A Woman's Paris ~ Joie de Vivre

Excerpted from Baking Chez Moi, (c) 2014 by Dorie Greenspan. Reproduced by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. All rights reserved. Including recipes for Double-Chocolate Marble Cake, Edouard’s Chocolate Chip Cookies, and Green Tea Sablés.

A “culinary guru” and author of the award-winning Around My French Table and Baking: From My Home to Yours, Dorie Greenspan returns with an exciting collection of simple desserts from French home cooks and chefs.

With her groundbreaking bestseller Around My French Table, renowned cookbook author and baker Dorie Greenspan changed the way Americans view French food. Now, in Baking Chez Moi: Recipes from My Paris Home to Your Home Anywhere, she explores the captivating world of French desserts, bringing together a charmingly uncomplicated mix of contemporary recipes that emphasis the French knack for elegant simplicity.

A little over five years ago, Dorie set out to observe and write about some of the best French pastry chefs behind the world’s most accomplished desserts—those towering architectural confections that are as much art as food. She went in search of what she called her “Ph.D. in Pastry.” However, it didn’t take her long to recognize that she was continually drawn to the simplest sweets—those of daily life—the home-baked cakes, tarts, pastries, and cookies we all crave every day. Baking Chez Moi is the culmination of all of Dorie’s discoveries, an irresistible collection of radically simple desserts inspired by years of travel through France, incorporating the country’s traditions, specialties, and seasonal ingredients as well as the recipes shared by talented home bakers and pastry chefs.

To purchase Baking Chez Moi: Recipes from My Paris Home to Your Home Anywhere (October 2014, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), Visit: Baking Chez Moi.

Photo: © Alan Richardson

Baking Chez Moi: “Real French people don’t bake” (introduction)

Here’s what I now know: Real French people don’t bake! At least they don’t bake anything complicated, finicky, tricky or unreliable. Not one of my friends, all good cooks, understood me when I explained that I had started baking intricate pastries at home as a hobby. According to them, what I was doing was best left to the pros. Pastry, the fancy stuff, is what pastry shops are for, and France has plenty of them.

When the French bake at home, they bake for love, for the people they care about most and for the joy of making them happy. They’ll make a weekend cake (that’s what many loaf cakes are called) for a picnic or a pick-me-up, or because friends are coming for le week-end. They’ll make cookies for their children and pots de crème to cap a midweek dinner. My friend Martine bakes the same birthday cake for her husband that his mother made for him: a domino-like construction of store-bought cookies dipped in espresso and filled with mocha buttercream. It’s the Gallic version of our classic icebox-cookie cake, and it’s just as charming, if a little less sweet and a lot more grown-up. And all of my friends know how to put together a snack-cum-dessert that’s so good that I only serve it when I know there will be enough people around the table to finish the treats off or take them home, because I am powerless to resist them. Their name, Desert Roses, is poetic, but their ingredients are plain: dried fruit, nuts, chocolate and cornflakes for crunch. My stateside friends call this “comfort baking,” and they are right.

I have adapted many desserts from sweets I discovered when I was traveling—the apple tarte flambée that won my heart in Alsace, the dipped- in-icing Palets des Dames cookies from Lille, the Tarte Tropézienne made famous by Brigitte Bardot and others from Normandy, Brittany and Provence. There are also recipes of pure invention that I created in my Paris kitchen. When cream cheese took the city by storm (Kraft Philadelphia Cream Cheese has a cult following there), I treated my friends to a no-bake cheese-cake topped with blueberries. My little Apple Pielettes are completely American, even if my French friends claimed them as a play on their own covered pies, called tourtes. And Strawberry Shortcakes Franco-American Style—an almost all-American shortcake built on very French ladyfinger disks—prove that there are no frontiers when it comes to goodness.

A perfect stranger, a woman I met because we were sitting side by side in a bistro, gave me the recipe. And when I learned to glaze madeleines, you’d have thought I’d found the Rosetta Stone.

Even after forty years, France—its people, its traditions, its food and its pastry—has the power to surprise me. These recipes are the record not only of discoveries but also of friendships and my love for the country and its remarkable cooks.

