Molly Wilkinson 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 three baking books, including my latest, “Snackable Bakes.” Each Saturday, I'm hanging out with the sweetest bakers around and taking a deep dive into their signature bakes.
Today's guest is Molly Wilkinson, an American pastry chef living in France. Molly trained at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and teaches pastry and baking workshops from her home in Versailles, France. Yes, Versailles. Molly loves to make baking fun and she's an expert at teaching French techniques for making macaron, pâte à choux and more. Her debut cookbook, “French Pastry Made Simple,” was released in 2021. Molly joins me to talk about her baking journey and all things Bûche de Noël, the traditional yule log cake that's beloved by the French. Stay tuned for my chat with Molly.
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Molly, so excited to have you on She's My Cherry Pie and to talk Bûche de Noël with you and so much more.
Molly Wilkinson:
I'm so excited.
Jessie Sheehan:
You started baking when you were little, sitting on a high stool next to your mom. What kinds of things was she making and what do you recall loving helping her with?
Molly Wilkinson:
It was all the classics. I'm a southern girl at heart. I'm from Dallas, Texas. And so it was a lot of chocolate chip cookies and brownies and I think for me it was a combination of the smells of everything that was being done, but then of course the cookie dough. Absolutely.
Jessie Sheehan:
100%. But despite your deep love of baking, which you carried all the way through college, post-college you became a digital marketer, although you baked on a weekly basis for your coworkers, as bakers do. Was your baking at this point, the kinds of things you were making, was it French inspired yet?
Molly Wilkinson:
Not at all. Not at all. I remember making a nine layer Martha Stewart cake for one of my roommates at two in the morning. But it was all American classics. I had never explored French pastry, so I wasn't doing eclairs or macaron, croissant, any of those things. It really was cookies, brownies, bars, and layered cakes and that's about it.
Jessie Sheehan:
So then you quit and you went to Le Cordon Bleu. When you left for France and knew you were going to go to pastry school, was it your intention to bake full-time when you finished the program or were you kind of like, this is something I really want to do, I'm going to have this experience and see where it leads me?
Molly Wilkinson:
The latter. It was very much so this is a huge passion of mine and growing up it was definitely fostered by the people in my family and my friends and my coworkers, but I never truly thought that it was a job that I could go into. I actually didn't quit my job immediately. I am one of those people that has a plan B all the time. I don't know if that's a pastry chef trait or something like that, but I love being organized, but I'm not a perfectionist and so for me it was like I need to have something in play to where if being a pastry chef or cooking doesn't work out, I can fall back on it. And at that time I'd been working in marketing, so digital marketing for seven years. I moved back home. I saved up to go to Le Cordon Bleu and I even tested it out. Because I'm really into research.
So I researched for months and what I was hearing consistently was that a lot of people, they really enjoy baking at home, but making it their career is something entirely different. And so I went to a community college in Dallas. I took a semester doing their culinary basic program, three months wearing the uniform. I loved it. I loved staying after cleaning up, scrubbing the floors, loved the atmosphere, and that's what really pivoted me into going to Le Cordon Bleu and trying to see what I could make of it. When I was in marketing, I was a trainer. I think that stayed with me. I really love working with people. I love empowering people but challenging them at the same time to try something new. When I graduated, I worked at lots of different places both in Dallas and France and it really was trying to figure out what I was going to do and how I was going to do it and where I was going to be.
Jessie Sheehan:
Did you speak French when you left for Le Cordon Bleu? No.
Molly Wilkinson:
Not at all.
Jessie Sheehan:
And the classes are in French though, yes?
Molly Wilkinson:
They're in French, but there is an English translator. But the thing to know is that the English translator doesn't translate everything and not perfectly. And so I started taking classes while I was there and kept getting better and better and intermediate level now, having been living here nine years. It's a difficult language.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Oh my gosh. Okay, so you left France when your visa expired after school, but you came back and you've made France your home and I wondered, are your family and friends ... Were they surprised? Were they like, "Molly, what are you doing?" Or is that so Molly of you that they were like, "Oh yeah, of course she's living in France now."
Molly Wilkinson:
Well, I think for my friends it was very obvious. It was exactly what you were saying. They were like, oh yeah. They could tell how much I loved it. My mom was still hanging on though. She was like, "Oh, she's going to move back to Dallas. She's going to move back, open a bakery here." And I've never had any intention of opening a bakery ever. I'm like, I just like teaching and creating and showing people how to do amazing recipes. So it took a lot of time actually for my family to become comfortable with it because we are very close. We like to have everyone close to each other. But I will say, I think once my mom started following me on Instagram, she saw what my life was like here and she's like, "Oh, I get it."
Jessie Sheehan:
That's amazing. I'd love you to tell us about your dessert style. I mean, I imagine to some degree it was formed during French pastry school and after and has something to do with French patisserie. However, I also know that the “Fanny Farmer” cookbook is your all time favorite cookbook, so I love the mixture of that. Can you unpack the style which maybe has components of both?
