simone rose baking
by Ella Rosenblatt
introduction WELCOME This is a book for people who have caught “the baking bug.” It takes a bit of commitment to use these recipes to their full potential; you’ll need to practice and experiment a bit. The basic versions are my favorite classics. I guarantee that you have some stellar, beginner-level recipes. Added challenge will come from veering off the prescribed recipe path. I hope you enjoy a creative, scientific approach to baking, the way I enjoy most. And who doesn’t love a bit of sugar? My advice on mastering creative, self-taught baking is treat it like a research project. Watch a lot of youtube videos; they will help you develop an eye for how successful bakes look at all the stages of the process. Read baking blogs to learn about their experiments and to get inspiration. Next time you decide to read a book for pleasure,make it a cookbook. This is the same advice as so many authors give: read a lot and you will become a better writer. Watch people baking, and practice yourself, and you will inevitably become a master baker as well.
ingredients
FLOUR Flour is the basic body of most (gluten-full) baked goods. It’s a thickener, structure-giver, liquid-soaker-upper.
Starch + Fat + Sugar This is a pretty basic conceptual recipe for any baked good. I’ve devised some (pseudo)scientific guidelines for experimenting and creating your own recipes. They’re based on a whole lot of experience, the bountiful wisdom of Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry. I Am Not an Expert. But I hope this advice will boost your confidence to get creative with your baking. You can finally be released from the shackles of recipes and exact measurements. What’s the fun in that? I don’t believe that baking is an exact science as it is often described; it it were, then anything would turn out perfectly if anyone made it and followed the recipe. The best baking combines intuition built with experience with some basic knowledge of kitchen chemistry. This book will be your guide to easily gain that intuition and chem-ify your baking to new delicious heights!
Let’s say you’ve got a really runny batter or super sticky cookie dough. Adding flour will certainly solve your dampness dilemma. However, remember that flour does not add much flavor and will cut down on richness. If you want chewy buttery cookies, you may want the lower flour content of a sticky dough. (And the solution may rather be refrigeration to combat stickiness.)
Since flour brings starch and gluten protein structure to dough, it is often the solution to overly wet mixtures, which need the added structure of proteins interlacing and starches gelatinizing. Additions of flavorings that bring extra fat or moisture also could benefit from extra flour to combat the inhibition of structure that fats cause. Any good baking book mentions flour measurement. If you are wise, you will use a scale. If you are a bit lazy, you will not. And I am, admittedly, lazy about 85% of the time. My advice is practice: after many bakes, you will know when the dough looks right to produce a delicious product. My general method is not the oft-recommended spoon-and-level, where you spoon flour into the measuring cup and level it with a knife. However, my approach does combat the over-measuring of simply dipping your measuring cup in and packing it full of flour. PLAIN SCOOPING IS BAD BEWARE. They are not making it up when they say that you will pack in too much flour and end up with dry baked goods. My method is scoop-and-shake. Make sure your flour is fluffy and not packed together in whatever bag or container it is in. Then scoop in your measuring cup, fill it almost all the way, turn it so that it is level, and shake it to level it off. You will notice that it often expands a bit with a shake. When you dump it in your bowl, it should not look like it was packed into a cylinder like those fancy presentations of rice beside a yummy peanut curry. If it does, you likely over measured, but don’t panic, just adjust! Under measure the next measurement of flour a bit. Make a note for the next time you make those cookies. We are an anxiety free band of bakers here.
ingredients SUGAR
Sugar does more than making things sweet. It caramelizes, bringing mouth-watering color to your baked goods. Just think about those sweet and a bit nutty edges of cakes that are darker in color. Those are also due to the Maillard Reaction, a chemical interaction between sugars and proteins. That reaction results in complex flavors and not just in baking--it’s even responsible for the color change of a succulent steak! Sugar also helps to feed the yeast in breads, aiding their rise. That’s why you often find bread recipes requiring a bit of sugar to help “prove” the yeast is alive. You don’t need to worry about measuring so much with granulated sugar. You can just scoop, and it won’t compact like flour does. There are, however, a lot of varieties of sugar that each have different usages and effects: distinctive, more complex flavor. It is not mixed with molasses as proper brown sugar is, so they cannot be substituted for each other. Turbinado is great for decorative dusting or for adding a unique flavor. It’s not ideal for most baking because the huge granules don’t disperse well among the other ingredients, but some recipes do call for it.