Praise for Baking Chez Moi:

“This personal book on homey French cooking is so beautiful that you’ll want to lick the pages. I’ll be making my way through every easy, delicious recipe.” —Ina Garten, author of the Barefoot Contessa cookbooks and star of the Food Network TV show

“Anyone interested in honest yet unfussy cooking, no matter where they call home, should have this collection of recipes in the kitchen.” —David Lebovitz, author of My Paris Kitchen

“Because [Greenspan] is as companionable a writer as she is a cook, this book is as much fun to read as it is to cook from. If Julia Child was the first to attempt to demystify French cooking for the Stateside home chef, Greenspan succeeds in making it seem eminently doable and easy.” —Alexander Lobrano, New York Times T Magazine and author of Hungry for France and Hungry for Paris

“On the page, Greenspan talks as if she’s having coffee with you, about where she found recipes, about the person who gave them to her, and when she might serve them… The heart of the book is sweets that aren’t a bit difficult.” —Boston Globe

Double-Chocolate Marble Cake

Excerpted from Baking Chez Moi, © 2014 by Dorie Greenspan. Reproduced by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. All rights reserved.

Makes 8 servings

As all-American as marble cakes seem, that’s how all-French they seem as well. No matter where you go in France, no matter if the pastry shop is ritzy or rustic, you’re bound to find a marble cake. Aside from their obvious tastiness, marble cakes are beloved because they are hearty, long lasting and good from breakfast through late-night snacking. And when you bake them at home, they’re good for another reason: They’re fun to make. Running a knife through the dark and light batters, producing arcs, curves and swirls, can make anyone feel like Picasso. In fact, the temptation to keep swirling is so strong that the risk of ending up with a cake that goes from marbled to monochromatic is high. Resist!

I’ve given you a recipe for marbling a cake with white and dark chocolate. Because you’re adding chocolate to the entire cake, it’s a little more substantial than a traditional marble cake, which is part white cake and part chocolate cake. If you’d like to keep to tradition, see Bonne Idée.

 Ingredients

2 cups (272 grams) all-purpose flour

1¼ teaspoons baking powder

¾ teaspoon fine sea salt

1½ sticks (12 tablespoons; 6 ounces; 170 grams) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 cup (200 grams) sugar

4 large eggs, at room temperature

1½ teaspoons pure vanilla extract

½ cup (120 ml) whole milk, at room temperature

4 ounces (113 grams) best-quality white chocolate, melted and cooled

¼ teaspoon orange or peppermint oil (optional)

4 ounces (113 grams) semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, melted and cooled

 Directions

1. Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Pull out an insulated baking sheet or stack two regular baking sheets one on top of the other. Line the (top) baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat. Butter a 9-×-5-inch loaf pan, dust with flour and tap out the excess; set it on the baking sheet(s).

2. Whisk the flour, baking powder and salt together in a small bowl.

3. Working in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, or in a large bowl with a hand mixer, beat the butter on medium speed for 3 minutes, or until smooth. Add the sugar and beat for another 2 to 3 minutes, then add the eggs one at a time and beat for a minute after each one goes in. The batter may curdle, but you needn’t worry. Reduce the mixer speed to low and mix in the vanilla. Still on low speed, add the flour mixture in 3 additions and the milk in 2, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients and mixing only until each addition is incorporated.

4. Scrape half of the batter into another bowl. Using a flexible spatula, gently stir the white chocolate into half of the batter. If you’re using the orange or peppermint oil, stir it in as well. Stir the dark chocolate into the other half of the batter.

5. Using a spoon or scoop, drop dollops of the light and dark batters randomly into the prepared pan—don’t think too much about the pattern—and then plunge a table knife deep into the batter and zigzag it across the pan. It’s best to move forward and not to backtrack. Don’t overdo it—6 to 8 zigzags should suffice.

6. Bake the cake for 80 to 90 minutes, or until a tester inserted deep into the center comes out clean. Check the cake at the halfway mark, turn it around and, if it’s getting too brown, cover it loosely with a foil tent. Transfer the cake to a cooling rack and let it rest for 10 minutes, then unmold it, turn right side up on the rack and let come to room temperature.

Serving: Because of the cake’s lovely texture, you can cut it thin or thick and it will be good either way. It’s meant to be served plain, but every plain cake is good with ice cream and this one’s good with ice cream and chocolate sauce too.

Storing: Wrapped well, the cake will keep at room temperature for up to 4 days. It can be wrapped airtight and frozen for up to 2 months; defrost it in its wrapper.

