Sarah Fennel Transcript
Jessie Sheehan:
Hi peeps, you're listening to She's my Cherry Pie, the baking podcast from The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network. I'm your host, Jessie Sheehan. I'm a baker, recipe developer and the author of four baking books. Each Saturday I'm hanging out with the sweetest bakers around and taking a deep dive into their signature bakes.
Today's guest is Sarah Fennel, the founder of the Broma Bakery blog. Sarah just released her debut cookbook, “Sweet Tooth: 100 Desserts to Save Room For,” and I am so excited to have her on the show. A self-taught baker and photographer, Sarah started her blog back in 2010 when she was a homesick college student, missing her mom's desserts. For the past decade she's chronicled her bakes across her website and social media, building and captivating her audience along the way. She's known for showcasing a wide range of desserts, from elevated bakes to comforting classics to nostalgic flavors with a modern twist. She joins me to chat about her baking journey and how her cookbook came about. We also walk through the recipe for her caramel pumpkin layer cake, which is filled with cream cheese, buttercream and drizzled with salty caramel. Stay tuned for our chat. If you'd like to follow along, you can find today's recipe at cherrybombe.com.
Today's episode is presented by King Arthur Baking Company. Whether you're a serious baker or just a newbie, King Arthur is here to help you be the best baker you can be. Their flours are some of the most coveted in the industry as you've heard from many of my guests. With the holiday season fast approaching, might I suggest tapping into King Arthur's host of resources to help you level up your baking game with ingredients and tools for every baking occasion, over 2,000 recipes and virtual and on-demand classes, King Arthur will guide you every step of the way. Did you know they also have a baker's hotline where you can speak to a professional baker seven days a week? Peeps, how cool is that? No matter your question or concern, King Arthur is here to help this holiday season and beyond. Head to kingarthurbaking.com to learn more and call 1-855-371-Bake, that's 1-855-371-Bake to try the hotline for yourself.
This episode is presented by Kerrygold. Let's talk for a minute about butter, which is truly one of life's simple pleasures. Beautiful butters like those from Kerrygold are as good as gold to me and all the butter lovers in my life. Kerrygold butter is the most special of them all. It's made with milk from Irish grass-fed cows and has a rich flavor and creamy texture thanks to its naturally higher butterfat percentage. This also gives Kerrygold butter that beautiful, natural, golden and yellow color we all know and love. Think about how many simple, delicious moments involve butter, making grilled cheese for a loved one. I can hear the butter sizzling in the pan right now, can't you? Slathering butter on an amazing scone or banana bread that you spent your Saturday morning baking, even just passing butter around a lively table when you get together with friends and family for a meal. There's a whole world of Kerrygold butters for you to discover and enjoy. Learn more at kerrygoldusa.com.
Let's chat with today's guest. Sarah, so excited to have you on She's My Cherry Pie and to talk caramel pumpkin layer cake with you and so much more.
Sarah Fennel:
Hi. Oh my God, I'm so excited.
Jessie Sheehan:
So, you had the uniquely good fortune to grow up in a home with a mom who quite literally baked chocolate layer cakes on a regular old Tuesday night, post-work, for you and your sister. So, please tell us everything about this incredible woman, including please tell me about her infamous coffee cake.
Sarah Fennel:
Oh my God, yes. So, my mom was a single mom, worked full-time, but had this massive sweet tooth. There's such a strong parallel between how she bakes and how now I bake. She had very little time to both go out to the grocery store and get things and to make things look amazing, but she also had this insatiable desire to have a cookie around at all times. So, her baking was all about being really easy. Things you could fit into your life, things you could do at the end of the day, and sometimes that meant having a chocolate cake at the end of the day, which is ridiculous and amazing, but there would be so many times when there'd be a cake in our fridge and we'd just slice it throughout the week and have that little moment.
She really, I think, taught me that dessert is something that can fit into your life and not the other way around. I think dessert can take so many forms and pastry itself is this whole other art form that I don't pretend to know, but this idea of still being able to create something really special and really unique, but doing it in an hour or two hours I think is something I absolutely learned from her.
Jessie Sheehan:
Tell me about her coffee cake?
Sarah Fennel:
So, her coffee cake is a coffee cake that is a sour cream base. It has chocolate chips in the batter and then it has the cinnamon streusel, like a brown sugar cinnamon streusel in the middle. It is so good. The funny thing about it is this was how so many of her bakes were. Now when I eat it, I'm like, there's a little too much baking soda. This could go up on the flour or whatever it is, but that's what makes her bakes so uniquely her. They weren't perfect and they weren't the exact right technique or the exact right ratios, they just tasted so good and homemade and they had that love baked in. I know that sounds so silly, but that's how they taste, and this coffee cake is just incredible. You can eat it warm in the microwave, you can eat it cold, you can eat it for breakfast. We would eat it for breakfast all the time.
Jessie Sheehan:
I know that she gave you this amazing 24 point font binder of recipes when you left for college, and of course we all want to hear about that, but I just have to ask before we get into the binder, which I just love this idea, but did you bake with her when you were little? Were you into baking before you left for college?