Molly Wilkinson:
Oh yeah. It's a huge, massive style. Exactly what you're saying. So deep roots in American classic baking like I was talking about because that's what I grew up with. And as we said, I didn't do any pastry until I was actually in my mid to late 20s in pastry school. And combining the two, finding out that French pastry, it has all of these really beautiful basic recipes that have been around for hundreds of years that are the basis for lots of different desserts that they make, that was so incredible for me to be able to pair with some of the flavorings or the simplicity that you can see in American baking to make it very accessible for people. And so I have gone through this massive journey of figuring out what my style was, which is a bit of bright and fun American, but still bringing in that gorgeous elegance but also multilayer effect that you have with French pastry in terms of textures and flavors.
And I will say it's not a perfect pastry. When you see my stuff, I don't mind if something's a little bit out of place. And I think for people, that makes it a lot more accessible. Because when you go to Paris or you see these top pastry chefs on social media and it is the perfect mirror glaze, it's clean cut, the piping, there's no mistakes, that's just not me. I don't mind if it's a little bit funky on top with some fun ruff edged piping. And it's just more so showing my spirit and my joy in that pastry instead of being very, very strict.
Jessie Sheehan:
I want you to tell us about your book, “French Pastry Made Simple.” I mean, I know that it has these 10 foundational recipes and then once you master those, the world is your oyster. It sounds like maybe that idea came to you when you started to understand French pastry after school. I've never heard it described that way that, oh, once you have these foundational recipes, you can actually make a lot of things. Can you tell us about that and how you came up with the hook for the book as it were?
Molly Wilkinson:
Yeah. After I graduated and I was working in different kitchens, I started realizing, gosh, I'm making that same recipe again and we're just doing something different with it. So I call pâte à choux the multipurpose dough for that very reason that you can make a eclairs, cream puffs, gougeres, even churros, St. Honoré, Paris-Brest, so many different things. And what's changing is the shape and the filling. And so in this book I go through fillings. So like pastry cream, how to make fruit curds. You don't have to make just a lemon curd, you can make a raspberry thyme curd, but using that same base recipe. Because I was really seeing that essentially you're taking these same 10 master recipes and you're just changing them up and making new creations.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. I also love throughout the book all of your tips and tricks, which you say can make the recipes a little bit longer, but in the best hand holdy way. As a recipe writer and cookbook author, I like my recipes to be short, but I really like to hold people's hands because I know as a baker and a consumer of cookbooks and recipes myself, I love it when someone says, "Oh, do this. Oh, the reason it is brown is because of this." I love, love, love that. So I so appreciate all the detail that you include.
Molly Wilkinson:
I feel like I should have put a little asterisk at the beginning of the book that says, I write how I teach and when I teach, if I'm teaching an hour and a half class, I'm literally talking for an hour and a half and I'm giving you as much information that is going to be as helpful as humanly possibly for you. And so they are. They're kind of long. The opera cake recipe, I think it's three pages long, but I can teach that in hour and a half, two hours because the parts aren't hard. It's just it's a process. There's, I think, six different pieces to it.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's a great segue because I wanted you to tell us a little bit about the teaching you do in France. I know you're making French pastry easy by breaking down recipes and tips and tricks, but I wondered, are your students American? Do you teach in English? I know they're all online, either prerecorded or a in-person, private class, but who's the student?
Molly Wilkinson:
Yeah. My students are typically ... They're American. My crowd is mostly, I would say 80% American. I have some Australians. I have folks from Singapore, Austria, all over the world. It's really cool. And it's folks that have tried American baking at home, typically. Maybe they've been to a bakery either in their hometown or they've come to France and they've tried a macaron or an eclair and they're like, "How do I make that? How can I make that at home?" And so they're really starting to just dabble into French pastry and I'm right there with them and I'm like, you can do it. I describe it in ways that makes sense to someone who hasn't started doing French pastry before, because the techniques and the method, they're different. It's not that they're harder. It's just a lot different than creaming together butter and sugar, adding the eggs and then adding the dry ingredients, which is a very, very typical process for a cookie or a cake of that matter. And so it is just a step-by-step, breaking it down, making it easy.
Jessie Sheehan:
We'll be right back. Today's episode is also presented by California Prunes. I'm a California Prune fan when it comes to smart snacking. Funnily enough, at the same time we started this podcast, my doctor told me how good prunes are for your gut, your heart, and even your bones. Prunes contain dietary fiber and other nutrients to support good gut health, potassium to support heart health and vitamin K, copper and antioxidants to support healthy bones. So prunes became a daily snack of mine. I have them in my cabinet at home. I put them in smoothies. And I bring them with me when I'm on the go because they're perfectly portable. Now let's talk about my true love. Baking. California Prunes are a great addition to baked goods, especially this time of year. They work beautifully in recipes with rich and complex flavors like espresso, olives and chilies, and they enhance the flavor of warm spices, toffee, caramel and chocolate. Consider adding prunes to scones, gingerbread, coffee cake, or any baked good that calls for dried fruit. If you're looking to make some holiday showstoppers like a fruit cake you make ahead of time, keep prunes in mind when you're assembling the dried fruit you need. They add just the right texture and flavor. Be sure to check out the California Prunes website at californiaprunes.org for recipes and more. That's californiaprunes.org.
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Now, I would love to do a deep dive into your Bûche de Noël. First things first, can you tell us what a bûche is for those that might not know?
