What Makes Dorie Greenspan’s Recipes So Good?

Ask folks in the world of food and cookbooks, “Who writes the best recipes?” and you’ll hear one name more than any other: Dorie Greenspan. "Dorie does rock solid recipes," says Chandra Ram, who judges the prestigious IACP Cookbook Awards. So what's Dorie doing that makes her recipes better than others?

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dan Pashman?

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• 0:43Dan Pashman?

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• 1:14Dan Pashman?

  Can you show me the butters that you have available in your house right now?

• 1:19Speaker 01

  Oh, you have to come downstairs for that.

• 1:21Dan Pashman?

  Okay, let's go.

• 1:22Speaker 01

  Come on down.

• 1:23Dan Pashman?

  Okay. You have a separate butter fridge?

• 1:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh, yes. Yes, doesn't everyone?

• 1:30Dan Pashman?

  This is Dorie Greenspan. I'm at her house in Westbrook, Connecticut. Now, Dory just came out with her 15th cookbook, Dory's Anytime Cakes. Most of her books have been about sweets and baking. She's especially known for her cookies. Hence, the butter fridge. When she was so excited to show me, she was skipping down the stairs. So this is your downstairs. Breads are falling out of your extra fridge.

• 1:52Speaker 01

  I've gone.

• 1:53Dan Pashman?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:54Speaker 01

  It's really kind of, I'm down. So I buy butter. In boxes of 36 pounds of butter.

• 2:02Dan Pashman?

  Dory has a full-size fridge in her basement, and I'd say a quarter of it is stacked with bricks of butter. When she says she buys 36 pounds at a time, that's 144 sticks of butter.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  This is Cabot's, which is local for us here. The other day, butter was on sale, and I can't resist a sale. So I bought 10 pounds of on-sale butter. And then there's Kerrygold for putting on the sesame bread and the baguette.

• 2:30Dan Pashman?

  That's like your bread and butter butter.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:32Dan Pashman?

  Okay.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  Um, butter. I live for it.

• 2:36Dan Pashman?

  What do you love about it?

• 2:38Speaker 01

  What I can do with it. Yeah, I'm a baker. A baker without butter isn't much of a baker.

• 2:44Dan Pashman?

  Right, like a painter without paint.

• 2:46Speaker 01

  Like a painter without paint.

• 2:51Dan Pashman?

  This is the Sporkful. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people. Before we get started, quick, exciting pasta-related announcement. The folks at Sfolini and I are teaming up for a special, limited-edition set of my pastas for this holiday season. We are infusing my shapes with special flavors. We're doing a Calabrian Chili Caskatelli. Oh, man, it's so good. A Safran Vesuvio and a Garlic Quattro Tini. They're not overpowering these flavors, but they are so, so good. And you can get a special pack, two boxes of each of the three flavors, this holiday season. Now, this special set goes on sale this Saturday, November 1st, and we're doing an early bird holiday sale. 20% off the entire site.

• 3:34Dan Pashman?

  You could also get six-pack, variety packs of my classic shapes. So get your holiday shopping done early. 20% off site-wide, starts this Saturday, November 1st through Monday, November 3rd. No code needed. Get them before they're gone. Head over to sfolini.com. That's S-F-O-G-L-I-N-I dot com.

• 3:52Dan Pashman?

  Earlier this year, we did a couple of episodes about what makes a great recipe and what makes a bad recipe. You know, there are so many recipes online, but why do some people's recipes work so much better than others? In one of those episodes, I talked with Chandra Ram, who judges cookbooks for the prestigious IACP Awards. And I asked Chandra, who out there writes consistently excellent recipes?

• 4:15Speaker 02

  I would say Dory Greenspan does just absolutely rock solid recipes. And I've experienced that with her baking and savory recipes.

• 4:25Dan Pashman?

  What makes her recipes so good?

• 4:26Speaker 02

  First of all, they're incredibly well-tested. There's a lot of instruction to them. She's eliminated unnecessary steps. And it's, I think that there's a certain amount of comfort that comes from knowing, okay, it's a Dorie Greenspan recipe, so it will work.

• 4:46Dan Pashman?

