Sheehan:
I also loved this, because I too grew up on Chips Ahoy chocolate chip cookies-
Lisa Donovan:
Oh, yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
... but no one ever warmed mine up for me.
Lisa Donovan:
Yeah, that was my first, ridiculous to say, but that was my first pastry chef endeavor. I had two, right? And I'm talking, I was like eight.
Jessie Sheehan:
Right, right, right.
Lisa Donovan:
And this is like, I would get the Chips Ahoy right out of the box, and I would put three in the toaster oven, and then I would eat one warm. And sometimes I would put marshmallows between two of them-
Jessie Sheehan:
You are like a genius.
Lisa Donovan:
... while they're steaming hot, so that they would get a little melty. And then I'd have basically, what were those whoopie pies, melted marshmallows between two Chips Ahoy.
And the other one, which is going to sound really gross, but still, I think a lot of kids did this just in general. Maybe it was just the '80s, I don't know, but most people ate white bread in the early '80s.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, Wonder Bread.
Lisa Donovan:
I had Wonder Bread, Bunny Bread. And it was some of the softest, sweetest bread. And I can remember, we would make, in quotation marks, "donuts." And we would get the crust off, and our sweaty little dirty eight-year-old hands that had just been in the dirt, flicking the fire ants off of us and stuff. We would come inside, take the crust off, roll the rest of the bread into our palms, our hot palms, until it became doughy and made a ball. And then we would roll that into cinnamon and sugar.
Jessie Sheehan:
And eat it.
Lisa Donovan:
And just eat it. And it tasted just like a donut.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, my God, I love that. We'll be right back.
Kerry Diamond:
Hi, everybody. Radio Cherry Bombe's Kerry Diamond here. I want to thank everyone who joined us in Austin, Texas, for the kickoff of our Summer Tastemaker Tour presented by the Visa Dining Collection by OpenTable and Visa. We had a great lunch and panel discussion at the beautiful Commodore Perry Estate, and caught up with some of our favorite food folks. Austin is such a great food city, and I am always happy to visit. Next up on our Summer Tastemaker Tour presented by the Visa Dining Collection by OpenTable and Visa is Hudson Valley, New York, on Friday, July 11th at Wildflower Farms. The event is sold out, but if you've got tickets, I'll see you there. Our stop after that is Willamette Valley, Oregon. We'll be at the ground on Friday, July 25th, for a magical evening in Oregon's wine country, featuring a panel conversation with Kelsey Glasser, Olivia Bartruff, Mariah Pisha-Duffly, and Kari Shaughnessy. And of course, we'll enjoy a beautiful meal, and there's a wine tasting experience with the legendary Maggie Harrison of Antica Terra. It's food, wine, and community all under the Oregon sky. Access is available for eligible Visa cards. Terms and conditions apply. Find out more at cherrybombe.com and purchase tickets through OpenTable. You don't want to miss it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Cherry Bombe's new issue, the Power issue, is out now, and this issue has four incredible cover stars, activist and author, Gloria Steinem, chef Mashama Bailey of The Grey in Savannah, chef/restaurateurs Jody Williams and Rita Sodi of Via Corota and Bar Pisellino in New York City, and chef and culinary creative Sophia Roe. The issue includes exclusive interviews with all of the cover stars, plus our first-ever Power list of the 100-plus women making the culinary world a more interesting, inspiring, and innovative place. You don't want to miss this edition of Cherry Bombe magazine. To get your copy, head to cherrybombe.com or stop by your local culinary shop or bookstore. You can find a full list of retailers on cherrybombe.com. Now, back to our guest.
Another food memory of yours from childhood that I loved reading about were your grandmother's tortillas, which you've since written about for New York Times Magazine, how you would butter the flour tortillas made with bacon grease evenly, and then a pinch of salt-
Lisa Donovan:
And a little honey.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, my gosh.
Lisa Donovan:
And she would always put a chili pepper in it. And-
Jessie Sheehan:
Would you approve of the chili pepper or would you take it out?
Lisa Donovan:
Yeah, I mean, when I was younger, I didn't eat so many chili peppers. But she would always pickle her chili peppers, and she had an abundance of chili peppers in her home, like pickled and otherwise. Sometimes she would put fresh and sometimes she would put pickled, but it was always those first couple of tortillas where you're working out the heat, and she would just take it off of the comal, and she would butter it, and she would salt it, and she would drizzle some honey, and she'd roll it, roll it, roll it, like in her palm, and then I would just-
Jessie Sheehan:
And send it to you.
Lisa Donovan:
I would be standing there next to her, and I mean...
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, my gosh.
