The Orange County Register, September 14th, 2006
Imagine, before measuring a single ingredient, being able to tap the shoulder of a recipe author to ask, “Are you sure this is correct?”
That was the surprising circumstance I found myself in a few months ago when on a quiet Saturday I considered making The Very Best Hermit Bars from “The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion.” The recipe called for five cups of cake flour, which seemed like too much. I sent them an e-mail through their Web site and within 30 minutes I received a reply confirming that the recipe was correct as written. To further my astonishment, a King Arthur Flour baker had attached a document citing all known errors in the book.
From testing to editing, anything can go wrong by the time ink dries and a new volume or cookbook is complete. In this way, the Internet is bridging a chancy void that has existed from the day the first recipe was distributed.
A few years ago, Gourmet magazine ran a beautiful photo of cinnamon cookies on the cover of its holiday baking issue. But depending on what route you took before stepping into your kitchen to bake them, the result was either a dry, incoherent heap of dough or a delicate cookie adored by everyone lucky enough to know you.
So what made the difference? Why did a cook from Paso Robles write, “This recipe is just delicious. What really surprised me was that the dough was so tender,” and another from Canada say, “I am an accomplished cook. The dough was a disaster”?
If a home baker’s first inclination had been to check the recipe online (as the cook from Paso Robles did – all recipes in Gourmet and Bon Appetit magazines are available at Epicurious) before baking – he or she would have come across a crucial correction from Gourmet editors: The cover recipe, as printed in the magazine, was missing two eggs.
But for those attempting the cookies without interest in others’ experiences or opinions, or for those who simply didn’t have Internet access, the effort was doomed.
The cinnamon-cookie botch serves as an example of how the Internet can help improve a home cook’s odds with flawed recipes coming out of even the most meticulous publications.
“It was very painful for all of us,” said Zanne Stewart, executive food editor of Gourmet, recalling the days after the error became apparent. “The recipe had been cross-tested; it worked fine. It had been photographed. We had all read so many cookie recipes by that point. Either our brain furnished the eggs (in the copy editing process) or we thought it was one of those recipes that didn’t have eggs.”
Nothing, not even an online venue for a permanent correction, however, makes up for the professional crisis that follows such a mistake. “There is some solace, but the truth is when your hands or your eyes have been on a recipe and it gets away from you with flaws, it’s just devastating,” Stewart said. “We’re not just filling pages. We’re all enthusiastic cooks. We’re sharing recipes we love with readers we believe are like-minded.”
In “Mangoes & Curry Leaves: Culinary Travels Through the Great Subcontinent,” writers Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid chronicle their food journey through Nepal, Sri Lanka and India. After tasting a mango and cardamom ice cream in the streets of India, they returned home to Canada and developed a similar recipe for the book. As with all of their recipes, they asked friends and family to test what they came up with. (The couple believe they are able to create better recipes with feedback from amateur cooks than from professional testers.) They tinkered with the recipe, worked out its flaws and approved it for the book.
Along with the editorial staff of the publishing house putting out the book, the couple edited and re-edited the manuscript. How then did a recipe for mango and cardamom ice cream make it into the final product with an ingredient missing? In this case, the cardamom was no where to be found in the list of ingredients.
“Everyone searches books for typos, and yet there are typos,” Duguid said. “It’s excruciating when you open the first copy after it’s been airlifted to you and in the first 24 hours of stroking it and looking at it you come across something wrong.”
While there was nothing to be done about the print version, they were able to point out the error and correct it on their Web site, www.hotsoursaltysweet.com.
“You proofread, then you proofread again. If this can get through, isn’t it lucky there aren’t more?” Duguid said.
The couple and their fans were unlucky with a previous book as well. In “Homebaking,” a recipe for lemon pound cake requiring both all-purpose flour and cake flour appeared with a call for only one flour ingredient. In baking, where success lies with the interplay of exact quantities, this sort of omission guarantees failure. Again, they were able to alert online readers to the mistake and run the recipe in its correct, well-tested version.
In this way – they receive many e-mails through their site – Duguid said they feel a greater sense of collaboration. “It’s a way to have an ongoing communication. It doesn’t have to be an error, it can be fine-tuning,” Duguid said. “Now you have feedback, a loop. It’s very collegial.”
Much more immediate is the help provided by King Arthur Flour, a Vermont company that started as a manufacturer of unbleached flour and now offers dozens of baking ingredients and hundreds of kitchen gadgets. In the company’s two books, bakers will find hundreds of recipes with measurements in both weight and mass. But the company has taken an unusual step of staffing their phones and e-mails seven days a week.
