Zoë François 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.
I am so excited about today's show because one of our favorite guests is back. It's Zoë François, who you all know as ZoëBakes from her popular Instagram account, her Magnolia TV show, and her bestselling cookbooks. Her latest book just dropped and it's called “Zoë Bakes Cookies.” It features 75 of her favorite cookie recipes, including her chocolate chip smash cookies, which we're going to talk all about in just a bit. I love Zoë so much and had such a great time catching up and going deep with her about her baking journey and the women who influenced her along the way. She shared so many great cookie tips from doubling up her sheet pans, to pressing on her cookies post-bake, to achieve the perfect shape and texture. I can't wait for you to listen. 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 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, winey 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.
I have big news for you. My new cookbook, “Salty, Cheesy, Herby, Crispy Snackable Bakes,” will be available Tuesday, September 24. This is my first savory baking book and I'm so excited to share it with all of you. It features a hundred easy-peasy baking recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and of course snacking, from sage butter scones to smash burger hand pies and tomato za'atar galette. You'll also find six of my essential savory baking hacks, including how to make my magic melted butter pie dough and the quickest and easiest caramelized onions. I just announced my cookbook tour and tickets are on sale right now at cherrybombe.com. The launch party will take place in Manhattan on Tuesday, September 24th, then I'm in San Francisco on Tuesday, October 8th, Chicago on Tuesday, October 15th, and Boston on Wednesday, October 23rd, and I can't wait to see you. Thank you to Kerrygold and King Arthur Flour for supporting my tour. You can also click the link in the show notes of this episode to pre-order the book now or pick up a copy at your favorite local bookstore, starting September 24th. I hope you love “Salty, Cheesy, Herby, Crispy Snackable Bakes,” as much as I loved writing it.
Let's check in with today's guest. Zoë, so excited to have you on She's My Cherry Pie again and to talk chocolate chip smash cookies with you and so much more.
Zoë François:
I am so thrilled to be back with you.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love asking guests about an early baking memory. Can you tell us a little bit about Zoë, plus Dutch baby?
Zoë François:
Yeah. I think I was actually seven. I lived in a commune. Communes have pantries that can feed dozens, at some points, multiple dozens of people, so there's lots of stuff in there. And my friend who also lived on the commune and I, Sasha, would take said pantry items, mix them all together usually in the bathtub or other places that was not condoned, and that was my very, very first sort of cooking in air quotes. And then eventually, we started mixing things in bowls and putting them in the oven and that's the Dutch baby. That was a recipe that came from Sasha's grandmother and it was really the first thing that I put in the oven and could eat it when it came out, but it was the mixing of the ingredients and then gluing our faces to the oven door window and watching this thing basically explode in the oven that was mesmerizing. I don't even think I cared if we ate it. I was so transfixed by how this slop turned into this just gorgeous puffy pancake. Yeah. That set it all in motion for me.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. So you famously grew up on a commune where sugar was a four-letter word and raisins, you were told, were candy. And oh, my gosh, I love this so much. I just learned that on the commune your nickname was Frazzy Bringle, and I wanted you to know that when I was a toeheaded little girl, my nickname was Sparkle Plenty, and I think Sparkle Plenty and Frazzy Bringle could have so much fun together.
Zoë François:
Well, we were just destined since we were toddlers to be friends. Oh, my God, amazing.
Jessie Sheehan:
Isn't that so funny?
Zoë François:
Amazing.
Jessie Sheehan:
Tell me about Frazzy Bringle. Does your husband ever as a joke be like, "Frazzy, it's time to go to dinner," or, "Frazzy, what's for dessert"?
Zoë François:
No. Thankfully, he forgets until he listens to this, and then he probably will and my children as well. Frazzy Bringle, I think everybody can kind of imagine a crazy curly-headed hippie child running around in the mud just doing her thing, chasing chickens. That was my life basically. It was pretty crazy and Frazzy Bringle was that flour child.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love it so much, Zoë. Can you tell us about the moment in kindergarten when you realized that perhaps there was a whole sweet world out there that didn't involve raisins of which you were being deprived?
Zoë François:
Yes. It wasn't just the raisins though, Jessie. The thing that I have the most resentment over is the carob.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, right. I forgot. Tell us about... I know the carob, but you tell the listeners about the carob.
Zoë François:
Yeah. When somebody is told that carob is chocolate and then they discover real chocolate, there's a lot of therapy involved. I'm coming back from that. But the Twinkies... I went from living on this commune in this sort of utopian environment where we made all our own food and we baked all of our own things, and I thought raisins were candy. And then I get to school. Somebody opens up their lunchbox and there is this cylindrical blonde-looking cake in plastic, takes it out of the plastic. It's this smell that I've never experienced before. And this is the remarkable thing, somehow I pried that Twinkie out of that kid's hands by bartering some whole wheat bread or some crazy thing that was in my lunchbox, and I got this Twinkie out of this kid's hand and ate it, and that was it. From that moment on, I knew sugar would always be in my life.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, God, I love that a Twinkie had that power over you and that you were so... That was Frazzy Bringle at her best. You could get that Twinkie out of that kid's hand.
