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- [00:08]
A
This is all of it. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC studios in soho. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. We're really grateful that you're here. Coming up on the show today, we'll speak with Martha Plimpton about her role as an FBI agent in the new HBO series Task. Yes. The finale is Sunday night and I can't wait. Also, actor Jeremy Piven is now on tour as a stand up comedian. He'll be here to preview his show this weekend. And it's National Adopt a Shelter Dog Month. And we'll talk about it with someone with the Best Friends Animal Society. Plus, call in and shout out your shelter dog. That's our plan. So let's get this hour started with cookbook author Dorie Greenspan. When we think of cakes, they are often these things that take up a lot of work and are reserved for special occasions like weddings or birthdays. They have fancy decorations, rich frostings, luxurious fillings. But in her latest cookbook, James Beard Award winning author Dorie Greenspan makes the case that cakes do not have to be fussy, complicated or even frosted. They can be eaten as a snack after school, with breakfast or when friends are coming by for a hang in Dorie's Anytime Cakes. Dorie shares over 100 recipes for cakes, some that are treasured favorites that she's done for years, somes that remind her of her childhood and some that she's tasted in her travels that she had to have the recipe for. There's cakes inspired from food markets, Parisian patisseries, and even savory cakes from when you just have too many tomatoes. And Dorie Greenspan is here with us in studio. Dorie, it is nice to talk to you.
- [02:00]
B
I'm so happy to be back with you. Thank you. Thank you.
- [02:02]
A
We wanted to mention that you will be in conversation with Melissa Clark in conjunction with Books are Magic on October 29th. So mark your calendars.
- [02:10]
B
Please come.
- [02:11]
A
Please come. You call these snacking cakes that many of these are snacking cakes. What do you mean by snacking cake?
- [02:18]
B
So snacking cakes is a new expression for me. I've heard it over the past, I don't know, five or 10 years. And I realized that so many of the cakes I made that I just called delicious are in fact snacking cakes. So those are the simple cakes that they can be a crumb cake, a loaf cake, a little brownie kind of cake that you just cut and nibble, cut and nibble.
- [02:45]
A
Growing up, you always said there was a cake on your counter. What was one that you remember fondly?
- [02:51]
B
Well, my mother didn't bake, but she was a good bakery shopper. And so we would have marble cakes. We would have lemon cakes. There would be be for my father cakes with raisins because he loved them. There would be my grandmother's honey cake that was homemade by grandma.
- [03:11]
A
Early in the book you write about wiggle cakes. It's a place where you can wiggle a little bit, so to speak. Explain to us what the wiggle means and what's a good example.
- [03:20]
B
Well, so there are cakes that really lend themselves to variation or additions. So for instance, the yogurt cake, it's a very simple plain cake. But it could have fruit, it could have dried fruit, it could have nuts on top. You could put some chocolate chips in it. There's wiggle room in there to play around.
- [03:42]
A
Listeners, we want to get you in on this conversation. What is your favorite cake to make? What sounds good Anytime? Give us a call or text us at 212-433-WNYC 212-433-9692. Let us know your favorite time anytime cake or if you have a favorite B for dory about cakes, you could let us know as well. 212-433-WNYC 212-433-9692. Let's get to baking basics. You are a big proponent of the scale and using grams.
- [04:16]
B
Oh yeah, I do love that. And again, I came to that late. First of all, I think it's easier. You just put a bowl on a scale, put in your flour. If you're adding some cocoa, you just like zero the scale. Put the cocoa in. It's just easier. It's also more accurate. I want to do a chart of all the different weights that are possible for flour. Every cookbook author has a different weight, 120 grams. I'm 136. I wish I had made it 135. But it's too late now. It's in too many of my books. But it really how you measure the flour, whether you scoop or you spoon, makes a difference. If you're weighing your ingredients, it sounds so professional, it sounds so scientific. But really it's just easy and accurate.
- [05:07]
A
It's funny cause I opened up your book and it's like the fundamental four. It's like the fantastic four of baking. In the first chapter, what is in your fundamental four?
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B
Butterflower, sugar, eggs.
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A
All right. Butterflower, sugar, eggs. So if flour is one of your fundamental four, we often get Listeners who call in and ask for white flour alternatives. What are some alternatives? You this book.
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B
Well, so you can. Spelt flour is a flour that can be used instead of white all purpose flour. But I tested all of these recipes with unbleached all purpose flour and so they're kind of made for that. If you want to substitute, try starting with like 20% of the white flour and see if you like it and then work up. I don't have an exact. If you do this, it'll be fine measurement. Of course, you can use cup for cup gluten free flour. If that's something that's important to you.
