Pod Insights The Sporkful What Makes Dorie Greenspan’s Recipes So Good? About this episode 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?
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:14 Dan Pashman? Can you show me the butters that you have available in your house right now?
1:19 Speaker 01 Oh, you have to come downstairs for that.
1:21 Dan Pashman? Okay, let's go.
1:22 Speaker 01 Come on down.
1:23 Dan Pashman? Okay. You have a separate butter fridge?
1:26 Speaker 01 Yeah, oh, yes. Yes, doesn't everyone?
1:30 Dan 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.
1:52 Speaker 01 I've gone.
1:53 Dan Pashman? Oh, my God.
1:54 Speaker 01 It's really kind of, I'm down. So I buy butter. In boxes of 36 pounds of butter.
2:02 Dan 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.
2:13 Speaker 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.
2:30 Dan Pashman? That's like your bread and butter butter.
2:32 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:32 Dan Pashman? Okay.
2:33 Speaker 01 Um, butter. I live for it.
2:36 Dan Pashman? What do you love about it?
2:38 Speaker 01 What I can do with it. Yeah, I'm a baker. A baker without butter isn't much of a baker.
2:44 Dan Pashman? Right, like a painter without paint.
2:46 Speaker 01 Like a painter without paint.
2:51 Dan 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.
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3:52 Dan 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?
4:15 Speaker 02 I would say Dory Greenspan does just absolutely rock solid recipes. And I've experienced that with her baking and savory recipes.
4:25 Dan Pashman? What makes her recipes so good?
4:26 Speaker 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.
4:46 Dan 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?
5:16 Speaker 01 Oh, I love this. When I worked with Julia Child... Allow me to just drop this in as early as possible.
5:26 Dan Pashman? Back in the 90s, Julia Child handpicked Dory to write a companion cookbook for her PBS series, Baking with Julia.
5:33 Speaker 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."
5:45 Speaker 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."
6:12 Speaker 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.
6:35 Dan Pashman? And I take it you still have that passion?
6:38 Speaker 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.
6:47 Dan Pashman? You've never made a good cake with saffron before?
6:49 Speaker 01 I never made a good cake.
6:52 Speaker 01 And I was just as excited as if I had just made my first cake. This work for me doesn't get old.
7:04 Dan 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.
7:48 Dan Pashman? Dory didn't cook again, not until she got married to her husband, Michael.
7:53 Speaker 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.
8:14 Dan 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.
8:35 Speaker 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.
8:46 Dan Pashman? And you did?
8:47 Speaker 01 And I did. And I got fired a month later for creative insubordination. How great is that?
8:53 Dan Pashman? Right. Right. And what does that mean exactly?
8:56 Speaker 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.
9:26 Dan Pashman? And that didn't go over?
9:27 Speaker 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."
9:40 Dan 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.
10:11 Speaker 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.
10:43 Dan Pashman? Right.
10:43 Speaker 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.
10:54 Dan Pashman? You thought it was the one thing you were sure you wouldn't screw up, despite how nervous you were?
10:58 Speaker 01 Exactly.
10:58 Dan Pashman? Because it's so simple?
10:59 Speaker 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.
11:12 Dan Pashman? And that was sort of your entree into working with her, which was a huge break in your career.
11:15 Speaker 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.
11:49 Dan Pashman? Why?
11:50 Speaker 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.
12:15 Dan 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?
12:46 Speaker 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."
13:17 Dan Pashman? Right.
13:18 Speaker 01 It stayed in till the end. It was the editor who pulled it out.
13:22 Dan 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."
13:28 Speaker 01 Right, exactly.
13:30 Dan Pashman? But that makes sense. I think you have a knack as a communicator, because you had
13:36 Speaker 01 Thank you.
13:37 Dan 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.
13:53 Speaker 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.
14:03 Dan 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."
14:14 Speaker 01 And I'm touching wood. I'm like, not holding on so that me and Ozzy...
14:18 Dan 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?