On a typical day, the King Arthur help desk gets about 40 e-mails. Around the holidays, that number goes up to 100. People ask about recipes from the company’s books and newsletters. In one instance, a man asked them to convert a pancake recipe to feed 200 people for church breakfast. Other customers need help swapping out flour with a gluten-free substitute. Some people ask science questions just because they’re curious. One recent e-mailer wanted to know why flour and water had to be precooked for pâté À choux, the pastry used in, among other desserts, profiteroles and éclairs.
And sometimes, being so readily available doesn’t exactly mean clarifying a recipe question. “It’s really strange because I feel like a lot of times we’re here to say it’s going to be OK,” said Rebecca Faill, a baker with King Arthur Flour who’s been answering e-mails for a year and a half for the company. “Especially around the holidays, baking is tied up with all of these emotions, when something doesn’t work out they feel they’re out more than butter.”
The direct communication King Arthur has channeled between company and home baker has, in some cases, resulted in new recipes. Last year, they were asked for a recipe named Sunshine Golden Raisin Biscuits. The baking staff found a recipe, updated it and then featured it as Squashed Fly Cookies.
But if the Internet has served a beneficial service for authors and publications to ease home cooks’ experiences, it has also given voice to anyone who types. All recipes on epicurious.com can be rated by anyone. Serious cooks weigh in, as do those who will try a recipe for the first time but replace key ingredients with inappropriate substitutions (using canned tuna and nonfat milk for fresh scallops and heavy cream in coquilles St. Jacques, for instance.)
“There’s a lot of bad advice out there,” Faill said. “There are so many bad recipes. I feel there’s more bad information out there than good information. We run into that a lot.”
To Stewart and others in the Gourmet newsroom, user comments about their recipes can be disheartening.
“The people on Epicurious I don’t have the feeling are our subscribers generally,” she said. “Our frustration is that they are judging us by some criteria we can’t quite understand. They don’t have the context of the magazine. Those comments on Epicurious say more about readers than recipes. They’re just interested in reaching out to one another, not getting the most out of a recipe. That’s just fine.”
In one instance, though, reader comments have directly changed the work of food editors at Gourmet. “We were playing fast and loose with salt. Now we’re more careful with it,” Stewart said.
That bolsters the view of Tanya Steel, editor-in-chief of epicurious.com. “That’s the power of the Web and something you have to embrace,” she said. “I’ve learned a lot from reading those comments. I feel those voices can help me even.
“That’s the great democracy of the Web, it’s one of the thrilling things I’ve found, everyone’s voice counts and everyone’s voice is heard. While the test kitchen may not always be thrilled with changes readers make to recipes, there are people out there thinking another way. Who’s to say that one way is right and the other is wrong? Everyone’s palate should be affirmed and recognized.”
The Very Best Hermit Bars Ever
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons vegetable shortening
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
3/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1 3/4 teaspoons baking soda
5 cups cake flour, divided use
1. Prepare bars: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease 10-by-15-inch jelly roll pan.
2. In large mixing bowl, cream together sugar, shortening and butter, beating at medium speed until fluffy. Add molasses, salt, spices and baking soda. Mix 1 minute, then stop mixer and scrape down sides of bowl. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add half of flour. Once it’s mixed in, add water, then other half of flour. When batter is mixed completely, add raisins and stir until combined. Spread batter in prepared pan.
3. Bake bars 18-20 minutes, until edges are light brown. They’ll puff up in oven and top will get shiny. As soon as you see this, pull pan from oven. The top will fall back down and interior of cookies will have an almost fudgy consistency. Remove hermit bars from oven and cool them in pan on rack before glazing.
4. Prepare glaze: In small bowl, stir together milk and powdered sugar until smooth; glaze will be quite thin. Use pastry brush to brush it on top of hermit bars before cutting bars.
Nutritional information (per serving, 1 bar ): Calories 56 (19 percent from
fat), fat 1.2 g, protein 0.6 g, carbohydrates 11.3 g, fiber 0.7 g, sodium 56 mg,
Source: “The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion” (The Countryman Press, $30)
2 cups sifted all-purpose flour (sift before measuring)
1 cup granulated sugar, divided use
1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, softened
1. Sift together flour, cinnamon and salt.
2. Pulse walnuts with 2 tablespoons sugar in food processor until finely ground (be careful not to grind to a paste).
3. Beat together butter and remaining sugar with an electric mixer until pale and fluffy. Beat in eggs until combined. Mix in flour mixture and nuts at low speed just until blended. Form dough into disk and chill, wrapped in plastic wrap, until firm, about 1 hour.
4. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
5. Keeping remaining dough chilled, roll out half of dough 1/4-inch thick on lightly floured surface. Cut out cookies with 2 1/2- to 3-inch floured cookie cutter. Chill scraps.
6. Arrange cookies 1 inch apart on greased baking sheets.
7. Bake cookies in batches in middle of oven until firm but not browned, about 10 minutes. Transfer cookies to rack to cool. Make cookies with remaining dough in same manner, rerolling scraps no more than twice.
Nutritional information (per serving, 1 cookie): Calories 73 (43 percent
from fat), fat 3.5 g, protein 0.7 g, carbohydrates 9.8 g, fiber 0.1 g, sodium 74 mg, calcium 14 mg
Source: Gourmet Magazine, December 2000
Yield: 1 large loaf cake
1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature 4 large eggs, at room temperature
1 egg yolk, at room temperature
3 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 tablespoons cognac or other brandy
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1. Place rack in upper third of oven and preheat to 350 degrees. Butter 9-by-5-inch bread pan and dust lightly with flour.
2. Work with stand mixer fitted with paddle attachment: Cream butter well, then add sugar and beat 2 minutes at medium speed, until very smooth. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating 30 seconds or more after each one, then beat in egg yolk. Beat 10 minutes.
3. Remove bowl from mixer. Stir in lemon zest, juice and cognac. Place a sieve over bowl, add flours and baking powder and sift onto egg mixture. Stir and fold in just until mixed.
4. Pour batter into prepared pan, using spatula to smooth top. Bake about 1 hour and 10 minutes. Loaf will have mounded top, with a crack down center; a skewer inserted into center of cake should come out clean.
5. Let cake cool in pan about 20 minutes then turn it out onto wire rack to cool completely.
6. Serve in thin slices cooled, or, even better, the next day. Store, once completely cooled, well sealed in plastic wrap, at room temperature for up to a week. Or, for longer storage, freeze, sealed in double layer of plastic and foil, for up to 2 months.
Nutritional information (per serving, 2-inch slice): Calories 400 (54 percent from fat), fat 24 g, protein 5.2 g, carbohydrates 40.8 grams, calcium 60 mg, sodium 330 mg
Source: “Homebaking,” by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid (Artisan, $40)
Squashed Fly Cookies
Yield: Makes approximately 20 cookies, each 2 inches by 4 inches.
2 cups (8 1/2 ounces) King
1/4 cup (1 3/4 ounces) sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
6 tablespoons (3 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
5 tablespoons (2 1/2 ounces) milk
2 teaspoons water, plus a little more for brushing
1 1/2 cups (7 1/8 ounces) currants, divided use
3 tablespoons (1 1/4 ounces) coarse sugar, for topping, divided use
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats (or very lightly grease two cookie sheets).
2. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in medium bowl. Add butter and work it in with your fingertips until mixture resembles coarse meal.
3. Make well in center of mixture and pour in vanilla extract and milk. Mix liquids into dry mixture with fork or with your fingertips. You can add extra milk, one tablespoon at a time, if needed to get dough to come together. Dough should seem a little dry, but not so dry that it won’t hold together in a clump when squeezed.
4. Gently knead dough one or two times until it forms a ball. Be careful not to work dough more than necessary, or your cookies will turn out tough.
5. Cut dough into two equal pieces. Set one piece aside, covered, and roll the other out into rectangle 1/8-inch thick on well-floured surface.
6. Brush thin layer of water over dough and spread 3/4 cup of the currants on one half of rectangle. It will seem like there are too many currants, but don’t be tempted to use less than 3/4 cup or the final cookies won’t have enough filling.
7. Fold empty half of dough over currants, as if you were closing a book. This will sandwich fruit between two layers of dough. Press sandwich together gently with palm of your hand. Roll sandwiched dough out again into rectangle almost 1/8-inch thick.
8. Whisk together egg and 2 teaspoons of water in small bowl. Brush top of dough with thin layer of this egg-wash. Sprinkle on 1 1/2 tablespoons of coarse sugar as decoration.
9. Cut dough rectangle into 2-inch-thick strips, each no longer than your cookie sheets. Lay these long strips on prepared cookie sheets, leaving at least 1/2-inch between each.
10. Repeat shaping and decorating process for second half of dough.
11. Bake each sheet 14 to 18 minutes or until cookies are just brown. Remove strips to rack to cool.
12. When completely cool, break each of strips into individual cookies, each about 4 inches long.
Nutritional information (per serving, 1 cookie): Calories 122 (29 percent from fat), fat 4 g, protein 2 g, carbohydrates 20 g, fiber 0.2 g, sodium 88 mg, calcium 67 mg
Source: King Arthur Flour Baking Sheet, Summer 2006