- [06:09]
A
You use the straightforward granulated sugar.
- [06:12]
B
Yep.
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A
A lot of baking recipes call for superfine or cast sugar. So how does the sugar affect the sort of the crumb of a recipe?
- [06:21]
B
So the sugar provides moisture, it provides flavor, sweetness, and it also will make a cake. Make a cake tender brown sugar helps with making a cake tender. You know, when I was writing this book, the only thing I. Well, I think it's what I've always wanted and what every other cookbook author wants. I just want people to go into the kitchen and bake. I'm like an evangelist for home baking. And so I didn't want fussy ingredients here and there. I have something that's unusual that you can either skip or go out and get. But I wanted the fundamental four. I wanted people to be able to feel like, oh, I want to bake a cake and be able to do it.
- [07:10]
C
Do you think people should get thermometers for their ovens?
- [07:13]
B
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Yeah. You know, ovens are so fussy. Even the. Or finicky or unreliable. I mean, even the most expensive ones. You need to make your oven your best friend. You need to know if it has a hot spot. You need to know if it runs generally hot or cool. And an oven thermometer will help you bake properly.
- [07:36]
C
Let's take a call. Natalie is calling in from Manhattan. Hi, Natalie. Thank you so much for making the time to call. All of it. You are on with Dorie Greenspan. Natalie, are there. Natalie put her phone down. She said she loves chocolate. Let's see if she can get her back on there. Are you on there, Natalie?
- [08:00]
A
Nope.
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C
Well, she said she loves chocolate, but her real favorite is carrot cake. Is there a way to marry the two?
- [08:07]
B
Oh, of course you can. Oh, you know, I've never done it, but now that you say it, I'm thinking, wouldn't a carrot cake with a chocolate glaze Be lovely.
- [08:14]
A
Yes, it would. Oh.
- [08:16]
B
Oh, Natalie. Okay, thank you. Sorry, Alison, I can't finish. I'm going home to bake a carrot cake with chocolate.
- [08:23]
C
My guest is Dorie Greenspan, award winning cookbook author, and her new book, Dory's Anytime Cakes, which contains more than 100 recipes for cakes to enjoy whenever.
- [08:33]
B
Whenever cakes.
- [08:35]
C
All right, let's get into some of your cakes. Fall harvest cake. It has both dried fruit, nuts, and a little bit of yogurt.
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B
Right.
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A
Why does it say fall to you?
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B
It was. It's the. The. Well, it's a fall. It's a fall cake and it. Because it has fall fruit. But you can. I love this about cakes like this. You can go through the seasons with this cake. So when I made the cake, I had just come back from the market, and so this book is so new, I'm thumbing through it. Like where I put that cake. Where is that cake? I was coming home from the market and I had grapes, which I had planned on just munching, but I thought, oh, they could be in this cake. And I mean, what says harvest more than grapes? And so you can have grapes, you can have apples, you can have pears in this. When the weather gets. You could have oranges in the winter. It just. It's one of those cakes that allows you to make it once. You'll understand how the batter comes together, which is fast and easily. And then when you look on your counter and you have grapes, you can add them. Or if you have a pear, you can use that. It's what I really love about these cakes, that they're so welcoming to variation.
- [09:58]
A
And this cake has no butter, but olive oil. How does this affect the texture and the taste?
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B
A little bit. Well, so an olive oil cake, I keep thinking I'm finished with olive oil cakes, but then I remember just how much I love them and how easy it is to use them. The cake, it's a. How do you describe it? Is it more tender? You know, it depends on the recipe, because you could have an olive oil cake that has a sturdy dense. Dense is a good word with cake in my book. This cake is a hearty cake.
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C
Mm.
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B
And the olive oil. I finally found the recipe, by the way. The olive oil in it and the. The yogurt, not so much. The yogurt is for tenderization, the olive oil. Doesn't that say harvest to you too?
- [10:48]
A
It does a little bit. It does a little bit. It makes me wonder, though, about how much this goes into the world of fruitcake.
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B
Oh, oh, so wait, do you like. I'm looking at your face. Do you like fruitcake?
- [11:01]
A
Depends. It depends.
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B
Okay. So, yes, it could be a fruitcake, and a lot of my cakes could, because I love fruit. But it's not. It's not. There's nothing. There are no little green squares in any of my cakes.
- [11:16]
A
Gotcha. Gotcha. This says Brazilian carrot cake is a carrot cake with a chocolate glaze. That's a text we got from somebody.
- [11:26]
B
Oh, thank you. I said.
