Baking

Spoon bread is an old Southern favorite, and it’s beloved in many parts of Texas, too. I’ve heard numerous stories about the origin of its name—some say it is derived from a similar-sounding Indian precursor, others suggest it’s named for the utensil customarily used to eat this softer, smoother version of cornbread. I often bring spoon bread to potlucks, where it can be counted on to stir up old memories. (A version reportedly was served at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello.) This recipe came from Gangy—the favorite grandmother of one of my oldest and dearest friends, Kristen Ohmstede. Kristen’s grandmother served it often with butter and blackberry jam and to this day, that’s the only way Kristen will eat it.

I first tasted Ralph Watterson’s Six Rivers Tuna last year when he and his group of bicycling buddies passed through Frederickburgs on a four-day cycling trip. His tuna provides hearty lunches for the group as they cover 300 miles and cross six rivers on their annual spring cycling trip. I asked for the recipe, which he described as his mother’s version, plus a few embellishments of his own. I made it, tried it out at the bakery, and our tuna sandwich sales skyrocketed. Ralph’s Six Rivers Tuna is now a part of our regular menu. Given its proven track record as a recipe that travels, I figured it would be great for an outdoor picnic or a potluck. On bike trips, Ralph says he often serves it with crackers. I wanted something more substantial and created a soft, honey-kissed roll that when split and filled with tuna makes a memorable and satisfying sandwich that travels with ease.

I recently happened upon a sand dollar cookie stamp at Der Kuchen Laden, Frederickburg’s topnotch kitchen store, and snapped it up, thinking what a great hit beach-themed cookies would be during Gulf Coast getaways. For kids summering on Bolivar Peninsula, a day at the beach meant a fistful of sand dollars, sugar shells, and colorful beach glass as smooth and opaque as Texas honey. Sand dollars were the hardest to find because the disk-shaped marine creatures habitually burrow into the sand. We’d swim out to the sand bars and dig for dollars by burying our feet a few inches into the sand and sliding along until our toes hit the critters’ hard internal shells. We’d pluck them out of the sand and haul them home. Popular legend holds that sand dollars are really mermaid’s coins. If I’d heard that as a little girl, I surely would have gathered even more. This recipe is a variation on the common shortbread cookie, without eggs or other leavening, because, according to the cookie stamp people, the rising of the cookies obscures the pattern left by the stamp. Makes sense to me. Although it is expensive, I like to use vanilla bean paste because it has little flecks of vanilla seed in it, giving the cookie a sandy, beach look. It is available at kitchen specialty stores and at many upscale grocers.

I’ve never forgotten the icebox pies I used to eat as a child at Luby’s Cafeteria. Those pies, along with the jewel-colored servings of Jell-O, were too tantalizing to resist. I always selected an icebox pie and a bowl of Jell-O, agonizing over which color to choose. I always finished the pie, but never touched the Jell-O. The Jell-O was for looks, the pie for flavor. My version of icebox pie is a stunning party animal—dramatic and devilishly rich. For parties, I prepare this recipe in stages: the crust one day, the filling the next, and the whipped cream topping the day of my party. A word of warning: These are large and very rich pies. Only under extreme circumstances do I recommend eating a whole one in a single sitting. (For example, you’re starring in a new movie and have been asked by your big-time director to gain fifty pounds pronto.) So you may wish to serve a half or quarter pie per person.

I know it’s tough to keep things fresh in the salt air, but my favorite cousin’s pineapple Bundt cake stays delectably moist for days—even at the beach. Sometimes I make it ahead and tote it to the beach; other times I make it there and keep it on hand. Who knows when we might be inspired to host a last-minute party? My cousin Vicki has been making this cake forever. She still bakes it in her grandmother Hille’s cast-iron Bundt pan, which she inherited along with a boxful of prized family recipes. Vicki says, “Every time I make this cake I feel like my grandmother is watching over me.”

These light, melt-in-your-mouth cookies are named for my good friend Kim, who started baking them as a child with her Scandinavian grandmother. While Kim makes them with her kids during the Christmas holidays, I think they are great for a spring or summer party. I tint the butter icing a light pink or pale blue. They always disappear quickly: kids love them, adults can’t resist them, and I never tire of them.

This party-perfect showpiece recipe is pure simplicity: fresh plums, flour, sugar, butter, salt, and water. Once it cools, free the tart from its springform pan and you’ll have a golden-crusted beauty with a jewel-toned plum center that advertises—in an elegant but low-key way—the wonders of summertime fruit. If you feel your guests need more, serve it with a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream.

