Dorie Greenspan, "Dorie's Anytime Cakes" (Harvest, 2025)

Summary

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Podcast Summary

Podcast: New Books Network – Food Channel

Host: Laura Goldberg
Guest: Dorie Greenspan
Book: Dorie’s Anytime Cakes (Harvest, 2025)
Date: November 18, 2025

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Brief Overview

This episode features a lively and heartfelt conversation between host Laura Goldberg and celebrated cookbook author Dorie Greenspan, discussing Dorie’s latest book, Dorie’s Anytime Cakes. The interview covers the inspiration and design behind the book, Dorie’s deep affection for simple cakes, the emotional and cultural connections behind baking, the importance of community within the baking world, and specific recipes—both sweet and savory—that highlight Dorie’s signature approach. The episode is rich with anecdotes, practical tips, and reflections on baking as both craft and connection.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Book Design & Visual Aesthetic

• Illustrations Over Photos: Dorie chose illustrator Nancy Pappas and designer Melissa Latfi to bring a whimsical, charming feel to the book, moving away from traditional food photography.
• The Magic of Small Details: Melissa surprised Dorie with a tiny heart illustration on the end papers.

  “There’s a tiny little heart in the front of the book that Melissa never mentioned she was putting there. It’s just so sweet.” —Dorie Greenspan [04:35]

• Embracing Simplicity: The design reflects Dorie’s desire to highlight the pure, unadorned beauty of simple cakes rather than overshadowing them with dramatic props and lighting.

2. Philosophy of Cakes & Simplicity

• The Beauty of Plain Cakes: Dorie’s love for simple cakes stems from their essence and enduring role in her life.

  “It took me until this book was born...to realize how much I love these simple cakes and how much they’ve meant to me through my life.” —Dorie Greenspan [10:19]

• Cakes as Social Glue: Dorie recounts how cakes were always present in her Brooklyn childhood home and served as a means for gathering and conversation.

  “I think of them now as a way that my mother drew people around the table. There would be coffee, there would be cake, there would be conversation.” —Dorie Greenspan [13:13-13:45]

• Comfort vs. Showstopper: She contrasts the talk-stopping nature of elaborate cakes with the inviting, everyday comfort of “counter cakes.”

3. Baking, Memory, and Family

• Intergenerational Influence: Dorie discusses the impact of her mother and grandmother, sharing stories around honey cake, almond cake, and other family favorites.

  “My mother hated honey cake but loved the almonds on top... And I had never been able to make a cake that was my grandmother’s honey cake.” —Dorie Greenspan [34:44]

• Recipes as Narrative: Headnotes in her book serve as “micro-essays” recalling places, people, and emotions tied to specific cakes.

4. Community, Social Media & Connection

• Authenticity Over Perfection: Despite the visual culture of Instagram and TikTok, Dorie focuses on sharing her genuine self and her bakes, rather than highly stylized images.

  “I can only be me, and I’m just me. I don’t have a team... I bake these cakes myself.” —Dorie Greenspan [16:26]

• Tuesdays with Dorie: A grassroots online baking group that started in 2006, where bakers worldwide bake and share Dorie’s recipes.

  “There’s still a Tuesdays with Dorie group and people are still baking every Tuesday.” —Dorie Greenspan [21:36]

• BaconTell & Building Community: Dorie’s Substack and related baking group foster a supportive corner of the internet for bakers to connect and help one another.

5. Cultural Exchange: French and American Baking

• French Sensibility in American Cakes: Dorie discusses the transatlantic dialogue between French and American baking traditions.
  • French home baking is typically low-effort; the yogurt cake (measured with a yogurt container) is a cultural staple reminiscent of the American pound cake.

  “Everyone knows how to make the yogurt cake... It’s reminiscent of our pound cake... almost infinitely play aroundable.” —Dorie Greenspan [26:19]

• Charlotte Russe: A particular cake that Dorie initially thought was strictly French but later realized had deep Brooklyn roots, reflective of culinary cultural crossover.

6. Cakes with Meaning and Memories

• Travel-Inspired Cakes: Many recipes are inspired by serendipitous encounters, e.g., a toasted almond cake discovered at a Paris farm fair (Salon d’Agriculture).

  “I bought the cake, and then the woman at the stand said, 'Do you want the recipe?' I don’t care about collecting anything on my travels except recipes.” —Dorie Greenspan [31:13]

• Every Cake Has a Story: Cakes marked with a heart in the book are “treasured favorites," each with its own backstory—such as the failed attempt at recreating Ebinger’s blackout cake that led to her “Devil’s Chocolate Bundt.”

7. Baking Technique & Approach

• Backbone Basics: Measurement, patience, and proper cooling are essential for cake success.

  “With baking, you need to measure the ingredients properly. You need to follow the recipe. … After that, you can play around.” —Dorie Greenspan [37:34]

• Joy of Baking: The tactile and sensory pleasure of baking remains endlessly satisfying for Dorie.

8. Favorite Bakers and Inspirations

• Influences: Dorie credits Mede Heater, Gaston Lenôtre, Pierre Hermé, Claire Saffitz, Yossy Arefi, Rose Levy Beranbaum, and Joanne Chang as inspirations.

9. Baking during the Pandemic

• Home Baking & Sharing: The pandemic increased interest in home baking and sharing as acts of comfort and community.