- [11:27]
A
Wait.
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B
Excuse me. I said I had never made a carrot cake. Yes. I was thinking of the grated. Oh, that's a good reader. Thank you.
- [11:36]
A
This is Judy calling in from the Bronx. Hi, Judy. Thanks for making the time to call. All of it. You're on with Dorie Greenspan.
- [11:43]
D
Oh, thank you, Dori. I'm a big fan of yours.
- [11:47]
B
Thank you.
- [11:48]
D
And I don't know if you would include biscotti as part of snack cakes, but the cornmeal cocoa biscotti with almonds is a really big, big seller here in the North Bronx, and I wondered if it at all came back from you from. From your family with mandelbread or, you know, those kinds of hard cookie snacks.
- [12:26]
B
So, yes, biscotti, Mandelbread. They're so similar. I wouldn't call biscotti. I've called brownies cakes and brownies cookies. So I do play around with categories, but I. I don't think I could call a biscotti a snacking cake, but, boy, I would call it a snack.
- [12:46]
C
Your next recipe that we have is morning, noon, and night Thanksgiving cake. And you wrote, this is like the little cake that grew and grew. How did it grow and grow?
- [13:01]
B
So I started. I was thinking about this seems to have a carrot theme today. I was thinking about carrot cake and how you grate carrots to make a cake that I love. And then I thought, well, what about sweet potatoes instead? And then when I thought about sweet potatoes, I thought about cranberries, and I thought about pecans, and I thought about maple syrup, and I thought about all the things that make that Thanksgiving casserole delicious. The Thanksgiving casserole with marshmallows on top. And so I turned those ingredients into a really good loaf cake and topped it with marshmallows.
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A
Ooh, that sounds really good.
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B
It's really good. And so it won't replace pecan pie for Thanksgiving, but it would go really well with it, and you'd have that all day long. All day long.
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A
Let's get to Edith, who's calling in from Manhattan who has a question? Hi, Edith. Thanks for calling all of it. You're on the air with Dorie Greenspan.
- [14:02]
D
Hi. I'm actually not much of a cake maker. I'd like to be, but my family tradition in Vermont was pies, so I make a lot of pies. But one cake that I really love in thinking of this autumnal season is apple cake, but I've never made it. Have you ever made an apple cake?
- [14:24]
B
I've made many. What are you thinking of as apple cake?
- [14:29]
D
Well, it's very moist. Like, it's a very moist and kind of rich cake cake. It's kind of. Yeah, I think I like the moistness of it.
- [14:41]
B
So I have. I have a bunch of apple cakes in the book. One of them is a really unusual cake. It's a recipe that came from Russia. It's called Sasha's apple cake. Sasha's grated apple cake. And it is moist. It's also one of the most unusual cakes I've ever made. You grate the apples, and you put a layer of apples down. Then you put a layer of flour and cream of wheat.
- [15:09]
A
What's the kind? Like breakfast cream of wheat?
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B
Like breakfast cream of wheat. I have never seen a recipe like this, and it is so delicious. And if you're looking for a moist cake that says apple, Apple, Apple, Sasha's grated apple cake is for you.
- [15:24]
A
This text says, I have perfected my mother's pistachio pudding cake.
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C
I can make many variations.
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A
Lemon, orange, pumpkin, cherry vanilla Secrets Pumpkin. Bake long enough in the bundt pan. Cool entirely in pan to set crumb. Serve with a simple topping, usually powdered sugar, sometimes glaze, sometimes matcha whipped cream. Mm. Pistachio is having a moment. We're having a moment with pistachio.
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B
There's no question about it. A pistachio pudding cake. Mm. Okay, so I'm seeing it in the buntin. I'm seeing that beautiful green color for the whipped cream. Mmm. Very nice.
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A
You have pistachio flour in this book.
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B
So I call it flour, but all it really is is ground pistachios. I put them in the food processor with some sugar, and press the button.
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A
And tell me about that cake.
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B
So that cake is the Pont Avene cake. And my husband Michael and I were in Brittany, in Pont Aven. We had gone because that's where Gauguin had painted. And it was a wonderful little weekend getaway. We were in a small guest house, and the owner of the house went by in the morning with this cake, and I stopped her. And she said, nope, can't have it. Not time. But later in the afternoon, she was very strict. Later in the afternoon, she not only gave me the cake, a slice of cake, but she gave me the recipe. So it's a pistachio cake. It has raspberries in it. And when I made it, it's. It's just so it's an elegant cake that's easily made. I thought, well, I'm not much for gilding, but the proverbial lily. But I cut the cake in half and I added some raspberry jam between the layers and some little white. Yeah. White chocolate glaze on top. It's really nice. And you're right about pistachio. It's everywhere now.