Sarah Fennel:
Absolutely. Truly, some of my first memories are food memories, and it's like her making a lemon poppy seed cake and me licking the batter and being like, that is so good, and later finding out it was a cake mix that she added lemon extract to. Because, it was like those ways to make things easy, but very much always in the kitchen, baking with her, eating things mostly off of the spoon, so I did it. But, this binder, oh my God, it just brings me so much joy to think about. I still have it in my little sentimental box, but going off to college, she knew that I would still want these desserts, and it wasn't a binder full of cooking recipes. It was truly a binder of baking recipes. They were things like the coffee cake, like her chocolate chip cookies, like a carrot cake she made, coconut cake, just all of these things that basically were the desserts we had growing up.
Jessie Sheehan:
When you started to make these recipes at school, can you tell us a favorite one? Can you tell us something you failed at, something you loved?
Sarah Fennel:
I think fall recipes in general were my favorites and I would make pumpkin bread on repeat. Pumpkin bread was my thing. I think one thing, and maybe I need to talk about this with my therapist, but one thing I really like about dessert is that you make it and you can have it throughout the week. I feel like when you make savory food, leftovers don't hit the same, but pumpkin bread, you make that, and on Tuesday it's amazing, on Thursday it's amazing, on Saturday it's still amazing. Fails, I would say too many to count. So, because my mom wasn't a recipe developer, the idea of developing my own recipes really took me a lot of time and it came through a lot of trial and error. I would make croissants that the dough was half laminated and the butter melted out everywhere. I knew nothing about technique. I would make things where I literally swapped baking powder and baking soda, and I'd be like, well, why? It was like a self-exploration and the self-education.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love it. You famously started your blog, Broma Bakery in 2010 because you missed your mom's recipes, although you had a lot of them in the folder, so you were missing them and you wanted to replicate them and make them happen. I love that. But, the blog was not only to satiate your sweet tooth and to remind yourself of your mom and home, it was also to practice your side passion, which was photography. I wondered, first of all, had you always loved taking pictures since you were little, and what were you photographing before you got into food or were the two always connected?
Sarah Fennel:
Photography was my first passion and my first love. Maybe when I was five, I got one of those tiny toy cameras. I've literally tried to Google this and I can't find it, but it's like a plastic camera that you put regular film into, but it's for children. My dad was a news reporter. He would produce a lot of his own stories. Sometimes he'd be working on the back end doing filming stuff, editing stuff, and so he always had a camcorder filming my sister and I at all times. He would basically produce our home movies. So, our home movies, they are fully produced things where-
Jessie Sheehan:
Please have me over for movie nights. I want to see baby Sarah at work.
Sarah Fennel:
Oh my God, I love it. So, we would go on our little vacations up to Maine or whatever, or Nova Scotia and my dad would be like, girls, wait, now step in. Walk a little bit faster. Could you come in from this angle? So, I think for me, photography and videography and all of that was so a part of my DNA from a young age, and then in high school I got into photography. I had a teacher who I absolutely loved and I did photography all throughout high school, analog, 35 millimeter film, absolutely loved it, and I really wanted to go to college for photography. I made a portfolio. I was doing mostly portraits. That was the thing I really liked, but then I thought to myself, I was like, it's 2009, who is a photographer? People like Annie Leibovitz, and I'm like, I'm not going to be her.
So, I scrapped it and I went to school for anthropology, which I feel like still scratched this itch of connecting with people and culture and things like that. But, photography took this back burner for like a year. And then, I went to NYU. I saw all my friends doing all of these fun things at Tisch, taking photos out in the city and of their friends and doing all this stuff, and I was like, oh my God, I miss photography. It really came together where I was already baking. I wanted to be able to photograph something that was easy and I didn't have to produce a whole shoot for, and so I just started photographing the food in my apartment. It very much is my mom and my dad together. It's so interesting.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, I love that. Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. Today's episode is presented by California Prunes, the best kind of prunes out there. I am a big fan of California Prunes for two reasons. They're a great addition to your pantry when it comes to smart snacking and baking. You probably already know that prunes are good for your gut. You might even know that prunes are also good for your bone health, but what you really need to know is that prunes are absolutely delicious in both sweet and savory dishes. But, don't just take it from me. Here's what some of the country's top culinary experts have to say. Chef Bronwen Wyatt of Bayou Saint Cake says prunes have an earthy, whiny richness that pairs beautifully with the tart fresh flavor of berries. Chef Kat Turner from Highly Likely in L.A. says, they are an incredibly versatile ingredient that strike a great balance between sweet and savory. They're incredibly sensual. Ana Castro from Acamaya in New Orleans says prunes have a sultriness to them. They're very rich and like velvet. I like to use prune puree in my baked goods to give them great flavor and also to replace some of the sugar, eggs or fat in the recipe. It's super easy to whip up, just blend prunes and water together and voila. For recipe ideas and more, be sure to check out the California Prunes website at californiaprunes.org. Happy baking and happy snacking.
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Big news from Cherry Bombe. The fall issue of their print magazine is all about the creative class, highlighting innovative and imaginative folks in and around the food world, including fashion designers, artists, photographers, and of course lots of pastry chefs. There's even a recipe from my new cookbook inside. You can subscribe to Cherry Bombe and get four issues delivered straight to your door, plus free shipping. Head to cherrybombe.com for more.
Now, back to our guest. I want to talk about social media with you just because-
Sarah Fennel:
It's my favorite topic.
Jessie Sheehan:
Good, oh, I love that. I feel like you've always had super robust social accounts, but obviously you have 100% exploded. So, I wanted you to tell us about that explosion. I also wondered how much of it was pandemic driven, and please, can you tell listeners who don't know about your mustache wearing days during the pandemic, which are so frigging hilarious, even saying it out loud, I'm laughing inside.