  “There is something about baking that is almost synonymous with sharing.” —Dorie Greenspan [43:24]

10. Holiday & Special Occasion Cakes

• Approachable Occasion Cakes: Despite the “anytime” theme, the book includes recipes for holidays that are simple yet full of seasonal flavor (e.g., cranberry-cardamom Bundt, morning-noon-night Thanksgiving cake with sweet potatoes and marshmallow, cocoa-swirl pumpkin Bundt, gingerbread with apple butter and crystalized ginger).

  “Everything that’s in the book is something I love… I wanted to do cakes that stayed in the kitchen, cakes that didn’t necessarily go out to the holiday table, cakes that you could eat while you were making the big holiday desserts.” —Dorie Greenspan [44:42]

11. Innovative Savory Cakes

• Salty Cakes (“Cake Salé”): Dorie introduces American bakers to the French tradition of savory cakes, with creative recipes such as harissa-lemon loaf, seaweed furikake muffins, miso-cheddar pull-apart “cake,” and blue cheese “pop the cork niblets” for entertaining.

  “It was so much fun… I normally make gougères, but now I give them pop-the-cork niblets… They have blue cheese and prunes and parmesan cheese and nuts.” —Dorie Greenspan [50:30]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On Simple Cakes as Enduring Love:

“It took me until this book was born…to realize how much I love these simple cakes and how much they’ve meant to me through my life.”
—Dorie Greenspan [10:19]

On Cake as Conversation-Starter:

“When you bring a simple cake out, I feel like it says, let’s just settle in. Let’s just talk. Let’s stay here and talk because we can always, you know, take another piece of cake.”
—Dorie Greenspan [14:18]

On Social Media Authenticity:

“I can only be me, and I’m just me. I don’t have a team… I bake these cakes myself.”
—Dorie Greenspan [16:26]

On Recipes as Travel Mementos:

“I don’t care about collecting anything on my travels except recipes.”
—Dorie Greenspan [31:13]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment/Topic | |------------|---------------------------------------------------| | 02:06 | Introduction; Book’s design—illustrations | | 05:13 | Visuals, the importance of simplicity | | 09:05 | The essence/power of simple cakes | | 11:33 | Baking, memory, and family stories | | 16:22 | Social media, authenticity, online community | | 20:18 | “Tuesdays with Dorie” and “BaconTell” | | 24:41 | French-American baking sensibility and recipes | | 27:56 | Charlotte Russe and culinary nostalgia | | 30:50 | Paris Salon d’Agriculture-inspired almond cake | | 34:44 | Cakes with a story—honey cake and family memory | | 36:52 | Baking technique—measurement and patience | | 40:21 | Cookbook/baker inspirations | | 42:07 | Home baking during the pandemic | | 44:42 | Holiday and special cakes | | 48:58 | Savory cakes and innovative flavors | | 52:03 | Closing remarks and gratitude |

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Conclusion

This episode offers a warm and insightful dive into the heart of home baking, as Dorie Greenspan shares her philosophy of “anytime cakes,” rooted in memory, family, community, and authentic joy. Both practical and inspiring, the conversation invites listeners to appreciate the emotional power of simple cakes—and to start baking, sharing, and connecting, one delicious slice at a time.

Transcript

[Laura Goldberg]

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[Marshall Poe Iron]

Hello everybody. This is Marshall Poe Iron, the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.

[Laura Goldberg]

Welcome to New Books Network. You're on the Food Channel. I'M your host today, Laura Goldberg. You might know me from my blog, vittlesvamp. I am very, very delighted today to welcome cookbook author and baking doyenne, I think that is the correct term, Dorie Greenspan. She has a new book out that's called Dorie's Anytime Cakes. Hi, Dori. Welcome to the show.

[Dorie Greenspan]

Thanks. I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

[Laura Goldberg]

Absolutely. I have to say, and I know I said this before we got on, but I'm going to say it for everyone listening. As I went through this book, I wanted to make each and every recipe. I can't say enough good things, except I'm threatening that I will come back in a year and actually talk about every single recipe that I have made in this book. So I look forward to doing that, Laura.

[Dorie Greenspan]

Not a threat. Not a threat. What a delight that would be.

[Laura Goldberg]

Okay, well, then expect to hear from me, Dorie. But I want to talk about the book really in depth. And okay, I'm going to go a little odd. I'm going to be a little weird and start with the acknowledgments at the end. Because one of the things that struck me in this book was how beautiful it is. And most people would think that means photos, but in this case, no. You have an illustrator who has created some of the most absolutely charming, I mean, really stunning illustrations. Nancy Pappas. And you also talk about a designer you work with, Melissa Latfi. And I think I'm getting this correct. You said that she knows how to make a book sparkle.

[Dorie Greenspan]

That's the way I feel about her. I've worked on a few books with her, and she's so passionate about what she does. And so she. She has that touch of whimsy that I love in when I. When I got the book. So, of course, you know, I saw the page layouts. I saw them a lot because there was a bunch of editing going on. And she sent me samples of the end papers, you know, the paper that goes against the covers and the first page. And I thought I knew exactly what the book would look like when I got it. And I opened my first copy and I opened to the end papers, and I found myself brushing something away first. I thought it was just like a little speck of something from the packaging, but it's a little heart. There's a tiny little heart in the front of the book that Melissa never mentioned she was putting there. It's just so sweet. I love working with people who are both creative and generous, who want to do their very best work for themselves and for the people they're working with. I love that.