Bonne Idée, Traditional Marble Cake: Omit the white chocolate. Stir the melted and cooled bittersweet chocolate into half of the batter and leave the other half plain. If you do this, you might want to add another ½ teaspoon vanilla extract to the plain batter.

Another Bonne Idée, Cardamom and Mocha Marble Cake: Make the batter and stir 1 teaspoon ground cardamom into the white-chocolate portion. Dissolve 2½ teaspoons instant coffee or espresso in 1 tablespoon boiling water and stir into the dark-chocolate portion.

Edouard’s Chocolate Chip Cookies

Excerpted from Baking Chez Moi, © 2014 by Dorie Greenspan. Reproduced by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. All rights reserved.

Makes about 50 cookies

When Edouard Bobin, the co-owner of one of the sweetest small bistros in Paris, Le Pantruche, said he would give me the recipe for his favorite hazelnut cookie, I knew the minute I read the one-word title, Cookies, that chocolate chips would be involved. See the word “cookies” (or the words “les cookies”) in France, as you do nowadays in glossy magazines, modern bakeshops and trendy cafés, and it’s a pretty risk-free bet that the sweet will turn out to be a chipper. If there are nuts, they may be hazelnuts, pecans, walnuts or macadamias; there may even be a few M&M’s-type candies pressed into the dough; and the chocolate can be any kind, the basic cookie is always a play on the American chocolate chip.

And so it was with Edouard’s cookies. In fact, as I looked at the recipe, I thought it was the standard back-of-the-bag recipe. It had the American mix of baking powder and baking soda (the French mostly use packets with the two leavening agents already combined), the same amount of chocolate chips as you get in a U.S. bag and the same number of eggs as in the classic American recipe. I’d hoped for something new, and I didn’t think this was going to be it.

But I hadn’t noticed a couple of important differences: Edouard called for almost half again as much flour (by weight) as our classic recipe, and the nuts were ground not chopped, acting like even more flour. The cookies were chubby and chewy and just a little soft at the center—altogether great. If this is what the French think of as American cookies, we Americans can be proud.

Ingredients

3½ cups (476 grams) all-purpose flour

1¼ teaspoons fine sea salt

¾ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon baking powder

2 sticks (8 ounces; 226 grams) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 cup (200 grams) sugar

1 cup (200 grams) packed light brown sugar

1½ teaspoons pure vanilla extract

2 large eggs, at room temperature

12 ounces (340 grams) semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped (or 2 cups chocolate chips)

1½ cups (150 grams) hazelnut or almond flour

Directions

1. Whisk the flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder together in a medium bowl.

2. Working in the bowl of a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, or in a large bowl with a hand mixer, beat the butter on medium speed for about 1 minute, until smooth. Add both sugars and beat for another 2 minutes or so, until well blended. Beat in the vanilla. Add the eggs one at a time, beating for 1 minute after each egg goes in. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the dry ingredients in 4 or 5 additions, mixing only until each addition is just incorporated. (Because you’re going to add more ingredients after the flour, it’s good not to be too thorough.) Still on low speed, mix in the chocolate and nut flour.

3. Divide the dough in half, wrap each piece airtight in plastic film and refrigerate for at least 2 hours. (The dough can be refrigerated for up to 3 days. Or, if it’s more convenient for you, you can scoop the dough now and freeze it in balls. You won’t need to defrost the cookies, but you will need to bake them a little longer.)

When you’re ready to bake: Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats.

Edouard says to scoop the dough into mounds the size of golf balls. A medium cookie scoop with a capacity of 1½ tablespoons is just right here, but you can also spoon the dough out using a rounded tablespoon of dough for each cookie. Place the dough on the lined sheets, about 2 inches apart.

Bake the cookies one sheet at a time for 8 minutes and then, using a metal spatula, gently press each mound down just a little; rotate the baking sheet. Bake for another 7 minutes or so, until the cookies are pale brown. They’ll still be slightly soft in the center, but that’s fine—they’ll firm as they cool. Pull the sheet from the oven and allow the cookies to rest for 1 minute, then, using a wide metal spatula, carefully transfer them to racks to cool to room temperature.

Repeat with the remainder of the dough, always using a cool baking sheet.

Serving: The cookies are good warm or at room temperature; good with coffee, good with tea and terrific with milk (a beverage I’ve never seen a grown French person sip); and even good with Armagnac.