Sarah Fennel:
So, in the pandemic, I like a lot of people had no idea how to transition to video content, but long story short, I dressed up as Guy Fieri for a few videos and they went very viral. And I think that in general, something I've really liked about being in the blogging space is how it's evolving and how in order to stay relevant in this space, you really have to evolve and adapt and add in new skills to whatever you're doing. And I think for me, social media hits this really vibrant, excited part of my brain where it's this mixture between data and analytics and marketing.
And so, you're able to, with every single thing you post, post it and figure out why was the reaction this way? How did people respond to this? What are people saying about this? And then, be able to tweak and do a new data point, and you're doing that every single day for years and years and years. I think for me, I've just developed this sixth sense of how to analyze, and then from there how to pivot and move, and that's just been so important in my growth. I love social media for that way. I would be lying if I said I didn't like the performance of it, but for me, the reason social media is so exciting is just because it's this constant fluctuation of data that you get to change and tweak and see success from immediately.
Jessie Sheehan:
I was hoping that you could describe your dessert style. I know you've talked about elevated bakes and comforting classics, nostalgic flavors with modern twists. Tell us all about it?
Sarah Fennel:
I would say that my dessert style is very much a daily or a weekly do it off the cuff dessert. I want a dessert that I really can go into the pantry and be like, oh, I totally have everything to do this. I don't tend to myself make desserts that are ones that I have to go to the farmer's market for, I have to go to a specialty store for. I want a dessert that I can have right now, I can fit into my life and that feels relatively easy.
Jessie Sheehan:
I know that sometimes you'll use a boxed cake mix. There's a little bit of store-bought pie crust in your pie cookies. I love the freedom of just using everything and not being ashamed of it. Not that anyone should be ashamed of using anything that comes from the store, but talk to me about that. You're very homemade, but you're not afraid to grab something from the store that is less homemade.
Sarah Fennel:
Absolutely. I think that we have to go back to my mom for this. She had this thought with dessert that you could still make an amazing lemon poppy seed cake. It really didn't matter if it was from a box or not, because you'd still jazz it up in some way and make it your own, adding that lemon extract, she would add triple the amount of vanilla, things like that, adding a little bit of Greek yogurt or something like that just to make it extra moist. And I think that there's so many different reasons why people create dessert.
For some people it's because it's a fun challenge. For some people it's because it's a way to flex some technique muscle where they feel like they've created something extra special. And I think for me and for a lot of my audience, it's so much more about the enjoyment at the end. And so, it doesn't really matter how you got there. I never want something to taste like it came from a box, but if it did come from a box, I think there is nothing wrong with that because we're looking at home bakers who don't have time to do all of these things, and in the end, all they want is to be able to put something down on the table and for their friends and family to be like, yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love the way a chocolate boxed or a vanilla boxed cake tastes.
Sarah Fennel:
Tastes so good.
Jessie Sheehan:
So, I'm just always trying to make all my cakes taste like boxed cake. I want that. I want them to be that moist. I love that flavor, the texture, all of that.
Sarah Fennel:
That's how I feel about brownies. I'm always trying to get my brownies to taste like a boxed brownie mix. I don't want any of the yuck from it, but I want that chew. I want that thin, thin, thin, crackly top.
Jessie Sheehan:
I totally hear what you're saying about easy recipes being able to make them from your pantry, but I do get some perfectionist vibes from your book. I have one of these in my last cookbook too, but the giant chocolate peanut buttercup, which is so delicious, love that so much, but you actually shape the peanut butter part and roll it out so it looks perfect. So, I had two questions. Is it kind of like once a perfectionist always a perfectionist or is it something you move into or lean into? And also, it's so interesting because I do get perfectionist vibes, but all of your reels are super fun and casual and low-key and just muddy buddies and brownies and I love it all. That's so special about you that there's both.
Sarah Fennel:
Thank you.
Jessie Sheehan:
I feel like some of us are just muddy buddy. That would be me. And then, some of us are perfectionists, but you're both.
Sarah Fennel:
I would say once a perfectionist, always a perfectionist for sure. But, also I really like instant gratification, so I think that those two parts of me mold into what you're talking about. So, with instant gratification, sometimes you're going too fast, sometimes you mess things up a little bit, because you're just so excited to get it done, and I think that's where that's born out of. The other part of the perfectionist that comes up is my food styling days and the way I think. I care so much about the way that something looks. I really want that presentation to look elevated. Still effortless, still homemade, but very much everything has a place. I think that's where some of that perfectionism comes in. If you're going to take time to take five bars of chocolate, I want to make sure that when that comes out of your fridge, it looks really good and it doesn't look lumpy, and when you cut into it doesn't look uneven.
That's really important. You have to make sure that you have some sense of technique in there. I think that's where that comes from. And I also think, yes, the desserts are easy and nostalgic and you can use a box mix. There is this element of perfectionism in there. I think there's also this element of wanting what you do to be unique and special and exciting. I want to make sure that when someone is baking that they don't just feel like, I could have found this on any website, or I could have just Googled this and figured it out. I really want them to feel like, wow, that's something that I never would've thought of, or I never would've done it that way, or when they bite into it, they're like, oh my gosh, I get it. That quarter teaspoon of almond extract, it really does make a difference. So, that's something I really try to add to all of my recipes, making sure they have that little like je ne sais quoi.