My backyard fig tree is not always the most reliable producer, but when I have figs I make this dessert. It pairs an old-fashioned pound cake (recipe courtesy of my great-aunt Emma) with a chunky sauce made with my homegrown Brown Turkey figs. I love this dessert’s down-home elegance—a figgy topping poured over individual pound cakes baked in cupcake pans. You can use any fresh fig that’s available—light green, brown, or purple. In Texas you’ll most likely find Brown Turkeys, which I’ve been told were planted throughout the state by early homesteaders. If fresh figs are not available, use Bosc pears or tart apples. If you want a large, belt-busting dessert, use Texas-size cupcake pans. Standard-size cupcake pans will give you double the servings.

Eating ice cream sandwiches always brings out the kid in me. Why not spread the joy? At a recent party, more than a few giggles erupted when I handed out overstuffed ice cream sandwiches for dessert. I owe my renewed interest in ice cream sandwiches to a herd of Belted Galloway cows that I often spot as I head home on Route 290 just outside of town. Those dark cows with the big white stripe running right around their middles remind me of great big ice cream sandwiches. I found the perfect recipe for the chocolate cookie part in an old favorite of mine, the Deer Valley Ranch Family Cookbook, a spiral-bound treasure trove of recipes from the kitchen of a Colorado dude ranch. The soft, slightly cakey cookies are the perfect foil for a creamy vanilla ice cream center. These cookies are also fabulous alone: sometimes I don’t quite get around to filling them with ice cream and before I know it they are gone.

My friends Larry Butler and Carol Ann Sayle, owners of Boggy Creek Farm in Austin, sell the most fabulous smoked tomatoes. I’ve used them to enhance meat dishes and salads. But I’d never tried them in a bread or scone, so I came up with this recipe to showcase them. As soon as the first fragrant scone came out of the oven, I knew I’d be delighted with the result. I even devised a way to use the day-old scones to stuff my Three Pigs pork tenderloin (page 33). As much as I love Larry’s smoked tomatoes, I must admit the scones are delicious made with any high-quality sun dried tomatoes.

All you really need for a good dessert is some good jam and a little pastry in your freezer. This follows the same principle as the Cherry Almond Tart (page 163), but makes use of Blueberry Lemon Jam (page 10). You can substitute another homemade or store-bought jam of your choice.

Why wouldn’t you bake cookies for yourself? Cookie dough freezes beautifully, and if you cut it into portions before freezing, you can have a plastic bag filled with the potential for cookies any time you feel like it. These salty-sweet cookies use one of my go-to ingredients: homemade nut butter. I use a Vita-Mix to churn just about any freshly roasted nut into butter, but you can accomplish the same trick with a food processor and a little oil. A food processor nut butter won’t be as super-smooth as one made in a Vita-Mix, but in a cookie like this, a little sandy texture from the bits of ground pistachio is a good thing.

I know I’m not alone when I say that snickerdoodles were my favorite cookie as a kid. Hell, they’re pretty much my favorite cookie as an adult. My mother’s 1970s recipe used shortening, but I prefer to make them with all butter, to deepen their flavor with brown sugar, and to scent them heavily with ethereal cardamom. This recipe calls for them to cool on a wire rack, but do yourself a favor and eat at least a few while they’re still warm, and be prepared to go weak-kneed. Snickerdoodles will keep at room temperature, in an airtight container, for about 3 days.

Crusty, chewy, salty dinner rolls whose textures and flavors play wonderfully off the slowly melting pat of sweet cream butter you place inside: these are the perfect accompaniment to the salad or cheese course, and will provide an irresistible distraction from the main course of prime rib or leg of lamb. If you have children, keep the rolls on reserve until after the kids say they can’t eat another bit of their meat or veggies. Then sit back and behold how they magically create enough room for a marathon runner’s share of salty-yeasty carbs.

