Stella Parks - BraveTart: Iconic American Desserts

To midnight snacks

Homemade versions of the brand-name products referred to are my own recipes, not provided or endorsed by the owners of those brands.

by J. Kenji Lpez-Alt

GREETINGS TO THE LUCKY FINDER OF THIS BOOK . In your wildest dreams you cannot imagine the marvelous surprises that await you.

Several years ago, Stella Parks served me a bowl of cereal at Table 310, a trendy restaurant in Lexington, Kentucky, where she was running the pastry kitchen (pastry dungeon, as she affectionately called it) at the time. Id read her blog, BraveTart. Id worked with her on pieces for Serious Eats. I cheered when she was named one of Americas Best New Pastry Chefs by Food & Wine magazine, but Id never actually tasted her food.

Oh man, she really gets it, I thought to myself as I took the first bite. The dessert was a play on Lucky Charms, complete with crunchy diamond-shaped multicolored marshmallows and a delicate panna cotta made to taste just like cereal milk. If you ate your Lucky Charms the right way (cereal bits first, semi-soaked marshmallows next, oat-flavored cereal milk to wash it down), you already know what this dessert tastes like in your mind.

Whats incredible, though, is that if you were to go home right afterward and pour yourself a bowl of Lucky Charms, youd find them to be unpalatably sweet, the marshmallows more Styrofoam-like than crunchy. Stella had managed to make a bowl of Lucky Charms that tasted more like Lucky Charms to me than actual Lucky Charms. Think about that!

If Stella had a superpower (which Im convinced she does), its her ability to tap directly into those parts of our brains that store our childhood taste memories, unlocking them and stimulating desires that we never even knew we had, hidden away like the creme in the middle of a Hostess CupCake (see ) as they took in the rows of double chocolate brownies and angels food and buttercream? Reading and baking from BraveTart is like this, but better, because youre an adult now and nobodys gonna tell you how much frosting to put on those cakes.

But to imply that all of Stellas research takes place in the candy aisle would be doing her a huge disservice. You will not find a more thoroughly researched treatise on the history of classic American home baking than what is within the pages of this book. Stellas recipes are more than just recipes; theyre thesis papers, informed not only by her own palate and skills, but by the hundreds of historic recipes, newspapers, advertisements, and books she unearthed in her studies. When was the last time you saw a book on baking with a seventeen-page notes section?

I am convinced that Stella is the result of a biological accident where a lab technician dropped Betty Crocker, Ernie the Keebler Elf, Mr. Wizard, and Fannie Farmers DNA samples into an incubator and out emerged a living, breathing pastry goddess. A genetic experiment gone horribly, horribly right.

Despite what reality TV shows might have you believe, great desserts are not about size or complexity or fancy decorations (though Stellas got no problem getting fancy when she needs to). Theyre not about breathtaking feats of culinary wizardry (though Stellas got plenty of those). Theyre not even about knowing how to make the lightest buttercream (marshmallows!) or the fluffiest yellow cake (potato flour!). Theyre about striking that balance between comfort and quality. Theyre about feeding friends and family and reminding them what they loved about desserts in the first place. And most important, theyre about making and serving the desserts that speak to you, in the way that you want to make them.

By the time youre done reading BraveTart, youll not only know how to make Stellas favorite brownies (), youll have been sufficiently schooled in the underlying science and technique to be able to make your own favorite brownies, whether you like them fudgy or cakey (and, because of Stellas infectious infatuation with history, youll note that the cake-fudge paradigm shift occurred sometime in 1929).

Where Willy Wonka relied on magic to bring his creations to life, Stella relies on science, history, and fanatical testing and devotion to her craft. This is good news for us. You have to be born with magic, but science, history, and technique are lessons we can all learn.

BraveTart

I BELIEVE IN THE POWER of fudge frosting, rainbow sprinkles, and warm cherry pie. I like sticky buns for breakfast, and strawberry shortcake for dessert. Im all about layer cakes, mile-high meringue, and cookie dough straight from the bowl. Theres a sleeve of Thin Mints in my freezer, and a jar of Skippy on the shelf. I set marshmallows on fire, I fry doughnuts in oil, I steal Santas cookies, and I always lick the spoon.

Thats the resume that matters most, what I think you should know about me before buying this book. Anyone can go to culinary school and pretend pastry cream is puddin, but that doesnt make it so. Theres real magic in a box of instant Jell-O, one that cant be matched with egg yolks and butter, and youve got to respect your roots more than your training to admit it. Look. Ive been to culinary school. Ive worked in fancy restaurants, and Ive been named one of the best pastry chefs in America. Not for being fancy, but for what Food & Wine called a collection of homey desserts.

And thats my dealI love American dessert, in all its cozy splendor, every messy, unpretentious bite. So this isnt a cookbook about making anything fancy, its about making everything from scratch. Not because you have to, but because its fun. Or, at least, it can be, with the right recipe; one that cares about the process as much as the result. Because whats the use in making your best friend a birthday cake if youre totally frazzled when its done?

Ive spent five years of my life with these recipes, testing and retesting to make sure my methods are as simple and reliable as they can be, looking for the unexpected variables that might derail you along the way. I might not always opt for the ingredients and techniques youd expect, but know that the flavors will never be anything but what you remember, iconic in every way. Im not here to upgrade or fix American desserts because I dont believe theyre broken, Im just here to make them more like the things they ought to be: apple pie that doesnt dirty every dish in your kitchen, sturdy chocolate sandwich cookies that twist apart just like the real deal, glossy brownies with a paper-thin crust, and layers of golden yellow cake as thick and fluffy as the kind from a box.

Most of the desserts in this book date back more than a hundred years, making them an essential part of American culture and cuisine. Doesnt matter when or where you grew up, youve had a slice of devils food cake and know the shape of a Fig Newton by heart. These desserts are a thread running through our history, well worth untangling from urban legends and corporate propaganda, because that history should not be lost. For that reason, most of my recipes begin with a bit of culinary time travelan origin story, if you will. Ive also included reproductions of the vintage advertisements Ive collected over the years, because theyre what unified the notion of American dessert from coast to coast, and every place in between.