Granulated Sugar: Ah, the jack of all trades. This is the basic granular sugar that most immediately comes to mind when someone says “sugar.” It is likely what an unclear recipe means by just saying “sugar.” A note on granule size: some bakers like really fine granulated sugar because they believe it’s best for creaming butter and sugar and mixing in general. You can buy this labeled as superfine sugar, but you can also just grind regular sugar in a food processor to get it a bit finer. Personally, I never do this unless a recipe specifically calls for it. It’s an extra step, and you dirty an entire food processor. But I recommend reading up on some arguments to the contrary because they are pretty convincing! Powdered Sugar: Powdered sugar is extremely fine sugar that is often mixed with an additive that prevents clumping (and is marginally successful). It does pack together like flour, so beware over or under measuring! Dusted with a sieve, it makes a posh garnish, but I mostly use it in buttercream or icings. Some recipes, especially shortbreads, call for it in the baked good itself, but I personally prefer the added texture of granulated sugar. But if you are looking for a very fine textured crust or shortbread, this is the sugar for you.
Brown Sugar: This is granulated sugar mixed with molasses, which makes it brown, adds a caramel-ly flavor, and boosts moisture. These are all valuable traits: the flavor is what gives chocolate chip cookies their characteristic butterscotch nuttiness (unlike plain sugar cookies), and the moisture improves the texture of cookies and cakes alike. I especially like to use brown sugar in cookies to add chew, and in just about anything to add a subtle depth of flavor that pairs well with stronger flavors. Turbinado: Not to be confused with brown sugar! Although the brownish color is deceiving, this is actually large grain, unrefined granulated sugar with a distinctive, more complex flavor. It is not mixed with molasses as proper brown sugar is, so they cannot be substituted for each other. Turbinado is great for decorative dusting or for adding a unique flavor. It’s not ideal for most baking because the huge granules don’t disperse well among the other ingredients, but some recipes do call for it.
ingredients
FAT Fat impedes gluten development, preventing proteins from building too much structure. It adds tenderness and moisture to baked goods. Fat-free baked goods, except those like plain bread that normally don’t have added fat, are often rubbery or gluey in texture. Be careful trying to make “diet” baked goods! Beyond its main role as texture-improver, fat can impart beautifully subtle flavors and richness. There are many many types of fats used in baking, each with its own desired effects. This is just a brief overview of those that I reach for most often.
EGGS When eggs cook, they solidify. This is a result of proteins reorganizing on a molecular level. The same change occurs when eggs cook in baked goods. Similarly to flour and the structure it’s gluten proteins bring, egg proteins also bring structure to baked goods. Eggs make enriched bread doughs more tender and soft by both impeding gluten structure-through the fatty egg yolks--and combating that effect through the protein structure of the whites. Yolks Yolks contain lecithin, which is an emulsifier. Emulsifiers allow substances that normally wouldn’t mix--like water and fats--to intermingle. This is how mayonnaise is made; it’s an emulsion of egg yolks, oil, and an acid like vinegar. When you add eggs to creamed butter and sugar, the mixture also emulsifies. Whites Whipped egg whites are often used as leavening. The proteins entrap air, and after being folded into batter (or alone in something like a meringue or a pavlova), those air bubbles remain during baking. The gas inside them expands, causing rise. Egg whites are responsible for the airy texture of egg foam sponge cakes like angel food cake. Most often they are beaten until they have stiff or soft peaks, sometimes with sugar. Cream of tartar is also often added to stabilize the mixture.
