If I could only have one book on desserts...this may be it*

 

Classic Home Desserts: A Treasury of Heirloom and Contemporary Recipes from Around the World

By Richard Sax

Houghton Mifflin 1994

Where to begin with this wonderful book? It is a trove of solid recipes, historical information, and useful tips. It is huge--nearly 700 pages and over 350 recipes. Everything I have tried has been good. It won multiple awards, including IACP and James Beard awards. And it's as good to read as it is to cook from.

When I need to bake something for a group, I turn here. When I need a comfort dessert, I turn here. When I need a basic dessert formula, I turn here. The flavors are always spot on, the instructions clear, and I usually find some inspiration just by turning the pages

Sax wrote several cookbooks as well as writing for Bon Appétit. His voice is friendly, assured, and calm. The word "classic" in the title is telling--very little fusion or forced pairings are present. This is not competitive cooking, but practical and joyous cooking.

Although the subtitle references world cuisine, my experience with the book is that it is dominated by American and British cookery, followed by French and European. And that's ok--it's big enough as it is.

One of the fun extras is the use of sidebars highlighting historic recipes and accounts of traditional foodways. Another plus is how many recipes can be converted into breakfast items!

Sax died way too young. I would have enjoyed more from him. But at least we have this great book. Here's what I have made from this:

Coffee Coffee Cake with Espresso Glaze--it's like a cappuccino flavored sour cream coffee cake!

New York-Style Sour Cream Cheesecake--I am not a huge cheesecake fan, but I have family members who are, so I make this for them. It not only has the right flavor (not too sweet) and texture (dense), it also one of the simpler recipes, with no fussing about with a water bath. Sax says it is based on Lindy's original recipe.

Double Chocolate Pudding--Pudding for grownups, this uses both cocoa and chocolate. The result is actually a tad closer to a mousse than a pudding, but it has excellent flavor.

Reuben's Legendary Apple Pancake--a kind of Dutch baby with apples. The whole thing is repeatedly flipped and caramelized with butter and sugar. I'm sure the original at Reuben's was fantastic, and Sax's is also delicious, but over the years, my tinkering has resulted in something different from halving the recipe, ditching the raisins, wanting a higher apple percentage, and trying to make the flipping go more easily--no matter how hard I tried the sheer volume of the original recipe in the 8 inch pan just didn’t work for me. Here’s where I am so far, but this is one that always comes out a little differently. Feel free to make it your own.

Caramelized Apple Pancake

1 large apple

3 Tbs butter

3 Tbs sugar

1 Tbs brandy or bourbon

2 eggs

¼ c. milk

½ tsp vanilla

pinch of salt

¼ c. flour

Peel and slice the apple. In a 10-inch nonstick skillet sauté apple slices in 1 Tbs of butter until tender and golden. Add 1 Tbs of sugar and toss. Let the apples caramelize a little then, carefully, add the brandy. Let the alcohol cook off.

While apples cook, mix the eggs with the milk, vanilla and salt. Whisk in flour to make a smooth batter.

Crank up the sauté pan with the apples and add a Tbs of butter, when foamy, pour the batter over the apples and cook over medium high heat, pulling the set sides away from the pan with a spatula to allow the runny batter to flow under and cook. Shake the pan occasionally to prevent sticking.

When the pancake starts to firm up (about 3 mins) it's time to flip it. Since this is pretty big I cheat, and use a plate like so:  Take a dinner plate and place over the pan. With potholders, grab the sides of the pan and the plate and flip the whole thing over in one movement--don't falter or you will have a mess.

Now, in the newly emptied pan, place another Tbs butter. Let melt and sprinkle evenly with 1 Tbs of sugar. Then slide the pancake back in with the cooked side up.

Let this cook another 3 minutes or so until lightly caramelized--you need to be careful now that the sugar doesn't burn. Check it frequently. Flip it again onto the plate and repeat the butter and sugar treatment at least one more time--though you could go longer. I always get too hungry by this point.

When I serve it, I like to add one more shake of a crunchy sugar, like raw sugar or a flavored one like Chicago Old Town Spiced sugar, which has cardamom and cinnamon.

Serves one, heh. What can I say, I like a big breakfast. Favorite beverage with this is a pot of Lapsang Souchong tea.