Jessie Sheehan:
The food styling aspect of it, I didn't even think of this. As a photographer and before you had a book, that was all you, correct?
Sarah Fennel:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
The beauty of your food photography is not only the way you take the picture, but it's how you're arranging the image.
Sarah Fennel:
Absolutely. When I develop recipes, I very much am thinking of the visual of them, and there's so many recipes that I would love to do, but they would just be too ugly. It's kind of like this little puzzle for me figuring out, how can I keep the flavors that I want and how can I keep it in that form that I want? But, it's all beige, so what can we do with mix-up? It's definitely a part of things.
Jessie Sheehan:
I'm so excited to talk about “Sweet Tooth.” I wanted to ask about the book deal. Assume that somebody came to you, that you were not trying to walk around town getting a book proposal out there, but tell us about that?
Sarah Fennel:
So, Clarkson Potter approached me and they're the publisher that I went with. I had been approached probably a few dozen times by publishers in the past, and I was at this stage, this was all before the pandemic where I felt like I was big, but I wasn't big enough. I knew that if I was going to put all this energy and effort into this book that I really wanted to be what I felt like was on the top of my game. I think people do book deals for so many different reasons, and there's no bad reason as long as you obviously don't feel like you're being taken advantage of. But, for me, I knew that I wanted to feel like I was at the top of my craft in so many ways before saying yes. And so, really it was that Clarkson Potter emailed me when I felt like, okay, I think I'm there, it's time.
And I met with my editor and I absolutely loved her. Everything was feeling right. I had had other conversations in the past and it didn't feel totally right. The publisher was maybe smaller or the amount of money they were looking to give me was smaller. And this was like, I think this makes sense. So, from there we backed into it. They provided a few different agents that I could interview that are obviously independent from them, and I found my agent, I absolutely love her. She's incredible. Katty Cowles, I love you. It really just felt like I had started to see the drain, what is it? Where something goes around the drain and it's starting to get to the middle I'm like, yes, this is all making sense. So, then we wrote the proposal, we gave it to Clarkson Potter first, and then they were like, let's do it.
Jessie Sheehan:
So, the book is a mixture of recipes from your blog, inspired by your blog and also new recipes. Which fan favorites from the blog did you know you had to include in the book, and did Potter have rules for you? I know sometimes only a certain percentage of a book can have recipes that have already been in the world.
Sarah Fennel:
So, our rule was no more than 20% had to be existing recipes. So, I really knew that those existing recipes, there had to be a reason that they were in the book. Number one, the best chocolate chip cookies in the world. Those are in the book. They absolutely had to be. I pushed so hard for those to be on the cover, and I'm so glad of how the cover turned out, but I was like, we need the cookies on the cover. Love, love, love that recipe. The “Matilda” chocolate cake is the gluten-free vegan chocolate cake from the site, which is just amazing. Little backstory on that cake. When I was living in Detroit, my girlfriend had a birthday party. I said, oh my God, I'll make the cake for you. She was like, great, but I'm vegan and gluten-free and I was like, this is new, but okay.
So, I took my chocolate cake that I made all the time and I made it vegan with flax eggs and I made gluten-free with gluten-free flour, and it was the best chocolate cake I'd ever had. And it was because the flax eggs, they add this tiny little slight nuttiness, but also when you bake up eggs in a cake, sometimes it can give a little too much tight structure to a cake. The flax eggs keep it so soft and melty, and then the gluten-free flour also provides a slight nuttiness, and the crumb itself falls apart a little bit more, and so it really works in the cake to just make this cake that absolutely melts in your mouth. So, the “Matilda” chocolate cake happens to be vegan and gluten-free, but not because you need it to be. So, that's in the book. The oatmeal cream pies are so good.
Jessie Sheehan:
Would you say that the book has the same style as the blog, stylistically a similar Americana classics kind of vibe?
Sarah Fennel:
That's a great question. I would say it definitely comes from the same place, but we played around a little bit more. The flavors are a little bit more unique, exciting, different, a little more seasonal. We really just wanted to test how much we could work with all of these different flavors and have this really large breadth of things. It's interesting because on the blog, there's so many reasons we're posting things. One is because, oh my God, that sounds so delicious, let's do it. Another is for SEO, so like creating these recipes that are going to get us high traffic to the blog to bring us in new readers and bring us in page views every month. I would say, if anything, the blog recipes are a little more basic, and in this book you're going to still get those basics, but there's a lot more fun.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love. I wanted to talk about two general things about the book that I loved. The first is, I love when you say the biggest secret in the dessert world is under-baking, because I could not agree with you more. I am a total moist crumb or go home girl-
Sarah Fennel:
Absolutely.
Jessie Sheehan:
... when you're checking on to see if a cake is ready or I like to see a raw center of a cookie.
Sarah Fennel:
Oh, yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Thank you for putting that in print.
Sarah Fennel:
Thank you.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes, you just like-
Sarah Fennel:
It's so important.
Jessie Sheehan:
It's so important.