Zoë François:
No. Kids are really wily and creative when they want something.
Jessie Sheehan:
I also just learned recently that you actually had an Easy-Bake Oven when you were little, and I wondered, who did you have to persuade to get that? That doesn't seem very commune to me.
Zoë François:
Oh, no, no, no. That was for sure grandmother.
Jessie Sheehan:
Ah, there you go.
Zoë François:
Oh, yeah. No, no, no. The grandmothers really played a role in the whole sugar experience because even on the commune, when we would go for holidays to visit the grandparents, they got free-range. My grandmother on my father's side would take me to the grocery store and let me pick out even sugary cereal, which that was nirvana for me. Yeah. So I think it made the holidays even sweeter because it was the one time that I got to have sugar.
Jessie Sheehan:
We'll be right back. Peeps, have you heard the news? Cherry Bombe's first ever Jubilee Wine Country is happening in Napa Valley on October 26th and 27th. It'll be a weekend filled with great wine, winemakers, beautiful food, seasonal produce, conversation, connection, and California. Passes are now available. To learn more and snag a pass, visit cherrybombe.com.
Now, I want to jump into talking about your fantastic and gorgeous new book, “Zoë Bakes Cookies,” because as I read it cover to cover, I learned so much about your baking journey that I'm dying for you to share with the listeners. I think the book is basically your life through the lens of cookies, with each chapter kind of representing a different time. Was that your intention originally for it to be quite so autobiographical?
Zoë François:
Oh, absolutely not. Okay. I started a cookie company in college to basically get out of a business class. During the business class, we had to write a business plan and I wrote about a cookie company. It was sort of in the fashion of Mrs. Fields and Famous Amos and it was just supposed to be fictitious. It was just supposed to be on paper, but I'm like, "That sounds like so much more fun than school," so I dropped out of school and started that company. I mean, I took a semester off. I did end up going back, but that's really where I thought this book was coming from, was my love of cookies and that it was going to be more about the cookies.
And then as I was baking and talking... Of course, most of us have memories of cookies from our family, so as I was diving into those recipes and getting recipes from my grandparents and looking into the history of each one of those cookies, I realized that one, I didn't know huge, huge swaths of my family history. And I learned through researching these cookies about parts of my family I had no idea about that, that cookies were not only something that I love to do, but they were deep, deep in my DNA. I had no idea, Jessie. It took me an extra year to write this book and I have goosebumps just thinking about it. This was the most personal journey for me through cookies. I thought this was a no-brainer. I love cookies. That's where my career in food started. It was just going to be about cookies. It turned into family stories and an entire history lesson for me. There is so much of me, my family, my heart, my soul on these pages. It was really a journey for me, but no, I didn't see it coming.
Jessie Sheehan:
I think you dedicate the book to her. Is it your Aunt Kristin?
Zoë François:
It is.
Jessie Sheehan:
Tell us a little bit about Kristin and just why the book is dedicated to her.
Zoë François:
Well, Kristin was the aunt that was closest in age to me and we did a lot together. And she was obsessed with baking, so she would help my grandmother around the holidays bake and they had their repertoire. It was the same cookies. There were so many of them. But Kristin then came to live with my dad and I when I was little, even through these middle school years that I had talked about, and she would bake all the time, so she was really the one who supervised me in the kitchen. And she has a notorious lifelong love affair with shortbread cookies and I had never even heard of them, and she was obsessed with them, so for me, baking is so much about her and our young relationship.
Jessie Sheehan:
Is she your dad's sister?
Zoë François:
My dad's sister.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's what I thought.
Zoë François:
Yes. Exactly.
Jessie Sheehan:
I guess this is a quick aside, but how brilliant are you to literally start your book on the dedication page maybe with a dog biscuit recipe and a huge picture of the poodles, which I think maybe Sarah Kieffer took.
Zoë François:
Yes. Yes, she did.
Jessie Sheehan:
I just, oh, my God, love, love, love. Was that just a stroke of genius when the book was coming together or were you like, "The book will begin with a dog biscuit"?