Lisa Donovan:
It's been great being in, currently we're in L.A., and I'm visiting, and it's been really great. She lived here, she grew up here. In the South, it's a different kind of Mexican-American food happening in the Southeastern United States, which is where I've lived for a long time. But being out in L.A., it has been really fun and satisfying to go to restaurants and find her food. Because she was such a California Mexican-American. And I don't think I really put two and two together so much, until I got here, that the food she was always giving me was this food. This is a very specific kind of Mexican-American food.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. I loved this line from the book about kitchens and your relationship with them, and how even before you were baking or cooking, kitchens always made sense to you. And I loved that idea. And it was when you were pregnant with your son that you first sort of got super into baking, going to the library. I loved this, searching for words like old world pastry, bread. And you discovered the books of someone you've described as your first mentor, Bernard Clayton Jr.
Lisa Donovan:
Junior. Yeah, that was one of the first series of baking books I found. And it's funny, as I got later in my career, I was like, "I need to find him." And I was starting to find places to write about food. People were letting me write, essentially. And I was like, "I've got to find this man. I bet he's still alive."
And he wrote these really classic books where he would travel around Europe, and they were kind of, I don't know how under the radar they were at the time of them coming out, but most of them came out in the late '80s, early '90s, I'm pretty sure. He basically was traveling around France and different parts of Europe, studying, and having oral histories with these artists and bakers, specifically bread bakers.
And one of the things that was really hard for me, we moved back to the United States when I was, gosh, probably about 15. We moved to North Georgia. And even though I'm, obviously, American and I spent a couple of times, I was summering sometimes in the United States, my family, we would visit my grandparents in Live Oak, Florida, and we definitely had a foothold in the southeastern United States, but I had gotten so used to these experiences, in Germany in particular, with brotchen, and just having really beautiful bread, not even complicated French bread, just dinner rolls and soft quick breads even.
And I got to North Georgia, we moved to a place called Dahlonega when I was 15. And as you might imagine, there was nothing there. I was really sad about not having access to certain foods. That's sort of when my, oh, I would like to learn more about... Or at least maybe that's where the want came from. And at the time, I was studying pretty seriously. I was studying classical ballet pretty seriously, and so as you might imagine, I wasn't eating a whole lot. I don't have really the frame of a ballerina, so I was having to work extra hard on my diet to maintain the liveness that I think is expected.
But by the time I found out I was pregnant, these little leanings of wanting to have that bread back in my life, and then because I was pregnant at 19, 20 years old, I guess I was 20 years old, I had permission to eat in a way that I hadn't before. And I was like, "Oh, now I'm going to make some brioche. I'm going to eat... I'm going to make..." And I just started baking. And all of my dearest friends would come visit from college, and I would just make them these carbohydrate feasts. And that was when it started. That was when I discovered those books. They were just what was at my library.
Jessie Sheehan:
Tell us about your notebooks, your kitchen notebooks?
Lisa Donovan:
My kitchen notebooks. Gosh, I have a lot of kitchen notebooks. And Food & Wine was really great and let me do this really, or they did a really lovely spread of them, gosh, I think now probably about, times are moving so fast, like seven or eight years ago now. But I used to keep all of these kitchen notebooks.
I still do, but they were very articulate back in the day. And there were times where my kids had to come to the restaurants. I raised two kids in the restaurant industry, and so sometimes my kids would come to the restaurant and I would hand them my notebooks to draw in. So a lot of these notebooks have my learning notes, they have my final recipes. They also have some drawings from my, at the time, two-year-old who was trying to learn how to be in a restaurant as a two-year-old. And they're to me like relics. And I still find inspiration in them, and they're great memory-recalls of a certain time and a certain place of what I was learning.
Jessie Sheehan:
At least what I interpreted, too, about reading about them, both in Food & Wine and in your memoir, is it was almost like your training.
Lisa Donovan:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
You were your teacher.
Lisa Donovan:
I was.
Jessie Sheehan:
And you were making yourself, just because you wanted to, take these copious notes about everything that you were learning and being inspired by. I want to talk briefly about the memoir, and I want to talk about our recipe, but before I do, I do want you to tell us about your buttermilk chess pie moment.
Lisa Donovan:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
That I guess still extends to this day, because kind of known for that.
Lisa Donovan:
It was the guy that, back in the early 2000s, it wasn't common, or even, I think, a practice to... There were a lot of slices of torte. There weren't a lot of layer cakes and pies being served at restaurants of a certain caliber back in that day. And there, I think it's great to have an opportunity to talk about it, because I think it's very common now. But I think it can't be stressed enough that, ain't nobody putting a slice of pie on a restaurant menu in 2005. And all of a sudden, you were.
Jessie Sheehan:
It's like I cannot imagine a world without it, but I know you're exactly right, because, obviously, I was around then. It's incredible.
