Confections of a Closet Master Baker Read online

  Für Mutti

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  The Devil in St. Nick

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Witching Hour ~ Golden Eggs

  CHAPTER TWO

  To Thine Own Baking Self Be True ~ Espresso Cheesecake

  CHAPTER THREE

  My Kingdom for a Scone ~ Scones

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Be Nice to Your Mother (Sponge) ~ Focaccia

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Montpeculiar ~ Starry Starry Nights

  CHAPTER SIX

  Eat, Drink, and Be Larry ~ Maple Pecan Sticky Buns

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Ode to the Oreo ~ Devil’s Cream Pie

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Crunchy Clouds ~ Raspberry Meringues

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Monster on the Wall ~ Zwetschgendatschi

  CHAPTER TEN

  End It with a Sigh ~ Cherry Filling

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Doing Lunch, the Vermont Way ~ Opera Cake

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Tiers of Frustration ~ Carrot Cake

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  A Grand Opening ~ Apple Pie

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Lamb of God and Star Giant ~ New England

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The Sacred Time ~ Mandelhoernchen

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Chocolate-Covered Chakras ~ Apfelkuchen

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  And Did I Mention We Were on the Food Network? ~ Passionfruit Healer

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Running Regrets ~ Helga’s Cake

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Career Day

  Acknowledgments

  PROLOGUE

  The Devil in St. Nick

  SAW THE DEVIL AT AGE THREE and he gave me chocolate. It changed my life forever.

  On the evening of December 6, 1973, in Salzburg, Austria, something stood at the landing just outside the door of our Shillerstrasse apartment, let loose an agonizing moan, and rattled a ghastly chorus of heavy chains. My mother whooped in delight and invited me to open the door.

  “Sina! Mach auf!”

  I was no stranger to this kind of perversely dark German childhood experience. My first storybook, Struwwelpeter, told such heartwarming tales as “The Story of the Thumb Sucker” in which a naughty boy gets his thumbs cut off when he persists in that odious habit. Illustrations included. Or the story of the rascal Kaspar who, upon proclaiming he will no longer eat his soup, wastes away and dies, again accompanied by beautifully detailed artwork. And, there’s Pauline who insists on playing with matches. She certainly deserves to be consumed by those bright orange flames that take her to a fiery death. These children were not alone in their misdeeds; I myself was an avid nail biter. And, as my cousin Suzanne liked to remind me hourly, I once pooped on the Persian rug in the foyer. I was a toddler. What did I know?

  But even worse, in the estimation of my majestically gorgeous and perpetually svelte mother, I was sugar obsessed. I was both grotesquely undisciplined and a potential fatty, effortlessly breaching two cardinal sins in my mother’s endless ledger of unforgivable venialities. To hide my growing addiction I became a candy thief, taking primarily from the “secret” sweets drawer in my aunt’s credenza and sometimes from my friend Katya’s bedside table stash. It was for these ugly crimes that I had been anticipating an untimely end similar to those of Kaspar, Pauline, and that poor thumb-sucking boy. And now the devil had come to my door; my mother had apparently subcontracted her daughter’s grisly disposal.

  I wasn’t going to help invite death in. My sister, five years older, wiser, and intent on setting unspeakable terrors upon me, opened the door herself. She was acquainted with our dark caller; she’d experienced him both as jolly Santa in America and as his cranky German alter ego, Saint Nikolaus. Either way, the outcome was usually pretty good for her on both sides of the Atlantic. We had dual natures ourselves; equal parts German and American, a bit of both our mother and our father. Our German mother, a professional opera singer, carted us to Europe while she toured, and our Alabama-born father kept the stateside fires burning in Virginia, toiling inside the rings of the Pentagon.

  My sister opened the door just in time for us to spy a gruesome creature layered in chains, a filthy burlap sack strapped to his back and a leather collar cinched about his pockmarked neck. Attached to the collar was a leash, and as I followed the length of rope to the hand that grasped the lead, I beheld what appeared to be the devil himself. Our visiting demon was lank and gray-bearded, draped head to toe in sooty red velvet robes and sporting an impractically tall pointed hat. He left two matching velvet stockings leaning against the door jamb, brimming with chocolates bearing his likeness and countless other sweets. Once he and his henchman were safely out of child-snatching range, I braved the open hallway to grab the loot.