[Laura Goldberg]

But I also. The aspect of design. A lot of our listeners are academics and obviously avid readers and hopefully avid home cooks. But what I found really fascinating was the visual play. And it made me think about how pastry chefs and even home bakers really want to make something beautiful because we eat with our eyes. And I was wondering how you sort of strike a balance with that, with these anytime cakes and where that came into play in terms of deciding how this book was going to look.

[Dorie Greenspan]

Oh, Laura, this is so interesting. Thank you for asking. Because now I'm gonna have to, like, think about it in a slightly different way. But so, yes, we do eat with our eyes first. And when I decided that I wanted to write this book, I made little boxes for me to live in. Sometimes I find it easier to focus when there are walls, when there are constraints. And so I wanted the cakes to be really simple, simple to make, and they would be simple in themselves. I didn't want a lot of frosting. I didn't want a cake to depend on extras. I wanted the cake itself to be really good. And as I was thinking about the book, I realized I was on my way to creating a book of brown cakes. I mean, most. This is. Most baked things are brown.

[Laura Goldberg]

True, true. Very true. I mean, that said, brown is a very chic color this season, so. But continued.

[Dorie Greenspan]

I had. I knew that the shapes would be beautiful. I knew that the textures would be beautiful, that there might be a little crackle or a crack or variations in color because of the bakery. I also knew at some point I would need some frosting, but that's another story. And so when I was thinking about what the book should look like, I met Nancy Pappas at Cherry Bomb Jubilee. Cherry Bomb is an organization for women interested in food, working in food. And I just loved her, and I loved her spirit, and I loved her art. And I said, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe I'll have a project that we can work on together. And my other books were all beautifully photographed. I had great photographers and food stylists and prop stylists. And when this book started, when I started to conceptualize this book, I thought, I want the simplicity of the cakes to be the highlight. I don't want the plainness of the cakes. I think plain is beautiful. I don't want the plainness of the cakes to be overshadowed almost literally, by dramatic lighting and gorgeous props. I want people to just see the cakes and that's when I thought, I have a project for Nancy.

[Laura Goldberg]

Well, I've got to say, it's absolutely beautiful. And in the book, you actually say that simple cakes are your first and most enduring love. And I mean, clearly, you know, you could say that that means that you like simplicity, but I also think it means that you really like a pure essence. To me, for example, a really great vanilla ice cream is a thing of beauty. And since, you know, if you could make the perfect pound cake, is there much on this earth that's better?

[Dorie Greenspan]

So I'm smiling because I was a chocolate girl for so long, and I still adore chocolate. And when I realized how much I love vanilla, I thought, maybe I've grown up interesting.

[Laura Goldberg]

I mean, mind you, I love chocolate, too. And I should say there are plenty of wonderful chocolate recipes in the book.

[Dorie Greenspan]

I mean, yes, yes, there are actually more chocolate recipes than I thought there would be. I love chocolate. But there is something wonderful about vanilla and the way vanilla supports other flavors. It's fun to play with, to play with the combinations. I realized what you had said that I had written. Sometimes I forget what I wrote, but I had written that the simple cakes were an enduring love of mine. It took me until this book was born, which is just a short while ago, until it was out in the world, to realize how much I love these simple cakes and how much they've meant to me through my life, that I had always had these cakes in books, but had never realized how much they meant to me until I put them all together in one volume, until I created. Until I created these cakes for this book.

[Laura Goldberg]

What I want to say that that comes through the fact that this is so tied to memory, that this is so tied to different phases of your life. And you also talk about your mother and grandmother in this. In the very opening of the book, and you talk about how your mom understood the power of cake. And, oh, boy, did I respect that. Cause I, on the other hand, not that I don't love cakes, but I respect the power of cookies. And I can tell you right now that cookies have actually forged many an important relationship in my life. And it sounds to me like, you know, your grandmother's honey cake and your mother's love of cake has certainly, you know, instilled a love of what baked goods can bring to relationships for you, if I'm not incorrect. And I would love for you to unpack a little bit about your mom and sort of provide sort of an emotional bridge to your grandmother's honey cake.

[Dorie Greenspan]

So I, by the way, also love cookies. I mean, I hope no one. You're not gonna ask me to choose, right? No, no, no, no, no, no.

[Laura Goldberg]

Never, never, ever.

[Dorie Greenspan]

