Baking from the Heart: Our Nation's Best Bakers Share Cherished Recipes for the Great American Bake Sale - Hardcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Michael J. Rosen is the author, editor, or illustrator of nearly sixty books for children and adults; fourteen of these, which include over 500 authors, artists, and chefs, have benefited philanthropic efforts. A member of the national board of Share Our Strength, Baking from the Heart is his second cookbook for that organization; Broadway Books published Cooking from the Heart in September 2003. His other books include poetry, pictures books, and the humor biennial Mirth of a Nation. He lives in central Ohio.

Aus dem Klappentext

Ann Amernick
Claire Archibald
Jerome Audureau
Kelly Bailey
Karen Barker
Fran Bigelow
Flo Braker
Lora Brody
Warren Errol Brown
Biba Caggiano
Joanne Chang
Carole and Norma Jean Darden
Karen DeMasco
Gina DePalma
Marcel Desaulniers
Jim Dodge
Crescent Dragonwagon
Suzanne Dunaway
Dan Dye and Mark Beckloff
Elizabeth Falkner
Sara Foster
Rèmy Fünfrock
Gale Gand
Dorie Greenspan
Mandy Groom Givler
Stephanie Hall
Maida Heatter
Nicole Kaplan
Christopher Kimball
David Lebovitz
Emily Luchetti
Sheila Lukins
Nick Malgieri
Alice Medrich
Mary Sue Milliken
Michelle Gayer Nicholson
Greg Patent
François Payard
Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock
Susan and Cassandra Purdy
Miguel Ravago
Michel Richard
Rick Rodgers
Judy Rosenberg
Amy Scherber
Michael Schlow
Jimmy Schmidt
Lindsey Shere and Kathleen Stewart
Nancy Silverton
Jane and Michael Stern
Christine McCabe Tentori
Jacques Torres
Bill Yosses
Judy Zeidler

Baking is about memories: recipes handed down from generation to generation and tastes that conjure childhood think of Proust s madeleines or your mom s chocolate cake. Sweets are often bound up in our emotional life as adults, too: they re how we reward ourselves or our children, how we celebrate holidays, birthdays, and special occasions, and how we honor guests.

In Baking from the Heart, more than fifty of the nation s preeminent bakers share their recipes for cookies, cakes, and other dessert favorites, and the memories of why they hold that recipe dear. From the Apple Snacking Spice Cake that Joanna Chang made her fourth-grade teacher to show her how much she loved her to the Polvorones that were a Sunday after-church treat in Miguel Ravago s home, these are recipes and stories to treasure.

When James Beard Award winner Greg Patent was a teenager, he won a trip to New York City to compete in the Pillsbury Bake-Off with his Cherry-Apricot Coconut Bars. Forty years later, his mother earned a place in that same competition with her Walnut Fudge Bars. World-renowned chocolatier Jacques Torres tucked a few pints of hand-picked Michigan blueberries into his luggage so he could again make Blueberry Dame Blanche, the jam-filled cookies he made when he was a child in France, with his aging mother. For her son Gio s first Valentine s Day at school, Food TV s Gale Gand concocted Marshmallow Heart Throbs, a cupcake he could cut into the shape of a heart. When Jimmy Schmidt s family vacationed in Wisconsin, his contribution to his mother s Black Walnut Pound Cake were the walnuts he picked and shelled with his siblings, aided by their father who would crack the hulls by driving over them in his 55 Chevy. Like many of the other contributors, Jimmy Schmidt serves up two recipes with reminiscences (the walnut cake and his Blueberry Slump) for our delectation.

Baking from the Heart is also sweet inspiration for anyone who wants to join in The Great American Bake Sale . When Share Our Strength the nation s preeminent hunger-fighting organization joined with PARADE magazine to launch The Great American Bake Sale in 2003, the country s response was overwhelming: nearly half a million people baked, bought, or sold, raising over a million dollars to end childhood hunger. (More information appears inside.)

A portion of the proceeds from the sale of this book benefit Share Our Strength, one of the nation s preeminent anti-hunger agencies.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Cookies and Bars


Michel Richard's Hazelnut Grahams
Miguel Ravago's Polvorones con Canela (Mexican Wedding Cookies)
Elizabeth Falkner's Browned Butter-Walnut Tea Cakes
Judy Rosenberg's Almond Raspberry Bars
Greg Patent's Apricot-Cherry Coconut Bars and his mom's Walnut Fudge Brownies
Joanne Chang's Homemade Oreos(r)
Dorie Greenspan's Choco-Peanut Butter Oatmeal Chipsters
Francoise Payard's Flourless, Butterless Chocolate Cookies
Susan and Cassandra Purdy's Apricot Crumb Bars
Judy Zeidler's Korjas (Crisp Poppy Seed Thins) and Poppy Seed Hamantaschen
Lora Brody's grandmother's Mohn Kickle (Poppy Seed Cookies)
Jacques Torres's Blueberry Dame Blanche
Nicole Kaplan's Most Favorite Cheesecake Brownies and Best-Ever Hot Fudge Sundaes
Lindsey Shere and Kathleen Stewart's Gingersnap Ice Cream Sandwiches with Wild Plum Ice Cream

* * *

Fran Bigelow's Chocolate Wafer Cookies (page 195)
Nick Malgieri's Biscotti di Pasta Frolla (page 121)
Michael J. Rosen's Aunt Sylvia's Rugelach (page 6)
Crescent Dragonwagon's Grandma Hat's Butter Cookies (page 284)


Michel Richard's Hazelnut Grahams


I was born in Brittany and raised in Ardens. We had an apricot tree across the street from our home. When the fruit covered the tree, my friend and I would tuck our T-shirts inside our pants and load them up with apricots, dropping the fruit inside the collar until the fruit gave us each a big belly brimming over our pants. The garde de campagne, the country policeman, found us one time: "What do you have in your belly there?" he asked us. He tugged at our T-shirts, pulling them from our pants and spilling all the apricots out onto the ground. He gave us each a ticket; I think my mother had to pay something like a quarter as a fine. But I feasted on a ton of apricots for that quarter.