Some recipes like genoise sponges require whipping whole eggs until they reach “ribbon stage,” which is when they become foamy enough to retain a figure 8 dripped into the mixture. (Look up some videos or pictures of this! It’s super cool but also takes a whole lot of whipping.) Whipped whole eggs will never reach the stiffness of plain whites or a meringue, though, because the yolks impede the protein structure of the whites. That’s why recipes always say to make sure your bowls are clean and your whites are yolk-free before you whip them up! There are Italian, French, and Swiss meringues, each with a slightly different method. French is the most recognizable--it’s just adding granulated sugar to the egg whites as you beat them. Swiss requires cooking the whites and sugar with a double boiler until no longer grainy, then whipping. Italian meringue is made by adding hot sugar syrup as the whites whip.
Butter Butter is a saturated fat, so it is solid at room temperature. This property means that it melts when baked, and produces steam if it is in large enough clumps or layers. Flakey crusts and pastries owe their scrumptious textures to butter’s change of state. Puff pastry and croissant pastry (viennoiserie) are made from layers of dough and solid butter. During baking, those layers melt and the liquid in butter creates steam. The steam forms air pockets between the layers of pastry. Flakey crusts and biscuits similarly have layers produced by large chunks of butter mixed into the dough. Beyond its flake-creating superpower, butter melting also causes cookies to spread, and it’s distinct, rich flavor is one of the main reasons it is so widely used in baking. Butter is actually not pure fat. It’s a mixture of milk solids, liquid, and butterfat. There are butters with higher fat contents, usually called European style because they are more common in Europe. I generally use American style butter, which has about 80% buttterfat, unless I indicate otherwise. European butter is the middle ground between American butter and Ghee or clarified butter. Some Indian cuisines use ghee heavily. It’s isolated butterfat, the milk solids and liquid removed. You can actually make your own with an American or European butter by melting it until it separates into 3 layers: milk solids sunken to the bottom, foamy liquids at the top, and a clear, jewel-yellow layer in the middle. Skim the foam, strain the solids, and you have clarified butter! If you take this process further by boiling the butter until the milk solids toast and turn brown, you will get brown butter. Brown butter has a nutty, caramelized flavor, and it can be resolidified and substituted for regular butter in any recipe.
ingredients LEAVENERS Oil There are many types of oils--vegetable, olive, peanut, and many others. They generally share the characteristic of being unsaturated fats and therefore liquid at room temperature. Often using oil makes baked goods more moist--I’ve found that oil-based cakes are frequently more moist than butter cakes. Oils also can bring lovely flavors to a recipe; olive oil, for example, adds a fruity unique aroma. Switching it out for plain vegetable oil in a recipe can add depth of flavor and pair nicely with other flavors like citrus.
Peanut/Other Nut “Butters” Although called “butters,” nut butters are generally nut oils with finely ground nut solids suspending in them. (Except something like Jif peanut butter which is hydrogenated and thus partially saturated--more like vegetable shortening.) The nut solids give nut butters textures more similar to butter, spreadable on toast. They don’t behave like butter in baking, though. They are as if an oil were already mixed with some solids before you mixed it into the batter. For that reason, they are best used in combination with other fats that are more pure in order to get the best textural results.
These are baking powder, baking soda, and yeast. (And steam!) They add lightness by producing gas around which the batter solidifies. Did you know that bread is mostly air? That is part of why it is so filling. Yeast is a microorganism that produces gas--bread’s spongy texture is because of yeast farts! Baking powder and soda produce gas chemically. As a result of the raised temperature of the oven, the acid-base reactions that occur between these two leaveners and other ingredients gain the energy required to occur, thus producing gas. Remember baking soda and vinegar experiments from elementary school? That’s what’s happening to baking soda; as a base, it reacts with acidic ingredients. (Fun fact: Eggs are actually acidic!) Steam is the last leavener. Any existing air pockets (usually bound by egg proteins) will expand as the air inside them gains energy from the hot oven. If all of this science is over your head, TLDR: You can’t fudge the measurements of leaveners. I am evidently a proponent of debunking the “exactness” myth of baking, but in the case of these ingredients it’s best to stick with the recipe. However, beyond that, if you think your results seemed too airy or not airy enough, adding leavening or acidic ingredients may be the answer to fixing a jank recipe
cookies SHORTBREAD 1 stick butter (soft) – ¼ cup granulated sugar – 1 cup + 2 tbsp flour (scoop loosely and shake to level, if it falls into the bowl molded into the shape of the scooper, then you likely have too much) – ¾ tsp salt (also taste for salt balance and add if need be)
So you can really just throw everything into a bowl and smash it together here. I haven’t noticed a significant difference between cutting ingredients together with a pastry blender or creaming the butter and sugar together before adding the dry. Don’t overmix. Don’t stress about overmixing. Just combine until you don’t see clumps of flour or slimy bits of butter, and you’re good.