Cakes. When, as I said, as I started to work on this book, I kept remembering things that were tucked away far away that I hadn't needed to think about or I hadn't thought about in a while. And cake. And my mother and my grandmother. One of the things I hadn't thought about. So my mother, my wonderful, fabulous mother, didn't cook and didn't bake. She loved food, though. Absolutely loved food. And she was just happiest when it was being prepared by somebody else. And so she. You know, it's so funny, I think that she didn't love to cook, but she loved to shop for food. And we always had. We always had the refrigerator. You know, it was like an overfill valise where you felt like you had to sit on it to close it. There was always just so much stuff in the house, but there was always cake. Cake from a bakery. We had three. I grew up in Brooklyn, and we had three bakeries on the street that my mother shopped on, and she shopped at all of them all the time. We always had bread from the bakery every day. And so when I talk about the power and the charm of cake, I think back to the cakes that my mother always had in the house that I now think of as counter cakes. The cakes that sat on the counter that were always there when we came home from school. We could take a slice, but. Or after dinner, there would be a little nibble of cake. But I think of them now as a way that my mother drew people around the. Something that she used to draw people around the table that when I would come home and she was not working, she'd be at the kitchen table. There was always coffee going, and there was usually somebody there with her. And there would be cake, and so there would be coffee, there would be cake, there would be conversation. And the more I worked on these simple cakes, the more I started to think, think of these cakes with conversation that, you know, when you bring a showstopper to the table, when you bring a big, gorgeous layer cake with, you know, flowers and rosettes and sprinkles and whatever, they're gorgeous, but they're not just showstoppers. They're kind of talk stoppers, right? But he's got a ooh and a over them. When you bring a simple cake out, I feel like it says, let's just settle in. Let's just talk. Let's stay here and talk because we can always, you know, take another piece of cake.

[Laura Goldberg]

I love that. I mean, but I agree. I mean, I'm also somebody who absolutely adores her in dinner parties. And it's the same sort of thing, you know, you don't. You want people to really enjoy themselves and feel like they can open up at the table. And you're not wrong. I'm not suggesting that I don't love somebody's absolutely gorgeous, dramatic wedding cake, but.

[Dorie Greenspan]

Of course, yeah.

[Laura Goldberg]

But there is something about that slice of almond cake that just brings comfort in a different kind of way and allows for a dialogue that maybe that fancy schmancy cake wouldn't necessarily, necessarily do.

[Dorie Greenspan]

I mean, there's room, there's room for cookies, there's room for pies, there's room for cakes, there's room for cakes with frills and Philips and fancy stuff. But day to day, I'll take a plain cake.

[Laura Goldberg]

So I have to ask because, you know, I'm a fan of Instagram and Obviously there's the TikTok out there, but, you know, did your publishers or the PR people that you're working with, I know you're PR person, but, you know, ask you to do anything in particular with, you know, those. Those particular platforms? Because, you know, I'm so used to seeing Cedric Brulee do all these fancy, schmancy, gorgeous.

[Dorie Greenspan]

They're stunning, breathtaking.

[Laura Goldberg]

But, you know, what do you do with. With a simpler cake to. To get somebody to. To want to be compelled to get your book and open it up?

[Dorie Greenspan]

That's such an interesting question. The other day, I was in Boston and somebody was taking my picture, and she said something about Instagram and she said, you have such a big following on Instagram. She said, when did you start? And I said, I don't know. I don't even know how you find out when you start. And she said, I'll show you. And she took my phone and she, you know, tap, tap, tap. And I think I'll get this right, that I'll remember. I was on Instagram in 2011.

[Laura Goldberg]

Oh, my.

[Dorie Greenspan]

Exactly. Oh, my. And I was on Facebook as soon as they, like grownups on. And I was on Twitter before that. I find, I find it interesting. I find it another way to build community, comma, but I can only be me, and I'm just me. I don't have a team. I don't have people who do my social media for me. When I make a cake, I try not to Photograph it in deep shadow, but it's just me there. And so, no, of course, I mean, everybody would love to be able to do what Cedric Gourlay does, but no, I just. And no one has pushed me to be anything other than what I am. And I'm so grateful for that.

[Laura Goldberg]

I'm just now picturing, you know, gotta be me. But I think it's the authenticity that really resonates.

[Dorie Greenspan]

I mean, I bake these cakes myself. You know, I don't have. I have a wonderful recipe tester who we've been together, well since 2011 also, and we both had new jobs when I decided that Nancy was going to illustrate the book, because I wasn't thinking. When you have a photography team, you finish your manuscript and you turn it in and your editor reads it and then the photography starts and there's a photographer and a food stylist and a prop stylist and assistants, and you get to be a princess and just like, watch the beauty and the magic happening. But with an illustrator. When you're working with an artist, you have to give them something to draw. And so it was our cakes. It was the cakes that I made, the cakes that my tester made. And then it was. Oh, dear, all of those loaf cakes were just showing, you know, loaf cakes in a pan, Take them out of the pan. We should slice these or maybe we should look at them sideways. We had to develop skills that we didn't have before. It was a really interesting process.

[Laura Goldberg]

Well, once again, I'm just going to say the book is absolutely gorgeous and those illustrations are really enchanting and mouth watering as well. So you clearly picked up that skill. Full toe. But you just were talking about your social media presence and you said something that really resonated with me, which was that it's about building community. And I've got to say, a lot of social media these days, I feel, is about showing off rather than building community. And in your acknowledgments, once again, I'm going all the way back to the.

[Dorie Greenspan]

End of the book.

[Laura Goldberg]

You know, you mentioned Pierre Herme, Derek Goldstein, Rosa Jackson, you know, among some of the fellow bakers and friends. But you also mentioned something that I need to know about, which is Tuesdays with Dory. Yes, Please explain.

[Dorie Greenspan]

You know, Lauren, as you said that, I thought, well, that was really the beginning for me being on social media. So I wrote a book called Baking From My Home to Yours, and it came out in 2006. And shortly after that I got. Did I get an email I probably got a snail mail letter.

[Laura Goldberg]

God bless snail mail.

