The Cookbooks of Summer, Part 2

The Book Bench is reviewing new and forthcoming cookbooks this week. In this post: “The Perfect Finish: Special Desserts for Every Occasion,” by Bill Yosses and Melissa Clark.

My mission was clear. It was a Friday afternoon at 2 P.M. I was at the office, picking up a copy of “The Perfect Finish: Special Desserts for Every Occasion.” By 5, I needed to be at my best friend’s potluck wedding shower in Brooklyn, some kind of dessert in hand. The odds were stacked against me.

First things first: what to bake? On the train, I flipped through the many decadent, beautifully-illustrated recipes. I am burdened with an insatiable sweet tooth, and with this book—co-authored by Bill Yosses, currently the White House pastry chef—it appears I had met my match. The recipes are loosely organized by occasion—brunch, holidays—so I instantly flipped to the section “Celebration Cakes.” Still, the options were overwhelming. With my time constraints, there was no chance I was going to make the eight-layered Red Eye Devil’s Food Cake, complete with chocolate ganache and thick layer of chocolate curls. I didn’t have a pastry tube, so the Yellow Cake with Seven-Minute Frosting was out, despite its efficient-sounding name. I settled on the Birthday Shortcake with Fresh Strawberries and Cream, which seemed like the perfect ladylike option for a bridal shower taking place in a beer garden. But was I cheating by opting for one of the book’s simpler recipes? I decided that if it was good enough to make the cover, it was good enough for me.

At Whole Foods in Union Square, I stocked up on the main ingredients, including an astounding number of eggs, but lost valuable time trying to locate the single exotic ingredient in the recipe: almond paste. I wasn’t entirely sure what almond paste actually was, though I envisioned some sort of marzipan thing. It was nowhere to be found in the store’s “When you want to bake” aisle, nor were the employees, who kept pointing me towards the grind-your-own-almond-butter machines, very useful. I consulted the back of the cookbook, where Yosses includes a source list for more obscure ingredients. Drats! Was a baking Web site my only option? In a panic, I grabbed some almond extract, thinking it might do in a pinch. Curiously, the recipe intro made no mention of the almond paste, so I had no idea of how essential it actually was.

Back in Brooklyn, I wasn’t ready to give up on the almond paste just yet, and I stopped by my local foodie haven, Brooklyn Kitchen. They didn’t have it either, though the extremely knowledgeable employees suggested that I might find it—of all places—at the humble Key Foods on McGuinness Boulevard, a relatively massive suburban-style grocery store next door to a Taco Bell. In other words, it was not the first place I’d go looking for a specialty ingredient. I called and—miracle of miracles—they did, indeed, have the paste, whatever the hell it actually was. The clock was ticking and I now had less than ninety minutes to bake. Was the almond paste worth it? In the name of journalism and the baking arts, I decided that it was. I hopped onto my rickety bike, hoping to shave a few precious minutes, only to discover that the back tire was flat. Fear not, dear reader, for I availed of my friendly neighborhood bike shop, where I got just enough air for the bike to function. Riding on the sidewalk in order to minimize the chance of a run-in with an eighteen-wheeler, I made it to the store, ran to the baking aisle and there was the almond paste—in not one but two different varieties! I opted for the can over the tube, though I hardly think it made a difference.

Back at my apartment, I set about sifting, stirring, and folding the ingredients together in a mad flurry. The only real hurdle was (you guessed it) the damned almond paste, which had the tacky consistency of silly putty. The recipe advised to combine the paste with confectioners sugar until smooth, but try as I might, “smooth” was simply not an option, even after I used my fingers to break up sticky clumps. I added the remaining ingredients—ignoring some of the recipe’s finer points about room-temperature eggs–and thankfully they helped dissipate the stubborn paste. With the cake in the oven, I whipped the heavy cream, then ran to the bathroom to wash the cake flour from my hair.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com