Holiday 2018 Issue
A HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS
Gingerbread architecture can be a world of crazy excess. I recall an exhibit years ago that featured a replica of Falling Water, the Frank Lloyd Wright house built o...
The Notorious RLB - Cake Bible author Rose Levy Beranbaum releases another classic
Nestled on a tree-covered mountainside in Warren County is the home of award-winning pastry chef and cookbook author Rose Levy Beranbaum. She shares the house with her husband, Dr. Elliott Beranbaum, but it’s also home to her test kitchen: a baker’s wonderland of seven different ovens, 30 rolling pins, more than 70 whisks and hundreds of pounds of chocolate, sugar and flour.
Her first book, The Cake Bible, was published 30 years ago and became an instant classic. It not only won cookbook of the year from the James Beard Foundation in 1989, but in 2017 it also received the award for best Classic Cookbook. Now in its 55th printing, the book’s combination of exacting measurements and precise directions, along with Rose’s never-ending desire to see her readers succeed in whatever they bake, has made it the go-to cookbook for home cooks and professional chefs.
This fall, she released her most recent cookbook, Rose’s Baking Basics, a collection of essential recipes featuring more than 600 step-by-step photos.
I was a devoted fan of her and her classic yellow cake recipe when I was introduced to her by a mutual friend at a demonstration Rose was doing at Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz, NY. Dry-mouthed, I tried to say something clever about the scones she’d just made. Instead, I stood there like a gasping goldfish, mumbled something and shook her hand.
A few emails and a few months later, I felt as if we’d known each for years, because that’s the kind of embracing soul Rose is. Shortly thereafter, I found myself walking into Rose Levy Beranbaum’s basement test kitchen. All I could focus on was the shelf full of sprinkles. Just as a tailor shop has every color of thread, Rose’s kitchen has every color of sprinkle. I could’ve spent hours looking through drawers and examining her well-labeled ingredients. My reward for tearing myself from the kitchen was a slice of sunshine-yellow lemon curd tart, which managed to be both creamy and pucker-worthy, accompanied by an espresso to which she’d added a demitasse spoon’s worth of homemade dulce de leche.
Rose is a generous friend, an enthusiastic listener and an engaging storyteller with a warm voice, lilting laugh and sharp wit. The truth is, even if Rose never fed me another slice of her cinnamon-swirled babka or dark chocolate-caramel tart, I would still be content to have the pleasure of being her friend. I might even do without the freshly made hazelnut ice cream served in homemade chocolate wafer cone that welcomed me when I came to talk to her about her latest cookbook, Julia Child, holiday baking and why the daughter of a dentist became a pastry chef.
Since the publication of The Cake Bible 30 years ago, you have helped legions of people around the world become better bakers. Have you always been a good cook?
No! The first pumpkin pie I ever made was a disaster. At the time, I was married to my first husband, a New Englander who loved pumpkin pie. I’d successfully made a cherry pie once using Comstock cherry pie filling, so I thought canned pumpkin had to be good, too. One taste and I turned to my husband and said: “I don’t see how anyone could eat this. It tastes like a barnyard.” He agreed. I’d only put canned pumpkin in the pie. Nothing else! That’s how little I knew.
That’s when I realized you really have to know a lot to bake properly. And I wanted to tell people so they wouldn’t have the failures I did.
Now, all your books since The Cake Bible are famous for the detailed instructions, including your latest, Rose’s Baking Basics.
When I came to my editor, Maria Guarnaschelli, with the idea for The Cake Bible, she asked me who my audience was. I said the home baker and the professional chef, but she insisted I had to choose one over the other. I picked the home baker because I wanted to put in all the detailed information a professional chef might not need. That said, I have many professional chefs who say The Cake Bible was an inspiration for them, such as Ron Ben-Israel (host and judge of Food Network’s Sweet Genius, and owner of Ron Ben-Israel Cakes) and Erin McDowell (pastry chef, food stylist and author of Fearless Baking).