Sarah Fennel:
And I think too, for a lot of people who are just starting off with baking, they're so stuck to the times like, oh, 13 minutes. It looks right, but that recipe said 13 minutes, and I think that having that flag and that caveat in the beginning for anybody who's baking, if anything, take it out a little too soon, you won't regret it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Couldn't agree more. And the other thing that I was fascinated by is you don't have weights in the recipes, and that just blew my mind, and I just had so many questions, but you have some lemon meringue pie macarons that definitely, they don't even have volume measurements, those you have to weigh. But, I had a couple of questions about the weights. I know they're not on the blog, so it makes sense that they're not in the book in terms of the Broma audience, but was that a hard decision and did you get pushback from Potter?
Sarah Fennel:
Surprisingly, literally no pushback from Potter.
Jessie Sheehan:
Amazing.
Sarah Fennel:
I was actually surprised by that. So, here's my thoughts on it. For this first book, I knew that the audience was going to be mostly an American audience. And knowing the types of recipes in the book, the way the book is portrayed, who the book is really for, it really is for people who, yes, they want to have something really exciting and they've definitely made cookies before, but they probably don't have a scale, or if they do have a scale, they're scared to use a scale. American audiences in general, they use cups and they use volume measurements. So, I'll do that. I will say that it's been so interesting to see feedback of how many people do want those weight measurements. And so, in the second book, I do plan to do that.
I think it also helps to just make the recipes even more precise. So, I see that. I'm always putting myself in the shoes of somebody who's just starting out. Just starting out doesn't mean that you're relegated to boring, silly, easy stuff. Just starting out can still mean you want something really exciting like a bumbleberry tart. But, as the author, I feel like I need to provide the confidence to people that they open up a page and it doesn't seem like, oh my God, whoa, I have never done this before and I'm just going to shut the book. That was my thought process going in.
Jessie Sheehan:
So, now we're going to talk about the recipe, your caramel pumpkin layer cake. You write that it's like a pumpkin bread, only softer and lighter, even more moist. It's layered with cream cheese buttercream drizzled with this sticky, sweet, salty caramel. You describe the cake as being a little bit extra, which I feel like is so you. Am I not wrong there?
Sarah Fennel:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then, I also love that the cake is assembled by hand, no special equipment and is one bowl-ish. I also love that. So, first things first, we're going to make the cake. We're going to heat our oven to 350 degrees. We're going to line the bottoms of three eight inch round cake pans. And you like that USA brand?
Sarah Fennel:
Love USA pan, yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
So, we're going to line the bottoms of three eight inch round cake pans USA brand with some parchment paper, and then we're going to grease the sides of the pans with nonstick cooking spray. So, I had a question. I'll spray the whole thing in them, put the paper down. But, you're a paper first girl, and then the sides?
Sarah Fennel:
Mm-hmm. And it's just out of being lazy. I just literally want to use less spray.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love you. Lazy is good, lazy, totally flies. Then in a medium bowl, and I think your fave is like a glass Duralex?
Sarah Fennel:
Yeah, so there's a glass Duralex mixing bowl set. You can get it on Amazon, and I use them all the time. They're like workhorses in the kitchen. I love that you can mise en place things out. They're the best.
Jessie Sheehan:
I also love, because I'm a big melted butter girl.
Sarah Fennel:
Oh, yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that you can melt butter in the microwave in that bowl, and then proceed with the recipe. Melt chocolate, and I think you even mentioned that. I love glass bowls too. And, of course, they're good for video.
Sarah Fennel:
They look great for video.
Jessie Sheehan:
So, in a medium bowl we are going to whisk, and you like a balloon whisk, is that your fave?
Sarah Fennel:
I go back and forth. So, Crate & Barrel has a really lovely whisk. I think they call it a balloon whisk, but I like a combination between a balloon and a French whisk. Some French whisks I think are a little too narrow, but if you can find a wide French whisk, I love that.
Jessie Sheehan:
If a balloon and a French had a baby?
Sarah Fennel:
Exactly.
Jessie Sheehan:
So, we're going to whisk pumpkin puree. Is it a Libby's pumpkin puree?
Sarah Fennel:
I'll say I always reach for Libby's.
Jessie Sheehan:
So, we're going to whisk together some pumpkin puree, some granulated sugar, vegetable oil. We're going to add some eggs, some vanilla extract. I know you like Nielsen-Massey, but also Rodelle.
Sarah Fennel:
Rodelle's my go-to. Nielsen-Massey is if I want to be extra fancy, but I think Rodelle does a phenomenal job.
Jessie Sheehan:
Awesome.
Sarah Fennel:
But, honestly, I'll say with vanilla extracts, someone like us would notice the difference in taste, but just get the best vanilla extract that you can afford.
Jessie Sheehan:
Agreed. I also like the nostalgic flavor of McCormick. I'm not going to lie.
Sarah Fennel:
I know.
Jessie Sheehan:
Please keep listening listeners. We'll set that aside. In a large bowl, we're going to whisk together all-purpose flour. And you're a King Arthur girl.
Sarah Fennel:
Love King Arthur.
Jessie Sheehan:
Some baking soda, some baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and you like the simply organic?
Sarah Fennel:
Yeah, simply organic is how I like to roll. And I will say this cake and all of my pumpkin recipes, they use a lot of nutmeg. I would say most pumpkin recipes around this size would probably use a half teaspoon of nutmeg. I think the nutmeg adds so much depth of flavor that you just, cinnamon's kind of top-noted. Nutmeg, there's something that's a little deeper in there. So, I just love a big amount of nutmeg. I think it's a teaspoon in this recipe.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that.
Sarah Fennel:
It's a lot.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that.