[Dorie Greenspan]

Remember those? From Lori Woodward, a woman I didn't know who lived in Pittsburgh. And she said she had gotten my book for Christmas and she wanted to bake her way through it. I think there are 300 recipes in baking from my home to yours, and she wanted to bake her way through it. And she had two friends who were going to be baking with her. Would that be okay? They thought they would each start a blog and they would post their recipes on their blog and they would call it Tuesdays with Dory. They would blog every Tuesday. And I was just so touched. I thought, this is so wonderful. Well, the group grew and grew, and then it was on Facebook and then it was on Instagram and it's people. There's still a Tuesdays with Dory group and people are still baking every Tuesday.

[Laura Goldberg]

So basically, this is your fan club.

[Dorie Greenspan]

Oh, you know, it's funny, I never thought about it that way. Yes, I get marvelous, silly. I never thought about it like that. Yeah, this group of wonderful people who bake and who just encourage one another. It's lovely. And when I started my. My newsletter, I have a substack newsletter called XOXO Dory. I started a baking group for. Well, for anybody who wanted to be part of it. It's called Bacon Tell and it's on Facebook and somebody. Because I've been on, you know, on tour and I've been meeting. I've been meeting such great people. So I've been out and about and I've met some bacon tellers. And they say, oh, it's such a sweet corner of the Internet. And it's just lovely. People helping one another with things like crack cakes or, you know, a cheesecake that didn't come out of its mold or what should I make for, you know, my guest who's gluten free? It's just 8,000 bakers helping one another. And I think it's. That's for me because obviously, at my age, I'm not a digital native. This is the magic that can be the Internet and social media.

[Laura Goldberg]

I couldn't agree with you more. That's why as soon as you said the word community, it was like music to my ears. Because I feel like we, as humanity, and we're gonna get really into it now, have abused the privilege of the Internet. And I would love for community, real community, to take it back.

[Dorie Greenspan]

Well, there are little corners, little pockets, little groups, and it's so encouraging to me to pop in and see what People are baking, and more than that, see how they're helping one another to do something I love. Yeah.

[Laura Goldberg]

It's about connection.

[Dorie Greenspan]

Yeah.

[Laura Goldberg]

So that's a really good segue for me to deal with a lot of the recipes in your book and unpack some of them. Because you have lived in New York, Connecticut and Paris. And a lot of what's in the book, when you talk about, you know, especially in a lot of the headnotes, you talk about, you know, your French friends and living in France. And, you know, for example, you talk about a Franco American banana bread and how it merges two cultures, traditions. And I'm just wondering, what French techniques did you learn that you brought to American kitchens? And, you know, how do you make a translation between these two cultures in a cake?

[Dorie Greenspan]

Such an interesting question. So I don't know that I've brought a French technique into American baking. I've learned a tremendous amount working with French pastry chefs. I think it's more bringing a certain sensibility, a certain style, bringing some flavors, bringing a particular pastry cake, cookie that's popular or known in a region in France, bringing it to America and talking about both the differences and what makes them similar the way I'm thinking about the yogurt cake. So it's 28 years that my husband Michael and I have been living part time in Paris. I feel like a part time commute, you know, a Paris, New York commuter. But almost as soon as I got there, I was talking to her. I was so excited to have a kitchen. I didn't have an oven in the first apartment, but never mind. And I was talking to a French friend about what she does, what she makes. I said, what do you bake? And she said, you know, we're not really bakers the way Americans are. And over the years, I've come to discover she was right. Where we might spend, we Americans might spend a whole weekend on a project, bake. French people go to the pastry shop.

[Laura Goldberg]

There's so many of them there, every.

[Dorie Greenspan]

Corner, and so many that are so good.

[Laura Goldberg]

Oh, incredible.

[Dorie Greenspan]

But she said, everyone knows how to make the yogurt cake. And originally, well, in France, the recipe is based on a yogurt container. You empty the container, use that as your measuring cup. And sure enough, I can't tell you the number of dinner parties I've gone to in French homes where the yogurt cake has been served. And what makes the cake so wonderful is it's immediately recognizable. Well, many things make it wonderful, but what makes it so interesting in terms of A French American connection is it's reminiscent of our pound cake. It can remind us of a sour cream cake and it's almost infinitely play aroundable. So it can have berries, it can have pieces of chocolate, you can flavor it with citrus, you can glaze it with jam, you can make it in a round pan and layer it. And I think that was one of the cakes that I was so happy to learn about because it was an opportunity for me to say, see, French baking isn't hard at all. And it's very much like our own.

[Laura Goldberg]

It is in the home, home baking world. It's just when you hit the pastry shops that I'm just like, oh, I don't see myself making this. And I gotta say, you have a recipe in the book that I always thought was French. And yet for you it's deeply connected to Brooklyn, which is Charlotte russe.

[Dorie Greenspan]

Oh, oh. So a char. It's funny again because I was out and about and I was talking about it, I put strawberries in it and somebody who grew up in Brooklyn said, you know, it had no fruit except a cherry on top. I stand corrected. But from memory. Sometimes memory isn't exact. So a charlotte is indeed French, but a Charlotte russe, according to, you know, all my googling creation. And I had made this hot milk sponge cake and I thought, oh, I'm going to layer it into like a strawberry shortcake. And when my husband, who grew up around the corner from me in Brooklyn tasted it, he said, doesn't this remind you of the charlotte russe? And the charlotte russe, the ones that we remembered were sold in like a little snack stand on a side street off the main shopping street. And it came in a white cardboard, you know, like those ice cream push up. So you push from the bottom and.