With Baking Basics, my editor, Stephanie Fletcher, said I should write a book for beginners, and I couldn’t understand why. Beginners still win 4-H awards cooking from my other books. I don’t see the point. Then two seconds later I thought, “but what if I could have step-by-step photos of each recipe,” and, to my amazement, she agreed. But my idea was to write a book for anyone who wanted really good results, and to have step-by-step photographs for every recipe was my dream. In a sense, it’s an evolution of The Cake Bible. The photos let you see how the recipe should appear at each critical stage.
When you published The Cake Bible 30 years ago, could you ever have imagined it would have its 55th printing one day?
I guess I knew I’d done something extraordinary because I had changed the way cakes were traditionally made, yet I wasn’t sure if my reviewers were educated enough to know about baking. In the past 30 years, people have become much more knowledgeable. Writers don’t just write. They understand. Thirty years ago was the Dark Ages—you couldn’t count on that!
What made The Cake Bible such an important book?
I really credit [journalist] Corby Kummer. He interviewed me for The New York Times and asked the most important question he could’ve: “What did you do that was different in that book?” I developed a way to make cakes faster, easier and better. And of course, in order to see that, people had to buy the book. He made a big deal of it.
Some people might think your becoming a baker was a reaction to having a mother who was a dentist.
Well, her mother used to own a candy store! And yet my grandmother, who took care of me while my mother worked, never made anything more than a pie. Once.
I was never much of an eater in those days, but when I tasted that pie I thought, “This I’ll eat.” And she said to me in her Russian- accented English: “This I’ll never make again.”
I was shocked. Here she was paying me to eat this and that. Slipping me a quarter to try eggnog. And here she wouldn’t make the one thing I said I wanted!
Did you bake as a kid?
Never. When my grandmother baked that pie, she gave me a little piece of dough to make a gingerbread man with. Of course I didn’t eat it. It was grey by the time I was done.
Both my mother and my grandmother thought of baking and cooking as work.
“The first pumpkin pie I ever made was a disaster . . . . That’s when I realized you really have to know a lot to bake properly. And I wanted to tell people so they wouldn’t have the failures I did.” —Rose Levy Beranbaum
What are your favorite childhood holiday memories?
A few things leap to mind. My best friend, who is also Jewish, got to have a Christmas tree, and I got to put tinsel on the tree. My grandma was an Orthodox Jew and she lived with us, so there were certain things that were forbidden to us, like Christmas trees. But I was allowed to decorate others’.
I was also a toy soldier in George Balanchine’s second production of The Nutcracker (by the New York City Ballet). I was 11 years old. I still have my first paycheck stub. My mother would pick me up after the performance, and we would go to the Horn & Hardart Automat. I’d get an ice cream sundae. I didn’t like eating in those days, but that I liked.
How will you spend Thanksgiving this year?
I will recover from having written my cookbook, Rose’s Baking Basics! And we’ll go to my cousin. We always bring dessert.
With hundreds of recipes you call your own, how do you choose what to make for Thanksgiving?
We bring something new each year. In fact, Woody and I keep a list [Woody Wolston is Rose’s long-time assistant and collaborator in the kitchen] so we don’t make the same thing each year. This year, we’ll make miniature pumpkin cheesecakes with caramel-pecan topping and possibly the bourbon balls from my new cookbook.
Aren’t you tired of people asking you to bring dessert to every party?
No! I don’t think I’m ever invited to a place that I don’t offer to bring dessert. Why bring a bottle of wine, when you could be baking something?
That said, a lot of people won’t invite me to dinner because they’re intimidated. When I started writing about food, my mother admitted she was intimidated. I reassured her, though. I loved her food. My mouth is watering just thinking about it.
‘Tis the season for lots of pie-making, but so many people have a real fear of making pie crust.
People are worried because they don’t have a good recipe. I worked for years to have a recipe that was flaky and tender, but wouldn’t be tender until it was baked. If it’s too tender beforehand, it will fall apart, so you can’t do things like lattice because it tears and shrinks.
I’m especially proud of the pumpkin pie recipe in my latest book, because my husband, Elliott—who doesn’t like pumpkin pie—likes it! He doesn’t like the texture and the spices of regular pumpkin pie, so I reconfigured it to have the silkiest possible texture and eliminated some of the culprit spices: no mace or clove, just pure pumpkin and some cinnamon. Brown sugar, especially muscovado, also makes it delicious.
