Everything I baked this week, including this Mokonuts recipe
It's chocolate, it's banana and it's the last sweet I tasted in Paris this year
Hello! Hello!
It’s a wrap! Or it will be in a couple of hours. Tonight, after I give Jane Bertch a virtual hug and thank her and the good people from the Alliance Française for our conversation, my official tour for Dorie’s Anytime Cakes will come to a close. It’s been a sweet whirl, and the sweetest part has been meeting you and so many other great people.
Thank you for coming out. Thank you for encouraging me and my new book. Thank you for all the smiles, the hugs and the good wishes. Thank you to everyone who hosted me and to all of the people who posted images from our events — I never had time to take pictures and was always so happy that you did. Thank you to all the extraordinary people who took time out of their crazy-busy lives to share a stage with me, and to the bookstores that have stocked and displayed Anytime Cakes. Thank you Carrie Bachman for figuring out the whole tour, making every arrangement and ensuring that everything went off smoothly — you’re an author’s dream. And thank you Michael Greenspan for, well, everything, including traveling the country with me and making sure that I didn’t eat M&Ms for dinner (except that one time when the choice was between M&Ms and potato chips). Onward!
Well, first picture is from the terrific booksigning hosted by Rizzoli at their gorgeous bookstore. How lucky was I to be seated next to Kim Hastreiter, the cofounder of legendary PAPER magazine and the author of Stuff: A New York Life of Cultural Chaos. The other two are from the truly wonderful holiday party organized by the New York chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier. It was wonderful to see the cakes that members had baked from my book and to have a conversation with Tara Bench and Nancy Pappas, who illustrated the book.
Using my own (old) recipes
When I’m working on a baking cookbook — and most of my books have been about baking — I don’t bake from other people’s recipes. I don’t even bake from my own. Because I’m always trying to create something new, I don’t go back to my older recipes. In fact, sometimes I don’t even remember them — there’s been more than a few times when I’ve come up with a flavor combination, a shape or a recipe that I’m excited about, only to be reminded by those with memories better than mine (thank you, Mary Dodd), that it’s something I’ve already made. It’s not that my memory is terrible, it’s just that I’ve developed so many recipes and, because I rarely go back to them, they slip from mind.
But now that Anytime Cakes is out in the world, my make-something-new commitments are lighter and I can whim-bake again and even bake from my own recipes. I’ve been baking a bunch from my new book (especially cupcakes, Gemma and VV’s favorites), but I’ve also baked some recipes from the xoxoDorie Archive. Over Thanksgiving, the wonderful Antonella wrote to say that she was thinking of making the Nibble-Away Gingerbread Cake from the archive. Of course I’d forgotten about it, but it was top of mind when I was looking for a dessert to make for some friends who were coming for dinner. Gosh it’s good! Of course, I didn’t take a picture when the cake was settled onto a pretty platter or when it was on a pretty plate with some ice cream next to it. But here’s the story and recipe, straight from the archive.
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Using my new cookbooks
It’s more likely that I’ll cook from my new (or old) books than it is that I’ll bake from them, but even then, I’m often cooking “au pif” and not searching for or following a recipe. This, despite the fact that I love, truly love, cooking other people’s food. And so, to celebrate having a bit more kitchen time, I’ve given myself a present — the pleasure of following recipes that aren’t mine! Because I cooked most of the food for dinner, I don’t have pictures (at least none that are better than the snaps I take for just for myself), but here are a few of the things I made:
Creamy Sesame-Ginger Dressing on page 119 of Samin Nosrat’s Good Things — I used it on noodles, “regular” salad and coleslaw
Falafel-In-Spirit Salad on page 165 of Hetty Lui McKinnon’s Linger
Blender Cornbread on page 132 and the Pickled Potato Salad on page 72 of Casey Elsass’s What Can I Bring?
I also baked the Funfetti version of the One-Bowl Vanilla Cupcakes on page 60 of the Sweet & Salty Cookbook for Young Bakers from King Arthur with 20 — yes, 20!!!! — 3- and 4-year-olds. Thank you The Washington Market School for inviting me to get messy with VV’s class. And thank you for all the clean-up help.
Making the Chocolate Banana Bread from Mokonuts: The Cookbook
Mokonuts is one of my very, very favorite restaurants in Paris and now they’ve got a cookbook. I remember talking to Moko years ago when she was thinking about the project, then when she was starting it, and then when Mokonuts: The Cookbook was almost done — that’s when she asked David Lebovitz and me to write the foreword, which was its own special pleasure.
And I’d made some of Moko’s recipes — remember the fabulous Rye-Cranberry Chocolate Chunk Cookies? I made them for NYT Cooking, then included them in Baking with Dorie and then, in an act of culinary topsy-turviness, I turned them into a loaf cake (Moko Cake-O) in Anytime Cakes. So it was extra fun to see the line-up of recipes that Moko chose for her half of the book — Mokonuts Part I is devoted to the exquisite cooking of her husband, Omar Koreitem. I put stickies on lots of pages, but as soon as I came to the Fluffy Chocolate Banana Bread, I knew it would be first, in part because it was the last sweet I had when I left Paris in September.
Michael and I had lunch at Mokochaya and while I was deciding which cookie to have, Michael decided on the banana bread and that was that. And so, baking it at home was a little look back — a very little look-back, as it happened: Friends turned up, I put the cake out and then it was gone, just as it should have been. Scroll down for the recipe.
There’ll be sweets here, there and everywhere. ‘tis the season. ‘tis our season. Sending you sweetness. Always.
Books in this post:
Samin Nosrat’s Good Things — Bookshop.org // B&N // Amazon
Hetty Liu McKinnon’s Linger — Bookshop.org // B&N // Amazon
Casey Elsass’s What Can I Bring? — Bookshop // B&N // Amazon
King Arthur’s Sweet & Salty Cookbook for Young Bakers — Bookshop.org // B&N // Amazon
Moko Hirayama and Omar Koreitem’s Mokonuts: The Cookbook — Bookshop.org // B&N // Amazon
Baking with Dorie — Bookshop.org // B&N // Amazon
Dorie’s Anytime Cakes — Bookshop.org // B&N // Amazon // More
Want more book recommendations that are great for holiday gifts or are just great this fall?
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FLUFFY BANANA CHOCOLATE CAKE
Adapted from Mokonuts: The Cookbook by Moko Hirayama and Omar Koreitem
Here’s what Moko has to say:
I ate my share of banana bread/cake during my life in the US. I always appreciated the subtle sweetness (well, not always, but hey, more often than not). I have to admit that I am not a huge banana fan. It follows my principle of preferences, and banana falls in the category of sweet but lacks in the acidity department (sorry, banana). However, when it is transformed into banana bread, the fruit’s rich sweetness becomes subtle. I find it a perfect part of the lineup of sweet breakfast offerings.
This recipe is quite forgiving. If your bananas are a bit too large or small, or you have a tiny bit too much yogurt or olive oil, things will come out just fine. Plus, all you need is one bowl. Great even for a last-minute brunch! Rice flour provides fluffiness to the cake, but it is not an absolute must. The recipe works just fine with good old all-purpose flour or any other flour of your choice, including almond meal or a grain flour. You’ll need a 1 lb (450 g) loaf pan to make this.