- [17:19]
C
Everywhere.
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A
This text says southern butter pecan cake.
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C
With chopped bacon added to it. That's their specialty. Oh, that's a pretty good thing. You include salty cakes in here as well.
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B
Yeah. I love a salty cake as. As a surprise. I love surprises in general, but I love it as a surprise when you're having wine or you're having friends in for drinks and you can once again play with. It could have bacon. It could have ham. It could be all vegetables. It could have an unusual spice. It's a really make a loaf cake, slice it. Cut those little slices in fingers. Serve with wine. It's nice.
- [18:01]
A
Let's talk to Martha, who is calling from Carmel, New York. Hi, Martha. Thank you for making the time to call all of it. You're on the air with Dorie Greenspan.
- [18:10]
D
Hey, thanks so much for taking my call. I was just in my car and I heard Dori was on and I just wanted to share with her about how I run a nonprofit hunger relief organization called Second Chance Foods.
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B
Bless you.
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D
One of the things we do is we cook meals with recovered food. And one of our favorite things to cook this time of year is your pumpkin stuffed with everything good. Just makes our volunteers so happy because it's such a beautiful dish. And I know it makes our recipients really happy too. And it's just such a flexible recipe. And so it just works really well when you're cooking with a covered food. Thank you, Dori.
- [18:42]
B
You just made me so happy. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
- [18:45]
A
That's a really lovely call. Thank you so much for calling, Martha. We're speaking with Dorie Greenspan, award winning cookbook author, about her new book, Dory's Anytime Cakes. If you want to call us and tell us your favorite cake or if you have a question, our number is 212433. WNYC 212-433-9692. Okay, you're listening to this segment. You really are a person who has never made a cake. You're a novice. What cake would you start with?
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B
Oh, easy, easy. But now I have two choices. Okay.
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A
Both are fine.
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B
Let's go back to the yogurt cake. Remember I was saying that you can do so much with it? So this is the cake. I learned this recipe when I first lived in Paris. I live there part time now. And it's a cake. French people don't bake the way we do. We're willing to, like, put in a whole weekend. They're willing to go to a pastry shop. But the yogurt cake is one that just about everyone knows how to make. And it's a. So it's yogurt and the basic ingredients, it has oil rather than butter. And you can just mix it by hand.
- [20:04]
A
And you just like, make it when friends are coming over?
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B
Yeah.
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A
That easily.
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B
Yeah. And so for my new book, I decided to add berries. Hardly radical, but it's a change from when I first learned to make the cake. This is definitely a first timer's cake. Make it once, pay attention to how you're doing it, and then the next time you make it, you can add what you like to it.
- [20:32]
A
What is perhaps the hardest recipe in the book for the really true baker?
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B
You know, I don't.
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A
I think they're hard.
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B
No, I don't. I don't. I think this was my easy book.
- [20:49]
A
Oh, okay.
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B
This was my easy book.
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A
Not even the little. The little ones are so cute.
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B
The little ones are adorable, aren't they?
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A
They're really adorable.
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B
So, I mean, you, Alison, you can make anything hard if you want to.
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A
That's the truth.
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B
I mean, in life in general. But sure, you can take these cakes, most of which are very plain, and frost them, fill them, you know, make buttercream flowers, you know, have a ball. But essentially, these are really simple cakes, not hard.
- [21:22]
A
You want people to have a good time and.
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B
Oh, I want them to have a good time. Yes.
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A
The name of the book is Dori's Anytime Cakes in conversation with the great Melissa Clark.
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B
The great Melissa Clark, yes.
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A
In conjunction with Books are Magic on October 29th. Thank you for coming in and sharing your stories with us.
- [21:41]
B
Thank you so much.
- [21:42]
C
WNYC Studios is supported by Perelman Performing Arts center presenting PAC Icons of Culture featuring EZ Devlin, Danai Gurira, Tiffany Haddish, Lucy Liu, Christy Turlington Burns and Laura Brown and Christina o'. Neill. This dynamic series of high profile conversations explores how culture shapes the way we live, work and play and inspires us to be iconic in our own lives. October 29th through November 1st tickets@pacnyc.org what does it mean to move at the speed of AI? It means thinking big and moving fast. It means running like a 10 person team, even if it's just you. With Wix, it's possible. Create a website that's as unique as your business, launch a new campaign, or test new ways to make more money without slowing down. Think it, build it, scale it all with AI on wix.