Storing: The best way to maintain the cookies’ chewiness is to store them in a zipper-lock plastic bag; they’ll stay fresh for about 3 days. You can keep them longer, of course; just know that they’ll get a little firmer as time passes. Or pack them in an airtight container and freeze them for up to 2 months.

Green Tea Sablés 

Excerpted from Baking Chez Moi, © 2014 by Dorie Greenspan. Reproduced by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. All rights reserved.

Makes about 40 cookies

I can’t remember how many years ago green-tea sweets became the rage in Paris. For the most part, the tea that was used was matcha (it’s still the pastry chefs’ favorite), a powdered tea that dissolves in water rather than steeps. Matcha is bitter, vegetal and divisive—a love-it-or-leave-it flavor—which is why I created these shortbread cookies using a mild tea. My preference is for berry- or citrus-flavored green tea, Earl Grey green tea (which gets its charm from bergamot, a type of lemon) or a spiced green tea. If you sniff the tea and like the fragrance, you’re bound to like the flavor.

Whether you make the cookie with loose-leaf tea or tea that you spill out of a tea bag, you’ll get the most flavor if you pulverize it and then work it into the sugar and salt with your fingertips.

Ingredients

1 stick (8 tablespoons; 4 ounces; 113 grams) unsalted butter

2½ teaspoons flavored green tea leaves

¼ cup (50 grams) sugar

¼ teaspoon fine sea salt

1¼ cups (170 grams) all-purpose flour

Raw sugar, sanding sugar or granulated sugar, for rolling

Directions

1. Remove the butter from the refrigerator and leave it on the counter while prepare the other ingredients. You want the butter to be cool but pliable.

2. You can crush the tea with a mortar and pestle or you can put it between pieces of parchment or wax paper and crush with the bottom of a glass. Any way you do it, you want to end up with enough crushed tea to measure 1½ teaspoons.

3. Put the tea, sugar and salt in a large bowl and, using your fingertips, rub the ingredients together until you smell the aroma of the tea. Add the flour and stir everything together to mix well.

4. Cut the butter into 16 pieces. Drop them into the bowl, toss with your fingertips just to coat the pieces and then set to work rubbing the butter into the flour mixture to make a soft dough that will stick together when you press it between your fingers. Knead the dough gently to work it into a ball and then divide the ball in half.

5. Shape each piece of dough into a log about 7 inches long. Take care that the logs are solid—it’s easy to end up with hollows (you can feel them), which will turn into holes in the cookies. (See page 61 for a nifty way to get solid logs.) Wrap the logs and refrigerate them for at least 3 hours, or freeze for at least 1 hour.

When you’re ready to bake: Position the racks to divide the oven into thirds and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats.

Sprinkle some raw, sanding or granulated sugar on the counter and roll the logs in it, just to coat the exterior. Trim the ends of the logs if they’re ragged, then slice into rounds that are 1/3 inch thick. Put the cookies on the baking sheets, at least 1 inch apart.

Bake for 12 to 14 minutes, rotating the baking sheets from top to bottom and front to back at the midway point, or until the cookies are golden brown on the edges and bottom but still pale on top. Let the cookies cool on the sheets for a few minutes, then transfer them to racks to cool to room temperature.

Serving: Just because they’re made with tea doesn’t mean these sablés aren’t good with coffee—they are. In fact, they’re especially good with espresso. And they’re nice with wine too.

Storing: The unbaked logs of dough will keep in the refrigerator for up to 3 days and can be frozen for up to 2 months; cut and bake directly from the freezer. Baked, the cookies will keep in a sealed container for about 4 days at room temperature.

Dorie Greenspan, called a “culinary guru” by the New York Times and inducted into the Who’s Who of Food and Beverage in America, she is the author of ten cookbooks. Her most recent, Around My French Table, was on the New York Times bestseller list and named Cookbook of the Year for 2010 by the IACP, Epicurious, and Amazon. A three-time James Beard Foundation award winner for her cookbooks and magazine articles, Dorie has collaborated with many celebrated chefs, among them Julia Child (Dorie wrote the book Baking with Julia), Daniel Boulud, and Pierre Hermé, France’s most famous pastry chef. Her book Baking from My Home to Yours inspired the creation of Tuesdays with Dorie, a weekly online baking club that has been ongoing for over five years and was profiled in O, the Oprah Magazine. A similar group, French Fridays with Dorie, cooked its way through Around My French Table. Dorie’s own blog, which she started in 2007, was named one of the top twenty food blogs in the world by the Times of London.