  Dory's been writing about food for more than 40 years. Mention her name to serious home bakers and they will gasp with delight. She has a near-cult following. There's even a blog called Tuesdays with Dory, where people all over bake her recipes and share the results. Well, I had the privilege of visiting Dory at home and baking with her myself. I took a ferry across Long Island Sound from where I live to Connecticut, where Dory lives, because I wanted to see her in action in her own test kitchen. I wanted to know, why are her recipes so good?

• 5:16Speaker 01

  Oh, I love this. When I worked with Julia Child... Allow me to just drop this in as early as possible.

• 5:26Dan Pashman?

  Back in the 90s, Julia Child handpicked Dory to write a companion cookbook for her PBS series, Baking with Julia.

• 5:33Speaker 01

  When I worked with Julia Child, one afternoon Julia said to me, "Let's play hooky." I said, "Ooh, what do you want to do?" She said, "Go to a supermarket."

• 5:45Speaker 01

  This was Julia's idea of a good time. And so I had a little miata, which is like the size of a jelly bean. So I kind of pleated, folded origami to Julia into the car and we went to the supermarket. We're walking to the car and Julia puts her arm around me and she says, "We're so lucky because we work in food."

• 6:12Speaker 01

  She said, "We will always be learning." This is such a vast, wonderful field and it has so many parts and there are so many possibilities, ways of entering it, that it's always interesting. It will always be interesting. And she's right, we're lucky, we'll always learn something.

• 6:35Dan Pashman?

  And I take it you still have that passion?

• 6:38Speaker 01

  I do. The other day I made a cake with saffron. I've never made a cake with saffron before. Well, that's not true, I made one and it wasn't good.

• 6:47Dan Pashman?

  You've never made a good cake with saffron before?

• 6:49Speaker 01

  I never made a good cake.

• 6:52Speaker 01

  And I was just as excited as if I had just made my first cake. This work for me doesn't get old.

• 7:04Dan Pashman?

  Dory grew up in Brooklyn where her father owned a grocery store. Now, a lot of people who work in food, they have some special memories of the food from their childhood, some experience that inspired them to get into this line of work. That's not Dory. Her mother hated cooking. And the one time Dory tried to cook, well, she was in seventh grade, hanging out with friends at her house, her parents were out, and she's not sure what got into her, but she decided she'd try to make frozen french fries by deep frying them in a pot of oil. When she took the lid off the pot, it exploded. The fire department showed up. The kitchen didn't quite burn to the ground, but it would require an expensive renovation. When Dory's parents got home, her mom first confirmed everyone was okay, then took one look at her kitchen and burst into tears.

• 7:48Dan Pashman?

  Dory didn't cook again, not until she got married to her husband, Michael.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  So as soon as we got married, I just couldn't wait to cook. I wanted to cook, I wanted to have friends come for dinner, and so I taught myself to cook and then to bake and then... It just became what I loved. So I'd go to work and I'd come home and cook and bake.

• 8:14Dan Pashman?

  This love of cooking and baking continued to grow through the early years of Dory's marriage. But it was always a hobby. As her day job, she was getting a PhD in gerontology, the study of old age. When Dory and Michael had their son, Joshua, Dory took some time away from grad school. When it was time to go back to her dissertation, she just couldn't get into it. She knew she wanted to do something else.

• 8:35Speaker 01

  And Michael said, "Why don't you get a job as a baker?" Forgetting that I had no training, no experience, no skills. But yeah, sure, get a job as a baker.

• 8:46Dan Pashman?

  And you did?

• 8:47Speaker 01

  And I did. And I got fired a month later for creative insubordination. How great is that?

• 8:53Dan Pashman?

  Right. Right. And what does that mean exactly?

• 8:56Speaker 01

  It meant that I got bored doing their signature cake, and so I changed it and didn't tell anybody. And that got brought up to the dining room and served to people who were accustomed to a chocolate cake with, I think that one had, I know it had raisins and whiskey, and I think it had almonds or walnuts. And I sent up a cake that had prunes, everybody's favorite with prunes, pecans, and armagnac.

• 9:26Dan Pashman?

  And that didn't go over?

• 9:27Speaker 01

  Well, when I was called up to the owner's office, she said, "That was some cake." And I said, "Did you like it?" And she said, "That has nothing to do with it. You're fired."