Lisa Donovan:
Yeah. I mean, unless you were in a diner, or you were at a café or something like-
Jessie Sheehan:
Or a bakery.
Lisa Donovan:
Or a bakery. But you wouldn't complete a meal, a five-course meal at a very what might be considered a fine dining restaurant, with a slice of pie.
And I started working with Sean Brock, and I was like, "If you want me to do this job, here's what I see. If we're going to talk about Appalachia, and we're going to talk about this food, we have to put pie on the menu, and we have to serve layer cakes, and we have to really dig into the history of these very archetypical recipes."
And he was game. And the buttermilk pie felt to me like the one I was the most excited about. There's different kinds of chess pies, there's vinegar pie, and all these sugar pies. They're such beautiful odes to Americana, I think in general. They're just so special, and they're so American, and I think they're so classic., At the time felt very underappreciated. And I fell in love with the buttermilk pie, mostly because in Tennessee, I was getting killer buttermilk from a place called Cruze’s Dairy out in Knoxville. And I wanted something that would-
Jessie Sheehan:
Showcase.
Lisa Donovan:
... showcase this beautiful ingredient. And even though it can be said, like buttermilk pie, chess pies, they're sugar pies, they got sugar in them. They got sugar, they got butter, they got eggs. That's the gist of them. We live in a culture where people are appalled at how much sugar is in desserts. And I'm like, "I get it, but also, it's a pie."
Jessie Sheehan:
It's dessert.
Lisa Donovan:
Have a sliver. Just have a sliver. And so my goal became, with that pie, how do I allow this to be as buttermilk-y as it can be? Some recipes, even some of my published recipes, there's a lot of lemon in them because I can't get quite a good buttermilk. You can't get a really, really special buttermilk that you would drink outright just as buttermilk, which people do. And if it's a good enough buttermilk, you would want to as well. I think people would be like, "Oh, I'd never drink buttermilk." But if you find a really beautifully made buttermilk, you will want to sip it, you'll want to drink it.
So if you don't have that kind of level of buttermilk, well yeah, maybe put a little more lemon zest in there, maybe make it more of a lemon buttermilk pie. But I was working with the best buttermilk, I think, probably in my opinion, in the country. And I just wanted to showcase it. I got my pie crust right. And I had worked really hard to make this easy pie crust that could be baked from frozen and not par-baked, which was going to be impossible. I was making sometimes 20 of these a day.
Jessie Sheehan:
You were filling the frozen shells-
Lisa Donovan:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
... not par-baked, with the buttermilk-
Lisa Donovan:
Yes, correct.
Jessie Sheehan:
... and they were baking in the same amount of time that it took to set the filling?
Lisa Donovan:
And the pie crust would be sharp on the bottom.
Jessie Sheehan:
How?
Lisa Donovan:
Basically, I would adjust my heat.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay.
Lisa Donovan:
So if you start out with a frozen pie shell, and you start out with a rip-roaring hot oven...
Jessie Sheehan:
Like 450?
Lisa Donovan:
Yeah, I would preheat it to 475, and then I would put my pie in... Well, I would turn it down to 450, but I would get it as hot as I can.
Jessie Sheehan:
Convection? So starting at 500?
Lisa Donovan:
Yes, convection. And you want it hot-
Jessie Sheehan:
Wow.
Lisa Donovan:
... because what you're trying to do-
Jessie Sheehan:
Is brown it.
Lisa Donovan:
... is create this beautiful sort of alchemy that happens between your butter and your heat. It allows your crust to take that heat, and then your butter doesn't have any time to slack. And so you put it in a super hot oven, even like a loose custard pie, and then you turn it immediately down.
Jessie Sheehan:
So let's say, since you were using convection, because you're in a professional kitchen. If we were at home, we would start at a 500-degree oven. The second it went in, we'd drop it to 475-
Lisa Donovan:
Drop it down. No, I would drop it down to, because I was working with convection, so it's probably a little confusing, but I would start at 475, I would get it super hot, and then I would turn it down to its proper baking temperature.
Jessie Sheehan:
Ah. Which would be 350 for you for a custard pie?
Lisa Donovan:
For that one, it would be 375, and then I would push it down again, to sometimes 325.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh my gosh, that is genius, Lisa.
Lisa Donovan:
So I would just keep staggering the heat so that it was just way easier than baking off, par-baking 30 pie shells.
Jessie Sheehan:
I don't know why, but... And I'm not going to use an expletive, because I don't want to get in trouble, hate par baking.
Lisa Donovan:
Yeah. Same.
Jessie Sheehan:
All of it, with the rice, and the parchment, and then lifting it up and taking it.