Zoë François:
Well, I am never in the kitchen without them, so it seemed like obvious they needed to be in that book. I actually wrote the book, sent the book in, was in edits, when Miles passed away, so I had to change the dedication to an RIP for my poodle, Miles. Now, I have a little puppy, but those dogs are my constant companion, and this book was so much a part of me that I had to have them in there. And then if I was going to dedicate the book to them, I had to have a cookie for them, so I came up with the dog biscuits, which they love and other people have made them. My recipe testers give them to their dogs all the time, so they are dog tested and approved.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. The book, as I said, as a reader, seems very autobiographical, so Zoë, and you also wrote that you realize while writing it's like an ode to the women in your family who baked for different reasons. Particularly, and I love this so much, you have this entire chapter that sort of dedicated I think to two of these women, your Jewish bubbe and you're not Jewish granny. I love that they get a chapter in the book. I love that you were exposed, as so many of us are or as my children are, for instance, two very culturally different cookie worlds as it was. Can you tell us a little bit about visiting bubbe versus visiting granny?
Zoë François:
Yeah. Each one of them has their own chapter because there is this sort of Jewish tradition. The chapter about my bubbe Berkowitz changed the book. When I dove into some of these recipes, that's when the book became more about me and my family, and in particular, these women. It was actually a couple of recipes. Several years ago, I had requested a Mandelbrot recipe from my grandmother and she wrote it down and she sent it to me along with a couple of others in her handwriting. She was probably in her 80s already. I made them and never really thought that much about them again until I was writing this book.
So I called my mom and I asked her about those recipes because my grandmother had already passed, and I asked her about the recipes, and she started telling me stories about how my great-great-grandmother lived in Kiev, had a bakery, which I kind of knew, but I didn't know why. And it was because bakers love to bring joy to their community, but it was also to survive. They were baking to sell these goods in order to eat and survive. The recipes that I got came from her, my great-great-grandmother, but what I didn't realize is that when I asked my grandmother to write these down for me, it was the very first time those recipes had ever been written. They'd always been passed down verbally from one generation to the next, one, because that's just how it happened. You were in the kitchen together. You were baking together. But also because they didn't read or write. Again, I didn't know this.
Thank God I had asked her to write these recipes down. Otherwise, they would've absolutely disappeared because it was the first time they'd been written down and my mom wasn't a baker, so she hadn't gotten them from her. So it was really just this powerful moment for me that I realized I had accidentally written down really significant history in my family. And those recipes, they got them through some really difficult times and they also brought them to America, selling those cookies, and the ingredients that made the cookies is how they made money to get themselves to America and start a new life. I mean, I had no idea that cookies were why I existed, really. It's crazy.
Jessie Sheehan:
Granny on the other hand maybe wasn't writing down her own recipes, but she loved Betty Crocker, right, and her 1950s Betty Crocker cookbook?
Zoë François:
Yes. Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
And that was more of the vibe of the cookies at granny's house, yes?
Zoë François:
Mm-hmm.
Jessie Sheehan:
Around the holidays?
Zoë François:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Tell us about that cookbook, which I think now you have, yes?
Zoë François:
Yes. I have her 1950s “Betty Crocker Cookbook.” It is stained and splattered. I think she baked every single recipe in that book. There is not a page that isn't... Not only is it splattered, but she has notes in it. I also have her recipe box, and these recipes, not only was she making the recipes, but she was sharing them back and forth. This was a way of being in community with her sisters and her friends, that they would share recipes like this. So the recipes that I have from her recipe box aren't only the recipes, they also have gossip. They trash-talked just about everybody and shared stories about their kids and stuff, but we don't do letter writing, and my grandmother was a real letter writer and they're written sometimes on these recipes.
So these recipes that I got from both sides of my family are just filled with all of this intimate content about my family that I had just no idea what I was walking into. And like you said, it's sort of like this evolution of my life through these cookies. It's also like my Eras Tour of cookies because it's the different decades and chapters of my life.
Jessie Sheehan:
Will you tell us what Ina Garten said? You were thinking about maybe tweaking and twisting and playing with some of your grandparents' recipes and you asked Ina what she thought of that. Can you tell us that, a little tidbit?
Zoë François:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I had the good fortune being in a magazine article with her and got to have brunch with her, and I have these recipes from my grandmothers. Do they stand the test of time? I feel like recipes really evolve, tastes evolve, and I always felt just a little bit guilty about taking these recipes that are so connected to history and changing them, but really, in order to enjoy them and make them so that they sort of live up to today's standards, I needed to do that.
And I asked her if it was cool, basically. Can you change a recipe that means so much to you and honor that person, but make it delicious and current? And she gave me full permission and said she does it all the time. And coming from her, I was like, "Okay. I'm doing it. I'm going in there." They still have the essence of my grandmothers, but they're mine, and I feel like there's bigger, bolder flavors. We like our flavors to be a little bit of spice, a little bit of something eccentric in there to make them interesting, to me and I think hopefully to my readers.
Jessie Sheehan:
I remember just when I was working on a book of mine that was all about old recipes, The Vintage Baker, I remember having to add vanilla and salt, literally something as simple. Forget even the cardamom or the miso or the whatever kind of interesting and kind more au courant ingredient you want to add. There wasn't a lot of the basic things that we expect when we bite into a cookie because they weren't heavy on the vanilla, heavy on the salt, or at least generous with salt the way we are today.