Molly Wilkinson:
Yeah. A lot of people know it as a yule log cake. It's a cake that's in the shape of a log, and it comes from pagan times. It's a pagan tradition in France where they would decorate a log with moss, brandy, wine, mushroom.
Jessie Sheehan:
A literal log in nature. Yes?
Molly Wilkinson:
Yes. Exactly, exactly. A log that they'd go out, they got it from the forest, they'd bring it in and they'd decorate it and make it as beautiful as they possibly could. And then it goes into the fireplace on the winter solstice, and the longer it burns, the tradition goes that the more good luck that you're going to have in the year to come. And so that continued for a very long time. There are a couple of other possible reasons and traditions behind it, as there always are with food history and stories. But we do know in the 19th century, pastry chefs noticed that that tradition was starting to go away and they took ahold of it and said, we're going to make a cake that looks like a log, just to keep that symbolism there. And so you do start to see them starting December 1st, not really before that, in all of the bakeries, all the pastry shops here. And even the hotels have a big competition to where they're trying to make the most beautiful one every year and sometimes it's not even in the shape of a log. You'll see a bell or a penguin. They're quite fun. So it's a fun thing to go around to the... and things like that and try the different Bûche de Noël every season.
Jessie Sheehan:
And even though the log shape of this cake is just traditional at Christmas, are there jelly roll cakes? Are there cakes like that in French bakeries all year long?
Molly Wilkinson:
You'll see it from time to time, but it really does come out around Christmastime for sure.
Jessie Sheehan:
I feel like people don't realize if you see a yule log or a Bûche de Noël, it looks so beautiful and so complicated. People have no idea how actually simple ... It's a simple rolled cake that's decorated maybe with some meringue mushrooms or you talk about little presents and trees. And I love for your recipe that the instructions are long, but that they contain so much information and text about the textures you're looking for and the tips. So I really appreciated that. And you say the whole process takes about two hours, which is really not that long.
Molly Wilkinson:
It really does. I made two today, actually. I'm in the process of making two today.
Jessie Sheehan:
I made my first one last Christmas, and I was just really so impressed with myself. I could not believe how easy it was and how amazing it looks.
Molly Wilkinson:
It's a really impressive dessert to serve on Christmas, and it is. It's so traditional and it's really fun, and you do the decorations right before you put it on the table as well.
Jessie Sheehan:
So first things first, we're going to make a Génoise cake. Can you tell everyone what the Génoise cake is?
Molly Wilkinson:
Yeah. A Génoise cake is a sponge cake, and just like the term it implies, it needs to soak in some sort of flavor. So you can add a jam on top, a simple syrup or a mousse, something like that to where that cake stays nice and moist. For Génoise cakes, typically you are whipping up the whole egg, which is very interesting and something that not a lot of people know that you can do. And you absolutely can. When you're whipping something, you're just whipping air into it to make it grow in volume.
Jessie Sheehan:
Are you saying people don't realize that because usually you're just whipping whites? When you say the full egg, you're saying isn't that interesting the yolk's included too?
Molly Wilkinson:
Correct. Exactly. Exactly.
Jessie Sheehan:
So first things first, we're going to spray a 10 by 15 inch jelly roll pan.
Molly Wilkinson:
I love using Oxo for theirs. I believe it's called the gold touch pans. I think the release is excellent. I just love them. I have their muffin tin, I have their jelly roll pan, I have their half sheet pan. I think they're great.
Jessie Sheehan:
And you're going to spray that with baking spray. Then we're going to line with parchment. And you talk about how the parchment should go up the sides of the pan. So the sides of a jelly roll pan are super short. Is the idea that we just want them to go up the sides so we can lift it out, or is it more so that we can lift? I wasn't sure if it was-
Molly Wilkinson:
Yes. So you can lift it out and it doesn't have to go that tall over the rim of the baking sheet. I would say an inch most. And what I found is that as long as it's going up the long sides of the pan, you're good. If it's not going up the short ends, that's okay because it's going to pull away from the sides.
Jessie Sheehan:
And do you need to clip it down? Sometimes paper flutters in my oven because I have a convection oven and I use tiny little clips to hold the paper down. Or do you not have a problem with that?
Molly Wilkinson:
You can, but if you cut it short enough, you don't really have to. I'm somewhat lazy with some of my baking things too, and that's something that I'm very lazy about. I'm like, oh, the paper's in the pan. But I think you are right. There is a trick to it. If it is two inches, three inches above the rim of the pan, then you're going to have so much excess paper waving around in the oven, and that's not great. So an inch above it at most, and you're good to go.
Jessie Sheehan:
And I also think that this is kind of a unique way of doing a sponge cake in my experience, because I usually just line the bottom, spray the sides, and then I do that thing where you invert it onto a dish towel, but you have whole interesting, cool way that I can't wait to share with people. But just so listeners know, this is a little unusual, at least in my experience, to have the sponge cake lifted out of the pan rather than inverted. So we're going to now spray the top of that parchment with additional baking spray, and then we're going to heat our oven to 350 degrees, and we're going to measure and set aside our flour.