• 9:40Dan Pashman?

  So clearly, baking in a restaurant kitchen wasn't for her. But her friend suggested that Dory try writing about food. In 1983, she pitched an article to Food and Wine Magazine. Along with the pitch, she sent a basket of the baked goods she wanted to write about. And they said yes. Her career as a food writer began. She worked for Elle Magazine, the James Beard Foundation, Food Network. She published a cookbook on simple desserts. Then, nearly a decade into her writing career, she got her big break. Tell me about making 15-minute magic.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  15-minute magic was a cake that I came up with where the whole cake could be made in the food processor. And it was almonds and Amaretto cookies and butter and sugar and eggs and chocolate. And so the whole cake took 15 minutes to put together. My book came out, 1991, and I was invited to do a demo. I was the last person to demo. Before me had been Julia Child and Jacques Peppin. So it was like, you know, Jacques Peppin, Julia Child, Dory Green's fan.

• 10:43Dan Pashman?

  Right.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  And I chose to do 15 minute magic because I was so nervous. And I thought that if I didn't slice my finger off in the processor, this would all go well.

• 10:54Dan Pashman?

  You thought it was the one thing you were sure you wouldn't screw up, despite how nervous you were?

• 10:58Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 10:58Dan Pashman?

  Because it's so simple?

• 10:59Speaker 01

  Because it's so simple. Julia Child tasted it and came up to me and she said, you know, we're all having dinner after this. Would you sit with me? She liked my cake.

• 11:12Dan Pashman?

  And that was sort of your entree into working with her, which was a huge break in your career.

• 11:15Speaker 01

  And it was also personally, it was extraordinary to work with her. She was so encouraging, so supportive, so smart, so curious about the world. She used to call me every morning. And so for years, my 8:30 AM call was with Julia. She asked me if I'd ever used a bread machine, if I had one. And I said, no. She said, we sound disdainful. I said, well, it just doesn't interest me. She said, that's the wrong attitude. She said, I'm buying one today and you should too.

• 11:49Dan Pashman?

  Why?

• 11:50Speaker 01

  Because it was something new. It might have had possibilities. What could we do with it? Would it be helpful to us in any way? In the end, I gave mine away and Julia kept hers. And she used it to knead bread and to let it rise. But then she shaped it by hand. But that was Julia. She just wanted to know everything that was going on.

• 12:15Dan Pashman?

  Dory published Baking with Julia in 1996. Dory says she and Julia had a similar approach. They both wrote very detailed recipes. And they both cared a lot about making sure the recipes would work for home cooks. After writing a cookbook with Julia Child, Dory wrote cookbooks with two iconic French chefs, pastry chef Pierre Hermé, who Vogue called the Picasso of pastry, and Danielle Boulud, who now owns restaurants and cafes around the world. What do you think that these chefs all saw in you?

• 12:46Speaker 01

  I mean, I think. During that time, what I was doing was translating. Was really to be able to take what they were doing and to figure out how to explain it to home cooks. I mean, when Danielle Blou did the pig's foot recipe and we came to the instructions where you manicured the pig's nails, actually pulled them out, I said, "I don't think that's really what most home cooks are gonna do."

• 13:17Dan Pashman?

  Right.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  It stayed in till the end. It was the editor who pulled it out.

• 13:22Dan Pashman?

  Right. Meanwhile, there's like one guy at home who's like, didn't bother doing that. It's like, "These things are chewy."

• 13:28Speaker 01

  Right, exactly.

• 13:30Dan Pashman?

  But that makes sense. I think you have a knack as a communicator, because you had

• 13:36Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 13:37Dan Pashman?

  enough of a foot in the world of cooking and chefery to understand what they were talking about and to ask the right questions, but enough of a foot in the quote-unquote "regular person" world, and that you were able to be a good translator, and that that must be, I think, what they responded to.

• 13:53Speaker 01

  Thank you. You know, I don't know, but now, so many years later, when I think about the work that I'm doing, I think that as a cookbook author, you're a teacher.

• 14:03Dan Pashman?

  One of the things that so many people say about your recipes, over and over again, is they say, "Dorie's recipes just work. Her recipes always work."