Zoë François:
Absolutely. Or there was oleo or margarine and I just don't cook with those things anymore. Flavor's important, so I like to play with those old recipes.
Jessie Sheehan:
I just wanted to flag one other chapter in the book that I loved, which is the Midwestern cookie and bar, Minnesota State Fair chapter. I love it partly because I've been to the fair with you, so I feel that part of who you are because I was there with you, but also a million times, yes to the idea of Midwestern bar cookies and more. And you say in this chapter that when you moved to Minnesota, this was kind of an introduction to bar cookies.
Zoë François:
Oh, yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Can you tell us about that? Because I never thought about being introduced to them, but yes, of course, there's a moment where you're like, "What? I can eat this and it's square and it came out of a pan, but it's a cookie?"
Zoë François:
And there is just layer on top of layer on top of layer of flavor. Okay. It is related somewhat, this chapter, which I did not know until I lived here and realized that this is the home of Betty Crocker, Minneapolis. General Mills is located right here. So lots and lots of my grandmother's inspiration came from right here. I would go to parties. I would go to my friends' houses and they would come out with these bars. Church basements are a very popular place to gather here. Always, always, always a table full of bars and they're generously given out, but it's a little bit of a competition, and man, are there some just absolutely delicious combinations of things. And it is such a tradition and it's such a tradition to when you go somewhere, you bring cookies or bars or a piece of yourself in that way. I just love that. I love the community of baking.
There is such a wealth of baking tradition here in the Midwest that I'm still learning every year. Go to the fair. There's new foods at the fair. So I also somehow ended up Midwestern. My show is all about Minneapolis and Minnesota. I love the culture. I love what people are creating here, and it turns out that I've lived here for over 30 years. I went to 16 schools before I graduated from college and I ended up being here longer than I've been anywhere else in my life, so I really feel an affinity to this place now and I learned a lot about it through these cookies and bars.
Jessie Sheehan:
Now, I want to talk about chocolate chip cookies, which leads me right into the cookie cart chapter. It sounds like many of those cookies that you had in your cart during college were chocolate chip cookies because of the Mrs. Fields, et cetera. Due to your love of chocolate chip cookies, in the book, and listeners, this will knock your socks off, there is a chocolate chip cookie lab. I love the lab so much. Please tell the listeners about the lab.
Zoë François:
Yeah. I feel like chocolate chip cookies in particular, everybody has an opinion. Do you want them crispy? Do you want them softer, cakey? Do you want them gooey in the middle or baked all the way through? Do you want them lacy? Everybody has their interpretation of the perfect cookie and I realized that my perfect cookie was not the same as my husband's. It wasn't the same as my kids'. So I wanted to put a place in the book where people could take my recipe and tweak it to make it their perfect cookie.
And I also wanted to show if you change the amount of brown sugar or you change the amount of flour that you put into it, what exactly will happen? So that people can tweak it. Unlike me, when I had my cookie cart, I had no idea what I was doing and I would experiment endlessly. I want people to have a reference point, so that if they're adding more or less baking soda, this is what's going to happen, so that they can create the cookie that's perfect for them instead of the one that's perfect for me. And maybe they think the one that I have written on the page is perfect and they can just leave it alone, but maybe they want to tweak it just slightly.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that so much.
Zoë François:
So I find this stuff endlessly fascinating. I think the getting there, the journey of baking, the process of it, the manipulation of these pretty simple ingredients into something as delicious as a chocolate chip cookie was endlessly fun for me. So that's why I always put the Baking Academy in its own place because some people just want to dive into a recipe and they don't necessarily want to know the mechanics of it, and other people are geeky about it like me and they want a little bit more intel.
Jessie Sheehan:
I just think it is utterly brilliant and I learned something fascinating that makes me love you so much. I know this could be controversial for the listeners, so I hope everyone's sitting down. If you're taking a walk, sit down. Zoë's ideal chocolate chip cookie has a little bit of shortening in it. I put shortening in some of my cookies for chew. I put them so they don't spread and I put them because sometimes you don't need to chill a cookie if it has a little bit of shortening in it. It doesn't spread as much. Talk to us about your ideal cookie having a little bit of shortening in it.
Zoë François:
Well, okay, shortening was a very key ingredient in a lot of my grandmother's recipes, so it didn't seem that weird to me. I have seen this in cookies for a long time. I am obsessed with butter. I mean, butter is just the most delicious ingredient, so it has to be in this chocolate chip cookie, but it wasn't behaving the way I wanted it to. It was spreading too much. It just didn't have the exact texture that I wanted. I knew that shortening would solve this issue and it just made the cookie of my dreams. So not everybody's going to want to bake with shortening and that is absolutely fine, but then the reason that I have that lab is so that you understand if you take that shortening out, this is what's going to be the result.
