Twenty Questions, Shared. Round Three!
If you follow social media at all, you will see that popular Quarantine Entertainment appears to center around home baking — so much so that there are shortages of yeast, and finding flour is an exercise in patience. For M and S, baking is nothing new. M has been baking for family and friends since childhood, and S took it a step farther — opting to complete culinary school after college, with a degree in Professional Pastry Arts. S has worked in several professional kitchens, M just at home, but we both adore baking, and the blogs are right — baking is a fine source of practical entertainment, whether sheltering at home, or wandering into the kitchen with a hankering for sweet rolls.
In our continual mother-daughter recipe exchange and texted photos of our baked goods for inspiration and jealousy-making purposes, we realized that baking is a really important part of both of our lives in our separate kitchens. In fact, for Easter this year, S asked for the Bunny to bring her some baking staples, and Bunny was happy to fill a cart for delivery to her city apartment. We both made Hot Cross Buns using the same recipe, and shared this Easter morning treat apart-together. Baking is economical, creative, useful, and a great way to show someone you care (just ask H and B, the lucky recipients of the products of this kitchen time). So, moving onward then to another round of Twenty Questions, Shared. It’s our game where we agree on a topic, each ask 10 questions of the other, then compile the results. Here we go!
Twenty Questions, Shared. Round Three. Theme: BAKING
Set 1. (Questions asked by daughter S, answered by mom M.)
- Top 3 favorite flavor combos in baked goods, to eat or to cook with, go!
M: In breads, I always love an enriched dough, with eggs, real butter and milk as a component. That goes in my cinnamon rolls and even the homemade whole wheat loaf currently rising in my kitchen.
2. What are the must-haves for your baking pantry, the staples you absolutely refuse to go without?
M: I must have yeast (and I buy it in pound bags at the Amish store when I visit my mom in rural Maryland, freezing it and keeping small amounts in a jar in my fridge), Kosher salt, baking powder and soda for muffins and quick breads, my homemade vanilla, butter, white and whole wheat flours, chocolate chips, cinnamon and raisins.
3. What is your favorite kitchen or baking tool?
M: Just one? My top contenders are my KitchenAid stand mixer — great at creaming butter and sugar, whipping eggs, and pulling a recipe together — as well as my bread machine, which I use to mix dough and as a proofing cabinet (I rarely bake in the machine — the loaves are homely, and there’s a big hole in the center from the mixing blade, but it does a nice job of making dough ready to work with.) I also appreciate my dough cutter/scraper and parchment paper. Then there are my hands — kneading and shaping bread is one of the best culinary therapies out there.
4. What is your favorite baking-related smell and why? (I know, this is a hard one!)
M: Oooh…I have such good associations with the smell of my Christmas stollen. It takes a couple days to put this one together, and I usually am baking it at night after dinner, so we sleep to the good smells of sweet bread. Too, to get properly “stale” like a good German recipe, I start this one about 6 weeks before Christmas, so that smell is the signal that the season is beginning.
5. What is the craziest thing you’ve ever baked, or the thing you’re most proud of having made?
M: I’ve enjoyed the themed cakes I made for occasions for you — like the Magic Kindergarten Fairy bowl-and-dollar-store-Barbie cake I made for you when starting school, and the school bus cake for your birthday party. I also impressed myself with the Santa bread I made for a work lunch. Sometimes, the magic works.
6. Have you ever had something you were trying to bake absolutely fail — what was it, and what did you do with it?
M: One year, I decided I was going to make a three-layer orange chocolate cake for my birthday. (I enjoy making my birthday cakes, because it’s a great excuse to make something wild.) Two chocolate layers, the center layer orange, and a couple fillings and frostings, all made from scratch. Although I lined my cake pans with parchment and greased everything, the cakes still stuck, and were incredibly fragile. So that year I served an orange chocolate birthday trifle! It was still yummy…if not the Insta-worthy treat I’d imagined. (Luckily, Instragram hadn’t been invented yet…)
7. What is your favorite thing that someone else has ever baked for you, and what made it so special?
M: I have lots of those — there were the chocolate croissants you made in culinary school and hid from your roommates until I visited you. That was special for the stealth factor…and the amazing chocolate hidden in there. There’s my mom’s Christmas cranberry bread, with each fresh cranberry hand-cut in half. That ties to earliest Christmas memories, good smells, and now connects us as I spent time last winter at her home, helping mom, who is turning 93, make that bread. (She still cuts the cranberries — I’m in charge of mix and measure!) There are my Grandmother Blanche’s refrigerator rolls — delicious memories of our summer trips to her home, and also of the sneakiness of a sister who begged for the recipe as a wedding gift, and who promptly shared it with all of us. This roll is now a part of our Christmas, and I feel that I’m channeling my grandma every time I made those rolls.
8. What part of baking is your weirdest favorite — we’re talking something that most people would probably think of as a chore but that you always look forward to doing?
M: I love the “hands on” part of working with a dough or shaping cookies — even if it’s wet and sticky and my hands get covered in stuff — feeling the character of the dough change as the gluten is formed, or seeing the rolls of cookie balls form is worth all the bleck on my hands and countertop.
9. What is the first thing you ever remember baking?
M: The first thing I baked all on my own was a nutmeg pound cake. I was about 7 years old, got a recipe and permission, and went for it. It was…dense (I don’t think I yet had a concept of creaming butter and sugar, and I know I was only allowed a wooden spoon to do it with) and my nutmeg application was…a little liberal. I remember the good smell of it baking, the sight of the rise, and the fact that I was able to successfully get it out of the pan! I also remember my family’s reviews were…well…luckily I improved with practice. And access to more cooking equipment as I got older.