• 14:14Speaker 01

  And I'm touching wood. I'm like, not holding on so that me and Ozzy...

• 14:18Dan Pashman?

  But like, there's so many recipes out there. What are you doing that not everyone else is doing that is allowing your recipes to work so well?

• 14:27Speaker 01

  You know, you pose questions in such a way that I have to say nice things about myself.

• 14:35Dan Pashman?

  You know what? Instead of telling me how you do it, why don't you show me how you do it?

• 14:43Speaker 01

  Come to my kitchen.

• 14:47Dan Pashman?

  At the time I visited, Dory was putting the finishing touches on one of her cookbooks. And there was one recipe that was giving her trouble. It's for cookies she calls nubbly nuggets.

• 14:56Speaker 01

  This is a recipe that I made a couple of times. And I then sent it off to Mary Dodd, my recipe tester. And she wrote back and she said, "Everything worked, except..." She said, "Your cookies in the picture and in my notes had a shine on them. Mine were dull. And I can't figure out why." And it's a small thing. I could just take the word "shine" out of the head note and no one would know. And if they were shiny, some of the shiny people would be happy and the dull people would... But I just, it bothers me that it wasn't consistent. And so I'm retesting it.

• 15:38Dan Pashman?

  Dory pulls out her food processor and the recipe. It's a Word doc on printer paper.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  Okay, so...

• 15:46Speaker 01

  I'm following the author's directions.

• 15:49Dan Pashman?

  Which are your directions.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 15:52Speaker 01

  It says to put all of the ingredients except the chocolate and the egg whites in the food processor. So, sugar, cocoa, cinnamon. These are actually like macaroons. They have coconut and they have almonds. And now I'm gonna make some noise. Wait, does she say make noise? Yes. She says, "Pulse until the mixture is pebbly."

• 16:21Dan Pashman?

  When you say "she," you're talking about yourself.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  Okay, yes, so I see.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  I'm sorry.

• 16:27Dan Pashman?

  No, but that's interesting. Do you always think of it that way when you're doing...

• 16:30Speaker 01

  No.

• 16:30Dan Pashman?

  No, okay.

• 16:32Speaker 01

  Except when there's something wrong. And then I say, "Oh, the author made a mistake."

• 16:43Dan Pashman?

  Dory pulses the ingredients a few times, then opens up the food processor and peers inside.

• 16:47Speaker 01

  There it is. It's pebbly-ish. It's more sandy than pebbly, isn't it? Yeah, one second, I just want to change that. Pulse until the mixture, the mixture is sandy.

• 17:02Dan Pashman?

  Let the record reflect that Dory has crossed out pebbly and written sandy.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  Okay, so now the chocolate does go in.

• 17:10Dan Pashman?

  Dory adds the chocolate, pulses a few more times.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  I feel as though I'm at one with my food processor. I can hear the change.

• 17:17Dan Pashman?

  I would imagine for you, it's almost like the way like an auto mechanic can listen to a car and be like, oh, it's the flux capacitor. That's what's wrong with that thing.

• 17:24Speaker 01

  I am not writing down flux capacitor.

• 17:26Dan Pashman?

  Flux capacitor is from Back to the Future. It's not a real thing.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  Okay, wait.

• 17:31Dan Pashman?

  I know nothing about cars.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  Okay, so.

• 17:34Dan Pashman?

  Dory adds the egg whites and pulses until the mixture is like a paste. Time for one final check before the oven. How does it taste?

• 17:42Speaker 01

  Mmm, pebbly.

• 17:46Dan Pashman?

  You sure it doesn't taste sandy? Should we cross that sandy and go back to pebbly?

• 17:49Speaker 01

  I'm tempted. No, because at that moment it was sandy.

• 17:52Dan Pashman?

  Okay.

• 17:53Speaker 01

  But it's pebbly now.

• 17:55Dan Pashman?

  It looks very fudgy. It looks like moist chocolatey with little bits of nuts inside. Mmm. You know what this reminds me of? And this is gonna, at the beginning, it's gonna sound like an insult, but then I'm gonna...

• 18:05Speaker 01

  Wait, wait, okay.