Lisa Donovan:
I think it's now more common practice for pie crust to be basically like a rough puff. But at the time, I was starting to experiment with... And Erin Jeanne McDowell and I have talked about this, but what she and I make, both of our pie crusts are very similar. And all of my pie shell baking, I was not satisfied with traditional pie crust methods. I liked the ratios, but the methodology just didn't work for me.
So I started trying to figure out, well, how do you do this? And I think around 2007, 2008, I realized, if I do fraises, which is actually a rough puff method technique, if I actually do fraises with the pie dough, Southern pie dough ratios, I think this is going to work. And it did. But then I had to figure out, on the back end, how do I bake this? Because it wasn't quite taking to the right temperatures. I wasn't baking puff pastry, I was filling it. Then it took me a little more time to figure out how I wanted to bake it. And then I did have to find something for efficiency, because I was teaching sous chefs and kitchens how to do this in my absence, or because I can't be there 24 hours a day.
Jessie Sheehan:
Right. No.
Lisa Donovan:
That was my best method, was basically working with the temperature of both the dough and the oven, in order to get that sturdy bottom, and also still, I like, which not every baker likes, but I like the sturdy bottom and then a little bit of, I won't want to say doughy, but that little in-between-
Jessie Sheehan:
The filling and the bottom?
Lisa Donovan:
... space where the filling and the top of the inside of the pie dough meet, and it becomes just a little gummy. I love that. I really love that. That wasn't a sacrifice for me. That was actually, if you can make sure that your bottom is super crispy, and your sides are all set, and crispy, and beautiful, and you can get that little chew, I love it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Little chew between the bottom of the filling and the top of the bottom of the crust.
Lisa Donovan:
That's right.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love that. Love that. Just tell us briefly about “Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger.” One thing I was interested in was, were you approached to write your memoir? Or you just wanted to write your memoir, and then you found someone to help you bring it into the world?
Lisa Donovan:
Well, so I had been writing, I'd been writing some stories. I had written this story, an essay that I had gotten a little bit of traction early on, basically about discovering MFK Fisher, and “How to Cook a Wolf,” specifically, while I was a nursing mother, baking. That was 2004, and I was literally slinging pies out of the trunk of my Volvo. And it was not the era of that being a common sort of thing to do.
I wrote this story, basically, about having the worst night at this, what was essentially just like a college bar, serving Red Bulls and vodkas to rich college kids. And I would have to go to the bathroom every 45 minutes to pump my breasts. And it's a story about that, and that was one of the first sort of things. I had an agent, also, that was helping me wait for the right moment to talk about selling a book.
I'd also written about masa and my grandmother's tortillas. And I had done that through the Southern Foodways Alliance and had gotten some personal food essays published through them specifically. There's a long-form narrative style that I definitely occupy, whether I like it or not, that's very personal and very much connected to why I've cooked and how I've found my way in the world.
And then I won the James Beard for an essay that I wrote for Food & Wine magazine, just about the state of the world. It was right when the Me Too Movement was coming up, and Kat Kinsman was my editor there. And it was in response to some things that were going on in general in the United States, but specifically, about some things that had been happening in the Southeastern United States, and I had bore immediate witness to, that I had finally, was like, "I can't not say what I see." And then after that, to answer your question in a very long form way, that was the moment. That was the moment.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yay. Such an incredible. I loved reading it so much.
Lisa Donovan:
Thanks.
Jessie Sheehan:
All right, now, finally, we are going to talk about your strawberry cake. So you write about this cake. The strawberry cakes, or layer cakes, are included in a category of cakes called church cakes, which are Southern staples. And I'm going to ask you to explain that to us, but I love that you talk about how they're Southern staples because there are stories and meaning in layer cakes. And you say, I love this, that strawberry cake may contain the richest tales. Tell us about a church cake, and the role that strawberry cakes play in the canon of church cakes?
Lisa Donovan:
Yeah, so it's so funny how language works, because I literally, in 2008, '09, '10, '10, '11, I don't even know dates anymore, but I was standing in the house kitchen and I said, "Just call it a church cake." And I thought I was coining... I just thought I was taking a little risk calling something a church cake, because I had seen them at church gatherings, and it was a sort of fun thing that I thought I was like...
And then I realized, Cheryl Day's mother called them church cakes too. Again, I am so fascinated by the way that language moves around the world, and that was one of them. And it's because they're often, even if it's not a church function, they are so at the center, especially for Southerners, of our gatherings. And even if you just have a store-bought one, a church cake, a layer cake, is a symbol of something that a pie just isn't, that a plate of cookies just isn't.
I think for me, and I think a lot of Southern bakers, it is almost the ultimate act of generosity and love. It's the dozen roses instead of dahlias, or whatever. Like it's saying something very specific that is very tethered to love. Not just appreciation, it is care, it is love, it is generosity of a very specific kind.
