Big City, Little Kitchen

When the beloved Brooklyn bakery, Baked, issued its first cookbook, I was all over it.  The founders/authors, Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, began with a mission and ended up with a great story:  to create The Best Bakery in an industrial expanse, serving all-American treats with friendly service, while overcoming logistical challenges and having their signature product, brownies, featured as one of Oprah’s “favorite things.”  I would have bought this book for that brownie recipe alone, but fortunately, it offers plenty more fodder for inspiration, albeit with a few complications.

This book is filled with comforting, classic recipes for the home baker:  simple baked goods, cakes and cupcakes, pies, bars and cookies, and candies.   I can’t wait to try the Maple Walnut Scones, Butterscotch Pudding Tarts, or another signature of the bakery, Baked Bars, composed of a graham cracker-coconut crust and a kitchen-sink filling of walnuts, chocololate and butterscotch chips, and sweetened condensed milk.  As for those brownies:  make them.  They are calorie-laden and worth every one.

The caveat:  some of the recipes are a bit overwrought.  The Sweet and Salty Cake, which I was desperate to make and even more desperate to eat, was a huge project that included making caramel twice and lasted about eight hours.  I started to question the accuracy of the recipe when making the caramel ganache frosting.  After caramelizing sugar and adding cream, the recipe calls for one pound of chocolate and four sticks of butter–that’s a lot of ingredients for thin layers of frosting, and I found the ganache to be plenty rich after adding the third stick of butter.  Peanut Butter Crispy Bars are completely delicious, but the recipe calls for a caramel-like solution to be mixed into rice crispy treats to form the crust; this solution must be mixed in quickly to prevent hardening, and tends to stick to the teeth when one enjoys this otherwise-perfect dessert.

Similarly, I did not always find flavors and textures to be on-point, such as in Easy Homemade Granola, which had a too-pronounced flavor of honey, or Black Forest Chocolate Cookies, which seemed to lack baking soda, as the end result was crackly and puffed, not rich and gooey as promised.  The Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Loaf could have benefited from the use of butter instead of vegetable oil, which yielded an oily texture.

This is a great book for a dedicated, detail-attentive home baker with plenty of equipment and ingredients on hand.  Those with a less well-stocked kitchen can bake from it as well, though the options will be more limited.

The Baked Brownie (from Baked:  New Frontiers in Baking)

• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tb cocoa powder
• 11 oz dark chocolate (60 to 72% cacao), coarsely chopped
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch pieces
• 1 tsp instant espresso powder
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 5 large eggs, room temperature
• 2 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Butter a 13×9 baking pan.

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, salt, and cocoa powder.

Put the chocolate, butter, and espresso powder in a large metal bowl; place bowl over a saucepan of simmering water.  Stir together until melted and well-combined.  Turn off heat and add sugars, whisking to combine.  Whisk in three eggs until well-combined; whisk in remaining two eggs and vanilla.

Add flour mixture and fold in until only traces of dry ingredients remain.  Spread into pan and bake for 30 minutes, rotating pan halfway through baking.  Brownies are done when inserted toothpick comes out clean or with a few crumbs attached.  Let cool before serving.