Sarah Fennel:
And then, the ginger, you got to do. Ginger adds a really nice brightness to it. A little tiny bit of spice on the back end.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then, we're going to add some salt. You're a Morton's table salt person?
Sarah Fennel:
Hell yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Not a Kosher salt person, but we can substitute if we want to.
Sarah Fennel:
You could totally substitute. For all the recipes in the book you can substitute Kosher salt.
Jessie Sheehan:
So, we're going to make a well in the center of the bowl. We're going to pour in our wet ingredients. We're going to whisk until no streaks of flour remain. I love that you do not switch to the spatula here.
Sarah Fennel:
No.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love the idea that we didn't even have to grab a spatula to make this cake. Love that.
Sarah Fennel:
I feel like especially when you're mixing larger amounts of things, if you're folding with a spatula, it's just a little bit taxing. And for something like this cake, especially because it's oil-based, that mixing with a whisk, it's going to be hard to over mix unless you're just standing there. It's going to come together pretty fast, so you're not going to get that insane gluten development that the whisk can sometimes do.
Jessie Sheehan:
So, I love that you don't switch to a spatula. I also love that this is a one bowl-ish recipe and that it didn't call for any special equipment.
Sarah Fennel:
Honestly, guys, if you wanted to do this fully in one bowl, you absolutely could. I myself am pretty much like a, if I can one bowl it, I do. My little one bowl technique. If you have your wet ingredients, first, then when I'm doing my dry ingredients, I'll put my flour right in on top of the wet ingredients. Then I'll basically try to put all of my tiny ingredients, my baking powder, my baking soda, my spices, my salt, kind of all into the center. And then, I'll take my whisker, my spatula, and I'll brush it over the top, kind of like you're doing a little sand garden thing with a rake. And that will help to get it distributed on the top end. And then, you can start folding things in.
Jessie Sheehan:
What I do, which is I learned from Deb Perelman, take your wet ingredients, put in the leavening first and whisk, then add spices, salt, etc. And then, add the flour at the end, because that way you can vigorously whisk in the things that you're worried about, which are your leavening and spices and salt, which need to be distributed evenly, and then do your flour last.
Sarah Fennel:
That's so brilliant.
Jessie Sheehan:
It's smart, right?
Sarah Fennel:
I'm going to try that.
Jessie Sheehan:
You should.
Sarah Fennel:
I love that.
Jessie Sheehan:
It's incredible. Now we're going to divide our cake batter evenly amongst our prepared pans. And because of this perfectionist vibe of yours, are you actually measuring out how much goes in each cake pan so that each layer is exactly the same height?
Sarah Fennel:
It depends. Some recipes I do that because I really want it to be absolutely perfect.
Jessie Sheehan:
But, in something like this, you would eyeball it?
Sarah Fennel:
I would. And what I usually do is I'll take a knife or my finger and I'll just stick it into the center of the cake and see where that cake comes up to.
Jessie Sheehan:
Been there, done that. So, now we're going to bake until the cakes rise. The tops spring back when we touch them, and a butter knife inserted in the center comes out mostly clean. A crumb or two is fine. That's for like 25 to 30 minutes. I'm so curious about the butter knife instead of a toothpick or instead of a paring knife.
Sarah Fennel:
So, a butter knife is a more dull knife. So, when you stick it in, it's going to allow crumbs to attach better. When you stick in a paring knife, your paring knife can slice through so precisely and so sharply that when it pulls out, you might not get the crumbs pulling. Because, when you think about it, a cake has slightly harder surface on top than it does inside where the crumb is. So, when you put in something really sharp like a paring knife, you're not creating these little micro ridges around the slit. So, when you pull up that paring knife, it could be that those crumbs get caught and they don't actually come off with your knife. SO, with the butter knife, we get this imprecise dig into our cake, but our slit has a lot of room for the crumbs to come up and pull up through. So, you can see those crumbs more easily.
Jessie Sheehan:
And I know you like under baking, so here, seeing some crumbs on that butter knife is what we want?
Sarah Fennel:
100%. So, cakes, because they're a little bit thicker, they're a little bit bigger, they're going to continue to cook as they cool like all baked goods. In every single recipe, I make sure that it says when you stick a knife in, it's a crumb or two attached is okay. Those crumbs are so fine. We love the crumbs. It shows that there's still moisture in our cake.
Jessie Sheehan:
So, if we're going to place the cake pans on a cooling rack and cool them for about five to 10 minutes, then we're going to remove the cakes from the pan. We'll drag a butter knife around the edges, flip them onto plates, and then peel away parchment, and then re-invert them onto our cooling rack. I just learned this spraying your cooling rack. Do you sometimes get cake layers that stick a little bit as they cool?
Sarah Fennel:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
I thought that was so interesting.
Sarah Fennel:
So smart.
Jessie Sheehan:
I thought that was really interesting. But, anyway, just a thought. So, we're going to let them cool for about 30 minutes while we make our caramel. And I love this. You say that the caramel is optional, but-
Sarah Fennel:
Is it really?
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. So, in a small saucepan, and I know you like that Goldilocks brand or you like All-Clad?
Sarah Fennel:
All-Clad.
Jessie Sheehan:
In a small saucepan over medium-low heat, we're going to cook granulated sugar. Since we're making this dry caramel, is it important that the sugar is in an even layer in the pan or is that less important? Can you just pour it in?