Note: If you want to serve two like Sax's original, I suggest using 3 eggs as he does, and take the flour and milk each up to a ½ cup. Splitting eggs is always a bit tricky and it is probably why this recipe didn't split so well for me.

 

*Choosing just one would actually be hard. But this is definitely a contender for a book I would want with me on a desert island.

Pie Manifesto

I want to talk to you about something serious now. Something that weighs on me. Something that everyone likes to eat but no one likes to make. We need to talk to about pie.

I make a good pie. I still occasionally dream about the best cherry pie I have ever made or ate. It was 10 years ago. Somehow I had managed the perfect synthesis of cherries, nutmeg, sugar and pastry. We all shut up while eating it and kind of curled our left hands around our plates, prison style. I didn't even tell my brother that the pie was in the house.

Today's world of boxed pies promises so much but delivers so little. Even very good pie purveyors are just ok compared to a well-cooked homemade pie. And here is why: Pie is ephemeral and maddening and different every time. You have to adjust on the fly and accept that inconsistency is part of the deal.

"If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe." Carl Sagan

I have rules about pie.

Pie rule #1

Freshness is everything. No matter how good the ingredients, technique or decoration, pie is not cake. Time does it no favors. Pulling a pie out of the oven is like pulling the pin on a slow-moving grenade. You have a window--and it ain't 3 days. It's a few hours.  Of course, if that's not enough complication for you, a fruit pie needs to cool first--which also takes time. But for the best set you need a room temp or just barely skin temperature pie.

So when someone asks me to make a pie, my first question for them is "When are you going to eat it?"

Pie rule #2

Cook the damn thing! Most pies, commercial or homemade--even in beautiful magazine spreads, look woefully underdone to me. Most commercial ones are underdone--probably because they encourage customers to re-warm them and it gives a little wiggle room on the browning. But I suspect that Hostess and the like have so degraded our sense of what pie should be that we have become accustomed to pallid, doughy crusts. Many recipes call for a mere 45 minutes of bake time. I routinely go over an hour in baking. The fruit can bubble up (one so-called sign of doneness) pretty quickly, but if the crust is not baked, the pie is not done. If you want a flaky pie, you need to keep cooking. I look for a friable texture on the top crust; actually touch the pie lightly to feel it. It should feel flaky.

I am not alone in these feelings about pie. A Hungarian chef I had the pleasure of dining with once barely repressed a shudder at the thought of pie--he clearly had been badly burned. And John Thorne in Outlaw Cook has a great essay on inferior pie and why it exists.

Pie rule #3

Use butter. Not margarine or olive oil or anything healthy. Butter is what the pie wants and it's what you want too. Using a small amount of shortening (1/4 c. for a 2 crust pie) will give you a bit of insurance against overworking the dough. After cutting in the butter, do not overprocess. My flakiest doughs look almost like a mosaic of dough and butter when I role them out. Lard crusts are good for savory pies, like chicken, but I find the bacon-y top notes clash with any fruit other than apple.

Taste the filling--adjust sugar, spice, and lemon juice to the fruit. Yes, it will be different every time. Accept it as part of the process of pie.

Pie rule #4

And finally, don't forget to have pie for breakfast the next day. While most "cook's treats" come during the cooking process and before serving, this is one worth the wait. The pie will have lost some of it's freshness and crispness, but there is something both decadent and nourishing about having a slice of cherry or blueberry pie in a cool kitchen before anyone else is up that soothes the soul. Plus, you will be upholding a grand American tradition. If Daniel Webster hopes there's pie for breakfast--shouldn't you?

Books I use to make my pies:

Julia Child's The Way to Cook  Her pâte brisée is my go-to crust. I have it memorized.

Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book  The 1961 edition has good ratios of fruit to sugar for many kinds of pie and sizes of pie plates. I use these ratios as a starting point. The new editions are useless, IMO.

John Thorne's Outlaw Cook A great book of food writing, the essay on pie dramatically improved my pecan pie recipe when I realized I could make a less sweet pie simply by doubling the amount of pecans.

Cook's Illustrated has a technique for thickening pies with Minute tapioca that works well for fruit pies. I have the original magazine, but I am sure it is in some of their books as well as on their paid website.