Jessie Sheehan:
So the first thing we're going to do with this recipe is we're going to make some roasted strawberry jam. So we're going to place strawberries. Are we cutting them?
Lisa Donovan:
I like to have them. Yeah, if they're really little, I don't. I just throw them in and I think it's perfect. And I roast my strawberries. Roasting fruit, I think, is one of the nicest ways to cook it down.
High temperature, very low sugar added, just a little bit of acid, any kind of citrus, honestly, that you want to squeeze on there just to give it a little bit of a boost, and a pinch of salt. And if you wait until your strawberries are nearly rotten, that's a terrible way of putting it, but you just want them to be very close to their end days, they got so soft, and so sweet, and their sugar had just finally gotten to its maximum capacity, I think. And so when you do that, you want to get it where they had just a little pressure to them still, where they're not soft and weird. But just high roast them. You don't even really have to put a lot of sugar in them. When they're high enough season, it's my favorite way of preserving fruit, is just hot roasting it. And if you put it in a pan that has the ability to caramelize-
Jessie Sheehan:
Even better.
Lisa Donovan:
... on the edges, even better. Just stir it a lot because then you can get some really nice, beautiful bits.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're going to take the cut strawberries, maybe cut them in half. If they're little, we won't. We'll add a pinch of kosher salt, squeeze of lemon juice. I'm so anal. When you say squeeze of lemon juice, are you imagining a whole lemon? Are you imagining a half lemon?
Lisa Donovan:
Depends on volume. So let's say we have a-
Jessie Sheehan:
Pound, or something.
Lisa Donovan:
... pound of strawberries cut in half, I would do, probably a quarter squeeze of a regular-sized lemon.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, yeah. We'll add a little bit of granulated sugar. You say you like the caramelization. Are we doing this on a sheet pan? Do you like this?
Lisa Donovan:
Something with some sides would be good. That way, you don't have to worry about when you stir it-
Jessie Sheehan:
Leaking, yeah.
Lisa Donovan:
... it leaks or anything. Something with some sides. I love, if you have a large enough cast iron, that's always nice. I'm just Southern, I cook everything in cast iron.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep.
Lisa Donovan:
But if not, just a regular old pan. Any kind of pan that you got.
Jessie Sheehan:
Great. So we'll put it in the oven at around 450 degrees. We'll stir it every 10 minutes for about 30 minutes and let it cool. We're going to make the cake. We're going to heat our oven to 350. We're going to grease the bottom and sides of three nine-inch cake pans. Do you have a brand of cake pan?
Lisa Donovan:
Yeah, anything that's sturdy, you know?
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep. We can either spray it with baking spray, like that has the flour in it, or we can butter and flour the pans. What are you using? If you're at home, would you use baking spray or would you-
Lisa Donovan:
I like Baker's Joy. I like a baker's spray. This week, whenever I retested this one, I used butter and flour because I'm staying temporarily somewhere, and I didn't want to buy a bunch of extra ingredients. But the butter and the flour work just fine.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep. Then we're going to line the bottoms of the pans with the parchment, and we'll grease the top of that parchment. Then in a medium bowl, do you like a glass bowl at home? Do you like a metal bowl at home? What are your mixing bowls?
Lisa Donovan:
I love metal bowls-
Jessie Sheehan:
Metal bowls.
Lisa Donovan:
Just because I'm true. I'm just-
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, you're a restaurant-
Lisa Donovan:
... I'm a restaurant person.
Jessie Sheehan:
You're a restaurant peep. Oh, yeah. In our metal medium bowl, we're going to combine our cake flour. Couple of questions, are you sifting it? Then I assume we're adding the cake flour is here instead of all-purpose for tenderness?
Lisa Donovan:
Yes, it's true. I'm not a big sifter if I'm being really honest.
Jessie Sheehan:
Nice.
Lisa Donovan:
But I always sift cake flour. I find it a bit clumpier than traditional all-purpose flour. So I typically, especially for layer cakes, like cake flour to me requires a little bit of sifting.
Jessie Sheehan:
And is there a brand that you're-
Lisa Donovan:
I like the King Arthur cake flour, and I like the Swans Down.
Jessie Sheehan:
Me too.
Lisa Donovan:
I really love it. It's so soft. It reminds me of the old White Lily recipe.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes. We're combining our cake flour. We're going to sift our pulverized freeze-dried strawberries. So I had a couple of questions about that. I assume we're pulverizing in a food processor?
Lisa Donovan:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
And is there a brand?
Lisa Donovan:
I just grabbed whatever I could find.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep. Yep.
