♪ ♪ - You know, I think America has the best dessert table in the entire world.

We love sugar.

We have the great English tradition of puddings and other desserts.

But in the last few years, American bakers have been changing the flavor profile of classics.

Take something like the pudding cake out of Fannie Farmer.

Instead of lemon or chocolate, how about maple and whiskey?

Or instead of a basic chocolate cookie, how about one with almonds and spices?

Or, if you like a scone, we can go up to Portland, Maine, and make a buttery scone with chocolate and ginger.

So stay tuned right here at Milk Street as we rediscover American sweets.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following.

- Ferguson's proud to support Milk Street and culinary crusaders everywhere.

For more information on our extensive collection of kitchen products, we're on the web at fergusonshowrooms.com.

- For 25 years, Consumer Cellular's goal has been to provide wireless service that helps people communicate and connect.

We offer a variety of no-contract plans, and our U.S.-based customer service team can help find one that fits you.

To learn more, visit ConsumerCellular.tv.

- Since 1899, my family has shared our passion for everything that goes into our Mutti 100% Italian tomatoes.

Only tomatoes.

Only Mutti.

- Designed by cooks for cooks for over 100 years.

Cookware collection by Regal Ware.

Handcrafted in Wisconsin.

- The AccuSharp knife and tool sharpener, designed to safely sharpen knives in seconds.

AccuSharp: Keep your edge.

♪ ♪ - You know, there's nothing new about pudding cakes.

I found my first recipe for pudding cakes in the redo of the Fannie Farmer cookbooks in the 1970s.

Marion Cunningham did those.

And they were vanilla or chocolate or lemon, and you do a cake batter and then a sauce.

You put the cake batter in, the sauce on top.

As it bakes, they change places, because the cake batter is aerated and rises, gets light.

The sauce is denser and goes down underneath the cake.

So cake on top, sauce on the bottom.

Very much a magical recipe.

But we found a more modern version that uses whiskey-- good idea-- from Tara O'Brady from her cookbook the Seven Spoons cookbook, based on her blog, and we really liked it.

So with her inspiration, and Marion Cunningham's, as well, we're going to do our version of that recipe.

- Right.

So you mentioned that there are two separate elements here, a sauce and a batter.

We're going to start with our sauce.

We're going to make a really quick sauce here using whiskey... - Good, good.

- ...which I know is a good start for you.

We're going to start with half a cup of water.

Four tablespoons of whiskey.

And we're going to use six tablespoons of maple syrup.

I think that Tara O'Brady uses brown sugar.

We really liked the more complex flavor of maple syrup.

And we added quite a bit of maple syrup here.

So to balance that out, we are going to add a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar.

That just added a little bit of acidity to this, so that we were able to use a lot more of that maple syrup to get that real maple flavor, but not so sickeningly sweet as maple syrup can sometimes be.

To this, we're going to add two tablespoons of salted butter, and then a quarter-teaspoon of salt.

And then I'm just going to bring this to a boil, and that butter will melt.

Once it's at a full boil, we're going to reduce the heat to low and let this simmer for about five minutes.

That's going to mellow that whiskey a little bit.

And we're really just going to meld those flavors.

While that's simmering, we're going to start on our cake batter.

And we're going to start by browning some butter.

So I have six tablespoons of salted butter.

And we're going to just put this over medium.

So we're just going to cook this until it's really nice and golden-brown.

It's going to be really nutty.

And when I do browned butter, I always remind everybody, don't walk away from this.

This is something that can happen really quickly.

Once the butter starts to melt, you want to swirl it a little bit just so that all of the butter browns evenly.

So you can see this is really nice and golden-brown.

When I do this, I usually take it off the heat kind of before it gets to the perfect brown level, and let it finish cooking off the heat.

So I'm just going to transfer this into a bowl.

You want to make sure to scrape all of those milk solids out.

That's where a lot of the flavor is in browned butter.

So you want to make sure you get that in the bowl, as well.

Okay.

I think our sauce is finished, so I'm just going to turn that off, and we'll set that aside.

So this butter is still really hot, and we're going to add an egg to it to make our batter.

So we want to let this cool-- otherwise, that egg will curdle.

So we're going to let this cool to room temperature, and we'll come back and make the rest of the batter.

♪ ♪ So the browned butter is cool, so we can continue on with our batter.