The other thing that I did, Jessie, is that there's an entire chapter about chocolate chip cookies and things of that genre. Each one of them is made a little bit differently because not only did I want different flavor profiles, but I wanted to introduce people to making a cookie with melted butter versus creamed butter versus adding a little bit of shortening. So each of the recipes offers a little bit of something new, either flavor wise or technique wise, that I'm hoping home bakers will take into the rest of their repertoire. I don't feel like any of the books I've ever written, and this is number 10, are the end-all. I feel like I'm trying to get people to treat baking more like an art and less of a strict science. Here's the technique so that you can go and explore and I hope that that's how people will use it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love. Now, I want to talk about your smash cookies. The cookies are inspired by New York City's wildly popular Levain Bakery cookie, which I won't lie is one of my personal faves. Can you describe that cookie for us and what you were looking for when you made your own version?
Zoë François:
Yeah. When I knew that I was going to write this book, I went to Instagram. I was headed to New York City and I said, "What are your favorite bakeries?" Levain was just by so many above and beyond the most popular of all of the cookies. I had famous bakers DMing me because they didn't want to be on record saying that this was their go-to cookie. They were addicted to it.
So I went and it is a buttery, rich, slightly underbaked giant cookie. I think the quality that gets people is that it's just shy of raw cookie dough and they're big and bold flavors. I tried making one. I got close to that feel of the cookie, but it felt too raw to me, so I just smashed it down and loved the results of it. So I kept it in the book just like that. I hadn't intended to. I was just like, "I'm going to smash it down and let it crisp up a little bit more, so it has just this perfect amount of not raw, but sort of this luscious rich interior and then this crispy outside because you bake it in a convection oven." And I just loved the results, so I kept it as is.
Jessie Sheehan:
But basically just a metal spatula pressing down on each cookie lightly-ish or gently-ish until it's about an inch high. So it's like-
Zoë François:
That's right.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. I love that. Okay. So in a medium bowl, at home, are you using glass? Are you using metal? Is there a brand that you like?
Zoë François:
Well, okay, here's the truth of it is I use glass. I always use glass because I'm used to teaching online, so people can see into it when I'm either doing an Instagram Live or on TV. So I've gotten very used to using glass. The other reason is because I usually microwave the butter, so I just put the butter into a big glass bowl and microwave it until it's melted.
Jessie Sheehan:
Basically, we're twinning. It's Frazzy Bringle and Sparkle Plenty at it again because I love a glass bowl, not because of the teaching so much, but because of the melting of the butter in the microwave. Okay. So in a medium glass bowl with a whisk, again, is there a type? Is there a brand? Are we thinking balloon whisk here?
Zoë François:
Yes. We're talking about an egg whisk, so that it has wider tines. You don't want a tight sauce whisk. A balloon whisk can often be the tines are too tight and things will get stuck in there, so I like an egg whisk.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep. So medium glass bowl with an egg whisk. So we're going to whisk together some all-purpose flour.
Zoë François:
For this particular recipe, I actually think a higher protein flour works really well, so a King Arthur all-purpose is awesome here.
Jessie Sheehan:
Great. With some baking powder, some baking soda, some kosher salt, whisk that all together and we'll set that aside. Then in a large glass bowl, we're going to whisk unsalted melted butter. And I just have to say that I love chocolate chip cookies with melted butter because for me at least, I think they're chewier. Did you consider using softened butter here or did you want the kind of texture that the melted butter is going to bring you?
Zoë François:
I tried everything and I landed on this because I just like the results better. I like when you use melted butter. It saturates the flour in such a way that you end up with a different texture in the baked cookie, and I just felt like it was closest to what I think Levain is up to. That recipe may be published at this point, but when I was creating this, I couldn't find it. Anyway, yes, I love the melted butter for this, but I also love... With the perfect cookie that we were talking about before, that is creamed butter. That is not melted. So really, just depending on what you want out of your cookie, you can go either way.
Jessie Sheehan:
So whisk our melted butter. We're going to add some brown sugar. I'm curious as to why you didn't add granulated as well. So many chocolate chip cookies have you add both. I think in the cookie lab, you said that all brown ends up making a more flavorful cookie and a slightly cakier cookie. Was that your thinking?
Zoë François:
Mm-hmm. Just granulated sugar, your cookies will tend to spread more. And I really wanted this. You bake it sort of as a baseball shape and I wanted it to keep its shape, so that I could smash it.
Jessie Sheehan:
It sounds so aggressive.
Zoë François:
Yeah. I wanted it not only for the flavor, but also for the spreadability of it.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then we're also going to add a little vanilla, and I know from having you on the pod before that you make your own vanilla.
