By Karen Ranz
I hadn’t realized that the baking phenomenon that is Dorie Greenspan — winner of five James Beard awards, over a dozen books published, an internet sensation with the spontaneous upstart of a “Tuesdays with Dorie” — co-authored “Baking with Julia,” bonding being over both being home cooks. (Of course, Julia was trained in France, that much is well known.) This is the Dorie Greenspan that’s credited on the cover of a Julia Child baking book as “Written by.” I’d had no idea.
Dorie’s also the recipient of two awards from the International Association of Culinary Professionals and, no less, one from the French government in recognition of the food writing she’s done representing that country. Impressive. Stories abound of people baking their way through her books to maintain their sanity through Covid-19.
So there was a splash in October of 2021 when “Baking with Dorie” arrived. She’s also the darling of podcast hosts. With her gamin haircut, petite frame and winning smile, everyone wants to know Dorie it seems. And the book, well, there’s no wonder it was another New York Times bestseller and on other lists of gift books that year.
It’s loaded with interesting, fun and challenging recipes, but written so novice bakers can be proud of their accomplishments. My copy has a multitude of sticky notes marking pages. My first project was with a friend, the French Riviera Lemon Tart, a simple but elegant pat-in-place shortbread crust in a fluted tart pan with a satiny lemon filling and a mirror finish gloss.
Her flavor profiles can be very forward, especially the lemon and chocolate recipes I tested with great success. I was even happy with my Apricot and Pistachio–Olive Oil Cake after a bone-headed mistake being over-generous with the butter. But I opted to use saffron and orange zest in the batter along with the apricot jam and chopped pistachios with wonderful results. Bone-headed baking the first time through a recipe still produces good dessert, right? Sometimes it does.
There’s an impressive lemon layer cake of four preparations that I’d love to try someday — lemony layers soaked with a lemon-sugar syrup, filled with lemon cream and frosted with lemon buttercream. The Lisbon Chocolate Cake on the cover screams, “Try me!”
She’s got a couple of good slice and bake freezer cookies — with variations — to have something quickly baked for drop-in guests, and her signature Gouda Gougeres recipe, also ready to bake, is also here.
From a trip down-under, there are Lamingtons, sweet little genoise petit fours soaked in chocolate syrup and rolled in coconut; Glenorchy Flapjacks are oat, coconut, ginger and raisin granola-type bars.
Look up a YouTube video featuring her Parfait-Layered Vacherin, one I’ve kept for another day. It’s a whipped froth of cream, egg yolks and meringue folded together with a base and filling of crushed meringue kisses and a caramel drizzle holding down butter-toasted sliced almonds across the top. It’s very easy, elegant and frozen, so do-ahead — really great for dinner parties! There’s also a slim candied almond tart calling for a full 2 cups of sliced almonds shellacked in caramel topping a rich custard over another shortbread.
For the curious there’s the second reference I’ve seen in short order for hermits, “more a cake than a cookie,” as being a true New England recipe.
I appreciate that her ratios of fat to flour are often more generous. She’s generous with the amount of buttercream in her recipes too. I like that she includes two basic cake recipes, the first a butter cake with multiple variations that I made with fresh plums.
When I bake, I write out in big block letters the ingredients list and bracket that into the basic method that I know works — sifting the dry ingredients, creaming the butter, sugar and egg mixture into an emulsion, and measuring the liquid for a butter cake. A genoise relies not so much on baking powder as on the air whipped separately into the yolks and whites which are then folded all together with the dry ingredients. Given there’s no Strunk and White Elements of Style for recipes, this is what I’ve found works best for me. I don’t reach for glasses and get aggravated, losing my place. Sometimes I find myself shoe-horning recipes into the baking method I know works. It’s science.
The two rules of cake baking I know are these: 1) Never mess too much with a recipe that works; and 2) NEVER OVERMIX A CAKE.
So it was confounding to see her Everything Cake basic butter cake recipe call for stirring a stick of melted butter into the already mixed cake batter at the end. The cake was flat, dense, and the crumb was ragged. My tasters said the flavor of the citrus I zested came through well, but, “It’s not cake.” So if it were not a borrowed copy, I’d have taken a black marker to it.
Her Chocolate Party Cake, another butter cake, called for an extra half cup of boiling water to be mixed in, again after the cake was already mixed. Bone-headed yet once more, I skipped it, and the cake could’ve used the extra liquid as simply more milk. But the flavor was great and the butter cream more than generous for a layer cake that’s not particularly tall. I can definitely see the popularity of this cake.
If you’ve got occasions coming this spring and summer, or reason to take a dive into a fully engrossing baking book to expand your repertoire some, this may be the book you’ve been missing. It’s never too late to visit your local Vermont bookseller and pick up a copy. Ask them to order it if it’s already been sold. Dorie’s fan base is huge for good reason.