Sarah Fennel:
You can pour it in. I do a little shake before it hits the stove, but I will say I think the most important thing is to use a small saucepan and not a medium. If you go to medium, then that sugar's going to spread out a little bit more and you might get some uneven patches. If you have a little thicker layer of sugar, when you mix it around, you're able to just get it a little more even. So, I think that's what I like.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's such a great tip. We're going to use a silicone spatula to stir the sugar occasionally scraping down the sides and bottom of the pan. I think, I didn't realize it was okay. You know how you're making caramel and they're like, don't stir it?
Sarah Fennel:
No.
Jessie Sheehan:
Is it different if it's a dry caramel? Is that why it's okay to stir?
Sarah Fennel:
Yeah. And also, I think for this caramel, we're going to this soft-ish stage, so I feel like you can be a little more imprecise with it. This is the most forgiving caramel recipe. You could have never made caramel before and you're going to be totally fine. You could have a giant clump in one corner of your pot. You're going to be fine. It's going to be okay.
Jessie Sheehan:
So, you say first the sugar might form clumps. Then they're going to begin to melt. You're going to take it off when it's like a light golden color. About five to seven minutes, it'll be fully melted. Once that last bit of sugar is melted, we'll take it off the heat, because we don't want to let it continue to cook or it'll burn.
Sarah Fennel:
But, that's one thing I love about this recipe. You don't need a temperature thermometer for it. The cue is a visual cue. It's as soon as it's melted, done.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. So, we're going to add some unsalted butter to the pot. It'll violently bubble, so don't be scared.
Sarah Fennel:
It's violent.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to whisk the butter and the melted sugar together until combined about 20 seconds, whisk in some heavy cream and some salt, and then we'll allow the caramel to cool completely in the pan until we're ready to frost our cake. Could you make it ahead, pour it into a bowl and put it in the refrigerator?
Sarah Fennel:
You're talking about my life. Yes, you could absolutely make it. While it's still hot, pour it into a glass container and leave it in the fridge. It's totally all right. Great.
Jessie Sheehan:
Now we're going to make the cream cheese frosting in a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Can we use a hand mixer?
Sarah Fennel:
Yeah, totally.
Jessie Sheehan:
Or a hand mixer. We'll beat some room temp butter and room temp cream cheese at medium speed until combined. We'll add some confectioners' sugar, some vanilla, some salt, beat on medium speed until frosting is fluffy, ta-da.
Sarah Fennel:
Ta-da.
Jessie Sheehan:
Two minutes, 20 seconds later, we're done. Now, we're going to assemble our cake. We're going to place the first cake layer right side up on a plate or a cake stand. When you're doing it on a cake stand, do you put a sheet or parchment or something underneath the cake so that you can easily lift? How does that work?
Sarah Fennel:
So, what I usually do, and I'm not saying this is correct, it's just what I do. I usually will peel off the parchment paper, take my spatula that has frosting on it, and just do a little glue of frosting on the bottom, and then I'll put my cake on. Once we're done with all of our nice, putting the cake together, frosting everything, I'll then use a bench scraper on one side and a really sharp knife on the other side, and I use that to swoop into the middle together, and then pick it up. And so, that works right for me. But, I like that because with the glue on the bottom of the cake, when it's on that rotating cake stand, the cake's not going to be falling over everywhere.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. So, we're going to spread a large dollop of frosting on the top of our layer using an offset. We'll spread evenly to the edge of the cake, repeat with the second and third cake layers and our dollops of frosting. We'll frost the sides of the cake with the remaining frosting. So, no crumb coat.
Sarah Fennel:
No crumb coat.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love you. Do you ever do a crumb coat?
Sarah Fennel:
I do sometimes do a crumb coat. For a cake like this, first of all, so some cakes are crumbier than others. This cake, the cake really stays together. That moisture in it really keeps it together. So, you're not going to find as you're dragging your frosting around the outside that the cake is following you. So, it's very easy then that way. I also find that I will do a crumb coat, usually when I want my frosting to look perfect and have that really nice, sharp outside. One thing that's so fun about this cake is that it has that caramel dripping down the bottom. So, it's nice to have little imperfections that then those caramel drips kind of bump off of.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love that. So, we're going to place our room temp caramel in a squeeze bottle or in a piping bag with a small tip. If it's too thick at this point, maybe because we put it in the fridge or it just sat for a while, we can microwave it for 10 seconds to loosen it. And then, we're going to start from the center of the cake, squeezing out caramel in a really tight spiral, going all the way to the edge of the cake. And I assume each time you do the spiral, it starts to bleed-
Sarah Fennel:
Exactly.
Jessie Sheehan:
... so that probably by the time you get to the edge, you've covered the top in caramel. Then once you're at the edges of the cake, you're going to make almost like a small zigzag like movement along the edges to allow the caramel to make those luscious drips. When I'm picturing you making little tiny drizzle, are you almost like you make a zigzag and you let it drip, you make a zigzag, or you're-
Sarah Fennel:
I'm going around the whole thing at once.
Jessie Sheehan:
And you're not actually even trying to do anything, it just happens?
Sarah Fennel:
No, it just happens.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh my gosh.
Sarah Fennel:
So, it's like, it really is a tiny zigzag. And when you do the zigzags, you want them to be a little uneven, because you want some drips to fall a little bit more, some drips to fall a little bit less.