The other crop that was free for the taking was the fresh hazelnuts that bordered a forest on the way to school. We had no money to buy candy, but here was the candy offered by God. You have to pluck off the green case with your fingers, and then pop the hard shell into your mouth and crack it open with your teeth--at least, if you're a kid walking to school. The nut meat inside is soft, like a fresh pea; they have a wonderful milky texture. The typical hazelnut aroma comes from roasting them, but we had no time to take them home to the oven; my stomach had to be my oven!

This hazelnut graham cracker, something I invented many years later, brings back the memory of those hazelnut trees, as well as the very best of the hazelnut's flavor. The nut's buttery texture is enhanced with a little more butter and the graham cracker's own nuttiness. And they're simple enough for your own kids to make and take to school.

Michel Richard's Basque Custard Cookie Cake appears on page 117.


Hazelnut Grahams
Makes 3 dozen cookies

1/2 cup hazelnuts
2 cups graham cracker crumbs
16 tablespoons (2 sticks) unsalted butter
1/2 cup dark brown sugar (packed)
1 large egg, at room temperature


1. Preheat the oven to 350°F and place the hazelnuts on a baking sheet. Toast the nuts for 7 minutes, or until they just begin to brown; lightly shake the pan midway through the toasting to turn the nuts. Remove the nuts from the oven. If your hazelnuts were not "husked" and still possess a papery outer skin, place them in a tea towel, and rub briskly to dislodge this darker outer covering from the nuts.

2. Combine the hazelnuts and crumbs in a food processor and grind to a fine powder.

3. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the butter and brown sugar on low speed and mix until just blended. Add the egg and mix until just incorporated. On low speed, add the crumb mixture and blend until just incorporated.

4. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate the dough for 15 to 30 minutes or until it is firm enough to shape.

5. Divide the dough into 2 equal portions. Place each portion on a 12-inch piece of plastic wrap and form two logs with a diameter of 1 1/2 inches. Seal the plastic around the logs and refrigerate for 4 hours or until firm. You can also freeze the dough for 2 months; defrost in the refrigerator before continuing with the recipe.

6. When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone mats.

7. Slice the dough into 1/4-inch coins and arrange them on the prepared sheets, leaving a bit less than an inch between each cookie. Bake the cookies on the middle rack of the oven for 8 to 10 minutes or until the edges of the cookies are browned; rotate the pans halfway through the baking. Allow the cookies to cool slightly on the baking sheet before transferring them to a wire rack to cool completely. Store in an airtight container.


Michel Richard is an internationally acclaimed chef and restaurateur. He has been the recipient of the most prestigious culinary honors and appears frequently on nationally televised cooking shows. Born in France, Michel came to the United States in 1974 to open Gaston Lenôtre's New York City pastry shop. Michel then moved to Santa Fe before opening his own pastry shop in Los Angeles. He opened his famed restaurant Citrus in 1987. In September 1997, Michel moved to Washington, D.C., to create Citronelle. He is co-author with Judy Zeidler of Michel Richard's Home Cooking with a French Accent.


Miguel Ravago's
Polvorones con Canela
(Mexican Wedding Cookies)


This recipe is my mother's, but its origin is certainly Arabic, taken to Mexico by the Spaniards at some point in their long mutual history. Polvorones comes from the Spanish word for "dust," polvo, because the cookies are dusted with powdered sugar. And the cookies have to be small enough to just pop in your mouth whole, because if you bite into one, the dust of the powdered sugar will make you cough.

My mother baked these cookies every week, and we'd have them after church on Sunday: We'd walk in the door and the cookies would be sitting on a plate, cooled to room temperature, and all we'd need to do was stir up a batch of Mexican chocolate drink to accompany them.

But polvorones are also part of most every Mexican wedding, mounded into in a pyramid at the reception. They make a beautiful white centerpiece: all the little balls carefully stacked into a tower as high as someone can reach. With all the dressed-up people hugging and rushing over to see relatives, the table is always jostled and the tower of cookies inevitably falls over, the balls rolling across the tablecloth. It doesn't matter. Each guest has a few polvorones with a glass of liqueur--my grandfather insisted that anise was perfect--or a glass of Mexican chocolate, and the celebration continues for hours.

These cookies are also just right for bake sales or with a gulp of milk drunk right from a little school-size carton.

Miguel Ravago's Capirotada (Mexican Bread Pudding) and his unusual Almond Flan begin on page 143.


Polvorones
con Canela
(Mexican Wedding Cookies)


Makes 4 dozen cookies


16 tablespoons (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sifted confectioners' sugar
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup ground or finely chopped pecans
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon


1. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter on medium speed for 1 minute or until creamy. Add 1/2 cup of the confectioners' sugar and the vanilla;...