In the physical universe, there is precious little closer to perfection than an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie. Unlike standard cookies, they are never cakey or disappointingly hard, not too sweet, with the butter and oats finding common cause in each other’s virtues. So how do you improve upon perfection? Topping these cookies with a beautiful flaky salt brings out the cow in the butter, the hills in the oats, and the jungle in the chocolate. Topping them with the salt rather than just adding it to the batter sets the salt free to work its mojo with each of the ingredients as they combine in your mouth. For these cookies, I prefer Bali Rama Pyramid sea salt, which has really cool hollow pyramidal crystals and a great, snappy impact. The advantage of using a flake salt here is that it remains delicate even after baking. The Bali Rama Pyramid salt does a spectacular job of bringing just enough drama to the cookies to make them sparkle while keeping everything mellow enough to assure they remain a comfort food. Other good choices are Cyprus flake or Halen Môn, or, in a pinch, any good fleur de sel.

Imagine running through the tessellated shadows of the forest with a mustard jar of just-caught pollywogs and a sharpened stick for a spear, scrambling up the levee and lunging into culverts, your dog baying ahead in the distance. You slip on a wet log, stumble, catch yourself on the mossy shoulder of a boulder, oblivious to the mud and moist lichen flecking your arms. You are lean, quick, alert, leaping streams and plunging through dense brush. Lungs filled with the crisp air, perspiration on your back, eyes wild with happiness—you are free, alive, home. The old hound nuzzles up to your hand as you mount the porch steps, your mother’s greeting at the screen door, the aroma of cherry pie on the windowsill, your life a storybook distilled in the sweet mirth of salt.

Most flat breads carry with them a long list of social and culinary baggage. Pita, matzo, injera, casava, rieska: you have to take the bread’s cuisine with you to the table. The pretzel is unique because you can take it wherever you want! It’s a snack food through and through, though its twisted form is steeped in folklore and symbolism. The first pretzels were made in monasteries in the seventh century, and given out on church feast days. The shape is said to represent a child’s arms in prayer. I think a better resemblance is found in the image of two wrestlers drinking beer—which monks also invented. The smoky majesty of Maine hickory smoked salt is a miracle that the monks would surely have prayed for.

Salt that is everywhere is nowhere. Burying food in layers of salted homogeneity gives you nothing so much as a lot of salt. Yes, salt can be used to subjugate other flavors, bending them to an evil imperial will, enslaving them to the offensive goal of not offending anyone. The dark lords of homogenous salting hold cocktail parties where they try to keep everybody in the usual safe conversational ruts—children, sprinkler systems, geopolitics—while you, a rebel with your feathered hairdo or cinnamon buns attached to the sides of your head, try to bring light, freedom, and individual expression to the sensory galaxy. Allow your ingredients to converse, each reflecting upon what it has to say before sharing with the others. Heavily salted breads and presalted butter have possibly done more than any other two foods to reduce the net amount of mirth and pleasure experienced on earth. Unsalt them, and then set them free with your salt. A small amount of salt can be added to round out the bread’s toasty flavors without detracting from the salt’s romp through fields of buttered grain.

If nut brittle is my muse, blondie pie is our love child. It is, to date, my favorite pie we’ve ever created. Dense, sweet, salty, nutty, chock-full of textures large and small, it’s perfect to grab a piece of on the go and crush as if it were a slice of pizza.

In February 2008, I traveled with Dave to Deauville, France, for the third annual Omnivore Food Festival. The two of us were like fish out of water in this off-season beach town. Straight off the plane from New York and jet-lagged, we were left to our own devices in the tiny, remote town to gather Asian ingredients for a kimchi demo. We agreed to wake up at 6 a.m. the next day to get breakfast and get going. We met drowsy and confused in the empty hotel lobby and proceeded to sleepwalk through the ghost town until we could smell fresh-baked bread and saw a light on in the only bakery in town. Dave took charge and pointed at nearly everything in the joint, as that’s how we eat when we’re abroad. “I’m full” is not a phrase you’re allowed to use—such is the price of traveling with chef Dave Chang. We found a bench outside and unwrapped this mound of bread that looked like it had some sort of creamy gravy inside. Still half-asleep, we wrestled the filled bread ball out of the bag and bit in. When you are having a food moment, it’s like tasting food for the first time. Your eyes open wide and then close, as if in slow motion. You chew as if no food with flavor has ever touched your tongue before and what you are eating at that very moment is what will shape all future food opinions you will ever have. That was our 6:05 a.m. February morning in Deauville. Neither of us speaks French, so we decided to call it what it was, a volcano—an explosion of potato, lardons, and cheese like no other. We raced each other to the bakery every subsequent morning that week. And on the plane ride home, we agreed that if and when we opened a bakery, it must serve our very own volcano.