INTRODUCTION
THE KITCHEN GOD
I stand on a chair pulled up to the counter. My nose hovers near my mother’s elbow as I strain to see everything she is doing. She still towers above me. She is God. With a capital G. She knows everything. She sees everything, right down to the lone chocolate chip that has strayed from the flock. I have witnessed her rescue burnt cookies and breathe life into an inanimate pile of flour. She is indomitable, and her anger, although rare, is to be feared. I will not talk too much. I will not pester her with questions. I will not touch things until I am told. I will be good, better than I’ve ever been before, simply because she has answered my prayers and is teaching me to bake.
Her gracious butter tarts shine upon all who eat them and bring them peace—even when you’re mad at your sister, who won’t stop nudging your foot under the table after you’ve told her a million million times to stop. The tooth-breaking cookies from the nice ladies at church do not shine. Maybe the church ladies use the wrong flour. But my mother bakes a cupcake so tender, so sweet, so impossibly good, you cannot cry once you put it in your mouth. You can’t be mean or angry or even scared. You can choke if you eat it too fast, but I will eat anything we bake today slowly. I will chew each bite a million million times. As long as she teaches me to bake.
Before we begin, she issues her commandments.
Assemble all ingredients.
Read the entire recipe—twice.
Always wear an apron.
Don’t eat the batter.
Share with the whole family.
(The last decree makes me wish I were an only child.)
Ready?
She pulls boxes and bags from cupboards above my head, aligning them in order. She reads the recipe aloud and touches each ingredient.
Half a cup butter. Her long, slim fingers tap the parchment-wrapped brick.
One, two, three eggs.
Two cups flour. She rests her hand on a large checkered bag that seems to weigh more than I do.
Clear Pyrex measuring cups with fading red print and a yellow ceramic bowl appear from the cupboards below. She opens drawers and sets a wooden spoon, a nest of metal measuring spoons, and a rubber scraper on the counter. She keeps adding items until there’s barely a free spot left. I think I will burst when she produces two aprons. The first she ties snugly beneath my armpits. The hem flutters about my ankles, and if I strain, I can brush the lip of the pocket with my chin. Don’t be silly. Pay attention. She wraps the second apron around her own waist, and I bounce on the chair in anticipation, plucking at the apron pocket with my fingers. She looks at me. She smiles and pinches my cheek. She knows I am trying, although I see in her eyes that my 5-year-old “best” is not as good as she would like.
We begin. She reads the recipe aloud again, this time explaining its meaning. The baking has begun. To keep my hands to myself, I wrap them in the apron, twisting it tight. When I’m instructed to tip the carefully measured flour into the bowl, I whip my hands free, letting the apron fall back in place, forgotten in the excitement. She then hands me the spoon, and I carve wild circles in the batter, swirling in one spot like a figure skater spinning on the ice. She places her hand on mine and guides my arm. Her grip is gentle but firm, and I can smell the floral perfume of her face cream. She talks me through the motion.
Place the spoon at the back of the bowl, push it down to the bottom of the bowl, and pull it toward you. Now pull it up and out. Slide it back and begin again. Fold gently, so as not to send flour flying. Gently, so you can feel the tug of the batter. How else can you know if it’s too thick or too thin?
Fast is for TV commercials.
Fast is for cake mix.
This is homemade.
From scratch.
This is baking.
When my mother turns to check the recipe, I sneak a finger of dough. Without looking up from the page, she warns me there will be nothing left to bake if I continue. I resist further transgressions only because I know she will move swiftly from gentle warning to strict punishment. Another stolen bite and I will be sent to my room. I love the raw dough more than baked cookies, but the thought of being exiled from the kitchen makes my eyes fill with tears. This culinary threat alone keeps me in line.
Together we drop the cookies. She scoops the dough while I scrape the lump from the spoon onto the baking sheet. Not too close. They need room to spread. How do you know how much room to leave? How can you tell when they’re done? When they’re cool enough to handle? Cool enough to eat?
The questions tumble out of me faster than she can answer. To silence me, she hands me the dough-covered spoon. This morsel occupies me for several minutes. Determined to get every scrap, I lick so hard, my tongue hurts from the friction. Euphoric that I ate every speck, I am immediately deflated. She performed a minor miracle while I was distracted and scraped the bowl so clean, you’d swear it had never been used. Time to wash up. Why do we have to wash the bowl? Because it’s dirty. How do you know it’s dirty when it looks so clean? But she knows. She knows everything.
