Perusing a library’s shelves, whether virtual or bricks-and-mortar, is always a pleasure, especially when I have food on my mind. To my great joy, I recently found an impressive new baking book from a Canadian pro.
Pastry chef and TV/YouTube personality Anna Olson, who is married to chef Michael Olson, is a reassuringly approachable pastry chef with a self-confessed fondness for cookies. Her new book, Anna Olson’s Baking Wisdom, includes several stellar sure-to-become-favourite cookie recipes, among assorted upscale patisserie.
This book is designed to be accessible to beginning bakers as well as to experienced pros looking to up their game or refine technique. The lengthy subtitle — The Complete Guide: Everything You Need to Know to Make You a Better Baker — sets the tone. Like any good cookbook, it opens with a detailed look at “Ingredients, Butter to Vanilla.” This is followed by suggestions for substitutions — eggs, dairy, flours, gelatin, nuts, spirits and wine, sugar, and a cheat sheet for “In a Pinch” fixes for when you just can’t drive 30 km to the store for one ingredient.
Next up is “Tools,” then a useful “Glossary of Baking Actions,” reminders that “Cream” and “Grease” are verbs as well as nouns, and that “Temper” is a verb too — a way to treat chocolate — as well as a noun, as in an explosion of frustration when your crinkle cookies don’t crinkle.
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“Baking How-tos” comes next, and a helpful set of “Fixing Baking Blunders.” You can’t just throw it out, right? Following is a comprehensive section on “Baking Science & Other Baking Wisdom,” exploring the roles of key ingredients: salt, sugar, starch, fat, acidity, protein. The denouement covers portioning, storage and cleanup.
This book makes exemplary use of photographs: each recipe has a clean-lined full-page image. Some, like Gingerbread Petits Fours, have several images to illustrate how-to. A one-page photo of toasted nuts in graduating degrees of doneness owes much to U.S. chef Kenji López-Alt’s similar photo of boiled eggs in his 2015 book, The Food Lab.
The front of each section — Pies & Tarts, Pastries, Cakes, Custards & Creams, Confections, Cookies & Bars, Breads — has a list of “Recipes at a Glance,” followed by pages of thumbnail photos of the recipes. It’s a smart way for a dithering baker to decide to make this and not that — or maybe both — today.
The recipes themselves draw from the classic European pastry canon. The opening recipe section, “Essentials,” includes several things I plan to have in my pantry: marzipan, spiced plums, salted butter caramel sauce. Oh, the places they’ll go! The majority of dishes are sweet, with a handful of savouries for balance, like one bass voice to counter a choir of altos and sopranos.
A notable example is a fish and seafood pot pie with a crust and biscuit topping. Anna’s fougasse recipe took me straight back to cooking school in France, with my mentor, the redoubtable Madeleine Kamman. One must-make: Buttercrunch Toffee, OMG. Also, the recipes for pain au chocolat and almond croissants remind me of the value of homemade patisserie as gifts suitable for any time of the year.
Pick something. Dive in and bake with Anna. First we eat, then we discuss methods and tools. More on those in coming issues.
Chewy brownie cookies
Method really matters in this instance. Note that the instructions in Anna Olson’s Baking Wisdom say, “In a large bowl, vigorously whisk…” and the photo shows glamourous cookies with a crackled surface. But my first batch of batter, which I mixed manually, produced plain lumpy cookies. My second batch, mixed at high speed in my countertop mixer after I watched Anna make a similar recipe on her YouTube channel, generated the gorgeous crackle and crinkle of the book’s photograph.
Because I am a coffee and mocha hound, I added coffee beans and, as per that YouTube video, balsamic vinegar, to encourage the development of a crust. The raw cookies are very soft and messy but rolling them in icing sugar makes them manageable while creating a handsome finish. These are rich, so keep them small. Makes 40 cookies.
- 8 oz. dark baking chocolate, chopped
- ¼ c. butter
- 2 large eggs
- ½ c. granulated sugar
- ½ c. light brown sugar
- 1 tsp. vanilla
- 1 tsp. balsamic vinegar, optional
- ½ c. all-purpose flour
- ¼ c. Dutch-process cocoa
- ¼ tsp. baking powder
- ¼ tsp. kosher salt
- ½ c. chocolate chips
- 1 Tbsp. coarsely cracked coffee beans, optional
- Icing sugar for rolling, optional
Set oven to 375 F. Line three baking sheets with parchment.
Melt chocolate and butter over simmering water or in the microwave on medium power. Mix and set aside.
Use a hand-held electric or countertop mixer to whisk together eggs, sugars, vanilla and vinegar at high speed for 3 minutes. Use a rubber spatula to stir in the chocolate-butter mixture. Sift flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt into the mixture. Add the chocolate chips and coffee beans.
Drop by spoonfuls into icing sugar, then roll and shape into balls. Place onto baking sheets, allowing room for spread. Flatten each ball with the palm of your hand.
Bake for 8-10 minutes. Let cool on the tray. Transfer to an airtight tin lined with wax paper.