Jessie Sheehan:
First of all, do we need to set the caramel before we serve it?
Sarah Fennel:
It depends how messy you want your cut to be. If you're like me and you just want to eat your cake, you can cut it. If you want to put in the fridge, fridge is totally good. It can sit in the fridge all afternoon.
Jessie Sheehan:
Although I hate cold cake.
Sarah Fennel:
I hate cold cake too.
Jessie Sheehan:
I really want room temperature cake.
Sarah Fennel:
I know. It's like that frosting gets so sad. You miss...
Jessie Sheehan:
So, we can either keep cake as it is, it's like a drizzle cake at this point, and let the drizzle do the talking as you say.
Sarah Fennel:
But, that's a really good point, because we're doing the drizzle, that drizzle, if you're doing your tiny zigzags, the drizzle will stop. It should stop halfway down the cake, three quarters of the way down the cake. Some will go all the way down the cake. But, because you're doing that drizzle, it's nice to serve it right away, because you want that drizzle to be fresh and not continue to drip down over time.
Jessie Sheehan:
Makes sense. We can either keep the cake as it is or we can decorate the top with fresh blackberries, figs, pomegranate seeds. Love, love, love. So, I wanted to talk just about a couple of other recipes. First of all, oatmeal cream cookies. That is in the top five of all time best recipes on the blog, yes?
Sarah Fennel:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Tell us everything.
Sarah Fennel:
Oh my God, it's so good. So, I feel like oatmeal doesn't get a good rep. Oatmeal is sad. Oats are sad. They don't really have a ton of flavor, but when you pair them with these warm, really soft spices, so things like brown sugar, oh my God, it's like they just come to life. And so, these cookies are just so absolutely incredible. It tastes like early fall in a cookie. Before you get into pumpkin season, you got to have a little oatmeal. So, they have an amazing chew. The crumb is really unique because it's held together enough, when you bite into it, there's a little bit of a toughness before it gives, which is really nice, but it also has the slightest crispy outside, which I absolutely love. It also has, I think, a really nice ratio of oats to cookie.
Sometimes I find that oatmeal cookies in general have too many oats in them, and those oats tend to expand. They tend to absorb liquid, and so it happens when you bite into it that it's just a little too oaty. It's almost like bready, and I think this is a really nice ratio where you taste the oats, but the oats aren't overpowering the rest of the cookie. The frosting is really delicious. It's thicker because you really want, first of all, that nostalgic icing, frostingy I interchanged those words. I don't know, whatever. It's so nice when you bite into it, because it almost feels like it came from a package and it has a lot of vanilla in it, so you really get a nice vanilla flavor in there.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love it. I have never been an oatmeal cream cookie person, and I need to become one.
Sarah Fennel:
Oh my God.
Jessie Sheehan:
I know. I don't know what I'm waiting for. What am I waiting for? That sounds so yummy.
Sarah Fennel:
I feel like I need to go home and make those. Truly, these are one of my favorite recipes. I am so excited to have it. So, it was a recipe on the blog. It did well on the blog. It's not one of our most viewed recipes of all time on the blog, but it's one of those blog recipes that I'm like, no, people need to know about this. It is so good. And then, also, I love the size of these. When you scoop them out, you're going to think that the cookie's way too small and it's going to be like, do I need to do double this amount? But, they really spread, and they spread into this perfect little disc that it's like a little four-bite cookie.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, love. So, good. Tell us about the caramel cookies and cream ice cream, and I love the little Starbucks origin story.
Sarah Fennel:
Absolutely. I feel like caramel and cookies and cream are both very sweet, but they also go so well together. It's just that hit of sugar that it's so good. So, then we need to find something to balance that. So, we're going to balance that with something a little bit more bitter, and we're going to have coffee and coffee's going to be our base, and it's going to be so good. I'll also say in general, I think Oreos and coffee go so well together. They're just amazing. But, the caramel adds this really luxurious hit to it. It also adds this new texture into things, and it's just this little unexpected flavor that you get in that compliments the warmer notes of the coffee. So, I absolutely love it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love, love.
Sarah Fennel:
That was hard getting the caramel consistency right for that, because you can't just create a regular caramel. If you do, and then you put it into your ice cream, it's going to disintegrate into that ice cream as everything freezes. So, we had so many iterations of that recipe where everything was the same except for the caramel, and we really just needed to make sure we could get that ribbony caramel so that when you scoop into it's not too hard and it doesn't hit your ice cream scoop, but it's not too soft that you're like, where did it go? So, had such fun.
Jessie Sheehan:
Do you remember what the secret was that thickened it up?
Sarah Fennel:
It's just getting the exact right ratio of butter and heavy cream in there.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh my God. It sounds so good.
Sarah Fennel:
So good.
Jessie Sheehan:
And it was based on a Frappuccino you loved?
Sarah Fennel:
Yeah. So, at Starbucks there's a Frappuccino that I would ask for, and it's coffee Oreo Frappuccino, and then they just do a little drizzle of caramel on top and it's like, okay, always.
Jessie Sheehan:
Thank you so much for chatting with me today, Sarah. And I just want to say that you are my cherry pie.
Sarah Fennel:
Thank you so much, Jessie. I could do this all day. It was such a treat. Thank you.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's it for today's show. Thank you to King Arthur Baking Company, Kerrygold, California Prunes, and Ghirardelli 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. Thank you to CityVox Studio in Manhattan. 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.