• 18:06Dan Pashman?

  Then it's gonna be a compliment in the end?

• 18:07Speaker 01

  I'm girding myself.

• 18:08Dan Pashman?

  No, no, it's not. There are all these like new fangled protein bars that they sell at like convenience stores. They all have names like double chocolate fudge chunk, but then it's like it's made with dates. And you're like, that's not chocolate. This is like what that's supposed to be.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  Okay, we can't finish this. I'm off to start a new business.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  I don't have time for this. I see my future in...

• 18:31Dan Pashman?

  If you turn this into bars, if you can find a way to package this and sell it at 7-Eleven.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  I'll make you a partner.

• 18:38Speaker 01

  Wait, I have to get my baking bag.

• 18:39Dan Pashman?

  All right.

• 18:43Dan Pashman?

  Dory uses a small scoop, like a mini ice cream scoop, to portion out the cookie dough on the sheet pan. With the cookies ready to go in the oven, she takes a minute to reflect.

• 18:52Speaker 01

  For me, baking is kind of magic. We took those little bowls full of ingredients and we're gonna have cookies soon. I think that when you're cooking, when you're, particularly when you're baking, the process should be enjoyable.

• 19:08Dan Pashman?

  There are times in your life where you just have to cook because you need to get food on the table.

• 19:10Speaker 01

  Absolutely, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 19:12Dan Pashman?

  And then there's times that you cook for pleasure. Like, to me, I find it kind of meditative. Like, I don't like to listen to anything. I don't like to put on music when I'm cooking. I like it to be quiet. I like that I'm just totally focused on the thing that I'm doing.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  I mean, baking was always my refuge. It was what I did when things weren't going well. I'm gonna put them in, set the timer, and we'll see if they come out shiny.

• 19:43Dan Pashman?

  Will the cookies be shiny or dull? Will Dory make any other tiny changes that'll make a big difference to the final recipe? We'll find out. Plus, Dory tells us about a cookie she invented that came to her in a dream, and another that came to her in a nightmare. Stick around.

• 20:09Speaker 03

  Hope you're hungry because it's time for some ads.

• 20:15Dan Pashman?

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• 21:43Dan Pashman?

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• 23:20Speaker 05

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• 24:24Dan Pashman?

  Welcome back to the Sporkful. I'm Dan Pashman. Last week on the show, we feature another iconic baker, the one and only Paul Hollywood, who you of course know as a judge on The Great British Baking Show, AKA Great British Bake Off. One of Paul's trademarks is his handshake. On very rare occasions, when he's very impressed with a baker, he will give that baker a handshake. The first time, it happened organically.

• 24:46Speaker 06

  I gave someone a handshake because I thought they did an amazing job. And then I did it again, maybe the following year or later that way. And then people started noticing it.

• 24:55Dan Pashman?

  But then over the years, perhaps inadvertently, the number of handshakes increased. And there were like whole think pieces and all this hand wringing of the number of Paul's handshakes that's going up.

• 25:05Speaker 06

  He's devalued. He's devalued his own handshake. I mean, I get people, builders coming into my house and they open the door and they go, nice to meet you. And the hand's out.

• 25:14Dan Pashman?

  Right.

• 25:14Speaker 06

  And I go, where's my cake?

• 25:17Dan Pashman?

  Also in this episode, I attempt to sell Paul on my unconventional approach to eating Oreo cookies. He talks about coming from a family of bakers and his uncomfortable relationship with fame. That episode's up now. Check it out. Now, back to Dory Green's band. While the cookies were in the oven, we continued chatting. Clearly, Dory's a very curious person. She's passionate about baking. She still loves learning new things. But there's a word I haven't yet used to describe her that I think goes a long way in explaining why she's so good at writing recipes. Dory is obsessive. So you sometimes dream about cookies?

• 25:52Speaker 01

  Hmm, yeah, I dream about a lot of foods.

• 25:55Dan Pashman?

  When I was in college, I did study abroad and like backpacked around Europe. And it was the first time it was pointed out to me by my friends who were sharing a sleeper car with me that I chew in my sleep, that I make this sound while I sleep, like, because I'm like always dreaming about food.

