Several weeks ago, in She has done it again!, I announced publication of Hunky Husband's sister Helen's second book on cooking. Later, The St Louis Post-Dispatch writer Daniel Neman interviewed Helen. An excerpt from Neman's resulting newspaper article appears below.
Daniel Neman: Tony's pastry chef does it her way in new cook(ie)book
Published in Variety Menu
To the baking world, it’s an unthinkable suggestion bordering on blasphemy: When making certain desserts, it’s just fine to use imitation vanilla extract.
So says Helen S. Fletcher, the author of “Craving Cookies: The Quintessential American Cookie Book.” It may be the best cookie cookbook you will ever see.
“At work, at Tony’s… I use vanilla that costs $400 a gallon,” she said, demonstrating in one short sentence the difference between professional bakers and hobbyists.
Even small bottles of what she considers the best tasting, most aromatic vanilla, Tahitian vanilla, can cost $35. And she doesn’t want to price anyone out of the joy of baking.
“My whole mantra is: I want people to bake. I want people to enjoy baking. I want people who have never baked to bake,” she said.
And that means using imitation vanilla when the vanilla flavor doesn’t stand on its own, such as in recipes that also use a lot of spice or chocolate. She usually uses professional imitation vanilla herself, but she also recommends McCormick’s.
Fletcher, 81, has had no formal training as a baker. So she has developed her own way of doing things, tips and tricks and hacks that work wonders but that other bakers don’t use.
“Sometimes, when you are trained, you get stuck on the way you are taught or the way the book taught you. Well, I wasn’t trained and I didn’t have the book,” she said.
Her new cookbook, which is self-published, has tricks for baking the way she bakes.
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