  But before I could marvel at the bounty, I stood to face our benefactor. If I was going to take his offering, I felt obliged to overcome my fear and acknowledge his generosity by looking him straight in the eye, devil or not. He had gone through all the trouble of finding us. He’d probably checked in Virginia first. And then he’d have tracked us to Germany and followed the trail to Austria. And he could have left us coal. But he gave us chocolate. All of this and he was going to leave it at our door without taking credit for his trouble and kindness.

  “Grüß Gott, Herr Teufel. Vielen dank.”

  He scoffed at my greeting, literally translated, “Greet God, Mr. Devil. Many thanks.”

  “Grüß Gott, Ferkel.” Little piglet, he called me a little piglet. Sure, it was a term of endearment, but I was anything but a little piglet. He knew that.

  And so it followed that he was anything but a devil. In fact, he was a misunderstood angel; he was the great Saint Nikolaus accompanied by his festering sidekick Krampus. And to put the final dusting of luster on this confectionary miracle, my mother allowed us unlimited access to the contents of our velvet stockings.

  I had less spectacular run-ins with confections while in Europe that I remember in an equal amount of detail: my fourth birthday cake, rimmed with marzipan clown heads and filled with almond cake and cream; the After Eight mints hidden in the credenza of the study in my aunt’s home in Bergen, Germany, top drawer of the middle row, behind the Christmas napkins; the stockpile of gummi bears in my grandmother’s handbag, which she doled out as bribery to keep me walking on the harsh cobblestone streets of Nürnberg during shopping expeditions. She herself kept a bar of the blackest bittersweet chocolate to bolster her own shopping spirits.

  Martha, our American nanny, conjured slim packages of lemon cream—filled wafers from the pockets of her prairie skirts to coax me along on our daily visit to see my mother during her matinee performance. We crossed the river Salzach on the footbridge that connects the old Salzburg to the new. I portioned each wafer perfectly to coincide with our walk to the Landestheater, one tiny nibble to every ten footfalls on the narrow cobblestone streets. Once we reached the metal stairs that clung to the side of the building and led to the stage door, I would modulate my bites to coincide with the ring of every fourth step. I lifted my knees high and let my foot land squarely on the tread so that the sonorous metal ring would vibrate through my body and add more drama to the crunch of each bite.

  Inside, the backstage hallways teemed with men in period costume, their britches open exposing girdles buckling from strain. Sweat streaked their heavily pancaked faces and loosened the glue holding their handlebar mustaches fast. Martha would usher me hastily past my mother’s empty dressing room and through a side door into the theater, where I would slip into an empty seat for my aft
ernoon nap. I might wake to see her mid-belly dance, or engaging in a lusty kiss or suffering a consumptive death. Once, I woke during a rehearsal of Carmen to see my sister among the gypsy children on stage, dramatically lunging for prop coins being thrown her way. The director invited us both to join a slew of other vagabonds to round out the cast, but I suffered from painful shyness and a general distrust of strangers. My sister had no such problems and took to the stage with hammy delight. At home, she emptied her pockets on her bed and revealed that the fake lucre she was scooping up on stage was in fact beautifully wrapped chocolates. Had I only known the rewards awaiting me, I might have conquered my timidity. I had, after all, faced a devil for chocolate only to find that I was in the presence of a saint. And in the end it was the example of unlikely angels and the power of confections that led me on a sweet path to happiness and grace in my adult life.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Witching Hour

  3 a.m.

  WAKE UP AT THE WITCHING HOUR. 3:30 a.m. According to folklore, it’s the very moment when witches, demons, and ghosts are at their most potent. It’s also when most bakers roll their flour-logged bodies out of bed.

