Another Mother’s Day without my mom, and I’m filled with memories.
Truth be told, my mother was not famous for her baking. She had other talents. She gave up a singing career (she was a headliner at Radio City Music Hall when she was pregnant with me) to stay at home and raise my brother and me.
Read more 5 new Orange County restaurants and food spots to put on your radar
The only cake I remember my mother baking was her maple walnut cake, which she served every time she had company … or she would just bring home that iconic green box from Ebinger’s in Brooklyn with everyone’s favorite: Chocolate Blackout Cake. So when I opened “The Baker in Me” (Whitecap, $45), a luscious cookbook by esteemed pastry chef Daphna Rabinovitch, and saw her recipe for Chocolate Blackout Cake, I was smitten.
“The cake, so named after the blackout drills performed by the Civil Defence Corps (ostensibly to prevent ships sailing at night from being detected), became famous, drawing other bakeries to try their hand at the three-layered cake,” she writes of the wartime drills. “Locals will tell you that the competition never matched the original. When the company declared bankruptcy in 1972 (it was founded in 1898), lore has it that only Entenmann’s had a version that came close.”
Alas, Entenmann’s stopped selling it years ago.
This is a cake with a few moving parts – a creamy pudding filling, luscious chocolate icing and one layer of the cake baked just for the crumbs garnishing the cake’s exterior – but the results are worth the effort, even if you’ve never been to Brooklyn.
Woven through the many cookies, bars, cakes, chocolates, muffins, quick breads and pastries in “The Baker in Me” are Rabinovitch’s confidence-building smart guides to techniques, ingredients and equipment.
”Although I completed my stage at a hotel restaurant and then moved on to be a pastry chef and then an executive pastry chef, I am, at heart, a home baker,” revealed Rabinovitch, and under her expert guidance, you too can create showstoppers in your own kitchen.
With hints of summer in our future, I love the rustic galette featured here, bursting with fresh peaches and blueberries.
“The mechanics of the galette are pastry, fruit filling and a topping,” Rabinovitch noted. “This is where the creativity of baking comes in. Choose whatever fruit you like, or you can let the seasons be your muse.”
Read more Drummond: PYLUSD strategizes for its future educating students
I’d like to say, in keeping with the Mother’s Day theme, that it reminds me of the pastries my mother used to make, but I’d be lying. It does, however, remind me of the huge, luscious peaches she would bring to sleep-away camp on Visitors Day, picked from the tree in our postage-stamp-sized backyard. Does that count? (She also would bring a 3-foot Hebrew National salami and a couple of loaves of rye bread. I was very popular.)
Fullerton’s Judy Bart Kancigor is the author of “Cooking Jewish” and “The Perfect Passover Cookbook.” Her website is cookingjewish.com.
Peach Blueberry Gingersnap Galette
From “The Baker in Me” by pastry chef Daphna Rabinovitch
Ingredients:
Pastry:
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 3/4 cup cold unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup cold cream cheese
• 1/4 cup cold water
• 2 teaspoons white vinegar
Filling:
• 4 cups sliced fresh peaches
• 1 cup fresh blueberries
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon all-purpose flour
• 3 tablespoons crushed gingersnap cookies
• 1 large egg, lightly beaten, at room temperature
Method:
Pastry:
1. In bowl of food processor fitted with metal “S” blade, or in a large bowl, pulse or whisk together flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder until well mixed and aerated. Cut butter and cream cheese into cubes and add to food processor or bowl. Pulse in food processor or cut in with pastry cutter (or two knives) until flour resembles coarse meal, with butter the size of peas amidst a few larger pieces.
2. In a 1-cup wet measure, stir together water and vinegar. Pour water mixture over flour-butter mixture. Pulse or fluff mixture until thoroughly moistened and shaggy or clumpy, but not yet formed into a ball. Dump entire mixture onto lightly floured work surface. Using palm of your hand, smear together dough along work surface until it comes together in a cohesive whole. Flatten dough into a disk. Wrap dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 45 minutes or up to 3 days. Bring dough to room temperature 20 minutes if refrigerated longer than 3 hours.
Filling:
1. Preheat oven to 400 degree.
2. In large bowl, toss together peaches, blueberries, sugar and flour until fruit is well coated; set aside.
3. On lightly floured surface, roll out dough, making sure the underside does not stick to work surface, to roughly a 15- to 16-inch circle. Roll up dough onto your rolling pin and then gently unroll it onto a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Sprinkle gingersnap cookies into center of dough. Leaving a 3-inch border of dough uncovered, arrange peach mixture over cookie crumbs. Bring pastry up and over fruit filling, gluing pleats together with beaten egg and making sure there is an opening in the middle of the galette where fruit is exposed. Brush beaten egg all over top of pastry.
4. Bake in center of oven until fruit is cooked through and pastry is crisp and golden, about 40 minutes. Let cool on pan on wire rack at least 30 minutes. Slide onto flat serving plate and serve either warm or at room temperature.
Read more Dunn: Love at first serve; this tennis couple wins big together