GET CREATIVE Modifying any recipe requires a bit of forethought. Adding other fatty ingredients like nut butters to shortbread will alter the fat to flour and sugar ratio and could result in oily or overly crumbly cookies. If you want a peanut butter shortbread, you’ve got to switch out a bit of the butter for peanut butter, but only enough to get the flavor. Otherwise you’ll lose the short consistency. A simpler modification is adding dry flavorings (spices, matcha powder) that become suspended in the mix, or extracts and zests that impart lots of flavor without altering the texture. Here are a couple I tried that worked, along with some comparable alternatives to help you start experimenting and creating your own flavors! Orange Zest: Add zest of 1 orange. Try: lemon or lime zest Pistachio: Add 1-2 handfuls of finely chopped pistachios. Try: almonds or hazelnuts Spice: Add 2-3 teaspoons of spices. Try a mixture! Rosemary: Add 2 teaspoons of lightly chopped rosemary. (or however much you think tastes good) Try: basil Chocolate Tahini: replace half the butter with tahini. Replace ¼ cup flour with cocoa. The texture is difficult here, so if your mixture is too dry, add more tahini or butter until it resembles classic shortbread texture. Try: other nut or seed butters
cookies COOKIES Whip together with a spoon until light and smooth: 1 stick of soft butter (able to poke a finger into) – 1 cup granulated or brown sugar (or a mixture of both) Mix longer than you think you should; you want to incorporate air into this. Add and mix in vigorously until the mixture emulsifies (it will lighten in color and texture and thicken): 1 egg – Vanilla – Salt (Vanilla and Salt to taste, adjustable later too) It will suddenly get fluffy and a bit difficult to whisk. Add and mix until some flour is not yet mixed in: 1 ¼ cups flour – ½ teaspoon baking soda
Add any chunks (chocolate, dried fruit, etc), then mix until just combined. You should have a sticky, wet dough. Make sure to taste a dab to check for salt content. It shouldn’t taste salty, but there should be a balance to the sugary sweetness. If it seems like something is missing, but you just can’t identify it, it is probably salt. Add a pinch or two. Wrap and either refrigerate until using or freeze briefly if you are in a rush (or freeze for a couple weeks for convenient future cookies). Refrigeration helps the flavors meld, the flour to fully hydrate, and the mixture to become easy to handle, so I advise you to do this step. When ready to bake, roll into cylinders of your desired size. If they are a bit taller than they are wide, you’ll get thick, chewy cookies with slightly crisp edges and tender centers, my ideal. If you like them flatter, feel free to use a different shaping approach. Bake at 375 about 10 minutes or until the edges are slightly golden and the centers look almost raw, but have definitely risen. They will sink down slightly as they cool and become chewy and soft. Delicious!