Molly Wilkinson:
I found out I think about a year after living here that there is a flour mill in Versailles that's been around since 1905. The family's name, Chaudé, actually means miller in an ancient dialect of French. So they've been milling flour for generations, and you can go and see the mill. They have a little boutique there. And because we are in Versailles, the bag is kind of a goldish yellow color and it has the sun king on it and an outline of the Versailles chateau. And so it's just kind of fun. And then it says Saint Royale on the side, which means it's royal. It's not expensive. They're just having fun with being in the town of Versailles. But the cool thing is that they use grain that has been grown within, I believe it's 100 miles of Versailles. Completely family run. It's now the son that has taken over and he's introduced using organic flowers and mixes, and so it's a cool thing. I pop over there, I grab my flour, I come back.
Jessie Sheehan:
Is it comparable to a King Arthur or another brand of flour that we might find here?
Molly Wilkinson:
Flour is really interesting in France. It's entirely different from flour in the U.S. and this was a huge problem that I ran into when I was creating my recipes. And I was lucky because at the time I started teaching virtually as well. And so I was able to see how my clients bakes were coming together. Something that I realized was that I have to take that extra step and have my mom ship me American flour.
Jessie Sheehan:
That makes sense.
Molly Wilkinson:
Oh yeah. The flour here, it is by T count. So it's T45, T55, T65, and that refers to an ash count. So what they do is they take a certain amount of flour, I believe it's 50 grams, I can't remember exactly, and they burn it and then they weigh the ash, and depending on how much the ash weighs, that is what the number indicates. So if you think about it, the finer the flower is the less the ash is going to weigh, so the lower the number, and then if you get into a higher number, so it can go up to T200 and sometimes I believe even higher T280, I believe, they're using a different part of the wheat grain. They're using lots of different parts. It's a little bit coarser and so that ash weighs more. Typically, what is used here is what's T45, which is a fine pastry flour. That would be the equivalent in the U.S. I develop all of my recipes with these so they work with all-purpose flour in the U.S. just to make it easy,
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to measure and set our flour aside with a sieve or a sifter. Now we're going to melt some unsalted butter and set that aside to cool in a medium sized bowl at this point, or a small bowl for our butter. Because I know we're going to add a little batter to it in a little while.
Molly Wilkinson:
Yeah, the butter, it should be in just ... I melt mine in a soup bowl. Like that Size. Perfect. Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Now in the bowl of a stand mixer, and is it a KitchenAid stand mixer? What's your guess?
Molly Wilkinson:
I love KitchenAid.
Jessie Sheehan:
In the bowl of a KitchenAid stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, or in a large bowl using a hand mixer, we're going to place some room temp eggs and egg yolk. Why do we need the yolk? For moisture or fat?
Molly Wilkinson:
Yeah. When I was developing the cake recipe, I was finding that it needed a little something else, and so I reached out to Rose Levy Beranbaum. I love her “Baking Bible.” Her cookbook's incredible. And I chatted with her about it because I'd seen lots of notes in her book about how egg size has changed and how that has actually affect Génoise recipe over the ages. Because this recipe has been around for a very, very long time. And so by adding that extra egg yolk, you're getting extra richness, and you're getting the amount of egg yolk that you really need in that cake, but you can't get from just adding the amount of eggs that's called for in the recipe.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love this tip you give us. You want these eggs to be room temp so you say, if they're a teeny bit cool, place it in a small bowl of warm water to bring them to room temp, which is a little trick I use all the time. And a great trick, listeners, if you ever forget to bring your eggs to room temp and you need them at room temp quickly, warm water in a bowl does the trick in less than five minutes. Now we're going to whip this egg mixture on medium high speed. And I love this note. You say even though you may be inclined to put your mixer up to high, keep it at medium high, otherwise you're going to get these big bubbles forming, which you don't want. That's a great example of one of your great tips, Molly.
Molly Wilkinson:
Oh, thank you. Yeah. That was a really big one, and it's been something that when I've been talking to my American clients, we're so inclined to rush through a recipe. The faster we can do it, the faster we can get it in the oven, the better. And really, you have to take the time. I like to tell people, if you're making a French meringue, it can take upwards of eight to 10 minutes, and that's the case with the Génoise cake as well. When you're whipping these up, by whipping them on a medium high speed, you're creating a bubble structure that is formed with lots of little bubbles, which is going to be a lot stronger than large bubbles that are just going to float to the surface and pop.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. So we're doing this until the mixture triples in volume, very pale, yellow in color, practically white and almost mousse like and thick in texture. And like you said, this can take eight to 10 minutes. I love you say set your timer for eight and then look. Now we lift the beater to check our texture, and this is that ribbon technique. Our batter needs to fall in this slow, thick ribbon, which takes a couple of seconds to disappear.
Molly Wilkinson:
And stay on the top. So stay on top of the structure itself too, like the batter. Because you don't want it to just dissolve quickly. So sometimes when I'm showing this, I'll be like, it's getting that slow ribbon like effect, but it's not just staying suspended on the top of those whipped eggs as long as I want. You should really see a little bit of a ribbon hanging out there.
Jessie Sheehan:
This creates that sturdy structure and creates the lift in the sponge. Now we're going to sift our flour over our whipped eggs in two additions and gently folding. Are we using a spatula?