You’re Jewish, but you wrote a very popular book about Christmas cookies (Rose’s Christmas Cookies, 1990).
I remember my editor at the time, Maria Guarnaschelli, asking me what I knew about Christmas, and without missing a beat, I said, “Christmas belongs to everyone in New York.” I didn’t realize I had so many Christmas memories until I started working on the book.
After it was published, the food editor of The Chicago Tribune said she wouldn’t come interview me because she was offended I could call myself Jewish and still write a Christmas cookbook. Instead, she sent her associate to ask questions for her. She relayed that her father was a rabbi and asked outright how I thought it was okay to write a Christmas cookie book. I quickly responded: “Well, my great-great grandfather was a rabbi, and he didn’t tell me not to.”
Where did you get the recipes?
I had a lot of my own, because I love cookies, but many of the recipes came from my friend Jeannie Bauer. She told me how every year she would go home to Ohio at the holidays, where her mother would be baking Christmas cookies. Her mother always saved some dough for her return so they could bake together. Her theory was [that], when your hands are busy you can say things that you couldn’t say otherwise. It creates an intimacy. I get chills just remembering that.
Is it true you used to sneak in to the dorm to watch Julia Child’s first PBS show?
I was living outside Philadelphia when I was 19. I used to drive all the way to Temple University, and I’d go to the dorm to watch Julia. No one seemed to mind. I never in a million years would’ve imagined that I would meet her, let alone be on TV, let alone have her call and congratulate me for being on TV! That was the highest moment of my professional life. I came home after doing The Today Show when The Cake Bible came out. Even before my mother called, Julia called and said, “Congratulations, dearie! I’m so proud of you.”
It was beyond wish fulfillment because I didn’t even know to wish for such a thing. I was in heaven.
Do you have a favorite dessert of the moment?
I have two favorites, really. From the new Baking Basics book, there is the triple lemon Bundt cake. I also love the chocolate caramel tart. My favorite flavors, in order, are: lemon, vanilla, caramel, then chocolate. But chocolate and caramel is, of course, unbeatable.
As you head off on your book tour, how are you feeling?
I feel so lucky to have this book. I feel so lucky to have this life! It’s a life that I never expected. I get to do what I love most every day. It’s pure bliss.
For a list of Rose’s book tour dates in the New Jersey area, see her blog: realbakingwithrose.com
ROSE & NEW JERSEY
Rose shares some her favorite spots in the state, and discusses life outside the city.
How does city life compare with life in rural New Jersey?
I loved our apartment [in Manhattan]. I loved our handymen and doormen. They were always there to taste my cakes. As a result, if anything ever broke in the apartment, they came right away to fix it. Out here, we could be without electricity for a week (although we finally did get a generator). I wasn’t keen to move out here permanently, but I loved this house because of the view of the Delaware Water Gap from my office.
What’s special about where you live in New Jersey?
It’s so beautiful and rural. People help each other out. There’s a wonderful community spirit. I like everything about it, but I guess the Internet connection was faster in New York. I like to cook at home, and the local produce is wonderful. There are wonderful free-range chickens, ducks, eggs and meat.
Rose’s favorite local sources for meat, eggs and produce include:
ARCTIC FOODS MEAT SHOPPE
251 E. Washington Ave., Washington
LL PITTENGERS FARM
143 Creek Rd., Andover
FOUR FIELDS FARM
129 Alphano Rd., Great Meadows
ORCHARD VIEW LAVENDER FARM
101 Karrsville Rd., Port Murray
RESTAURANTS
When Rose isn’t cooking, she can often be spotted at one of these NJ restaurants:
NINETY ACRES
2 Main St., Peapack & Gladstone
I enjoy the cooking school’s restaurant, but I also occasionally do baking demonstrations there with Woody.
SHAN SHAN NOODLES
333 US-46, Parsippany
I love the owner Lily, and I love the hand-stretched noodles and soup dumplings. I just love it! Period.
VILLALOBOS
6 S. Fullerton Ave., Montclair
The best tacos I’ve ever had. Their creativity can’t be beat.
SLA THAI
38 Upper Montclair Plaza, Montclair
I’ve been to Thailand and, wow ,.their food is so flavorful and amazing.
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