Lisa Donovan:
Yeah, luckily right now it's such a popular snack, freeze-dried fruit.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, you can find them easily.
Lisa Donovan:
You can find it pretty easily.
Jessie Sheehan:
And you're sifting them, because I know we're going to add these bits when we actually make the frosting, but for now, you like to get out those little bits that don't get quite fine enough.
Lisa Donovan:
Yeah, I worry. I think about the baking process being a bit too rogue.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep. And then we're going to whisk, also, some baking powder, kosher salt, and baking soda. And I wondered why soda here?
Lisa Donovan:
Well, because I used to do this cake with buttermilk.
Jessie Sheehan:
Ah.
Lisa Donovan:
And the buttermilk needed a little bit of baking soda.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, of course.
Lisa Donovan:
And then, I just sort of kept it in because I worried about the acidity from the strawberries.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep. Yep.
Lisa Donovan:
So I just left it to be sure. I now make this with whole milk, because I do think it needs a little bit of a lighter thing with the strawberries being in there. But I kept the baking soda because I just didn't feel confident that it still didn't have too much acid.
Jessie Sheehan:
Something else from the strawberries.
Lisa Donovan:
Something. Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
And I love this, the freeze-dried is just because we're already going to be adding some of, or all of our roasted strawberries, to the cake batter. The freeze-dried is just to pop that strawberry flavor a bit more?
Lisa Donovan:
Yeah, and the color. This is really what I was looking for. And it does help with the flavor. It really does.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love that. So then, that's our dry ingredients. And in a large measuring cup, two cup, four cup?
Lisa Donovan:
Two cups should be good. Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
It's kind of a standard-ish measuring cup with a spout. We're going to combine, obviously, our roasted strawberry jam is room temp now.
Lisa Donovan:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Room temp whole milk and vanilla paste, and we're going to set that aside. I'm assuming you could sub-extract, but paste is going to...
Lisa Donovan:
Yeah, you can. Paste is delicious.
Jessie Sheehan:
Paste is so good.
Lisa Donovan:
And those bottles last a while. I know they're pricey. And again, use vanilla extract as you need, or leave it out if you need, but vanilla paste is so-
Jessie Sheehan:
I know, it's so special.
Lisa Donovan:
... beautiful. I love it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Then, in a bowl of your stand mixer with your paddle attachment, we're going to cream room temp salted butter. So crazy and delightful. Why salted?
Lisa Donovan:
I started picking up this habit. I've been baking in France a lot these last four years, and I've worked with, now, three different bakers. French bakers, they just use salted.
Jessie Sheehan:
Of course.
Lisa Donovan:
They just use salted butter.
Jessie Sheehan:
Of course.
Lisa Donovan:
And they're like, "Unsalted? Why would you?" And I have noticed that there's something, and I know we like to control our salt, and I know all of those details are true, there's something a little more complex, I notice, when I use salted butter, and add my own salt still, that just rounds it out.
Jessie Sheehan:
Do you feel like you are adding slightly less of your own salt?
Lisa Donovan:
Yes. Just slightly, though.
Jessie Sheehan:
Slightly, but just slightly.
Lisa Donovan:
My desserts, if I'm being really honest, since the beginning, have been salt-forward.
Jessie Sheehan:
I'm like a saltaholic, so I can relate.
Lisa Donovan:
They have been one of my biggest champions, and letting things be simple.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're adding salted butter, which I love.
Lisa Donovan:
Yes
Jessie Sheehan:
And granulated sugar on medium-high until well combined. And I love this adverb, an incredibly fluffy, not just fluffy, but incredibly so, for three to four minutes, scraping sides and bottoms of bowl. We're going to add some room temp eggs, one at a time, beating well, scraping after each addition. After the last egg, we'll scrape once more. We'll turn the speed up to medium-high and beat until fluffy, three to four minutes.
Lisa Donovan:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Then we're going to add one-third of our dry ingredients with the butter mixture, mix on low to medium until incorporated. I love all your scraping instructions. We're scraping again. I remember being-
Lisa Donovan:
It's very important.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, I've talked about this before on the pod, but I remember in my first, and only, bakery job being told about the nipple in the bottom of the Hobart.
Lisa Donovan:
Yes, you have to get the nipple.
Jessie Sheehan:
And you had to get in there-
Lisa Donovan:
Oh, my God.
Jessie Sheehan:
... and scrape around your nipple.
Lisa Donovan:
Yes. The best thing to do, and this feels really vulgar, maybe, but get-
Jessie Sheehan:
The rubber bench scraper.
Lisa Donovan:
... the rubber bench scraper, and if your hand is not all the way in the bottom of this, and you have to get the batter off your hand because you've scraped so much of the bottom, like...