Molly Wilkinson:
Oh, I have such a collection of spatulas, and my favorites are the fun ones from Sur La Table. I think they're just so cute. I love folding with a whisk, but in this case, I really like a spatula. There's something to it to where I have a little bit more control. Another tip with folding in a flour substance into a wet substance is to try to keep that flour in the center of the bowl because if it collects on the sides, it's going to clump up and it's not going to as easily go into the mixture. And so by using a spatula, that can really help out with it.
Jessie Sheehan:
I had never thought about trying to keep the flour in the center, but I think you and I do kind of have a similar folding technique. I go from the top of the bowl down the center and then around the side, and then I turn the bowl in the opposite direction to which I'm moving my spatula. Is that what you do as well?
Molly Wilkinson:
Exactly. And if you think about it, essentially what you're doing is you're bringing what's at the top down to the bottom, then what's at the bottom up to the top. And so if you think about that, you're almost scooping what's on the bottom and bringing it up and then turning at the same time.
Jessie Sheehan:
Once the flour's almost incorporated, you're going to ... And I thought this is another great Molly tip. We're going to use our spatula as a scoop, scoop up some of the batter, add it to our cooled melted butter, because you say that that makes it much easier to blend into the batter rather than the thin, dare I say, greasy butter situation. It's nice to have it mixed with the batter. And we're going to mix that up with a whisk?
Molly Wilkinson:
Just to go back to that tip as well, just to explain it even further. When you're mixing together two things, they're easier to mix together when they're at a similar state. So if you think about it, you have this cloudy, fluffy batter, and then you're going to try to add exactly what you're saying, a melty, buttery mixture to it. It's not going to combine very easily. So you can do this with all sorts of different things. I do it with pastry cream and cakes, different kinds of cakes. But in terms of a whisk brand, I'm going to be a little, I don't know if you'd say bougie, but I don't know. The ones that I love ... And you become very particular about things when you're a baker. I know you totally understand this. Is it's Matfer. It's a very French great brand.
There's a couple of fantastic French brands here. It has a black handle and a little bit of a yellow at the bottom of that handle, and I found them at E. Dehillerin. So it's the cooking supply shop that's been around since probably the 1830s, if I remember correctly. Ina Garten goes there. Julia Child goes there. I love it. And I got to say, because it has a plastic handle, it just washes really well. The metal portion is not falling out of the handle. That just drives me nuts. I had a whisk like that and I ... Yeah. Having a good whisk in your kitchen is just ... It's a good thing.
Jessie Sheehan:
I totally agree. We do become very particular about our equipment. So then we're going to pour this butter mixture into the batter, fold it in carefully. I noticed that there's no salt in this recipe.
Molly Wilkinson:
Ooh, yes. Okay. A lot of my clients have pointed that out too. Salt and vanilla in French recipes in particular. Vanilla is a very easy one to explain. Vanilla, I don't know. I love it. As an American, I love it. We add it to everything. It's pretty much a complimentary flavor that it just goes with everything, compliments everything. Versus the French methodology behind vanilla is very much so when I'm doing vanilla, I'm doing vanilla and I'm doing it with a vanilla bean. You can find the teeniest tiniest jars of vanilla extract in the grocery store, but that's it. They're not going to add it to different things. When it comes to salt, that is something interesting that I have seen too, is that as Americans, we do like to flavor everything with a little pinch of salt to bring out the flavor. And I honestly, if I'm baking, even if I don't see it in a recipe, I'll usually add a little pinch here and there. It's not going to ruin the recipe or anything like that. For French pastry recipes, you don't always see it in there.
Jessie Sheehan:
So interesting.
Molly Wilkinson:
Yeah. I think it does go back to that same thing of they're just letting those flavors shine. It's kind of a weird contrasting thing because you're like, well, wouldn't salt make them shine further? So I don't know. I would just say it's a weird French thing.
Jessie Sheehan:
No, I've certainly had experiences where I've made a cake, a chocolate cake, and forgotten the salt and it tastes flat. So it's interesting.
Molly Wilkinson:
Yeah, it's not as good.
Jessie Sheehan:
But I trust the French. I trust the French. So now this is really cool. We're going to pour our batter into our prepared pan, but we're going to do so by pouring a line of batter down the center of the pan, and then with an offset, spreading the batter into the corners and then filling in the rest of the pan. Talk to me about that.
Molly Wilkinson:
It's just all about making it easier for yourself. So instead of just doing a big pool of the batter in the center of the pan, why not ... I mean, we know we're going to spread it into the corner, so let's just do a big line down the middle. And then what I like to do is I focus on the corners first. So I drag what is in the middle, which is typically where we put the most batter anyways when we're pouring it and I drag that into the four corners, and then I focus on filling the rest of the pan.
Jessie Sheehan:
Then we're immediately going to place the pan into the oven to keep the batter from deflating and bake for about nine to 11 minutes. Cake is done when it's slightly browned across the whole surface and pulling from the sides. This is another great tip. Once we remove the pan, we're going to cover the cake with a damp clean tea towel. I never knew the damp trick. I have covered before, but usually only because I'm covering the cake so that I can invert it immediately. So I love the damp trick. Am I taking a tea towel, putting it under the faucet, wring it out, and then draping it over? Incredible, incredible.
