Torey - More from Magnolia: Recipes from the World Famous Bakery and Allysa Toreys Home Kitchen

Also by Allysa Toney

The Magnolia Bakery Cookbook (with Jennifer Appel)

RECIPES FROM THE WORLD-FAMOUS BAKERY
AND ALLYSA TOREYS HOME KITCHEN

Allysa Torey

SIMON & SCHUSTER
Rockefeller Center
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright 2004 by Allysa Torey
Color photographs copyright 2004 by Zeva Oelbaum
Black-and-white photographs copyright 2004 Jay Shauss

All rights reserved, including the right of
reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases,
please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales:
1-800-465-6798 or business@simonandschuster.com.

Designed by Jaime Putorti

Manufactured in the United States of America

20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Torey, Allysa.
More from Magnolia : recipes from the world-famous bakery and Allysa Toreys home kitchen.
p. cm.
1. Baking. 2. Desserts. 3. Magolia Bakery. I. Title.
TX765.T67 2004
641.815dc22
2004045222

ISBN 0-7432-4661-6
ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-4661-3
eISBN-13: 978-1-4391-8997-9

For Tadhg,
who says I could never make anything that wasnt good
and whose love helps make my dreams come true

I would like to thank my agent, Carla Glasser, and my editor, Sydny Miner, for convincing me to write a second book when I didnt think I wanted to. It turned out to be a very wonderful and creative experience. Special thanks to Barbara DiNicola and my managing staff at Magnolia, whose incredible hard work and support enabled me to take the opportunity to put this project together; and thanks particularly to Margaret Hathaway for her contributions and her assistance and computer skills. Lastly, I would like to thank our loyal customers who have continued to support us over the years despite the crazy long lines out the door.

A cupcake can change your life. That was an epiphany to which I was not privy in the summer of 1996. Theater and art are my calling, but in the creative tradition, I needed rent money to sustain those passions. I walked into Magnolia Bakery. I cannot imagine walking out.

On a quiet corner in the residential heart of the West Village, I have played a part in the theater of sugared success, family dynamic, and New York renown. Cherished customers looked wistfully to that first summer when there was no limit on cupcakes per person, when lines never wrapped around the block, when the nightly staff was Allysa, my sister Shelly, and myself. Visit today, and the cast has quadrupled, the baking is unremitting, and as many as five people have the sole task of icing cupcakes. Yet while the number of people who enter the store has changed drastically, the store has not. Frequently I am asked about expansion, I just smile. The real thing happens but once.

Magnolia Bakery is tradition. Oh, yes, the business is young, but what is inside is ageless. How beautiful that American tradition thrives in a city known for people who left tradition behind, in a bakery that is alternately Grandmas kitchen and a happening hot spot. It is a place where success has been earned through hard work, where the kitchen is right before your eyes and baking from scratch is priority, and where wealth or fame must wait on line with everybody else.

Because of Magnolia, many of us in the City have a place where every season is joy again. This past holiday a former employee who had left to become a trapeze artist came straight from the airport to Magnolia. How can I not take pride in such a workplace? Although this vision was not my own, I delight at the result of combined efforts. With Allysas family and my own as colleagues, we have worked through proposals, discoveries, friendships, and love gained and lostall while we are ever mixing, measuring, scooping, and icing forever icing. You can work with your family, and sometimes the people you work with become family, and sometimes becoming passionate about the way you earn your rent can change you. This began as a bit part, and I now find myself in the directors chair, lending what I learn to everything else.

Sometimes when I turn the corner of West 11th Street to another night of sweet chaos, it surprises me, not yet or ever immune. It is the smell of cake baking, I am at work, and I am at home.

Barbara DiNicola
Magnolia General Manager
September 2004

W hen we first opened the Magnolia Bakery, I imagined a cozy, old-fashioned shop where people could come for a cup of coffee and something sweet. I expected our customers to include some local regulars and lots of neighborhood families. I thought wed close at seven each evening so I could go home and make dinner. I never expected that Magnolia would turn into a city-wide hangout, much less that on weekend nights there would be lines out the door!

The bakery is busier now than ever. Our customers stop by as much for the feel of the store as they do for the desserts. With its vintage American decor and desserts, customers often tell me that walking into the bakery is just like stepping back in time to their grandmothers kitchen. They come in for a slice of cake and end up with a little piece of their childhood. Many want to meet me to say thanks for making the red velvet cake they remember from church picnics or the banana pudding just like their mom used to make.

Since the publication of The Magnolia Bakery Cookbook, many people have suggested that I do a second book. While working full-time at the bakery, the idea of writing another cookbook seemed impossible. Finally, after putting together a committed staff at the shop, we were able to move full-time to our country house, and I could really consider the idea, knowing that I would have the time and energy necessary to write the book I wanted to write.

The kitchen in my house is the one Ive always dreamed of having. Its a big country kitchen with a window over the double white enamel sink that looks out on my vegetable garden and the cornfields beyond. The walls are painted pale yellow, and the glass-fronted cabinets, filled with vintage dishware and linens, are a creamy white. I have a counter just for baking that holds my 1950s Sunbeam Mixmaster, and there is a big enamel table that sits in the middle of the room, which is the perfect place for rolling out piecrusts.

Being able to work on the book in the country has turned out to be a wonderful experience. Its been great to be able to work on ideas for recipes while sitting on the back porch and then go straight into the kitchen to try them out. I like to create recipes in an old-fashioned style, but with new ideas and perhaps different combinations of ingredients to keep things interesting and fun.

These classic American desserts reflect the sensibilities of the bakery and my home. They arent fussy or difficulttheyre simply my favorites.