Dorie splits her time between New York, Connecticut, and Paris. For more information, visit: doriegreenspan.com.

Photo: © Alan Richardson

You may also enjoy A Woman’s Paris® post Wine Lovers’ Choice: 154 Wines of France from Bordeaux and Champagne. Is “tasting stars” on your list for great food and wine pairings? Not sure what wines to try next? We, too, like wine lovers from around the world, have a special love affaiar from wine “where sudden friendship springs,” as John Gray said. We sip the wine and find dreams come through. Aren’t we always looking for clues that there is a “star” behind the recognized labels, for personal, unforgettable moments? Become a part of our conversation. We celebrate the art and ideas of people from every place and every heritage.

 Mireille Guiliano’s “Meet Paris Oyster” on the Parisians’ love for them (excerpt). Mireille Guiliano, a former chief executive at LVMH (Veuve Clicquot), is “the high priestess of French lady wisdom” (USA Today) and “ambassador of France and its art of living” (Le Figaro). She is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller French Women Don’t Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure, as well as French Women Don’t Get Facelifts. With her characteristic wit, wisdom, and storytelling flair, Mireille will soon have you wanting to eat oysters at least every week. Including a recipe for Oyster Vichyssoise. (Interview: Mireille Guiliano’s “Meet Paris Oyster” in pursuit of the best oysters and wine pairings with them, on A Woman’s Paris®.)

Ann Mah’s “Mastering the Art of French Eating” on the perfect steak frites the French way (excerpt) part one. Ann Mah, a food and travel writer whose articles have appeared in the New York Times, Condé Nast Traveler, the International Herald Tribune, South China Morning Post, Fodor’s guides, and other publications, shares her gastronomic adventures in France during a yearlong post in Paris. She discovers the true stories behind the country’s signature regional dishes, exploring the history and taste of everything from boeuf Bourguignon to buckwheat crêpes. Including recipe for Bavette aux Échalotes (Skirt Steak with Shallots). (Interview: Ann Mah’s “Mastering the Art of French Eating” on gastronomic adventures in France, on A Woman’s Paris®.)

David Lebovitz’s “My Paris Kitchen” — quirks, trials, beauty, and joys of life in Paris (excerpt). Ten years ago, David Lebovitz packed up his most treasured cookbooks, a well-worn cast-iron skillet, and his laptop and moved to Paris. In My Paris Kitchen, David remasters the classics, and introduces lesser-known fare. Through his recipes and stories we get insight into his delicious and extraordinary world. Including David’s recipe for Salted butter caramel-chocolate mouse. (Interview: What’s cooking in Paris: David Lebovitz on the secrets of  French cuisine, on A Woman’s Paris®.)

Alexander Lobrano’s “Hungry for France” – My appetite for France (excerpt). Hungry for France: Adventures for the Cook & Food Lover by acclaimed food writer and Paris-based author Alexander Lobrano. Every food lover’s ultimate dream is to tour the countryside of France, stopping off at luxurious inns with world-class restaurants and sampling fresh produce and regional specialties from local markets. Hungry for France offers just that with Lobrano sharing his thirty-plus years of exploring every corner of this gastronomically rich country with readers. Including a recipe for Layered Ratatouille Gratin. (Interview: Alexander Lobrano on eating well in France: a culinary tour of alluring inns, food producers, restaurants and winemakers, on A Woman’s Paris®.)

African Queen of Parisian Cuisine, from Kiratiana’s Travel Guide to BLACK PARIS: Get Lost and Get Found, by Kiratiana Freelon who writes about the “African Queen of Parisian Cuisine.” Featuring suggestions such as Le Petrossian 144, in Paris, where the head chef is Rougui Dai, a Frenchwoman of Sénégalese decent. There are more than 2,000 French restaurants in Paris. Of the 400 that the Michelin Guide found worth listing, only 77 receive on of their coveted stars. And of those starred restaurants, only one has a black, female head chef: Le Petrossian 144.

Text copyright ©2014 Dorie Greenspan. All rights reserved.
Illustrations copyright ©Barbara Redmond. All rights reserved.
barbara@awomansparis.com