Beisch Leigh - Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey

Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey

DESSERTS FOR THE SERIOUS SWEET TOOTH

By Jill OConnor

PHOTOGRAPHS BY LEIGH BEISCH

For my favorite sugar babies, Olivia and Sophia, and for Jim, who makes my life so sweet.

It would be impossible to finish a project as absorbing and time-consuming as writing a book without the understanding, enthusiasm, and willing tastebuds of my husband and two very sweet daughters. Thanks, too, to Sandi Burke, Heather Tynch, and Cambi Martin for their invaluable assistance and good humor. Thanks to Denise Gee for helping me unravel the mysteries of whiskey and to Nancie McDermott for her advice on cracking coconuts, her memory of the Poky Little Puppy, and her hilarious e-mails when the going got tough. Thanks to my parents for giving me free rein in the kitchen growing up, and to Vicki Villarreal and Nancy Bowen, who were the first to actually hire me and pay me to cook. Finally, many thanks to Bill LeBlond and Amy Treadwell, for their support and encouragement in making this sticky, chewy book a reality; to Carrie Bradley for her gentle editing, and to Ayako Akazawa, Leigh Beisch, Dan Becker, and Sara Slavin for making everything look so beautiful.

I can resist everything except temptation.
OSCAR WILDE

Who wouldnt want to enter the fantastical world of Willy Wonka and his wonderful chocolate factory full of violet-flavored marshmallows and little feathery sweets that melt away deliciously the moment you put them between your lips? There, food isnt just sustenance. It is adventure. It is magic. It is abundance, luxury, and excess, all tied up into one big, pink, innocent bow of childlike glee. That is the world I want to re-create with the recipes in this book. Just like the aromas wafting from Wonkas chocolate factory, sweets oozing with sticky chewy caramel and butterscotch, gooey with marshmallows and jam, dripping with cream and dribbled with chocolate entice us to indulge our inner Augustus Gloopif only every now and then. I loved reading about food when I was growing up. I was drawn to the kitchen, to the pleasure and romance of cooking and eating, as much from reading books as I was from the food actually cooking in my own childhood kitchen. All my favorite stories kept me in thrall through the descriptions of the real and imaginary foods eaten and prepared. I always smiled imagining Winnie-the-Poohs great golden paw dipping into his pots of honey, or the Poky Little Puppy lapping up rice pudding when he finally makes it home to his mother. At the end of Bread and Jam for Frances, Frances digs in to the school lunch to end all school lunches, complete with lobster salad sandwiches (on thin slices of white bread) and, among other things, two plums and a tiny basket of cherries. And vanilla pudding with chocolate sprinkles and a spoon to eat it with. Whew. No wonder she and her friend Albert decide eating is nice. I remember finding an article in one of my mothers cooking magazines with a detailed menu and recipes for a Christmas breakfast just like the one the March sisters gave up to the poor German family in Little Women, complete with sizzling, crisp-skinned sausages wrapped in buckwheat pancakes. I wanted to make it on the spotwith real maple syrup, not the pancake syrup in the log-cabin-shaped bottle we stored in the refrigerator door. I wanted to fry my own donuts after reading about the heady, all-but-bacchanalian feasts Almanzo Wilder tucked in to throughout the whole of Farmer Boy, which I know had a plot, but all I can remember was how much food that boy could put away. The description of donuts frying is sheer heaven: they... went to the bottom, sending up bubbles. Then quickly they came popping up, to float and slowly swell till they rolled themselves over, their pale golden backs going into the fat and their plump brown bellies rising out of it. That book is one big feast of custard, pumpkin, and spicy apple pie with its thick, rich juice and its crumbly crust; preserves and jams and jellies; rivers of real maple syrup; and those donuts, hot and crisp from the fryer. I was transfixed by the description of Laura Ingallss first taste of horehound candy. It sounded exotic and fabulous and completely unattainable, and I obsessed about tasting it for a long time, until I happened one day to visit an old-fashioned candy store selling a big selection of swirled ribbon candy, toast-colored chunks of maple sugar pressed into the shape of maple leaves, and jar upon jar of colored candy sticks in every flavor and color imaginable. Then I saw them. Unassuming little sugar-dusted, taupe lozenges in a small bag marked horehound drops. I couldnt believe it! I was sure they would transport me to another place and time. I was so excited. I passed by my favorite red licorice and the crunchy little sugar drops they sell on long sheets of paper, like tiny pills on a page, and with great excitement I purchased a bag then and there. I still remember the bitter disappointment, and the malty, cough-syrup flavor of those horehound drops. Some real-life experiences can never live up to their imaginary predecessors. Reading The Secret Garden started my long love affair with England, and I wanted to have a picnic with Dickon, Mary, and Colin and dine on roasted eggs and potatoes and richly frothed milk and oat-cakes and buns and heather honey and clotted cream. It was years before I actually tasted real clotted cream in Devon, England; pale and creamy and thick as mayonnaise but mildly sweet, piled four inches high in a thick pottery bowl to spread on scones with homemade strawberry jam. Unlike the horehound drops in my story, clotted cream is sure to exceed any fantasy you may have about it. Traveling in my mind from the English country-side to the fairy-tale forests of old Europe to the American prairie and farm country and back again, I licked imaginary cones of frozen custard while visiting the fair with Wilbur and Templeton and Charlotte from Charlottes Web, fried hundreds of donuts with Almanzos mother, nibbled on the gingerbread house with marchpane windows along with Hansel and Gretel, and tucked into Jam Roly-Poly and berries and thick cream with Beatrix Potter. My mother used to complain that she had to take my books away from me while I was growing up so we could have a real conversation. So when just reading about all this fabulous food was no longer enough, I pulled my nose from my books and followed it to the kitchen to cook up some magic of my own. I began, of course, with dessert, because baking has a magic all its own. Nothing delights the eye and encourages you to live only in the moment like a rich, frothy sweet: a gooey brownie layered with walnuts and strands of chewy caramel, a crisp wedge of buttery shortbread, an ice cream sundae slathered with homemade butterscotch and caramel sauces, a cupcake. One of the first cookbooks I was given was called The Pooh Cook Book. I tried to make Honey Toffee Pennies and scorched the caramel so badly it filled the kitchen with the bitter, acrid smell of burnt sugar for days. I learned quickly what color amber isand it isnt black. After the toffee pennies, I got better. I went on to successfully bake chewy seven-layer bars, Swedish cinnamon sand cookies, pans of brownies, elaborate bches de Nol, and German chocolate cakes. I collected recipes from the mothers of my friends and, of course, read book after book after book. I discovered there is no satisfaction sweeter than the oohs and aahs elicited by a beautifully presented, delicious dessert. Eyes light up and everybody smiles when you walk into the dining room carrying something glistening with chocolate or covered in cream. Is it any wonder, then, that I always think, in life, there is no trouble a little butter and a lot of chocolate cant make better? If you have a real sweet tooth, you probably feel the same way. Since you have obviously cracked the spine of a book entitled