14:27 Speaker 01 You know, you pose questions in such a way that I have to say nice things about myself.
14:35 Dan Pashman? You know what? Instead of telling me how you do it, why don't you show me how you do it?
14:43 Speaker 01 Come to my kitchen.
14:47 Dan 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.
14:56 Speaker 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.
15:38 Dan Pashman? Dory pulls out her food processor and the recipe. It's a Word doc on printer paper.
15:42 Speaker 01 Okay, so...
15:46 Speaker 01 I'm following the author's directions.
15:49 Dan Pashman? Which are your directions.
15:50 Speaker 01 Yes.
15:52 Speaker 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."
16:21 Dan Pashman? When you say "she," you're talking about yourself.
16:23 Speaker 01 Okay, yes, so I see.
16:26 Speaker 01 I'm sorry.
16:27 Dan Pashman? No, but that's interesting. Do you always think of it that way when you're doing...
16:30 Speaker 01 No.
16:30 Dan Pashman? No, okay.
16:32 Speaker 01 Except when there's something wrong. And then I say, "Oh, the author made a mistake."
16:43 Dan Pashman? Dory pulses the ingredients a few times, then opens up the food processor and peers inside.
16:47 Speaker 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.
17:02 Dan Pashman? Let the record reflect that Dory has crossed out pebbly and written sandy.
17:06 Speaker 01 Okay, so now the chocolate does go in.
17:10 Dan Pashman? Dory adds the chocolate, pulses a few more times.
17:13 Speaker 01 I feel as though I'm at one with my food processor. I can hear the change.
17:17 Dan 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.
17:24 Speaker 01 I am not writing down flux capacitor.
17:26 Dan Pashman? Flux capacitor is from Back to the Future. It's not a real thing.
17:28 Speaker 01 Okay, wait.
17:31 Dan Pashman? I know nothing about cars.
17:33 Speaker 01 Okay, so.
17:34 Dan 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?
17:42 Speaker 01 Mmm, pebbly.
17:46 Dan Pashman? You sure it doesn't taste sandy? Should we cross that sandy and go back to pebbly?
17:49 Speaker 01 I'm tempted. No, because at that moment it was sandy.
17:52 Dan Pashman? Okay.
17:53 Speaker 01 But it's pebbly now.
17:55 Dan 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...
18:05 Speaker 01 Wait, wait, okay.
18:06 Dan Pashman? Then it's gonna be a compliment in the end?
18:07 Speaker 01 I'm girding myself.
18:08 Dan 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.
18:23 Speaker 01 Okay, we can't finish this. I'm off to start a new business.
18:27 Speaker 01 I don't have time for this. I see my future in...
18:31 Dan Pashman? If you turn this into bars, if you can find a way to package this and sell it at 7-Eleven.
18:36 Speaker 01 I'll make you a partner.
18:38 Speaker 01 Wait, I have to get my baking bag.
18:39 Dan Pashman? All right.
18:43 Dan 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.
18:52 Speaker 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.
19:08 Dan Pashman? There are times in your life where you just have to cook because you need to get food on the table.
19:10 Speaker 01 Absolutely, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
19:12 Dan 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.
19:24 Speaker 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.
19:43 Dan 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.
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24:24 Dan 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.
24:46 Speaker 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.
24:55 Dan 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.
25:05 Speaker 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.
25:14 Dan Pashman? Right.
25:14 Speaker 06 And I go, where's my cake?
25:17 Dan 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?
25:52 Speaker 01 Hmm, yeah, I dream about a lot of foods.
25:55 Dan 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.
26:13 Speaker 01 That's so much better than grinding your teeth or snoring.
26:21 Dan Pashman? So, so tell me about a recent food dream you had.
26:26 Speaker 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.
26:37 Dan Pashman? So wait, but when you said you thought about that, like you dreamt?
26:41 Speaker 01 I, yeah, I was dreaming about it, yeah.
