Goldsmith - Baking Out Loud

Copyright 2012 by Hedy Goldsmith
Photographs copyright 2012 by Ben Fink, with the exception of 2012 by Ryan Oswald

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
www.clarksonpotter.com

CLARKSON POTTER is a trademark and POTTER with colophon is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Goldsmith, Hedy.
Baking Out Loud / Hedy Goldsmith.
p. cm.
Includes index.
1. Desserts. 2. Cooking.
3. Confectionery.
4. Cookbooks. I. Title.
TX773.G56 2012
641.86dc23 2011042268

eISBN: 978-0-7704-3341-3

Jacket design by Stephanie Huntwork
Jacket photographs by Ben Fink

v3.1

My mom was no Suzy Homemaker. She was a working mom who actually entertained the idea of turning our kitchen into a library. If fast food is at one end of the spectrum and slow food at the other, the Goldsmith household in Philadelphia bolted ahead at a gallop. Our pantry was always filled with the latest convenience foods: SpaghettiOs, Pop-Tarts, Chips Ahoy! cookies. I grew up thinking that everyone ate dinner out of three-compartment aluminum trays.

My earliest cooking adventures involved these supermarket goodies, and the kitchen quickly became my playground, the Easy-Bake Oven my babysitter. I remember at a young age dipping Charles Chips into half-melted Hersheys bars for a salty-sweet treat and topping my vanilla ice cream with Capn Crunch cereal. I was a curious, chubby kid who was drawn to the bright packaging of junk foods. I would amuse myself for hours organizing all the mini pots and pans and alphabetizing the boxes of cake mix. I should have guessed my future then, but the only lightbulb that went off was the one cooking my first batch of brownies. Then again, I was only six years old.

My mom had quite a sweet tooth. She and I would go on road trips to Entenmanns bakery outlet on Academy Road in the Far Northeast of Philly to buy coffee cakes and pound cakes by the dozen. When we ran out of our stockpiled goods, wed walk hand in hand the two blocks to Castor Bakery. Some moms teach their daughters how to shop for just the right pair of shoes. Not mine. With my face pressed against the glass counter at Castor, I learned how to scrutinize every crumb on each Jewish babka to find perfection.

When I was in fourth grade, I became a Girl Scout, and cookies came into my life in a big way. I wanted to be the Girl Scout who sold the most cookies everand I did, at least in Philadelphia, which won me a trip to Washington, DC. Thats the power of Thin Mints. By the time I was in high school, I was making chocolate-covered pretzels for my friends on the softball teamnot your run-of-the-mill variety but the triple-dipped kind.

I loved making people happy with food, but I never thought about baking for a living. Instead, I went to the Philadelphia College of Art and was a photography and film major with a minor in graphic design. Then one day I stumbled upon Reading Terminal Market in downtown Philly, a magical place filled with things I had never seen before, let alone tasted. Suddenly I caught the cooking bug, and I knew I wanted to do it for a living.

After graduation, I somehow landed an interview at a restaurant in Center City. Though I didnt really know what I was doing, I got a job as a prep cook reporting to the kitchen manager, Melanie. After many months of perfecting coleslaw and tartar sauce, I was finally allowed to help Mel with desserts. She gave me a baking book to take home so that I could study up. Maida who?

Every night, I would go home and try to follow one of the recipes in that cookbook. The next morning I would get to work with note cards in hand, on the off chance I would be asked to break out a dessert. Finally, Melanie asked me to make something chocolate. To impress her, I chose one of the most difficult cakes in the book: Queen Mothers Cake, a flourless chocolate cake with ground almonds. The tricky part of this cake was whipping the egg whites just right and folding them into the cake batter so as not to lose volume. Melanie was indeed impressed. Maida Heatters Book of Great Desserts would ultimately change my life.

It was soon after I discovered Maida that my mother died suddenly, in her sleep, when I was way too young. My life was just starting, and I had lost my best friend and my biggest supporter. My mom never tasted a single dessert of mine, aside from the brownies from the Easy-Bake Oven. It remains the biggest disappointment in my life that I never got to bake for her. Heartbroken, and with nothing to lose, I applied and was accepted to the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, which had just started a new baking and pastry program. I packed up my cookbooks and snow globe collection and moved to Poughkeepsie.

In cake and torte classes, my creative mind started churning at warp speed. Candy making and working with chocolate required such patience, such focus, and I learned from the best in the field. And it turned out that everything I had studied in art school gave me a competitive edge in culinary school. My ability to look at the endless possibilities of a blank canvas served me well when it came to staring down a blank dessert plate.

After graduation, I took a job at the Waldorf Astoria in New York, where I certainly paid my dues. We did a lot of high-volume production, and I remember cakes baking in a deck oven that had been built at the turn of the century. Five foot two and a hundred and eight pounds, I could barely hold the heavy peel used to remove the cakes, or, even on tippy-toes, see into the oven. And I had no help. My coworkers were seasoned old guys who, frankly, enjoyed watching me struggle. The job was hell. I loved Manhattan, the people, the sights, the sounds, the foodbut it was time to make a big change. After a year and a half, I gave in to the lure of the beach. I vacationed in Florida, loved it, and secured a job as soon as I could.

Funny, but I never knew my hair was wavy until I stepped off the plane at Miami International Airport. I also never knew that in Miami, Maida would reenter my lifethough this time in personto once again guide my career.

I worked as the catering director at the glamorous CenTrust Tower in downtown Miami before becoming the pastry chef at Mark Militellos restaurant, Marks Place, in North Miami. Maida happened to live near the restaurant and loved coming for lunch. One day, she asked to meet the pastry chef. I was so nervous at finally meeting the undisputed Queen of Sweets! Maida was beyond kind, showering me with praise during that first meeting. She invited me to lunch at her friend Michael Schwartzs new restaurant in South Beach, called Nemo, and we had great fun chatting about all things pastry. Since Maida knew Mark was moving his signature restaurant to Fort Lauderdale, she asked what I wanted to do next. I didnt hesitate to say I would love working at Nemo, and not twenty-four hours passed before I received a phone call from Michael.