• 26:13Speaker 01

  That's so much better than grinding your teeth or snoring.

• 26:21Dan Pashman?

  So, so tell me about a recent food dream you had.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  I was thinking about, there's a French coffee extract called Trablis, I think. And I don't know why I was thinking about it, but I thought I could make that.

• 26:37Dan Pashman?

  So wait, but when you said you thought about that, like you dreamt?

• 26:41Speaker 01

  I, yeah, I was dreaming about it, yeah.

• 26:43Dan Pashman?

  You had a dream that you would make this?

• 26:45Speaker 01

  That I could make this coffee extract, but I could make it really strong, like an espresso syrup extract that I could put in chocolate and I could make a marble cheesecake. And I did it in the morning. And yeah, I don't know where, how it became a cheesecake, but that's what I did in the morning. I mean, my most, my, my, my favorite, favorite dream was the jammer cookie that's in Dory's cookies. It's a beautiful cookie. So it's a

• 27:17Speaker 01

  Sublet, a French shortbread cookie. And it has a dab of jam in the center and it has streusel around it. And I baked it in muffin tins. So the sides are straight and the jam melts and gets that. I love what melted jam looks like after it's been, kind of bubbles up and boils. And then jam becomes gel on top. The streusel is nubbly and golden brown and it's so beautiful. And that came to me in a dream.

• 27:52Dan Pashman?

  I mean, I've seen the pictures of those cookies. I haven't made them, but they look so good. Like my, my mom makes thumbprint cookies. Thumb cookies, similar, similar to like a shortbread cookie with a bit of jam in the middle. A little more simple, but like classic, you know, it makes them around Thanksgiving. She has a clothespin that she uses to put the thumbprints in. But the streusel.

• 28:10Speaker 01

  It's another texture. It's another flavor also because the streusel has little brown sugar in it. And just like a couple of specks of cinnamon.

• 28:20Dan Pashman?

  Do you ever have cookie nightmares?

• 28:22Speaker 01

  Oh, why did you even bring this up? So when baking chaymois.

• 28:28Dan Pashman?

  This is one of your cookbooks from a little while ago.

• 28:30Speaker 01

  Right, 2014, I think. So it was at the printer and I had gotten a call to be part of something that Martha Stewart was doing and I had to do a cookie. And I said, oh, I'll do the speculus cookies. And I was excited. And I woke up in the middle of the night and I thought, there's a mistake. That cookie doesn't work. I don't know why that came to me. And I got up, it was three or four o'clock in the morning and I made the cookie and it didn't work. And I made it again and it didn't work. This sent me to the doctor for anxiety.

• 29:10Speaker 01

  Turns out I had made the worst error you can possibly make in a recipe. I left an ingredient out, I left an egg out in the ingredient list and in the instructions. This was hopeless.

• 29:24Dan Pashman?

  That's amazing. It's amazing to me that that came to you in your sleep.

• 29:28Speaker 01

  I can't explain it. It is kind of amazing. And thank goodness-

• 29:32Dan Pashman?

  But it was tested previously and it worked. It must have been tested for the book before you put it in the book.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  Yes, and then I must have been recopying something. I must have taken an older version out of my file. I don't know. Fortunately, that may have been my first book that came out in the real internet age. And it was kind of, I mean, it was a horrible mistake and as I said, it sent me to the doctor. But it turned out to be an interesting experience and kind of a nice one because I announced on Twitter and on my website that there was this mistake. And I asked people to tell other people that there was this mistake. And people were so kind. They wrote and said, "Oh, don't worry about it. We now know that there's an egg."

• 30:20Speaker 01

  And it was actually a nice, it turned out to be a nice experience.

• 30:25Dan Pashman?

  And what did you learn from that experience?

• 30:27Speaker 01

  Proofread better.

• 30:30Dan Pashman?

  I thought you were gonna say, "It's okay to make mistakes. Even Dorie Greenspan makes mistakes."

• 30:34Speaker 01

  No, no, no. Proofread, proofread.

• 30:38Speaker 01

  Gotta do better. Gotta get it right.

• 30:44Speaker 01

  Can you smell the chocolate?

• 30:45Dan Pashman?

  Yes, it smells amazing. Do you wanna check on the cookies real quick?