Molly Wilkinson:
Yeah. It should sizzle a little bit as you put it in there. I mean, it shouldn't be sopping wet. We don't want to get that moisture into the cake. And your tea towel's going to get a little bit dirty. I feel like I always have to say this when I'm teaching it. It'll get a little bit dirty. Just throw it in the washing machine. It's not a big deal.
Jessie Sheehan:
And you say that it's okay if the cloth touches the cake a little bit, and basically we're doing this to keep moisture in the cake and to help prevent cracking, which when you roll a Génoise, that's a big issue.
Molly Wilkinson:
It's a big thing. So the added butter in the recipe will help with that, with cracking. Getting the bake correct will help as well. And then you're just taking all these additional steps, right? Okay, I have the butter, I got the bake right, and now I'm putting this damp towel on top, keeping that moisture in so it doesn't dry out as it's cooling.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love it. Now we're going to let that cake cool while we make a ganache. We're going to heat cream to a simmer, pour over chopped chocolate. And we're going to wait one to two minutes, which when I make ganache, I usually wait 30 seconds, maybe 45 seconds. Remind us why after we pour our hot cream over our chopped chocolate, why do we need to wait before we start to stir?
Molly Wilkinson:
As soon as you start stirring, you're cooling down your mixture, so you're incorporating air just as we do when we're whisking things. And so if it hasn't started to melt, then it's going to cool down too quickly, and you're going to have chunks of chocolate in that mixture, and then you're going to have to go, oh, shoot, I have to reheat it again and then whisk it again and da, da da. So just waiting ... Okay. I will say I typically probably wait about 30 seconds too. If you have the patience, a minute is great. I never have the patience for two minutes though.
Jessie Sheehan:
So now we're going to keep our ganache at room temp to cool it and have it firm up so it's spreadable so we can spread it on our bûche, and if needed, you can chill in the fridge because it will speed things up, but you warn people, and I have to say, been there, done that. If you leave it too long, it hardens and it's a nightmare and you have to heat it in the microwave or on a double boiler and it-
Molly Wilkinson:
It really is worth just ... Especially, we're making this typically at a time of year when it's cold in our kitchens, and it's okay to leave it out. And I will say another thing with ganache is that the texture, the consistency highly depends on the chocolate that you're using. This isn't something where the recipe calls for semi-sweet and you're going to change it out for milk or white chocolate. You really have to follow that and know too that even if you are doing what is called for in the recipe, I believe I said bittersweet. I probably said bittersweet because that's typically what I bake with. I just like the flavor of bittersweet. It balances out with other flavors very well. And so even if you're using what is called for, if you change the brand, you'll even get a different result. It's crazy. And so ganache is ... I like to tell my students when I'm teaching them live that you can adjust a ganache recipe. So if you're looking at it and you're like, "Oh my gosh, it's so liquid. How is this going to firm up?" Then you can always add a little bit more melted chocolate. Or if you're like, "Ah, it seems really thick," you can add a little bit more cream or milk, and that's no problem.
Jessie Sheehan:
Next we're going to make our milk chocolate French buttercream. We're going to beat egg yolks for several minutes on medium speed. Is that around five minutes or do you not like to give a time because it really has to be visual?
Molly Wilkinson:
For this part, it doesn't really matter that much. Essentially what you're doing is just breaking up those egg yolks to where you can incorporate the sugar syrup that's to come. Because it is a smaller amount, I believe it's three egg yolks, if I'm remember correctly, we're not trying to incorporate air. It's not going to happen very easily with that quantity. And so it really is just breaking them up and getting them ready for this hot sugar syrup.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to beat our eggs just until they're slightly lighter in color on medium speed. Now we're going to heat granulated sugar and water on the stove top to 244 degrees Fahrenheit, and we're using a thermometer obviously. Do you have a preferred thermometer?
Molly Wilkinson:
I do, and I got it in my pastry kit when I was at the Cordon Bleu, and it has never failed me. It's a Mastrad, M-A-S-T-R-A-D. It was a little bit more on the expensive side because I looked up the brand for my clients and I adore it. I've been using it for 10 years, no fail. It's fantastic.
Jessie Sheehan:
As soon as you hit your temp, you're going to take it off the heat. You'll let the bubbles calm down for a couple of seconds while giving the yolks one last final whisk, and then we're going to slowly pour our hot sugar syrup into the yolks. Again, you have a great tip. We're going to avoid hitting the whisk with the syrup or hitting the syrup with the whisk, and we're going to aim for the gap in between the side of the bowl and the whisk. Tell us why is that important?
Molly Wilkinson:
Yeah. If you hit the whisk, it's just going to spin that sugar around the sides of the bowl and it's not going to get in the egg yolks. If trying to hit that gap though is really hard because it is small, it's small, just drizzle it down the side of the bowl and you're still going to have so much less waste than if you were hitting the whisk anyways, that you're all good to go. And the other thing is you can't scrape your pan because it's hot sugar that's going to cool really fast. And the other tip that I have is that when you get to the end of that sugar syrup in your pot, as you're pouring it in, if you lift it up and over the KitchenAid head or whatever stand mixer that you're using, it helps you to get that last little bit.