10. Do you remember the moment you realized you wanted to be — or maybe already were — a baker?
M: That first pound cake got me hooked! After that, my dad got me a kids’ cookie cookbook I wanted from the Scholastic Book order at school…and my snickerdoodles (baking attempt #2) were much better. From that point on, I was pretty much the house baker. In a family of 7, treats didn’t last long, so I had lots of opportunity to practice desserts and quick breads, moving on to bread and cakes and pies. Baking is one of my major creative outlets — I enjoy it, because the outcome is practical — we get to eat my “art.”
Set 2. (Questions asked by mom M, answered by daughter S.)
- What is your favorite recipe or type of food to bake?
S: Cookies!! Sometimes the simple things are the most delightful. I love the fact that you can go from, “Man, I want some cookies,” to 20 minutes later eating warm gooey cookies, just from ingredients that are in the pantry. Yummm….
2. Have any secret tips or tricks?
S: Too many! My biggest one is: mise, mise, mise (prep, prep, prep)!! Between pastry school, restaurant work, bakery management, and test kitchen work, I’ve learned from experience that the easiest way to make mistakes is to neglect your mise en place. Always read the entire recipe start to finish before you start in on it, and always get every single ingredient out, measured and ready before taking on step one. Always!
3. What’s been the most beautiful/delicious/insert positive adjective here success?
S: The thing I’m most proud of for its beauty is the wedding cake I made for our cakes final in pastry school, but the thing I’m proudest of recently was the pie I made for B’s most recent birthday. He requested something that combined the flavors of horchata — a rice and almond drink I’d never even had — and derby pie — another dessert I’d never tried. I made homemade horchata from scratch, adapted a pecan pie filling recipe to include the horchata, and ended up with a beautiful pie that somehow tasted nothing like horchata or derby pie but exactly like a warm chocolate chip cookie. It was a big hit at the Friendsgiving/birthday dinner we threw for him, even though everyone was stuffed on all of the delicious comfort foods all of our friends had made and brought!
4. What’s been your most disastrous baking disaster?
S: Oh boy… There were some true baking travesties in pastry school. I have not-so-fond memories of standing over an ice cream machine just silently crying… I think the worst was during our Level 2 practical, when I absolutely ruined the batch of lemon curd I needed for my lemon meringue tart. I had to completely throw out the first batch, and I remember working through dinner time (the class ran 5–10pm, with half an hour for dinner at 8), blinking back tears and just thinking “Breathe, Sara. Breathe.” I thought for sure I’d had the biggest mess-up of the entire class, but I was so honed in and focused on my work that I didn’t realize that literally every single other student had to work through their dinner too! Ended up getting an A on that tart, but I can’t look at lemon curd the same again.
5. Do you bake for anyone in particular? (“Yourself” is also an okay answer.)
S: Oh definitely for myself, but for B too. He’s the type that will come home with flowers or propose a surprise date night out. That’s not my style — but I will surprise him with cinnamon rolls or chocolate chip cookies! We’ve also been enjoying baking together on the weekends lately, giving our future workweek selves something sweet to look forward to at the end of each day.
6. If you could own and run your dream baking emporium, what would it be? Restaurant? Tea shop? Bakery? Other?
S: Hmm…is it fair to say I just wouldn’t? I’ve managed a bakery and worked in a restaurant, and for me the shine wears off of that work as soon as you get into the nitty gritty of the business side of it, the realities of invoices and inventory and landlords and long hours. I’m glad to have had those experiences, but I wouldn’t want to do it again. If I had to pick, I’d say a bakery, specifically something with healthier options (pastries you can have for breakfast and not tank an hour later!) and with allergy-friendly options.
7. If you were put in charge of the neighborhood bake sale, what would the rules be?
S: No dessert repeats! I’d want contributors to have to be really creative, so everyone would have to compare recipes and make sure there aren’t any multiples of any dessert type. I’d also want there to be an even mix of salty or savory snacks with sweet treats.
8. Are any particular baked goods especially evocative to you — bringing back strong memories?
S: Your raspberry sacher torte, and Grandma H’s raspberry preserve-topped brownies. I have always loved raspberry and chocolate together, and felt so grown up and sophisticated and connected to two of my favorite lady role models through the fact that we all loved this silly, delicious thing.
9. If visiting a bakery, what would be the treat you would choose to buy? And do you have a favorite bakery?
S: My go-to method is always to get the most unique, most new, most “wait, they did that??” thing I can find. If I’ve never tried it or never heard of it, I want to try it! I don’t have a favorite bakery per se, but B and I love going out to get fancy doughnuts, usually either at Dough or Doughnut Plant here in the city. They have some crazy-fun flavors: hibiscus, black sesame, matcha, passionfruit — and it’s always fun to taste the one that sounds the most out-there.
10. You’ve worked professionally as a baker, have a culinary school degree in professional pastry arts — what’s a story from either school or work that still strikes you as unbelievable?
S: Ooh, great question. Rather than a specific story, I think the thing that I still think back on and go “wow,” is probably some of the sugar and chocolate work that I did in school. Blown sugar swans, sugar paste lilies, chocolate butterflies, molded sugar roses. I still can’t believe that that’s something my hands can actually make.
Well, if that hasn’t made you hungry yet, then we must be doing something wrong…better get baking on something else! Whether it’s intricate cakes or the simplest of cookies, baking is truly rewarding in so many ways. One of our favorite rewards? Eating what you’ve made!
Waving from our kitchens (and yes, everything you see here was made by us!),
M & S