• 30:48Speaker 01

  I do wanna check them.

• 30:49Dan Pashman?

  Alright, let's check. Oh, it smells very chocolatey.

• 30:57Dan Pashman?

  We take a quick peek, keeping the oven door closed. Dory says they're not quite done, so we wait a few more minutes. Finally, she takes them out.

• 31:05Speaker 01

  So, they are not shiny.

• 31:11Speaker 01

  I'm glad we're redoing these. I think I'm gonna ignore the shine word.

• 31:15Dan Pashman?

  Just take it out?

• 31:16Speaker 01

  I might. I was just, I thought the shine was so pretty. That's why I mentioned it. So, let me-

• 31:24Dan Pashman?

  Is it possible that's just like an issue of lighting? Like maybe you had certain lights on or it was a certain time of year, the sun was coming in the window a certain way? And it hit them and then, and it illuminated them?

• 31:34Speaker 01

  No.

• 31:36Speaker 01

  No, nice try. I like that.

• 31:39Dan Pashman?

  In the end, Dory's best guess is that when she made these cookies earlier, they had a slight sheen to them, and she got overly excited and wrote the word shiny, which turns out to be an exaggeration. So Dory decides to delete shiny, because for her, every word of a recipe matters. See, like, if we can dissect some of the writing in this recipe that we're focusing on here today. I mean, you change from pebbly to sandy, but you have these lines like, bake for 22 to 25 minutes, or until they feel just firm when gently pressed. And most important, can be peeled away from the paper or mat.

• 32:14Speaker 01

  And they can be.

• 32:16Dan Pashman?

  And that's the kind of thing that is like, very clear and precise and detailed, that I think that like even an average person can understand.

• 32:23Speaker 01

  I think it's important to have the time to give somebody visual clues, because often ovens are not perfectly calibrated. It's another way of helping people be successful, by giving enough clues so that if you're not sure that it was 20 minutes or 25 minutes, you can say, okay, they feel firm, they peel. You know, it's anything that helps a home baker get it right.

• 32:54Dan Pashman?

  Dory says her recipe-writing idol was Maida Heater, who's sort of like the Dory of a previous generation. She was known for her desserts and her consistently excellent recipes.

• 33:04Speaker 01

  She would always be one step ahead of you. So she would say, the batter might look curdled, but it will all come together when the dry ingredients go in. And I was always so comforted by that, that, ooh, the batter looks terrible. Ah, it's just as she said. And when I started to write recipes, she was the model that I looked up to. And I actually, when I'm writing the recipes, I think of myself, I hope this isn't a terrible image, I think of myself sitting on your shoulder, or like just looking over your shoulder, um, helping you.

• 33:45Dan Pashman?

  Like a little cookie fairy.

• 33:46Speaker 01

  Like a cookie fairy, yeah. I think of myself as being there with you.

• 33:50Dan Pashman?

  Okay, should we eat some cookies?

• 33:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, have a cookie. It peels right off the paper, right?

• 33:59Dan Pashman?

  Oh my god.

• 34:00Speaker 01

  Mmm, they're good.

• 34:02Dan Pashman?

  They're so good.

• 34:05Speaker 01

  Mmm.

• 34:05Dan Pashman?

  You know what I love about it that I did not anticipate? They're really kind of crispy crusty on the very outside and immediately you get through this sort of shell into a soft gooey center.

• 34:17Speaker 01

  The shell that's not shiny into the soft gooey center. And there's, I think, just a lot of flavor. You get the almond. It's really chocolate, but not, not that heavy. Is it okay to say that sometimes too much chocolate is too much?

• 34:36Dan Pashman?

  A hundred percent.

• 34:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, that it's not so chocolate that that's the only flavor you get. When you've got nuts and cookies and coconut, as we have, it really helps make the flavor last longer.

• 34:50Dan Pashman?

  It's funny, now that I'm starting to look a little bit shiny.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  But not, I mean shiny, you expect to have to put sunglasses on. I think, I think, I think I went overboard.

• 34:58Dan Pashman?

  Right.

• 34:59Speaker 01

  Guess who's going home with cookies today?

• 35:01Dan Pashman?

  Me?

