Rosen Alan - Juniors Dessert Cookbook: 75 Recipes for Cheesecakes, Pies, Cookies, Cakes, and More

Acknowledgments

My sweetest thanks to...

Alan Rosen, my co-author and Juniors owner, who personifies Juniors to me. He strives every day to be The Bestand so does everyone around him. To slice that perfect slice of cheesecake, to make the highest sundae topped with that perfect mountain of whipped cream, to ice the most spectacular six-layer cake you have ever sunk your fork into. Because Alan Rosen careshe cares that everyone who comes to Juniors, or orders a cheesecake by mail, or makes a dessert from one of our recipes remembers it as being The Best they have ever mixed, baked, stacked, iced, sliced, tasted, and served.

For our third book, this one exclusively on desserts, Alan always found time to share his knowledge, the Rosen tradition, and his love of Juniors with meespecially everything sweet. Over many plates of blintzes (the most heavenly ones ever!), I listened and learned as he described step by step, then showed me, scoop by scoop and slice by slice, how to make desserts the Juniors Waythe highest, the biggest, the richest, the creamiest, and the yummiest ever. For Alan, and all the Rosens, the most important thing is perfection in everything Juniors makes, serves, and sells.

Everyone at JuniorsAlan, his father, Walter, his brother Kevin, and all the Rosens who shared memories of Grandpa Harry; Brooklyn restaurant manager Allen Fleming, who showed me how Juniors makes their Broadway skyscraper ice cream soda; and others on the Brooklyn staff: Executive Chef Adam Marks; Hastings Stainrod; Chef Krzysztof Chachler (brownie icing expert); Luis Mendez (expert rugelach baker); Colette Swanston-Harris (fabulous sourcer of Juniors facts and photo props); and Times Square location restaurant manager Miles Ellis, as well as the rest of Juniors extremely skilled family of bakers, cake decorators, chefs, sous chefs, waiters and waitresses, counter servers, office staff, and soda jerks, who always seemed to go out of their way to make me feel as though I just came home the minute I walked through the door. Without everyone at Juniors, our three cookbooks would never have been written. And because of them, New Yorkers, visitors, and customers worldwide can enjoy dessert the authentic Juniors Way.

Bakery Manager Jason Schwartz and Quality Control Manager ArmandoGurango, who invited me into the bakery to see first-hand how the bakers at Juniors whirl raspberries into cheesecakes, shower cakes with ganache, pipe towering peaks of buttercream by hand onto thousands of cupcakes, and lovingly tie red ribbons about every Tiramisu Cake before it leaves
the bakery.

Master Pastry Chef Michael Goodman, who shared his scrumptious recipe for Brioche Bread Pudding with Caramel Sauce and priceless tips from his storehouse of baking knowledge to help this pudding come out the same delicious way every time.

Bob Hunt, who shared his egg-cream know-how on measuring, stirring, and bouncing seltzer off a spoon to get that perfect white foam on every egg cream that Juniors serves.

Nancy Weinberg, the marketing whiz who is helping to expand Juniors into more and more locations, the QVC home-shopping network, mail order, Internet, and wholesale channels. Somehow she found the time to track down a photo or a cake fact that answered another question about the traditional Juniors Way.

Pam Hoenig, food editor extraordinaire, who, like me, has believed in the Juniors Way for years and once again has helped me visualize and perfect every printed word of this dessert bookfrom helping us select which of the countless Juniors delicious desserts to include, editing each recipe until it was perfect, contributing her invaluable food knowledge, and always being as close as my computer to advise along the way.

Carolyn Mandarano, senior managing editor at Taunton Books, who helped visualize and translate the Juniors story into this beautiful book that you can now read, bake with, enjoy, and give as a gift. She was always there, supporting, advising, and managing the creation of this book, along with the extraordinary creative staff at Taunton, including Carol Singer, Alison Wilkes, Katy Binder, and Lynne Phillips.

The Photography Team: The delicious photographs scattered among these pages required an exceptional team highly skilled in photographing food, especially desserts: photographer Mark Ferri and his digital technician Jamie Slater; food stylist Leslie Orlandini and her assistant Jennifer Jung; and prop stylist Francine Matalon-Degni.

The Public Relations Team: Getting the word out about this book to you, the reader, takes a highly qualified team of public relations professionals. Many thanks go to executive vice president Bruce Bobbins from Dan Klores Communications and the food publicity team at Taunton, including Janel Noblin and Allison Hollett.

And most of all to you, the reader, who believes in and loves Juniors dessertsfrom the regulars who come frequently for dessert and coffee and bring their family and friends, to presidents, politicians, celebrities, not-so-famous folks, journalists, experienced bakers, and those discovering baking and tasting Juniors desserts for the first time. Each of you makes the many hours of working alongside the Juniors bakers, translating their recipes into consumer-size ones, writing, kitchen testing, and tasting well worth every fabulous bite!

Beth Allen

The Story of Junior's

Our story begins on Cherry Street, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. In 1895 my great-grandfather Barnett Rosen and his wife, Sarah, moved into a tenement building there from the Ukraine and got a job working twelve hours a day in the Wilson & Company slaughterhouse on First Avenue and Thirty-Eighth Street. Six children soon came along, two daughters and four sons. Grandpa Harry (Hershel), who would become the founder of Juniors, was born in 1904.