Jessie Sheehan:
In other words, go a little taller than you might, rather than being kind of low with your pour. Get higher with your pour.
Molly Wilkinson:
Correct.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love it.
Molly Wilkinson:
At the end. Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
So you say that the egg yolks will initially look watery with this addition of the syrup, and then they'll lighten in color and thicken as the two are beaten together. But if this was an Italian meringue, it would be the same thing except no yolks,
Molly Wilkinson:
Correct? Yeah. So essentially what you're doing is you're cooking that egg, so either if it was a yolk or a white, when you're adding that really hot sugar syrup to where it's really safe for people to eat. By doing it with yolks instead of whites, again, we're getting that richness.
Jessie Sheehan:
What's the difference between Italian and Swiss?
Molly Wilkinson:
Oh my gosh. I love talking meringues. They're all named after countries. So you have French, Italian and Swiss French is the easiest. It's you whip up your egg whites and you add granulated sugar to it. Super easy. Swiss is you add the egg whites and the sugar to a bowl over a bain-marie that is simmering. You whisk it to melt the sugar and then you whip it up. I personally hate a Swiss meringue, which is a strong word, but it is very true. I didn't even include a Swiss meringue in my cookbook. For me, I'm like, if you need to know two meringues, it's French and it's Italian. Italian is the most stable. So as we were saying, it's whipping up your egg whites to a stiff peek and then adding the syrup and then whipping it, which is cooling your syrup and cooking them at the same time. So it's the most stable meringue that you have.
Jessie Sheehan:
Meanwhile, we're going to melt our milk chocolate and set that aside to cool as the buttercream finishes whipping up and then we're slowly going to add very soft unsalted butter. Is there a trick for very soft unsalted butter or it's just we want it to be the kind of thing where we press with our finger and the indentation is easily made?
Molly Wilkinson:
You don't want it melty, but you don't want it firm. It needs to be soft, pliable, but not to that melting stage because if it is too cold, it will not incorporate well into our buttercream mixture.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're going to slowly add that soft butter to the whipped egg yolks one cube at a time, whisking on medium speed. Then we'll whip in our melted chocolate. You say if it's very soft at this point, we can stick it in the fridge for five to 10 minutes to firm it up slightly. And you can also make this recipe with an American buttercream if you would like.
Molly Wilkinson:
Absolutely. If you want ease, go for it. Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
And that would just be confectioner sugar and butter and-
Molly Wilkinson:
And the milk chocolate.
Jessie Sheehan:
And melted milk chocolate. So now we're going to assemble our bûche. We're going to remove that damp towel from the cooled cake. And it can be there for a while, I assume. There's no limit on while you go ahead and do all your frosting and your ganache it just sits there with this damp towel.
Molly Wilkinson:
Yes. This is something really good to know about pastry too, is that yes, there are a lot of steps to it typically, but a lot of the times you can take a pause. I could run to the grocery store and then finish it later in the day and I wouldn't be too worried about it.
Jessie Sheehan:
And we're going to transfer the cake to a clean workspace. So are we removing it from the pan at this point?
Molly Wilkinson:
Yes. So you're just lifting it up. Exactly what we were talking about at the beginning. You're lifting it up out of the pan using that parchment paper, and it is important to keep that parchment paper there.
Jessie Sheehan:
Right. We're going to leave the parchment paper on the bottom. We're going to make sure we have our serving platter nearby. We're going to spread the milk chocolate buttercream on top of the cake, and then we're going to roll the cake up from one of its short ends using the parchment paper to help us. So as you say, it's a little awkward, but be patient. We're rolling a teeny bit at a time and then kind of peeling back the paper so we're not rolling the paper up with it.
Molly Wilkinson:
Correct. Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
I do want to point out that many bûche recipes or for jelly roll cake recipes will have you literally roll up a dish towel or roll up parchment with the cake. And this is amazing. Molly's way of doing the damp cloth is amazing because you don't need to do that.
Molly Wilkinson:
Correct. Yeah. And I did a whole lot of research on that, trying different styles, and I can't remember where I saw that initially, but it just works like a charm. You're lifting up the parchment paper almost at like a 45 degree angle to where that gravity is helping that cake roll down. So I usually have one hand that's holding the parchment paper up, and then the other hand that is doing the rolling motion down with the cake.
Jessie Sheehan:
Perfect, perfect. And so once you have that roll going, like you said, you're using the parchment paper to help move the cake, and this allows for more even pressure when rolling and when you're just about at the end of the roll, you'll transfer the cake and the trailing parchment, as it were, to a serving platter and pull the parchment off.
Molly Wilkinson:
You pull the parchment off, and then usually that's the end and you just tuck the end under.
Jessie Sheehan:
You make sure that seam is underneath.
Molly Wilkinson:
Exactly. Neat, clean. Love it.
Jessie Sheehan:
So now we're going to decorate. We'll chill the cake for 15 to 30 minutes to firm up the buttercream that's in the center. Then we'll trim the edges of the cake if needed, just for aesthetics. Yes?