While the cookies bake, she helps me return the kitchen to its pristine, prebaking state. She washes. I dry and put away. Without looking, she tells me where the measuring spoons live and where to return the bowl. Each item has its own spot. Bottom cupboard, second shelf, far right, beside the Dutch oven. Middle drawer, at the front, between the grapefruit spoons and corn picks. She is indeed the Kitchen God, restoring order where chaos once reigned, feeding the masses and healing the pain of terminal curiosity.
My mother is the Kitchen God. She raised a Messy Baker. Her wisdom still astounds me.
This is for you, Mom. Live long and bake.
THE MESSY MANIFESTO
Never trust a person with a clean kitchen.
Baking is a messy art. Chemicals react, dough spills over the sides of the pan, egg whites fly from the bowl, flour finds its way into the utensil drawer … halfway across the room from the baking counter.
And if the results are imperfect, all the better. Delicious cake doesn’t need a raffia bow, the best cookies are a bit lopsided, and the pie with the filling oozing down the side is the one to pick. After all, it has filling to spare.
Forget the cook in the crisp, hospital-white apron. Instead, look for the person with the chocolate splatter on her cuff, the smudge of flour on her forehead, the fingers stained with berry juice. If her kitchen is messy, it means she’s baking. It means she’s creating. That she’s alive.
Be messy with me.
THE RULES
While I know my way around a stand mixer, I tend to be impulsive and rush things. I come across a delicious flavor combination or get an idea and I want to make it now. Not when the butter has softened. Not when the oven has heated. I want to mix and whip and stir, not organize and plan. As a result, I make more than my share of mistakes. And you know what? About 90 percent of my baking disasters could have been avoided if I’d followed these simple rules, which I learned the hard way.
1. BE PATIENT. Baking takes time. The more you rush, the more you ruin. Some recipes come together quickly, some can be done in stages, some take a lot of commitment. It’s all doable if you block off enough time. But how much time will you need? A lot depends on the person. I’ve baked with a friend who scooped cookies so slowly, I nearly shoved her out of the way. My mom can scoop cookies faster than I can eat them, which is pretty fast. So instead of providing specific time allotments, I’ve assigned each recipe a Commitment Level.
♦ READY IN AN HOUR OR LESS: These recipes can be out of the oven in 60 minutes or less.
♦ DONE IN STAGES: You can make these recipes in short stages over time.
♦ LAZY SUNDAY AFTERNOON: These recipes take a bit longer but are worth the time.
2. READ THE RECIPE—ALL OF IT—FIRST. If, like me, you struggle with Rule #1, this will be a challenge. My brain says, “Isn’t looking at the picture and skimming the ingredient list enough?” No, Brain. It’s not. I’ve had cakes rise out of the pan and spill onto the oven floor because I didn’t read the pan size before starting. I have produced soggy-bottomed pies because I failed to lower the rack when preheating the oven. All avoidable.
3. SET OUT YOUR INGREDIENTS BEFORE YOU START. More than once I have gotten halfway through a recipe only to find I am out of an ingredient. Again, I refer you to Rule #1. Take the time to place all ingredients on the counter before you start. Heck, go one step further and measure the ingredients to make sure you have enough. The French call this mise en place. My mother calls it common sense. Over the years, I have learned that you can’t tell just by looking if a big cardboard box of baking soda is full or empty. And someone, we don’t know who, might have eaten that bag of chocolate chips you bought last week. We won’t discuss the milk situation, but I think you get the picture.
4. USE THE RIGHT INGREDIENTS. The number one reason recipes don’t turn out is that bakers altered the ingredients without understanding how the change would affect the outcome. If a recipe calls for sour cream, all-purpose flour, and white sugar, don’t be surprised when your soured milk, whole wheat flour, and honey version is heavy and inedible. If, while executing Rule #3, you notice you are out of an ingredient, see page 233 for emergency substitutions.
5. JUDGE WITH YOUR MOUTH, NOT YOUR EYES. Looks can be deceiving. I’ve choked down artfully decorated dry-as-sand sugar cookies and gobbled delicious appetizers that looked like they came out of the hind end of a donkey. If your cake is too embarrassing to serve, cut it up in the kitchen and deliver it in bowls. If the taste and texture are good, no one will care.
Now that we understand each other, let’s begin.