[Laura Goldberg]

The cake, you get to cake arises.

[Dorie Greenspan]

That's right. And you can nibble your way up that layer and then push up some more. And it had, I think it had like points around the top. I keep thinking like, you know, jester's hat. And so, yeah, so that cake, that cake brought back all of those, those memories. And I think it's a New York cake. The woman who corrected me grew up in Brooklyn also.

[Laura Goldberg]

Okay. I mean, I live in Brooklyn and I've not seen Charlotte Russ around. So I'm going to do my own investigation because I was like, wait, that isn't Brooklyn a black and white cookie, you know, a blackout cake. I just never had thought of Charlotte Russ as a Brooklyn creation.

[Dorie Greenspan]

But I think you're too young okay, thank you.

[Laura Goldberg]

That's very sweet of you to say.

[Dorie Greenspan]

And I often say I grew up in Brooklyn before it was hip and groovy. Things have changed in Brooklyn. And the blackout cake out, that's definitely Brooklyn.

[Laura Goldberg]

Oh, absolutely.

[Dorie Greenspan]

Right, right, Evangers?

[Laura Goldberg]

Mm. Absolutely. But I wanna ask you about a few more cakes. In fact, a whole bunch of cakes. There was one that you talk about. I would love for you to share a bit with listeners. A toasted almond cake that, you know, actually came out of a discovery at the Salon d' Agriculture in Paris. And I'm sure I'm ruining the pronunciation, so I'm just wondering if you could talk about that chance encounter and that recipe.

[Dorie Greenspan]

So the. The Salon d' Hriculture is like a farm fare. And there are cows and there are goats and there's fabulous food. And it happens once a year, and it has the huge convention center, and it's set up by regions, and so you get. Walk around the Brittany stands and you get oysters, and if you go someplace else, you get walnuts. And I was on my way out and I saw this almond cake. Just my kind of cake. It was one layer, very slender, and it had a white glaze on it, I think. And it had some almonds around the edge. And that was really all it had. And I bought the cake, and then the woman at the stand said, do you want the recipe? I don't care about collecting anything on my travels except recipes. So this was. And I made the cake when I was working on the book, and I had pulled just almonds out of the freezer. I keep nuts in the freezer because nuts go rancid. That's a good place to keep them. And I realized after I made the cake that I had made the cake with very expensive Marcona almonds. And, boy, was it good.

[Laura Goldberg]

Yeah, but those are pricey, my goodness.

[Dorie Greenspan]

Oh, exactly. Exactly. And so I ended up toasting regular almonds and just putting them in the food processor to grind them into almond flour and got such a wonderful cake. I got that kind of warm, toasty flavor that you get from Marcona almonds. And I got the salt, which was really, really nice. Cake is so simple. I love the texture of it. It's really nutty, and it's just a little chewy. And can you tell that I like cakes that have stories?

[Laura Goldberg]

Oh, absolutely. I mean, your headnotes were all like, you know, micro essays. They all had a little narrative. They were talking about travel or memory or humor. I mean, what are some of your favorite stories? In terms of you told so many of them, is there one in particular that you're really proud of, that maybe you even struggled a bit to remember or to tell?

[Dorie Greenspan]

So I don't. I feel like I. No. The answer is no. But the story about the stories, which is that when I was working on the book, so many of the recipes had stories, and some of them had really long stories and stories that went back in time. I mean, the honey cake is. Which you had mentioned earlier, and I didn't talk. Why is one of them. But so I sent my manuscript in with, you know, bundt cakes and loaf cakes and round cakes and a chapter called Cakes with a Backstory. And my editor said, you know, all of your cakes have stories. Yeah. She said, this is really not a good chapter title. And so we took those cakes and put them into their chapters on cake or round and put a little heart. Thank you again. Melissa, the designer, put a little heart next to those recipes and called them treasured favorite. And so the cakes that have the stories. The Devil's Chocolate Bunt was, in fact, my trying to make an Ebinger's blackout cake, which I failed at, but I got a good cake out of it. And I published in 2006 in Baking from My Home to Yours and had, over all those years, made it as a Bundt cake, where the flavor is different because. Not the flavor, but the way you experience the cake is different because of the size of it and the way it bakes. And so all of the little heart recipes have a story. And the honey cake. The honey cake. I'd never. My grandmother used to come to the house every week, and she would bring food, you know, certain that my mother hadn't fed us that week. And so she was just taking care of us. And she brought three cakes. She brought three things, three sweet things. She brought an apple cake, she brought cookies, and she brought a honey cake. And my mother hated honey cake, but loved the almonds that were on top of it. And so she picked up all the almonds and left the cake for us. And I had never been able to make a cake that was my grandmother's honey cake. And a friend of mine called me just to see how I was doing. And I said, you know, I'm working on this book. She said, oh, I have a recipe you might like. And she sent me her honey cake recipe. And it brought back all the memories of my grandmother coming to the house, bringing that cake. It has a kind of rough texture, almost bread, and I'm using rough As a compliment, actually, it's a little coarse, kind of plays against your tongue. And my grandmother's cake had that almost a little bready, and that not honey, can, like, just have a tinge of bitterness to it almost. It's like almost a bit tangy flavor. And it's all in that cake, and it's all the way. I remember my grandmother's.