  My husband, Ray, sleeps through my alarm. I can’t look at him, sleeping or awake, without getting a little weak in the knees. He’s more handsome now than he was ten years ago when we first met in Hollywood, home to the prettiest boys and girls on the planet. My job was to develop films for those beautiful people. It was a miracle that I could find anyone attractive, I was so anesthetized by the constant parade of bleached smiles and spray-on tans. But there he was, sitting across from me at a conference table at a big studio meeting, an honest-to-god Man, handsome as all get out. And smart. And funny. And not an actor. An illustrator for film, in fact. An employed artist and a grown-up, something in rare supply in Los Angeles among the insecure, fame-hungry hordes of beefcake.

  I sit up. Stretch. The dogs wake long enough to yawn and deliver a few sloppy kisses, and then all three jump into my still-warm side of the bed, burrow under the covers, and snuggle up to Ray.

  I take a bath, brush my teeth, and pull back my hair. For this very brief moment I see what’s become of my black mane. I’m in possession of Crystal Gayle—like, snake-handling, ankle-skimming hippie hair. Only a few years ago I’d drop major cash to get it permanently and perversely straight. To look at it now, you’d think I’d been scheduling regular appointments with a live power outlet.

  I pad naked down the stairs, wanting so much to take a detour to the kitchen to make coffee but head instead to the laundry room and rummage for something clean to wear. I don’t care that our clothes never make it from the intertwined dance of the dryer to the smooth folds of the dresser drawers anymore. If it’s clean and comfortable, I’ll pull it on.

  Today I’m sporting a dryer-culled ensemble consisting of an ancient Al “Big Daddy” Roth T-shirt emblazoned with his signature hot-rod-straddling rat caricature flipping the bird. It’s unbelievably soft, manhandled by some grizzled biker into buttery suppleness and then graciously sold to me on eBay. At the moment, it’s both graphically offensive and soon to be encrusted with chocolate. It also sets off my growing collection of knife and burn wounds to great effect. My pants are ratty blue cords with a malfunctioning zipper circa 1978. They are number one on my queue of pants to wear to work, being both roomy in the thigh and so fantastically high-waisted that they don’t require a belt. My clogs are encrusted in flour and my socks don’t match. If my mother were alive, she’d be horrified that I’d half-consciously chosen this getup. She was, after all, the only mother at my elementary school who routinely wore leather pants and high heels. But if she knew my purpose, she’d forgive me any sartorial sin. She may have been a well-respected opera diva and an outrageously sexy and fashionable woman, but she was also our family’s resident master baker.

  I was once a beautifully dressed woman. I have storage bins, tucked away in the attic of our barn, filled with “grown-up” gear—smart pantsuits and death-defying heels, leather briefcases and tailored overcoats. I can’t bring myself to give the stuff away; I dragged every stitch from LA to rural Vermont. My beef was never with the clothes I had to wear to work in Hollywood, it was with Hollywood itself. So I keep them because they were innocent bystanders in my past misery as a cog in the wheel of the entertainment industry. And many of them are from my sister, better known as “Sand-me-downs.” Luxurious, couture bits of fashion she gets for free for being a movie star. Every few months she weeds through her closet and sets aside things she’s never worn and will never wear. And since she’s a loving and generous big sister, she sends me the prime nuggets. So they have sentimental value as well.

  Unlike me, my sister found her calling early in life. Sandy’s also gifted genetically. She inherited my mother’s razor-sharp jaw and mile-high cheekbones. Her thick black wavy hair came from our father, but she blessedly missed that family’s predilection to start graying as teenagers. She pulled the dimple in her chin from a source so distant that no one in living memory has possessed one, and her sweet nose comes from Germany by way of my grandfather Meyer. Her wit and winning personality surely come from the Bullocks; both our father and Aunt Luddy can spin a yarn and charm the pants off anyone. Her talent could have come from either side, artistry bursting from our DNA at every angle. My sister was also blessed with great humility and cultivated a habit of downplaying her attributes and rerouting any and all attention or praise on me. Usually she does this in my absence. She’ll meet someone and feel the need to tell him or her I am brilliant. And she tells them I am beautiful and tall.