• 35:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:02Dan Pashman?

  Oh my god. This is very exciting. Thank you.

• 35:09Dan Pashman?

  You said in an interview recently, even simple recipes like sugar cookies can evolve. I look at the cookies I made 20 years ago and I'm embarrassed by them. Cinnamon and everything, all that sugar, hardly any salt.

• 35:22Speaker 01

  I would say it again. I'm not, I mean embarrassed. I was being dramatic, I think, but it is true that things have changed. So when, when I started working with Pierre Hermé, it was in the late 1990s and he gave me a recipe for chocolate cookies. And in that cookie, it was chocolate, chopped chocolate, brown sugar, white sugar flour. There was salt. And you could taste the salt and it was revolutionary then. Salt that was a real flavor, a real component of a cookie. Now we don't even think about it. We sprinkle.

• 35:57Dan Pashman?

  Yeah, now they got salted caramel ice cream at Carvel.

• 35:59Speaker 01

  Great example. And we sprinkle salt on top of cookies and all. Knowing that.

• 36:06Speaker 01

  I look at my earlier cookies and think, where's the salt? If I tasted them now, that would be my first question. I'm using less sugar, I think we all are. And I'm looking for more elemental flavors. So I use cinnamon a lot, but I don't use a lot of cinnamon. I use it to highlight something. And I think that I just depended on it early on.

• 36:32Dan Pashman?

  That's sort of like any format, any version of the creative process. You're always changing, always evolving. You, when you put something out, you think like, oh, like you hope like, oh, this is pretty good. And then 20 years later, you look back and you're like, ah, it's not so good. Now what I'm doing now is much better. I'll listen back to this podcast in a few weeks and be like, that was a great episode with Dory. And then a few years, I'd be like, mm, the stuff we're doing now is better. And it's not an insult to your cookies or to my podcast. It's just like, I think that when you're a creative person who always wants to be improving, that's just what happens.

• 37:00Speaker 01

  But thank goodness, because it is, just as you said, it's being creative, it's always wanting to progress, it's always wanting to do better. It's back to Julia saying that we'll always be learning.

• 37:26Dan Pashman?

  That's Dorie Greenspan, author of 15 cookbooks, including her latest, Dory's Anytime Cakes. It was so fun for me to go get to hang out with her and really watch her behind the scenes to see how she does what she does. It's not an accident that her recipes are so great. Dory also writes a newsletter called XO XO Dory. We'll link to it in our show notes. And we're pleased to tell you that Dory shared the recipe for those nubbly nuggets. They won't be shiny, they will be delicious. That recipe is at sporkful.com. And check this out, one final note, if you want to win a copy of Dory's new book, we're giving them away to two lucky winners. For your chance to win, all you gotta do is sign up for the Sporkful's newsletter by November 9th. And we do a lot of giveaways through the newsletter, so you want to be on that list because if you don't win this time, you might win next time.

• 38:07Dan Pashman?

  If you're already on the list, you're already entered into this and all of our giveaways. Sign up now at sporkful.com/newsletter. Contest open to US addresses only. Next week on the show, I talk with actor Tony Shalhoub. We'll talk about his very famous role in the iconic food movie Big Night and his new CNN travel show, Breaking Bread. That's next week. While I wait for that one, check out last week's show with the one and only Paul Hollywood of Great British Bake Off. You'll hear me teach him my very own method for dunking Oreos in milk. Does he like it? Will I earn a Paul Hollywood handshake? Tune in to find out. That one's up now. This episode was produced by me along with managing producer Emma Morgenstern. and senior producer Andres O'Hara. Additional production by Julia Shue. It was edited by Tracy Samuelson.

• 38:52Dan Pashman?

  Our engineer is Jared O'Connell. Our interns are

• 38:54Speaker 07

  Morgan Johnson.

• 38:55Dan Pashman?

  And

• 38:56Speaker 07

  Jasmine Sutherland.

• 38:57Dan Pashman?

  Music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful is a production of Sirius XM Podcasts. Our executive producer is Camille Stanley. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman. This is Oliver Camacho in Chicago, Illinois, reminding you to eat more, eat better, and eat more better.

• 39:31Speaker 08

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