Molly Wilkinson:
If you want. There's two ways of doing it. You can trim the ends if you want. So the one that I did for the cookbook, I actually, because I'm rolling the shorter way, which using a jelly roll pan and for this cake, it gets you a better swirl on the inside and height. I didn't trim the ends off because I didn't want to lose that cake. So instead I encased them in that chocolate ganache.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. So we're going to trim those ends if we want with a serrated knife. Then we're going to spread our ganache on the outside with an offset spatula. Would you like a small one at this point, or do you like a large one?
Molly Wilkinson:
I typically always work with a small one. I think this is four inches. I think it's just so much more control over what you're doing.
Jessie Sheehan:
Me too. No matter the job, I always want the small one. So we spread our ganache all over with our offset. And then you say to make long indentations, which I assume are lines with the edge of the spatula. Because I always use a ... Always. I've only made one once, but let's pretend always. I've always used a fork.
Molly Wilkinson:
Yeah. I have seen that done before, but I like how it looks with an offset spatula. I think the lines are a little bit more elegant. They're larger. They don't have that uniformity that you have with a fork, if that makes sense. And so it's just a little bit more rustic. I mean, it's a log, so for me it looks more log like.
Jessie Sheehan:
And when we're doing that, those indentations are so that it looks like bark. So now we're going to cover the ends as well with the ganache, and we're going to make a swirl pattern with the end of a kebob stick. Is that like a long wooden skewer?
Molly Wilkinson:
Yeah. Anything that you have. I actually, I have paintbrushes that I use just for food, and I typically use that. So any sort of stick or surface. You just want to make a swirl, so it's imitating that end of the log. It does help if you wait for just a little bit for the ganache to cool so you have a more defined line too.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love it. Then you're going to dust with powdered sugar, so it looks like snow and maybe decorate with some meringue mushrooms or acorns or cranberries or whatever you have. Do you then stick it back in the fridge to set everything before serving?
Molly Wilkinson:
Yes, absolutely. For this cake, you want it to set in the fridge for at least 30 minutes before you serve it. Just because that buttercream, especially the French buttercream, is going to be a little bit softer on the inside. It's going to help you get those nice clean cuts and set that ganache as we were talking about. I will say though, that you do want to ... This is a typical thing with French pastries and French food in general, is that you want it to sit out at room temperature so it's at the best flavor that it can possibly be. You can taste everything a lot better when it's room temp versus cold.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes. I just will come out here. I need to get a T-shirt that says this, but I really hate cold cake. It really, really upsets me.
Molly Wilkinson:
That's good.
Jessie Sheehan:
I just want to talk about a couple of recipes from the book. I read that Croquembouche is your favorite thing to make. Tell us about why that is, and maybe tell us what Croquembouche is, in case people don't know.
Molly Wilkinson:
I love it. It is the traditional wedding cake here in France. It is a pile of cream puffs that have been dipped in caramel, but then also attached to themselves with caramel in a dome like shape. It is just magnificent. Beautiful. And it's not difficult, difficult, but you are playing a little bit of Tetris with caramel, and so if you're not careful, I mean it can be pretty difficult. But I like it too because it's very ethereal, so it only lasts for one day. And so when you're making this, you have to make your choux pastry in advance. I typically will freeze them and then pop them in the oven and re-crisp them before I use them so they're just like they've been freshly baked. You make your pastry cream in advance. You fill them on the day that you're going to make it. And then you're making this cone like shape and you can make it any size that you want from miniatures to huge Croquembouche structures. And the word itself means crack in the mouth. So croq like you're biting something crunchy. The caramel obviously in the mouth, so bouche is your mouth. Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
All right. If that's a traditional French wedding cake, I'm renewing my vows in Paris because I really want somebody to give me that on my wedding and I missed out.
Molly Wilkinson:
Yeah. We're going to have one. We're getting married in May, and we will absolutely be having a Croquembouche. That was the one thing that I was like, yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. I had coconut cupcakes, which are also good. I also love the Bombe Gâteau because it looks so striking and reminds me ... It gives me baked Alaska vibes. I mean, I know without meringue. Tell us what a bombe gâteau is.
Molly Wilkinson:
So a bombe means bomb, so it's in the shape of a bomb and there's a lot of different ways of doing it. It is very reminiscent of a baked Alaska for sure. For mine, what I did was one of those ... Like a candy shell type chocolate coating where you pour it over the top really quickly and it hardens, and then you can have it set up in the fridge or the freezer. It's just exactly what you're saying. Very, very striking. And the name goes back to the shape. Absolutely.
Jessie Sheehan:
Thank you so much for chatting with me today, Molly. And I just want to say that you are my cherry pie.
Molly Wilkinson:
Oh, it has been so much fun. Thank you.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's it for today's show. Thank you to Plugrà Premium European Style Butter and California Prunes for their support. Don't forget to subscribe to She's My Cherry Pie on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen and tell your baking buddies about us. She's My Cherry Pie is a production of The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network and is recorded at CityVox Studio in Manhattan. Our producers are Kerry Diamond and Catherine Baker. Our associate producer is Jenna Sadhu, and our editorial assistant is Londyn Crenshaw. Thank you so much for listening to She's My Cherry Pie and happy baking.