cake VANILLA
(adapted from Better Homes and Gardens) Stir together in a large bowl: 2 cups flour – About a teaspoon salt (taste the batter later to check this amount) – 1 2/3 cups sugar – 1 teaspoon baking powder – ½ teaspoon baking soda Cut in with a pastry blender or smash in with your hands: 1 stick of soft butter (Best if you can easily poke your finger in. The microwave is your friend, but don’t melt it!) The butter should be completely combined in the mixture, no clumps, not even pea sized. This is not pie crust! Add and gently whisk together until combined: 2 eggs – 1 ¼ cups milk mixed with the juice of ½ lemon – Vanilla (a swig or two)
Add to buttered and floured (or parchment lined) tins and bake at 350 for the times below based on the tin size. 3 6 inch tins: 20 minutes, then check 2 8 or 9 inch tins: 25 minutes, then check Cupcakes: 15 minutes, then check In general with timings, I prefer to do a timer for the bare minimum amount of time and then check every couple of minutes. With practice, you will develop a 6th sense for how much more time is necessary for a baked good, especially cake. Since every oven is different, and altitude, added ingredients, butter softness, and so many other factors can impact baking times, I can’t give you an exact number. It may 20 extra minutes--don’t question it! Please never take something out at the exact time the recipe says just because it says so. It will be over or under done 95% of the time, and tears will be shed. With this cake and most others, my approach is to press the center very lightly (which is the part that cooks last). If it does not indent and returns to its former shape, then the batter has cooked there and everywhere else. Take it out before it gets dry!
cake BASIC BUTTERCREAM FROSTING With American buttercream frosting, my approach is very freeform. It is just a combination of butter and sugar with flavorings and sometimes liquids added to loosen the texture. Just put in whatever fats you are using (butter, of course, but also any nut butters--almond, nutella, etc!) and whip them until smooth and homogenous. Then add flavorings, any added liquids, and icing sugar until you reach your desired sweetness and texture. This is based partially on personal preference, but over time you will develop a gauge for when it is too buttery or needs salt. Too bad you’ll have to taste a dab of it! The Most Important Ingredient Is Salt. There is often a lot of sugar in frosting, and it needs a collar and leash to tame the sweetness a bit. If you’ve ever had bad buttercream, it likely was unsalted. I have even found that salted butter works here to balance the sweetness. (Just keep it in mind if adding other salt!) GET CREATIVE These are some ingredients I often add to the basic butter + powdered sugar + salt formula: Vanilla: I add this every time. It really should be part of the basic recipe. Vanilla Can Do No Harm. Just don’t put in the entire bottle. (A bit of vanilla enhances other flavors. Even add it to chocolate frosting; presto flavor complexity and warmth.)
Whipping cream: Despite being a liquid, this will not loosen the mixture. It will actually whip up, adding lightness and cutting some of the richness of this intense sugar/fat combination. I like to add a splash for just that reason. Remember that whipping cream can be whipped into butter, so proceed with caution. Its large fat content could tip the balance between a perfect buttercream and a buttercream that’s a bit too heavy on the Butter part. Milk: This is the way to thin out frosting that is too thick without changing the flavor significantly. You can also use concentrated or reduced juices if you’d like to impart flavor through a liquid. I especially add milk or another liquid if I intend to pipe the frosting in order to adjust the consistency to a perfectly pipeable paste. If you add too much (within reason), you can always fix your mistake by adding a bit of sugar or cocoa powder. Nut Butters: These can be great ways to create new frosting flavors. I usually replace part of the butter with a nut butter (or nutella or cookie butter) and adjust salt and powdered sugar content accordingly. They will often slacken a mixture, so be aware of that. Also of allergies! Spices and Powdered Flavors: These are some of the simplest ways to (literally) spice up your plain frosting! Just add a teaspoon or so and you get an instant flavor boost, without irritating textural side effects. Presto! Voila!
Cocoa: I usually use this instead of melted chocolate to make chocolate frosting. Its rich, intense cocoa flavor gets a lot of “bang for your buck” as far as flavor goes. If you really want an intense chocolate topping, though, I recommend ganache, which is a mixture of chocolate and cream or milk. Although a bit finicky and expensive, silky ganache is the most pure chocolate topping. That said, a variation of buttercream with cocoa powder can be pretty intense and if you want milder chocolate flavor, a perfect alternative. Melted Chocolate: With melted chocolate I find it very difficult to add enough to frosting to get a rich flavor without altering the texture of the frosting too much or having the chocolate seize. I like to use this for mild “milk chocolate” flavored frostings, and I will usually use a pretty concentrated dark chocolate bar for that in order to get as much flavor as possible. (I rarely use chocolate chips because they really just aren’t as delicious as real chocolate bars. I think if you’re gonna go to the trouble of baking something, you might as well commit to using the best ingredients possible!) Added bonus: melted chocolate makes your frosting a bit glossy and more decadent looking. It also can help it set firmly if you like that effect! Remember to let the chocolate cool a bit before you add it, or you risk melting the frosting. Zests: Similarly, citrus zests don’t impact texture, but they do impart lots of flavor. They are one of my favorite ways to subtly add flavor or to intensify a juice flavor. Just think about when you peel an orange and suddenly need to rub the skin all over your body because it smells so good! Other people don’t do that? Regardless, you get the point!