  In the face of someone as beautiful as my sister, they come to think that I must be an otherworldly beauty if she describes me that way. Bless her; I think she really thinks all these wonderful things of me.

  To be honest, I’m bright but not brilliant. Bookish and being a smart-ass really don’t add up to genius, though I wish they did. And the words most often used to describe me physically—exotic or striking or stunning—all translate to tall, pretty girl with black hair and a prominent nose. On more than one occasion, someone has pointed at me as evidence that my sister has had “work done.” I’m the “before” to her “after.” But more often, I’m asked why it is that I don’t look more like her, to which I reply, “So sorry to disappoint you, you ass.”

  She also forgets to add to her long list of superlatives for me that I am a socially retarded misanthrope, awkward on the best of occasions and completely witless and offensive on the worst. So my chosen profession, one in which I am required to work behind closed doors in the darkest hours of the morning with very little contact with other humans, is quite fitting.

  On this black morning, dressed in “baker’s casual” with my still-wet hair in a sloppy ponytail, I’m searching for my car keys and I look out the kitchen window to see where the moon hangs. If it’s just above our first ridge of pine, lighting my path to the barn door, I’m making good time. Any hint of daybreak and I’m screwed. In the winter, the path is a slippery white corridor. Pearly walls reaching up to our chins, small arterial tunnels dug by the dogs breaking off from the main throughway and leading into places unknown.

  In the summer, moonlight permitting, I greet the toads that linger at the side door, tales of soggy midnight rainstorms and dewy grass clinging to their skin. Apple green luna moths, as big as my palm, loiter on the glass of the kitchen door. I see their fuzzy bellies first and carefully open the door to admire their handsome wings before they fly away.

  My headlights flood the ghostly dark dirt roads twisting from our house to the paved street that leads to Montpelier. I have fifteen minutes of uncorrupted driving ahead of me. Not one luxury car cutting me off in the narrow canyons of the Hollywood Hills. Not a single Harley shattering my solitude on Sunset Boulevard. No road rage, no cell phones, no fake tits or tans, no prestige handbags, no billboards, no stoplights, no braking, no traffic, no nothing. Welcome to Vermont. Just heaven.

  Golden Eggs<
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  I HAVE THOUSANDS of great recipes but only one magic recipe. It’s vanilla cake, really just an ordinary yellow cake. Plain old humdrum yellow cake. Big deal. So where’s the magic?

  Made simply, with pure vanilla extract and vanilla beans, this cake is hands-down the best thing ever. It’s moist and dense but still effortlessly springy. The vanilla lives deep in this batter; it permeates every molecule of butter and imparts a richness of flavor that trumps every other yellow cake out there.

  But you can take out the vanilla and still make grown men cry. Add lemon extract and fresh blueberries and you’ve just made a groundbreaking muffin. Add sour cherries and orange extract, sprinkle a buttery streusel on top before baking, and you’ve made every other coffee cake obsolete.

  But if you really want to mess with people, if you want to make something that is both confusing and outrageously delicious, make a Golden Egg.

  I created the Golden Egg for Easter. I make hot cross buns too, but I wanted to offer something else. Something special. I consulted my magic recipe. And I remembered reading about a technique that made ordinary cake taste like donuts, without all the deep-frying. That’s pretty special.

  I make Golden Eggs year-round now; they’re not just for Easter anymore. And they are coveted as if they were indeed genuine 14-carat gold.

  MAKES 12 EGGS OR ABOUT 12 MUFFIN-SIZED CAKES

  For the cake

  Nonstick baking spray

  3 cups all-purpose flour

  1 tablespoon baking powder

  1 teaspoon salt

  1 teaspoon nutmeg

  ½ pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature

  2 cups sugar

  5 large eggs, at room temperature

  1 teaspoon vanilla extract

  1¼ cups nonfat buttermilk

  For dipping the eggs

  8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted

  1 cup sugar and 1 teaspoon cinnamon mixed together in a small shallow bowl