What to serve in celebration of the passing (dare I say, thank goodness?) of the Royal Wedding from our media midst? I started off by baking some of Maida Heatter’s mohn (poppy seed) cookies, which were so speckled with poppy seeds (a full cup!) that I found them revelatory. And perfect for afternoon tea. Unfortunately, the poppy seeds skeptic in my house found them a touch overwhelming. Which gets us to this dark chocolate sorbet and peanut butter cookies. The classic American combo. Go figure. Turn the page for a recipe in today’s LA Weekly from Maida’s kitchen, by way of mine, and now on to yours.
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28 Apr 2011, Posted by admin in MEET, 0 Comments
It would be too easy to say that Maida Heatter epitomizes that “gets better with age” adage like a fine wine, and I have a feeling she has always been pretty fantastic to chat with, anyway. She’s not half bad with a brownie, either. If only we can all be so graceful — and hilarious — about our key lime pie presidential moments at a youthful 95. Turn the page for part two of my interview with Maida on LA Weekly.
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Though some may call Maida Heatter “The Queen of Cake,” and her revamped Maida Heatter’s Cakes is certainly at the top of our weekend baking list, after flipping through her companion cookbook, Maida Heatter’s Cookies, we would argue that royal title is best bestowed on the octogenarian (or older, even her publisher isn’t certain of her age) for cookies.
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14 Apr 2011, Posted by admin in MEET, 0 Comments
A Saturday morning spent chatting with Maida Heatter makes all those doubts that quality journalism (or at least quality as defined in my rather skewed food history-friendly mind) can survive in this trendy blogger and food celebrity-driven world disappear in a brownie batter moment. Here is part one of my interview on LA Weekly: There is a beautiful irony in knowing that all those years Betty Crocker boxed cake mix devotees were strolling the grocery store aisles in a fruitless search of the perfect pre-mixed chocolate birthday centerpiece, home bakers like us had already baked our way through a half dozen seven layer chocolate tortes with Maida Heatter. As we worked up from basic lemon pound cakes to more complex Dobos Tortes architectural feats via her cookbooks (two have recently been re-released), we felt we really got to the true heart of the Queen of Cakes.
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What’s inside a cookbook counts, but we still judge a book by its cover. Which is why even those books that should be on everyone’s shelves, like Maida Heatter’s 1997 classic Cakes (itself a compilation of two 1980s titles by Heatter) really do take on a fresh feel with a design revamp, recipe tune-up, and reissue under the same title. Heatter has simultaneously released the matching — cover-wise, at least — book Cookies, a compilation of her best cookie recipes of the past quarter century (more on that later).
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