Zoë François:
I do. I do.
Jessie Sheehan:
Until all of this is uniformly mixed, our sugar, our butter and our vanilla, then we're going to whisk in eggs one at a time until incorporated. Cold eggs, room temp eggs, does it matter here?
Zoë François:
Mm-hmm. It does not. It does not. You're chilling this dough anyway, so it's really the cold eggs. For this, if I'm creaming butter, I'm a little bit more inclined to say use room temperature, but with the melted butter and I'm going to chill the dough anyway, anything goes.
Jessie Sheehan:
If I want to create a cookie recipe that just can go into the oven right away and doesn't need to be chilled in terms of avoiding spread, not texturally. Always a cookie will taste better if it rests, but if I just want it in the oven quickly and I don't want it to spread, I'll use a cold egg to keep the cookie dough a little bit cooler, so that when it goes in the oven, it's less inclined to spread anyway. So sometimes I feel like there's-
Zoë François:
I love that.
Jessie Sheehan:
... room for a cold egg in Frazzy and Sparkle's lives.
Zoë François:
In this recipe, I also say melt the butter and then let it cool down a little bit. I feel like people get so intimidated and nervous about entering into recipes, especially baking, and really, it's okay. They may spread a tiny bit more or not spread as much, but they're going to be delicious, so there is a little bit of freedom.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to mix the dry ingredients into the wet with a wooden spoon, which just seemed so granny to me. I loved it. And I wondered, could we use a flexible spatula or do you feel-
Zoë François:
Of course.
Jessie Sheehan:
... like there is something different that happens if you're using a wooden spoon?
Zoë François:
No. I just use a wooden spoon, but you can. I mean, I would use sort of a stiff spatula. Just it's more that I don't want people to continue using their whisk because it'll just all end up jammed inside that whisk, and we've all pried our doughs out of a whisk before.
Jessie Sheehan:
So with a wooden spoon or a flexible spatula but not our whisk, we're going to mix our dry ingredients all at once until just incorporated. Dough will be thick but not dry. We're going to add some chopped bittersweet chocolate. You like a 72%, I think. Is there a brand that you like?
Zoë François:
Well, okay, I like a 72%. My husband likes semi-sweet chocolate. He doesn't like a super bitter chocolate and he also doesn't like that much chocolate in his chocolate chip cookies. So this is one of those places where I do give recommendations for what kind of chocolate to use, but I feel like people should use the kind of chocolate that they love. If it's chocolate chips, awesome, use them. I like to cut up a Valrhona or a really nice high-quality chocolate and I tend to use a bittersweet chocolate, but use the chocolate you love because you're going to taste it in these cookies.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're also going to add some toasted pecan pieces. I think for the Levain cookie, I think the standard is walnuts, which I also love, but I love pecans too. A couple of questions, you're saying pieces, so are you chopping before toasting and do you have a toasting technique?
Zoë François:
Well, I typically toast on a baking sheet just in the oven 350 until I smell them, which is five minutes or so. I typically just toast a bunch of pecans or whatever I'm toasting and then freeze them again, so that I have them on the ready and I don't have to do it for the particular recipe because then, you have to toast them and then you have to let them cool down again. So by doing them in a big batch and then freezing them again, I always have toasted nuts on hand, and you can use walnuts. You totally could.
Jessie Sheehan:
No. I love this. You say-
Zoë François:
Or any other thing.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. You say use macadamia nuts, coconut, dried cherries, M&M'S, or whatever you can... I love this. Whatever you can jam in there. We're going to line a baking sheet with parchment and this is just when we're chilling our dough balls. We'll do something else with the baking sheet when we bake off. But is there a brand of baking sheet that you're fond of or a type that works well?
Zoë François:
Well, I think I own every single baking sheets ever made and I have lots of them. Brand wise, I don't know. I have some from Nordic Ware that I really love and some from Williams Sonoma that I really love. I've kind of gravitate towards the gold ones at this point just because I find that the gold pans have the most even baking. The thing that I would say is more important than that even is the gauge of metal. You want a really heavy-duty baking pan, so that it doesn't warp in the oven when it hits a hot oven. Other than that, I'm using a cookie sheet that has sides.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love those Goldtouch, the Williams Sonoma ones. They're so pretty. They bake so beautifully. I love the-
Zoë François:
They bake beautiful.
Jessie Sheehan:
... loaf pans. I love it all. This is sort of interesting. At this point, you've sort of described the dough because we're going to be kind of pressing it together roughly into four and a half ounce, 120 gram dough balls. But you described it as almost being like a crumble topping at this point, that you would crumble on top of a pie for instance or a crisp or a crumble. It has almost a dry-ish quality to it or just a little of a clumpy quality.