[Laura Goldberg]

I mean, in terms of making a cake, you know, the actual ingredients, how you put them in. There is something about precision that really does make a massive difference in how a cake turns out. That's why there are like, 3 million recipes for honey cake. But, you know, you dive into your book, quite honestly, talking about backbone basics, and you talk about measuring and patience and cooling as part of the baking process. You know, can you talk a little bit about all of that as well as you also say that there's something primally joyful about whisking eggs and sugar.

[Dorie Greenspan]

Together, that the looking, working with ingredients, mixing them together, watching them transform, catching the smell of lemon when you mix it with sugar. None of that has ever been anything but wonderful for me. It just does not get old or unexciting. I still think that baking is magic. Certainly what happens in the oven is magic, but it's. I think this. I know with baking, you need to measure the ingredients properly. You need to follow the recipe. And I always hope that people will make the recipe just the way it's written the first time. After that, after you know, how. How the recipe progresses, what you need to do, then you can play around and use flavors that are really the flavors you love. You can, you know, go for the frosting if you want, put a little jam glaze on something. You know, change the nut. There's room around the edges in baking to make, to be really, really creative, but it's really important to get the measurements right.

[Laura Goldberg]

It makes a huge difference. I mean, there are times I've unfortunately forgotten the baking powder. And I can promise you the recipe did not turn out as intended. So it's critical. But I also loved what you were saying about cooling as part of the baking process, because it is. Because if you don't wait long enough, it doesn't have the time to settle and create that crust or, you know, that crispness and the edge that is so marvelous in terms of.

[Dorie Greenspan]

Yeah, yeah. So that's. So that's part of the reason that I say patience is an important. You need patience to be a baker. You had talked about cookies before, and they're like, I'm not good in math. So I was going to just say, you know, like 90% of cookies, but I don't know if that's true, are okay eaten warm. Some are even delicious eaten warm. There are very few cakes that are meant to be eaten warm. Just as you said, cakes need to gather, they need to cool, they need to gather themselves. And if you have spices in a cake, the cake is usually even better the following day when the spices have really had a chance to settle in. So, yeah, baking is kind of a game for the patient.

[Laura Goldberg]

Well, what cookbooks, what bakers have inspired you? I know you mentioned in the book you talked about made a heater and book of great desserts. And I've gotta tell you, I have that on my shelf. It's not as dog eared as it sounds like yours is.

[Dorie Greenspan]

Mine's a mess, a happy mess.

[Laura Goldberg]

But what are some of the books on your shelf?

[Dorie Greenspan]

So I have them looking up. I have so many books. I learned from Mede Heater from Gaston de Notre, who was considered kind of the father of modern pastry in France. My inspirations are French books by Pierre Hermes. I love what Claire Saffitz is doing. I love her book Deserved Person. I love what Yossi Arefi is doing with snacking cakes. Also, like really simple, lovely, lovely cakes. I have enormous respect for what Rose Levy Baringbound has written. I have a baker's crush on Joanne Chang from Flour Bakery in Boston. She's a fabulous person and as you know, a person. And you feel when you, when you're looking at her books, you feel that, that sweetness and generosity in her books. I think it's a, it's really a golden time for cookbooks now.

[Laura Goldberg]

I think in some bizarre way, at least for me, I think that the pandemic actually fueled a little bit of this because people suddenly were learning how to cook who hadn't before and were starting to embrace, you know, trying to expand their horizons in their own kitchens. I could be wrong in this, Jo.

[Dorie Greenspan]

Well, we both could be wrong, but I agree with you completely. I mean, yes, there was that whole sourdough movement and on and on. Yeah, was tending their starter, but people were baking at home, baking cookies, baking. I mean, my husband bakes bread and he baked bread. And we were in Connecticut through the pandemic and left bread in people's mailboxes. I baked and, you know, left things in mailboxes and on doors. And I think there's something, you know, I always say, people say, what do you do with everything you bake? And I say bacon release, but there is something about baking that is almost synonymous with sharing. And during the pandemic, when we couldn't see one another, we could still share what we baked.

[Laura Goldberg]

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I did the same thing in my building. I would leave things in front of doors. You know, it's just. And. And frankly, I still do it to this day. Not just leaving things in front of doors, but, you know, I love to bake. And so I will just. I bring things to like, you know, my bartenders, you know, if these, if this is somewhere I go regularly to get a Manhattan, they're going to be getting shortbread cookies.

[Dorie Greenspan]

You know, that's so great. But that's. Baking is. It's a gift. When it comes out of the oven, it looks like a gift. It's meant to be shared.

[Laura Goldberg]

Well, speaking of sharing and gifts, the holidays are coming up, and you do have a number of recipes in the book that are for holiday cakes, you know, specifically for Thanksgiving and the winter holidays, Christmas. And, you know, even though, yes, these are anytime simple cakes, let's be honest, Thanksgiving is special, Christmas is special, and yet these cakes aren't complicated. How did you settle on which cakes to put in the book for this purpose? And could you talk a little bit about them?