Jessie Sheehan:
Exactly. Exactly. So then we're going to add one-third of our wet ingredients, scraping well. And continuing this way, scraping well after each addition, repeating it twice more until we end with the wet, scraping again. Then the food coloring is optional.
Lisa Donovan:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
But if we wanted to add it, we could add it now.
Lisa Donovan:
That's right.
Jessie Sheehan:
We'll beat on medium-high for 30 to 45 seconds. And again, another, I love when recipes are using language that you don't always expect in recipes. So I love, we're going to give it, really giving it a good last spin, which I also love, like you're spinning around, I don't know, in your car, in your race car.
Then we're going to divide the batter evenly amongst our three prepared pans. We can use a scale if we want it to be uniform.
Lisa Donovan:
You can weigh it if you like.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to bake until a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean. So I had two questions. First of all, I assume in restaurants you probably weren't even using a tester? It was just eyes, smell.
Lisa Donovan:
We had little cake testers.
Jessie Sheehan:
You did?
Lisa Donovan:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
And what were they? Would they be toothpicks? Would they be metal?
Lisa Donovan:
We have metal cake testers.
Jessie Sheehan:
Metal. This is my other question. I like to pull with a moist crumb, because I live in mortal fear of a dry cake.
Lisa Donovan:
Same. Well, and it's still cooking when it comes out.
Jessie Sheehan:
Exactly. But I sometimes feel like the metal is too smooth to grab my crumbs. And so I want something, like I use almost like big wooden skewers, just because there's something about the roughness of the wood-
Lisa Donovan:
That's right.
Jessie Sheehan:
... that I feel like is pulling.
Lisa Donovan:
But to your point, it's mostly smell and touch. You can just touch the top of it and feel. I agree with you, I like to try to pull it about 30 seconds to a minute before it's actually done.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep.
Lisa Donovan:
And then that way, it's the residual heat just finished cooking wherever it's cooling.
Jessie Sheehan:
And I love that you give us all these indicators. It's going to be our cake tester, but it's also going to be lightly colored. It's going to bounce back when touched in the middle, about 25 to 30 minutes. And I also love that you're a rotator.
Lisa Donovan:
I'm a rotator.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to rotate our pans on the racks midway through. It's so interesting, just interviewing all the bakers that I do, there are a lot of peeps who do not rotate. I was just trained that way, so I can't imagine. I don't care if someone told me their oven was perfect, I would still rotate.
Lisa Donovan:
I'm a futzer. I believe that getting out of the way and patience are the best, two strongest ingredients in any baking. But I believe, even in a convection oven, I just don't trust it. I've cooked in some janky ovens, some janky ovens. I'm telling you, I trust no one.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, exactly.
Lisa Donovan:
I trust no one. I have to be involved.
Jessie Sheehan:
I feel the same way about an oven thermometer.
Lisa Donovan:
Yeah, that's right.
Jessie Sheehan:
I don't care if you're telling me your oven's calibrated. I'm like, "That's okay. I'm just going to test it."
Lisa Donovan:
It's true.
Jessie Sheehan:
So then we're going to let the cakes cool in a wire rack until completely cooled, about one hour. And we'll make our frosting. So in a bowl with a stand mixer, using our paddle still, we'll cream salted butter again. You say for the butter, it's softened, but still has a little bit of a chill.
Lisa Donovan:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Why is that important, because it can get too loose?
Lisa Donovan:
I find, and this is me being someone that has done most of my baking in the Southeastern United States, it doesn't take long for it to get weird. So I have to protect my temperatures a little bit. So I find, especially, if I'm trying to make a layer cake in New Orleans in August, if my butter's just a little cold, that when it goes into the mixer, I'm not in danger, and I can still keep the tooth of it where I want it.
Jessie Sheehan:
And we're going to add some room-temp cream cheese. And I have to say, I love the idea of a strawberry cake with cream cheese. There's something about cream cheese and strawberries, I was just like, yes. So I love that.
So we're going to add some room-temp cream cheese. We're going to beat these together on medium-high speed until combined, slightly fluffy, and we're going to gradually add our powdered sugar one cup at a time, scraping the bowl as needed. This also blew my mind, besides the salted butter, switching to the whisk attachment.
Lisa Donovan:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Thought that was so interesting. Do you do that for all your frostings?
Lisa Donovan:
Most of them, yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Talk to me about that.
Lisa Donovan:
Except my chocolate ganache frosting, because I don't want to get too much air in there. I like a fluffy frosting. I do.
Jessie Sheehan:
So at this stage, I'm just seeing what stage we're at. So once we put in all of our powdered sugar and combined it, you pull out that paddle, you switch in?
Lisa Donovan:
I do.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love.