Zoë François:
There's a couple of things that I've realized from making these so many times, is that if you mix this while the butter is still a little bit warm, so you've melted it, but it's still warm, it's going to absorb differently. The cookie dough will a little bit softer and it won't have that crumb topping. If you let the melted butter cool completely, you get more of that texture, but both ways work. So if you end up with one over the other, the other thing that's so fascinating is it also depends on the type of butter you're using, the type of flour you're using. So each little change that you make may change the dough just a tiny bit, and I have tried it with every kind of flour, every kind of butter, and it does change the dough a little bit, but they're all equally delicious.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to press the dough into these balls and they're kind of going to be a rough ball. We're not trying to smooth them out or roll them in our hands. We're not flattening them yet, and they're basically literally the size of a baseball at this point.
Zoë François:
They are. Yes. Yep.
Jessie Sheehan:
And we're going to refrigerate the dough balls on this prepared baking sheet for at least an hour. If we do want to bake off soon-ish and we're not resting for 24 hours, let's say, can we place in the freezer to speed up this process or do you want an hour in the fridge?
Zoë François:
The reason that I went with an hour in the fridge is so that they chill through to the center of that baseball shape. When you freeze something for a short amount of time, what typically happens is the outside is nice and chilled and firmed up, but the inside hasn't yet firmed up. And this cookie, I really wanted to be a thorough chill, so that it will bake a certain way and then we can smash them.
Jessie Sheehan:
Perfect.
Zoë François:
Having said that, if you do freeze them and then bake them, they're still going to be delicious. So each one of these things, and this is all kind of things that I touch on in the Baking Academy, is play with it. It may not be exactly the recipe as I wrote it and it'll turn into your recipe, and then you have to tell me on social media what you did, so I can try it.
Jessie Sheehan:
So if you have time, the cookies, you say, will be thicker. They'll have a slightly better shape, maybe more flavor, and a little more color if we chill for 24 to 36 hours, though absolutely not necessary. The cookies, they'll spread a little bit less and be a little bit chewier, would you say, if we give them that 24 hour?
Zoë François:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay.
Zoë François:
Yes. If you bake them after one hour in the refrigerator, they'll probably spread a little bit more. You'll still have to smash them, but to get them to be an inch, you won't have to smash them much. I've let them chill for 36 hours and bake them and you have to smash them quite a bit. That's how I prefer it, but like I said, try baking one at different stages and see which one you like best.
Jessie Sheehan:
So when we're ready to bake, we're going to heat our convection oven to 375, which you call a wind oven, which I'd never heard it described that way, or 400 degrees for a flat oven, which I also had never heard conventional called flat. I love these little insider baseball/professional baking terms. And I also want to understand why you're giving us both because I feel like most people do not offer up convection. They just offer up conventional.
Zoë François:
Yes. Okay. I'd like these cookies done in a convection oven because with a convection oven or wind oven, you literally have a wind blowing in your oven and it's just a much more intense heat, and the heat is traveling around and is more even and it's more intense. So the outside of this cookie is going to get that sort of caramelized golden color and a crispy sort of crunchy outside faster and more efficiently than if you have just conventional flat heat. So I really love this cookie baked with convection oven, but I understand that not everybody has a convection oven, so I also wanted to give the temperature and timing for just a conventional oven.
Jessie Sheehan:
Well, I also love that because for a conventional oven and for convection like conventional, which is what most people have I think, 400 is high, and that's such a smart Zoë Baking Academy/Lab situation factoid. You know what I mean? I'm sure the higher temperature is going to set the outside more quickly. It's not going to spread as much, et cetera, et cetera, because we're only really baking these 12 to 14 minutes, so it's not-
Zoë François:
Yeah. It's not a lot of time.
Jessie Sheehan:
... like they're in the oven for a crazy amount of time, but that higher temp allows us to get the texture and the amount of baking and color we need in that short amount of time. So this is a great Zoë tip. I love this. We have this very hot temp, so one way to deal with that and avoid the bottoms of our cookies burning, let's say, is you're doubling up two baking sheets, and then lining the top one with our parchment because that extra layer of metal protects the cookies from the heat coming up from the bottom. I love that.
Zoë François:
Okay. There are those insulated cookie sheets that you can buy that I have never owned or used, but this is essentially doing that. By doubling up a cookie sheet, you are creating a little insulation between the two. You have the double sheets, but then you also have that air pocket, so you're essentially making your own insulated cookie sheet. I don't love cookie sheets without sides because I can't reuse them for anything else, so I like to own baking sheet that has the sides because then I can use it for cakes and all sorts of things. I love equipment, but I love equipment that I can use in multiple ways.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to evenly space six chilled dough balls on our prepared double baking sheets. We'll leave two inches between them so we can smash them after baking, so they must not spread too much if we're-
Zoë François:
No.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Zoë François:
Like I said, depending on when you bake them, they'll spread a little bit more in some instances and less in others, but this is a very safe spacing.
