(*****Before you read this, I want to assure you that this only relates to recipes for pastries I sell in the shop and have "invented." The things from which I make my living. But if there's something you're looking for, a recipe you remember as a child, I'm here to hunt it down. *****)
My sister and I frequent a beautiful little teahouse in Georgia. They serve unbelievable scones. We love them. So much so, that we call ahead and reserve a spot for high tea and make sure they’ve got extra scones and then some.
One day, we were delighted to find a little cookbook on sale, cataloguing all the recipes traditionally served at our favorite little spot. So we both bought a copy. But before we got out the door, the chef came tearing out from the kitchen and begged us to stop. He had a pen in his hand.
I thought, “Oh, he wants to sign it for us.”
We both handed over our copies.
But instead of flipping back the cover and adding the flourish of his signature to the title page, he cracked the spine completely to open the book to the middle. Where the scone recipe lived, the very reason for our having bought the book.
He scratched something out and then wrote in the margin. And he looked at us very sheepishly and said “I changed the ratios in the cookbook so they wouldn’t be exactly like the one’s I make. But I just gave you the real deal.”
My lovely sister happens to be a movie star, so this kind of stuff happens a lot. If I’d bought the thing alone, you can believe that no one would have hauled their ass out of the kitchen to set the recipe right. I’d have been left desolate, crying in my scone batter, wondering why I was such a miserable failure.
This little parable just demonstrates a larger characteristic of professional bakers. If you’ve got something good, I mean really good, and if you make money off of it; you’re not going to share the recipe without shedding some blood. Let’s go back to France, home of the great Master Bakers. It’s common for the lead pastry chef to cancel out his last measurement on the scale so that even his own baking assistants don’t know the exact ratios of his recipe. There are Junior Leaguers who bake for their families and an occasional bake sale who would scratch your corneas out for asking them for Memaw’s Secret Snickerdoodle recipe.
So you can imagine how I felt when I read the following email:
“I’m opening up a café in xxxxxxx, Texas and was wondering if you sold your macaroons wholesale. If not, could you give me the recipe. Sincerely, Gary xxxxxxx”
To answer the first question, no. I don’t sell wholesale. Why? Because I want full quality control of my product, I’m not going to let someone sell them as they please weeks after I would have thrown them in the incinerator. And also for many other reasons that I catalogue under “my house, my rules.”
And to answer the second question, hell no! I spend years working on a 16th century recipe, reverse engineering and tweaking and testing, making it my own and I put a huge investment of my savings into starting a business to sell them AND YOU JUST EXPECT ME TO GIVE YOU THE FREAKIN’ RECIPE? Are you mad?
Any great baker knows better than to ask for someone’s very own, personally calculated recipe. And if you do ask, you’re usually wearing body armor, a facemask to ward off the pepper spray, your first-born with a ribbon around her head and a good bottle of hooch. You still won’t get the recipe but if you’ve presented yourself with a reasonable amount of supplication, you may get to leave unharmed.
So Gary, no. You may not have my recipe. But here’s a coconut macaroon recipe, just because I’m nice (sometimes) and I feel for your upcoming plight of opening a café. Godspeed and consider yourself lucky that you didn’t ask me in person.
P.S.: I must give proper thanks to the most excellent Joanne Henderson for teaching me the title phrase. I’ve used it often and with great pleasure.
One day, we were delighted to find a little cookbook on sale, cataloguing all the recipes traditionally served at our favorite little spot. So we both bought a copy. But before we got out the door, the chef came tearing out from the kitchen and begged us to stop. He had a pen in his hand.
I thought, “Oh, he wants to sign it for us.”
We both handed over our copies.
But instead of flipping back the cover and adding the flourish of his signature to the title page, he cracked the spine completely to open the book to the middle. Where the scone recipe lived, the very reason for our having bought the book.
He scratched something out and then wrote in the margin. And he looked at us very sheepishly and said “I changed the ratios in the cookbook so they wouldn’t be exactly like the one’s I make. But I just gave you the real deal.”
My lovely sister happens to be a movie star, so this kind of stuff happens a lot. If I’d bought the thing alone, you can believe that no one would have hauled their ass out of the kitchen to set the recipe right. I’d have been left desolate, crying in my scone batter, wondering why I was such a miserable failure.
This little parable just demonstrates a larger characteristic of professional bakers. If you’ve got something good, I mean really good, and if you make money off of it; you’re not going to share the recipe without shedding some blood. Let’s go back to France, home of the great Master Bakers. It’s common for the lead pastry chef to cancel out his last measurement on the scale so that even his own baking assistants don’t know the exact ratios of his recipe. There are Junior Leaguers who bake for their families and an occasional bake sale who would scratch your corneas out for asking them for Memaw’s Secret Snickerdoodle recipe.
So you can imagine how I felt when I read the following email:
“I’m opening up a café in xxxxxxx, Texas and was wondering if you sold your macaroons wholesale. If not, could you give me the recipe. Sincerely, Gary xxxxxxx”
To answer the first question, no. I don’t sell wholesale. Why? Because I want full quality control of my product, I’m not going to let someone sell them as they please weeks after I would have thrown them in the incinerator. And also for many other reasons that I catalogue under “my house, my rules.”