[Dorie Greenspan]

So everything that's in the book is something I love, which is maybe a little selfish, but there. And I wanted. So originally, the way the book came about was I was asked by the New York Times to create three holiday recipes. And I said, I don't think I'm your person. I said, I really, I don't want to do big frosted cakes. And that's what I think of for holiday cakes. I said, what if I did cakes that stayed in the kitchen, cakes that didn't necessarily go out to the holiday table, cakes that you could eat while you were making the big holiday desserts? And they said, yes. And that was the start of this project. And the COVID cake is the Holiday Bunch. And I think it's so beautiful. I would be happy to put it in the center of any table. But it has all, all the flavors of holiday. It has cranberry. It has this beautiful cranberry sugar icing. It's got coriander and cardamom, so those kind of warm holiday spices. So I think that's holiday for Thanksgiving. You know, I had so much fun doing these recipes. So for Thanksgiving, I was thinking about the sweet potato casserole along with the marshmallows on top, and I ended up cakeifying the Casserole and made the morning, noon and night Thanksgiving cake. It has grated sweet potatoes, it has pecans, it has maple syrup. It has all the stuff that we love in a sweet potato casserole. And it has a marshmallow frosting.

[Laura Goldberg]

I fell in love with that recipe immediately. I just, my jaw dropped. I was like, oh, this is just fantastic.

[Dorie Greenspan]

So much fun. There's a jing of also for Thanksgiving. And it's beautiful. The cocoa swirl pumpkin bunt. So we know bundt are beautiful no matter what you do. The pan is beautiful, right? You turn the cake out and it's gorgeous. So this is a bund and it has a swirl of cocoa that gets kind of pudding, pudding ish. And then it's a pumpkin cake and you can decorate it if you'd like. It's great with a chocolate icing or glaze. So that's a great holiday cake. And the gingerbread, I love the gingerbread cake. I make it in a skillet, but it can be made in, you know, in a cake pan. And I use apple butter in it, store bought apple butter. And it gives such a lovely texture and a moistness to the gingerbread. And then I put little, sometimes not so little pieces of crystallized ginger in the gingerbread. And so you're eating it and you get the spices and you get the sweetness and then you get that pop of kind of sharp, little hot in a nice way, ginger. Those are great cakes for the holidays.

[Laura Goldberg]

They sound amazing. And as I said, I'm planning on making just about every single recipe in the book at some point. So I wouldn't be surprised if some folks over the holiday season get one of these in front of their door. But I also want to ask you about a very special chapter in your book. Cause yes, there's a chapter on bundt cakes. Yes, there's a chapter on this, that and the other. But there is a chapter on salty cakes. And I'm one of those proponents of salt in dessert. And I sometimes like, I'll be out at a restaurant and I'll taste something and I'll be like, I'm sorry, can I get a little sea salt? And I'll literally put salt on the dessert just to take the flavor up a notch. But you go even further than that. You have a harissa lemon loaf.

[Dorie Greenspan]

Oh, I love that.

[Laura Goldberg]

Seed and furake muffins. Please, please talk to us about that. Let's talk salt.

[Dorie Greenspan]

So I learned about salty cakes called, you know, cake celle in Paris. You can buy them in the supermarket in the frozen food section. So the first one I had was a small kind of mini loaf, and it had smoked salmon in it. And the idea of those salty cakes was to cut them into slices, maybe cut the slices into fingers. And they were meant to be served with a pair of teeth. So they were cocktail cakes. And I loved that idea. Simpler than, you know, making something out of puff pastry. And they're a surprise. You don't particularly here, where we don't see them that often. And so I have some loaf cakes like that, but then I got a little. I got a little carried away. I had so much fun. So I normally make gougere, and I keep them in the freezer. And that is a little trick that I learned in. In. In Paris to make the. The puff pastry. No, I'm sorry. The cream puff dough. The gougere dough, and scoop them out into little puffs and then freeze them raw and bake them straight from the oven. And so that's what I usually serve when people come for drinks. But now I give them pop, the cork niblets. They're so cute. They're made in mini muffin tins, and they rise so that they look like champagne corks in a way. And they have blue cheese and prunes and parmesan cheese and nuts. And they are so good with wine or champagne. So there are those kinds of recipes. I wanted to do something with. I love miso. I wanted to do something with miso and cheese and decided to make miso cheddar scones. But, I mean, I've stretched the meaning of cake a lot in this book. But scones, it was kind of hard, but I did it. I scooped the scone batter into a springform pan, kind of like a daisy, and baked it and made it into a cake. So it's like miso cheddar pull apart cake. It's a fun chapter. It's a really fun.

[Laura Goldberg]

It's a really fun chapter. I mean, you know, and then you also do a miso butter that goes with the seaweed for akake muffins. So I'm like, oh, my. You know, I just. I just want to do a party that's all these.

[Dorie Greenspan]

Now, that would be fun. It would be.

[Laura Goldberg]

And now that you're saying champagne like that, sounds like a very fine way to ring in a new year.

[Dorie Greenspan]

I like it. I like it.

[Laura Goldberg]

Dorie, I want to thank you so much for joining today. And once again, I just want to tell people the name of the book is Dory's Anytime Cakes. And I promise I will be posting at least a couple of blog posts about making these cakes over the course of the year. But I suggest you go out and get this book for yourself and make them at home. Thank you so much.

[Dorie Greenspan]

This has been a delight. Thank you so, so much for talking to me about my book.

[Laura Goldberg]

Absolutely.

[Dorie Greenspan]

Happy holiday. Go home and bake. Go home and b. Sa.