Lisa Donovan:
I do. Especially too, because I'm adding, in this case in particular, I'm adding the dehydrated strawberries, and I just really want them to get a good spin.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're going to switch to the whisk. We're going to add our pulverized freeze-dried strawberries. This time they're unsifted, because you love-
Lisa Donovan:
I like-
Jessie Sheehan:
I think you say you love the little flavor bites and seeds.
Lisa Donovan:
Yeah, I do.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then we're going to add more vanilla paste. We'll taste, we'll add a pinch of salt, pick up the flavor, and we add them until we get it just right. Whisk until fluffy, two to three minutes. Now we're going to assemble. This was interesting to me, so we're turning our cooled layers out onto a cutting board. So does this mean that you're letting the layers cool in the pans the entire time? Or are you-
Lisa Donovan:
Honestly, it depends on what I've got. I'm not always somewhere where I have cooling racks, so I am happy to let them cool-
Jessie Sheehan:
In the pans.
Lisa Donovan:
... in the pans.
Jessie Sheehan:
You don't see a problem with that?
Lisa Donovan:
I'm not super worried about it. I do remove them from the oven space. And I try to get them somewhere cooler. If I have, everything is perfect in the world, and I've got cooling racks, yeah, I turn them out.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. So then we're going to use a serrated knife to trim off the dome tops of the cakes.
Lisa Donovan:
And these don't get terribly high. So there's maybe one of them, because I didn't measure the layers this week, one of them was just like, I basically just took the slightest little sliver off of the top, to keep it even.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep, which is the chef's little treat anyway, so not a bad thing.
Lisa Donovan:
Yeah, uh-huh.
Jessie Sheehan:
If the frosting is soft at this point, sitting around, or just because we made it and it's soft, we're going to chill in the fridge or the freezer. And I loved that you mentioned the freezer. People don't take advantage enough of their freezer when they're baking.
Lisa Donovan:
I agree.
Jessie Sheehan:
I mean, people use their fridge sometimes, but you can put so many things in your freezer if you don't want to wait too long.
Lisa Donovan:
Yes. Yeah, especially when you're building a cake. I think people forget that you can stop building the cake and let it chill for just a minute. You're not trying to get the cake cold. You're just trying to let it sit for a minute so that frosting has a minute. And then your layer will be a little bit more...
Jessie Sheehan:
Totally. I am so impatient, so it's hard for me to do the things you're supposed to do. Like a crumb coat, which we're about to talk about. We're going to place one tablespoon of frosting in the center of our serving platter or our cake boards. On our cake board, and we're going to top with one of the cake layers cut side up. Probably, if we hadn't cut off the dome, we would flip them. Or if there was just a teeny bit of a dome, and we were just flipping if we were lazy. But it's cut side up, we're going to frost with, is it basically like a third? Is it a third between?
Lisa Donovan:
Yeah, I'd say-
Jessie Sheehan:
Maybe a little?
Lisa Donovan:
I'd say a little less, maybe.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, right.
Lisa Donovan:
And also of note, you can also, if you've got leftover strawberry jam, you can put that on the layer and then the frosting.
Jessie Sheehan:
For a little more-
Lisa Donovan:
You can add a little bit more strawberry at these points if you'd like. I didn't have that, and I don't always have that. And it can get a little messy if my jam's not as tight as I want it to be. But it's yummy. It's not a bad thing.
Jessie Sheehan:
Then we're going to repeat with a second layer, cut side up, frosting it. Then we'll put on the last cake layer, we'll apply our crumb coat around the whole cake. Do you always do a crumb coat?
Lisa Donovan:
I think I do.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Lisa Donovan:
I think I do, because even if it's nice, and neat, and tidy, I like to have one layer, I always put that in to chill.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, of course.
Lisa Donovan:
Because then, even if it didn't get crummy, what it allows me to do is put the final layer of frosting over a cold layer, and then it just-
Jessie Sheehan:
Goes together so easily.
Lisa Donovan:
... is tight, and clean, and pretty.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we'll chill in the fridge for five minutes to set the crumb coat and then frost with the final layer.
Lisa Donovan:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Well, thank you so much-
Lisa Donovan:
Thank you so much.
Jessie Sheehan:
... for chatting with me today-
Lisa Donovan:
This was so fun.
Jessie Sheehan:
... Lisa. And I just want to say that you are my cherry pie.
Lisa Donovan:
Oh.
Jessie Sheehan:
And my strawberry cake.
Lisa Donovan:
Thanks so much.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's it for today's show. Thank you to Nordic Ware for supporting this episode. Don't forget to follow She's My Cherry Pie on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. And tell your pals about us. You can find today's recipe at cherrybombe.com. She's My Cherry Pie is a production of The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network. 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.