And to answer the second question, hell no! I spend years working on a 16th century recipe, reverse engineering and tweaking and testing, making it my own and I put a huge investment of my savings into starting a business to sell them AND YOU JUST EXPECT ME TO GIVE YOU THE FREAKIN’ RECIPE? Are you mad?
Any great baker knows better than to ask for someone’s very own, personally calculated recipe. And if you do ask, you’re usually wearing body armor, a facemask to ward off the pepper spray, your first-born with a ribbon around her head and a good bottle of hooch. You still won’t get the recipe but if you’ve presented yourself with a reasonable amount of supplication, you may get to leave unharmed.
So Gary, no. You may not have my recipe. But here’s a coconut macaroon recipe, just because I’m nice (sometimes) and I feel for your upcoming plight of opening a café. Godspeed and consider yourself lucky that you didn’t ask me in person.
P.S.: I must give proper thanks to the most excellent Joanne Henderson for teaching me the title phrase. I’ve used it often and with great pleasure.
COCONUT MACAROONS
4 egg whites
3 ½ cups sweetened shredded coconut
¾ cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
½ teaspoon salt
Preheat oven to 300
-Combine all ingredients into a metal/heatproof bowl
-Set the bowl on a pan/saucepan of simmering water and stir occasionally to prevent the bottom from burning
-Make sure mixture is HOT and has thickened slightly, about 10 minutes
-With a medium sized cookie scoop, drop batter onto a parchment lined sheetpan bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until the edges are dark golden brown.
4 egg whites
3 ½ cups sweetened shredded coconut
¾ cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
½ teaspoon salt
Preheat oven to 300
-Combine all ingredients into a metal/heatproof bowl
-Set the bowl on a pan/saucepan of simmering water and stir occasionally to prevent the bottom from burning
-Make sure mixture is HOT and has thickened slightly, about 10 minutes
-With a medium sized cookie scoop, drop batter onto a parchment lined sheetpan bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until the edges are dark golden brown.
7 comments:
Greetings Gesine! I am so glad you clarified at the beginning of your blog that this particular blog is in reference to those items which you have invented. I completly respect you on your stance. I had sent an email to you a few days ago and worried I had offended you. I just wanted to thank you for those recipes you do share so generously. It is clear you have such passion and integrity. I find your approach inspiring and your blogs enjoyable.
I can just imagine the guy running, pen in hand, to change the recipe. Good thing you had your sister with you.
Me, on the other hand, would have let the celebrity run off with the incorrect recipe... hehehe!
I always wondered why recipes were given so freely, that makes so much sense now, and I feel less guilt over not wanting to share my recipes. I'd rather make them and give the goodies then the master plan. Enjoying your blog, your writing style, and soon some of your recipes.
Instead of finishing your book, I am jumping in the old archives....Not a stalker I promise, it's just the way I go when I discover a new blog. This post just cracked me up..So true. They are recipes I will never put on my blog because I would have an endless inbox of "It did not work like your picture"...even my friends don't know everything :)
Ah ha! Hmmm. Uh, okay, I normally wouldn’t randomly email a baking blogger with this request (probably untrue) but since you said you would help track down recipes, I’ll give it a try . . .
December of 2007 I went to NYC with a foodie friend of mine and we ate our way through our trip (intentionally). On that vacation, I had the most DELICIOUS cookie I have ever eaten. I like cookies, but I normally don’t go gaga for them so this cookie was definitely special. It was a giant ginger chocolate cookie and I got it at The Petrossian Bakery. It was huge and soft in the middle. And the outside wasn’t hard and it wasn’t soft. It had substance (it has to if you’re making a cookie that big) but it didn’t crunch or anything. It was ginger WITH chocolate (not the other way around) but maybe it was cocoa powder or something because the chocolate flavor was seamlessly mixed in (instead of chunks of chocolate). And, what else can I say? Extraordinary cookie. Really, I couldn’t stop thinking about it afterwards. And in the middle of eating it, I took a picture of it because it was such a perfect experience and I was enjoying it so much and didn’t want it to end.
We didn’t have time to go back to The Petrossian before the end of our trip, but I was armed with my memories and the photo of the cookie, and I was determined to find a recipe and recreate this experience at home. Well, guess what? I’ve only been able to find one recipe for ginger chocolate cookies (ala Martha Stewart) and it doesn’t even come close to what I ate. And although I seriously love baking and make excellent stuff when I follow recipes, I’m not great at analyzing recipes and changing them to suite my needs. Needless to say, I also don’t have a clue as to how to create a cookie recipe. All I can do is describe the recipe and dig up a photo if needed, but that’s all I’ve got. Do you think you could help out with my quest? You’re probably my only hope at this point. A few months after I got home, I called the bakery, hoping that they miiiiiight give up the recipe. Turns out they stopped carrying it within two months after my religious cookie experience because it wasn’t popular enough. Blasphemy! And my friend (who doesn’t even like ginger) has gone to NYC a few times since then and has asked in person for me, but she hasn’t gotten a favorable response.
Can you get my email address off my login and email me at that address? I don’t want to post it if I don’t have to since I don’t want loads of junk mail coming my way.
Happy baking!!! I have been on a mission for the perfect scone recipe and have tried replicating a famous bakeries but with no luck. Is there anyway you would share the recipe you found from that teahouse is Georgia?
Thank you for solving the mystery of the perfect macaroon. Was wondering if you could post your recipe for perfect parisien macarons - and also explain why you use a swiss meringue instead of french?
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