high-bar baking

I’ve been so impressed with Stella Parks’ Bravetart. I’m reading it like a novel because there is so much good information in there. Tons of random history lessons, little baking nuggets of wisdom, interesting variations on classic recipes. Yes I do want a caramelized sugar angel food cake, sign me up!

Her White Chocolate Butterscotch Blondies did give me a few heart palpitations last night, though. In general, I know what I’m doing in the kitchen. And I’ve been around the block enough times to know how to troubleshoot most problems, but I had to bring my brain to bear on this recipe for it to work out ok, I will say that. 

She says to go for 35 minutes, so as the responsible adult that I am (pshaw, literally only when baking, never otherwise) I started checking for doneness at 30 minutes. It’s one of those recipes that has a really stiff top crust and is a complete mystery underneath, which doesn’t help. The top was pretty golden, like she said, and her other indicator is a new one for me: “just barely firm (like the softest part of your forearm)”. What does that mean? So now I’m standing outside the oven, poking myself in the arm, feeling like a prize horse and wondering if I need to go check out the quality of my teeth in the mirror. Do I have forearms that are above-average muscular? Which part even is soft? The under part? The elbow part? So that was weird. 

But that was actually pretty moot, because when I went to pull the tray to poke it for forearm-ness, the entire pan flowed like liquid. The top’s one solid piece, and everything underneath was straight waterbed. Like I say to myself in the gym, “I don’t think that’s supposed to jiggle…” 

So it goes back in, of course. For longer. And longer. And I start getting worried about how much it’s browning. I tent the top with foil because I’m a good little worker bee, but I don’t stop stressing about it until I track down a photo of these blondies in the book. To shore up my sanity, Stella’s included a picture in which her blondies also have extremely dark edges. That calmed me down a little bit. I also poked one of those brown crusts and realized it wasn’t crisp-burnt at all. There’s so much sugar in this recipe it was keeping everything nice and soft. Perfect. 

On the last five minutes I gave the blondies (we are well, well over time here) it occurs to me that I’ve had the door open a lot and my oven already isn’t awesome. I throw my oven thermometer back onto the rack (it falls off easily and I often keep it on the stove, ok?) and sure enough, it’s at least 30 degrees under where it should be. I crank the heat for the last few minutes, but I should have done that earlier. A good thing to keep an eye on.

I also appreciate that she gave an internal temp reading for doneness; the inside was absolutely liquid, of course, but it was also a good thing to know that I was fully 60 degrees below the expected temperature at the time she called for. 

Of course, even when I got to the point of pulling them out, I was still worried I’d underdone them a little. And I probably could have gone longer, but they set up nicely and at that point I was very over it all. They ended up “fudgy” texture, even though I was on edge as they cooled. I felt like a drill sergeant at basic training disappointed by the latest batch of recruits. I was wandering around the mess muttering things like “Frighteningly soft!” under my breath.

It all worked out. 

If your recipe isn’t cooked, do not pull it. That’s the long and the short of it. You can tent, you can check the temp, you can work around it. But your cakes, pies, blondies, what have you, are not getting any less raw sitting on your counter cooling.