Jessie Sheehan:
Then we're going to bake one double sheet at a time, which I love. I always love to cook one tray of cookies or one layer of cakes in my oven at a... I know people like to fill their ovens. I feel like the baking is never as even. Is that why you do that with this-
Zoë François:
Yeah. Absolutely. I wrote them to get the maximum deliciousness out of the recipe and not necessarily holiday efficiency. I know that sometimes during the holidays when you're baking so much, you're going to need multiple racks in your oven, and I talk about that in the Baking Academy, but for the typical baking, we don't need to be smashing our oven full because that changes the heat and it's hard to keep track of them all. So I just find, for success, it's better if you can bake one sheet at a time.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to place it in the oven one sheet at a time, 12 to 14 minutes until golden brown on the outside, soft in the center. We're going to remove our double sheets from the oven, and while they're still hot, right, immediately, we're going to gently smash the cookies with a metal spatula. I had two questions. I think I know the answer because I think you would get stripes, but I feel like my metal spatulas are like fish spatulas.
Zoë François:
Oh, yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Which have-
Zoë François:
Oh, I've done it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. So would you recommend that we either have a hard plastic spatula if we don't have metal? But we want something flat. The fish spatula is probably not what we're looking for.
Zoë François:
Yeah. I've done it. I have done it. The issue with doing a fish spatula or one that has the holes in it is that the chocolate wants to ooze out and then cling to the spatula. So then you just need to scrape that chocolate right back onto the cookie. But either one will do it. I have done this with all kinds of spatulas, plastic spatulas, metal spatulas. As long as they're plastic tempered, so that they won't melt into your-
Jessie Sheehan:
I even wondered if you could use a glass or something with a large enough flat bottom to just sort of press them down.
Zoë François:
Yes. Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
But I agree with you. I'm not a smasher, but I am a presser of cookies because I don't love domed cookies. And unlike your beloved, and I love her too, Sarah Keiffer pan-banging method, I just press with a spatula, and I have found that you can mess up the look of your cookie when your chocolate is sticking.
Zoë François:
It's the cookie that's on the cover of the book. It is a big, juicy, beautiful cookie but messy. There is chocolate. It's sort of a chocolate melt in your hands and face and loveliness. I'm not that worried about what they look like because they're delicious.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to press until they're about one inch thick. We're going to let them cool for about five minutes on the baking sheets, move them to a cooling rack. But is there a reason we can't just let them sit on the baking sheets? Do you like to take them off after five minutes because you're worried something's going to happen if you left them on? Or is it more that you might want to reuse your sheets and you just don't want people to move the cookies too soon?
Zoë François:
That's interesting. Both. For this one, you absolutely could just leave it there and let them cool on the sheet. Sometimes if I feel really strongly that you need to take them off or the cookie will dry out, I'll say that in the recipe, but for the most part, I have a thousand cookie sheets. But I know that the typical home baker doesn't, so I'm just really trying to be aware that I don't use 10 cookie sheets because who other than crazy bakers like us has that many? Part of it is I'm just trying to be aware of equipment that people have, and honestly, I wasn't even aware of it. My recipe testers made me aware of it. They're like, "You have to be aware that not everybody has an insane stock of sheets like you do."
Jessie Sheehan:
And then we're going to enjoy this deliciousness, slightly warm or at room temp, and I wondered if you could just quickly tell us about the variation, the brown butter smash blondies. Oh, my gosh.
Zoë François:
Yeah. Okay. I love, adore brown butter. I think it adds a richness and a nuttiness and you can really just change the complexity and sophistication of a recipe by just adding brown butter, but brown butter behaves differently in a recipe. It no longer has the milk solids and water in it, so it behaves almost like an oil, so things tend to spread a little bit more. So I love the flavor of this, but they were spreading a lot, so I thought I would just bake them in a pan. And then of course, that becomes blondies and they're just delicious. So either way, you can either bake them with the big baseball shape and smash them or just add your brown butter and bake them in a pan, and they're great both ways.
Jessie Sheehan:
Well, thank you so much for chatting with me today, Zoë, and I just want to say that you are my cherry pie.
Zoë François:
Aw, it was such a pleasure always, and happy baking.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's it for today's show. Thank you to California Prunes for supporting this episode. Follow She's My Cherry Pie on your favorite podcast platform, so you never miss an episode. You can find today's recipe at cherrybombe.com, plus tickets and more information about my book tour, which kicks off on September 24th in Manhattan. 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, Catherine Baker, and Elizabeth Vogt. Our associate producer is Jenna Sadhu and our content and partnerships manager is Londyn Crenshaw. Thank you so much for listening to She's My Cherry Pie, and happy baking.