MIXING TIPS This is one of the few basic recipes that I think is best with an electric mixer. That said, I usually use a wooden spoon / whisk combo, so don’t worry if you don’t have a mixer. Your electric whisk will never get tired, though. To really beat enough air into this to get a light, not cloying buttercream takes a bit of arm endurance. (If you add whipping cream, this problem is often solved because it adds whipped lightness.) Either method is fine, but here are some tips to remember: Start with really soft butter. Softer than room temp. For me this takes 12 seconds on one side in the microwave, a flip, and 12 more seconds on the other side. Especially if you’re doing this by hand, fingerpoke-able butter is your friend. It will allow you to beat and mix to get the proper texture. Mix slowly at first. You do not want a powdered sugar and/or cocoa facial. Add powdered sugar slowly and taste dabs of frosting as you go. This is my general approach because I rarely use measurements. Don’t worry about recipes or ratios. With this method, you can customize your recipe to fit new flavors. Whip it longer than you think you need to. It should get slightly lighter in color. (Unless you are looking for a more sturdy, thick frosting.) Whipping a lot of air into this will get the light texture that combats the tendency for frostings to be sickly and swept off your baked goods with a knife.
bars
BROWNIES
(adapted from Betty Crocker) Melt over medium to low heat in a saucepan and gently stir to make sure nothing burns at the bottom: 2/3 cup butter (Salted works here! Just keep an eye on salt content later on.) – 6 oz chocolate (I use semi sweet. Bars or chips work. Milk chocolate may yield overly sweet brownies, and way dark (70+ percent) alters the texture a bit. However, any chocolate or a mixture of varieties will work in a pinch!) While that melts, whisk vigorously: 3 large eggs – 1 ½ cups granulated sugar This will be done whisking when you let it rest and see a layer of lighter colored foam rise to the top, but the entire mixture has not reached that foamy stage. This is key to getting a good amount of that yummy crackled top that you see in mix brownies. Whip the eggs too long, and you’ll get a crunchy top that breaks and separates from the rest of the brownie; too short and you’ll get no crackly top. After practicing a couple times, you’ll figure out what the eggs should look like to get a perfect batch. Don’t worry if the first one’s a dud!
Bake in a greased and parchment lined 9 x 13 inch pan at 350 for 40 minutes or until the center no longer jiggles. This is a bit up to personal preference; I like my brownies gooey and sometimes a bit underdone in the middle. As long as there’s no liquid batter and your edges aren’t black, you’ve hit a decent window that can just depend on your personal ideal brownie consistency.
GET CREATIVE Although I think it’s best to leave the basic bones of this brownie recipe intact, these are some easy ways to add new dimensions of flavor to your batch. Mix-ins: Add nuts, dried fruit, or chocolate chips for new textures! You could even do candy canes for a minty twist or savory snacks like pretzels. Hot Chocolate: I like to add in some ginger, cayenne, and cinnamon to get a spicy chocolate bunch. Be careful not to add too much cayenne or you’ll need to wash these down with a lot of milk! Graham Cracker Crust: This is one of my favorite variations. You simply make a basic graham cracker crust recipe (cookie crumbs, melted butter, salt, and granulated sugar), and press it into a bottom crust. Pour the brownie batter over it, and bake as usual. Orange Chocolate: Add the zest of a couple oranges, and you’ll easily get a fragrant orange flavor. This might also benefit from an orange glaze or white chocolate orange ganache. You decide!