While swathed in a faux fur stole, Stefin shares a recipe that uses the leftover graham cracker crumbs listeners may have after making the New Year’s Eve dessert from Episode 9. It’s King Arthur Flour’s No-Bake Peanut Butter Chocolate Squares, and they’re divine, daaahling. Ostensibly more suitably clad, Andrea recounts two recent reads — one, a red-hot romance set in a bed and breakfast, and two, a memoir that more accurately depicts the realities of life in the food industry, Spiced: A Pastry Chef’s True Stories of Trials by Fire, After-Hours Exploits, and What Really Goes On in the Kitchen, by Dalia Jurgensen. When the hosts discover that a novel on Stefin’s nightstand, Kitchens of the Great Midwest, was Andrea’s favorite book of 2015, the idea for a Preheated Podcast Bookclub is born!
Moving on to the review of their lightened up favorite, Can’t Tell They’re Lowfat Brownies (their first baking resolution of 2017) the Team Fudgey Brownie hosts applaud themselves for giving it a try, but believe that brownies are ultimately too special and delicious to make mock of by adding baby food to the batter. (Though a trip to the baby food aisle is seriously a trip these days.)
Next up, the hosts introduce their second baking resolution: Try Something New. Stefin, refusing to be intimidated by 40 layers of filo, will tackle one of her faves, baklava, from Natasha’s Kitchen. Andrea, though suspicious of one-use kitchen gadgets, agrees to use Stefin’s macaron mat while making her French macarons, and is excited to try a recipe from a friend who is a macaron expert. (Note: We’re talking macarons, not macaroons. See here).
Finally, Andrea and Stefin thumb through some favorite cookbooks. For Stefin, it’s the King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion when she’s being serious, and In the Kitchen with Miss Piggy when she just wants some style advice (and a great, full-fat brownie recipe from Ben & Jerry). Andrea recently inherited her pick: a 1955 edition of the French Acadian Cookbook. The hosts realize how much things have changed in the decades since its publication when Andrea reads aloud the recipe for spiced pecans (that doesn’t actually list pecans as an ingredient).
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With the idea of baking those brownies, I went to the baby food aisle of the grocery store. There were a gazilllion things there, but NO prunes. So, I thought, “well, I can try another store”. But, since I have now listened to the podcast, and y’all were not too happy about the way those brownies turned out, I am not going to try that recipe. As an aside: when my children were eating baby food, my husband remarked that while spooning the fruit baby food into the mouth of the kid, I would give the baby one spoonful, and then, the next spoonful would go into MY mouth. Hey, it was good !!