26:43 Dan Pashman? You had a dream that you would make this?
26:45 Speaker 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
27:17 Speaker 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.
27:52 Dan 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.
28:10 Speaker 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.
28:20 Dan Pashman? Do you ever have cookie nightmares?
28:22 Speaker 01 Oh, why did you even bring this up? So when baking chaymois.
28:28 Dan Pashman? This is one of your cookbooks from a little while ago.
28:30 Speaker 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.
29:10 Speaker 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.
29:24 Dan Pashman? That's amazing. It's amazing to me that that came to you in your sleep.
29:28 Speaker 01 I can't explain it. It is kind of amazing. And thank goodness-
29:32 Dan Pashman? But it was tested previously and it worked. It must have been tested for the book before you put it in the book.
29:37 Speaker 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."
30:20 Speaker 01 And it was actually a nice, it turned out to be a nice experience.
30:25 Dan Pashman? And what did you learn from that experience?
30:27 Speaker 01 Proofread better.
30:30 Dan Pashman? I thought you were gonna say, "It's okay to make mistakes. Even Dorie Greenspan makes mistakes."
30:34 Speaker 01 No, no, no. Proofread, proofread.
30:38 Speaker 01 Gotta do better. Gotta get it right.
30:44 Speaker 01 Can you smell the chocolate?
30:45 Dan Pashman? Yes, it smells amazing. Do you wanna check on the cookies real quick?
30:48 Speaker 01 I do wanna check them.
30:49 Dan Pashman? Alright, let's check. Oh, it smells very chocolatey.
30:57 Dan 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.
31:05 Speaker 01 So, they are not shiny.
31:11 Speaker 01 I'm glad we're redoing these. I think I'm gonna ignore the shine word.
31:15 Dan Pashman? Just take it out?
31:16 Speaker 01 I might. I was just, I thought the shine was so pretty. That's why I mentioned it. So, let me-
31:24 Dan 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?
31:34 Speaker 01 No.
31:36 Speaker 01 No, nice try. I like that.
31:39 Dan 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.
32:14 Speaker 01 And they can be.
32:16 Dan 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.
32:23 Speaker 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.
32:54 Dan 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.
33:04 Speaker 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.
33:45 Dan Pashman? Like a little cookie fairy.
33:46 Speaker 01 Like a cookie fairy, yeah. I think of myself as being there with you.
33:50 Dan Pashman? Okay, should we eat some cookies?
33:51 Speaker 01 Yeah, have a cookie. It peels right off the paper, right?
33:59 Dan Pashman? Oh my god.
34:00 Speaker 01 Mmm, they're good.
34:02 Dan Pashman? They're so good.
34:05 Speaker 01 Mmm.
34:05 Dan 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.
34:17 Speaker 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?
34:36 Dan Pashman? A hundred percent.
34:37 Speaker 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.
34:50 Dan Pashman? It's funny, now that I'm starting to look a little bit shiny.
34:52 Speaker 01 But not, I mean shiny, you expect to have to put sunglasses on. I think, I think, I think I went overboard.
34:58 Dan Pashman? Right.
34:59 Speaker 01 Guess who's going home with cookies today?
35:01 Dan Pashman? Me?
35:02 Speaker 01 Yeah.
35:02 Dan Pashman? Oh my god. This is very exciting. Thank you.
35:09 Dan 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.
35:22 Speaker 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.
35:57 Dan Pashman? Yeah, now they got salted caramel ice cream at Carvel.
35:59 Speaker 01 Great example. And we sprinkle salt on top of cookies and all. Knowing that.
36:06 Speaker 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.
36:32 Dan 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.
37:00 Speaker 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.
37:26 Dan 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.
38:07 Dan 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.
38:52 Dan Pashman? Our engineer is Jared O'Connell. Our interns are
38:54 Speaker 07 Morgan Johnson.
38:55 Dan Pashman? And
38:56 Speaker 07 Jasmine Sutherland.
38:57 Dan 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.
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