So to this, I'm going to add a half a cup of granulated sugar, a quarter-cup of whole milk.

One egg.

(laughs): Two more tablespoons of whiskey.

I wanted a lot of whiskey flavor here, and.. - I'm not... - You have to add more.

And a teaspoon of vanilla.

So we have whiskey flavor in the sauce and in the batter.

All right.

So now we're going to move on to the dry ingredients.

And we're going to start with three-quarters of a cup of pecans.

And this is how Tara O'Brady made her whiskey pudding cake, as well.

She substituted some of the flour for pecans.

We're going to grind them up pretty finely, so they're almost the same texture as flour.

And I'm just going to process this for about 30 to 40 seconds.

(whirring) (stops) So you can see that's nicely finely ground in there.

And then to that, we're going to add a half a cup of flour, a teaspoon of baking powder.

And a quarter-teaspoon of salt.

So I'm just going to pulse this about five times.

(pulsing) - So there is a little tip here for a lot of baking we use all the time, which is to use a nut flour, like almond flour, or grind pecans or walnuts to make a flour.

The other thing you could do is use a whole wheat or rye flour.

And the point is, there's a little bit of bitterness in nuts or in the rye flours, so the bitterness goes nicely with the sweet, so you get a little bit more balance, and I think that makes a more interesting dessert.

- I would agree.

So now we're going to finish up this batter.

I'm going to put that butter mixture in here.

We're going to pulse again, another five pulses.

(pulsing) Okay, and that's it.

That's all that there is to this cake batter-- pretty simple.

- Dump and whirl, great.

- Exactly.

So we're going to add this to these ramekins.

We have four six-ounce ceramic ramekins here.

We misted those with cooking spray.

If you don't have the ceramic kind, you could use just those glass custard cups.

You just want to make sure they're oven-proof, and you want to make sure they're six-ounce.

♪ ♪ Now here comes the magic.

Do you want to do it?

- It's very exciting.

- It is very exciting.

So we're going to pour that sauce that we made earlier on top of the cake.

And this is really important-- you don't want to stir it.

Because we really want this to kind of just sit on the top.

And don't get scared if you see it sort of break through to the batter.

That's not going to make a difference.

It's still going to sink down to the bottom.

I can smell the whiskey in there.

It smells really good.

So we're going to put this in a 325-degree oven on the middle rack, and that's going to take about 25 to 30 minutes.

You want the cakes to puff, and they're still sort of jiggly in the center.

♪ ♪ So I took these out of the oven when they were puffed, and I let them cool for about ten minutes on the sheet.

You can see they've fallen a little bit, so not quite as dramatic anymore.

But trust me, once I put a little whipped cream on this and you dig in, you're not going to even notice.

- Do I look disappointed?

I don't think so.

- I know.

But they were so beautiful when I took them out of the oven.

- Well, they look more... You know, a typical pudding cake just looks like cake.

This looks more rustic.

- Dig in.

- Now, these are still warm.

- Yeah, they're still... - I point out.

- Fresh from the oven.

- Mmm.

Mmm.

Oh!

How do I describe pure pleasure on a cooking show?

- (laughs) It's so delicious.

- This is, um... (laughs): Just really good.

It's so really good.

Mmm.

Now I have to...

I have to describe it.

It's crispy on the top.

It's a very moist cake underneath that.

And then you have a nice creamy sauce on the bottom.

But the flavor, with the whiskey and the maple syrup and the pecans, it's a really interesting flavor.

And it's not that sweet.

You used six tablespoons of maple syrup.

We just look inside here, I mean... Look at that, mmm?

An awfully big mouthful.

- (laughs) - So we learned two things today.

Adding whiskey is pretty much a good idea.

But the more important lesson is that if you use white sugar and white flour, you don't get a lot of flavor.

So instead of white sugar, we used another sweetener, maple syrup.

And instead of white flour-- we used some of that-- but we also added in some ground pecans, which gave it a nice balance.

So you have whiskey, maple syrup, ground nuts, a little bit of bitterness, a little depth, along with the regular white flour.

Here at Milk Street, we really like that.

We like sort of depth of flavor.

So you ended up with something that's not too sweet.

It's actually rather complex and absolutely delicious.

- (laughs): It is.

♪ ♪ - Here at Milk Street, we like to invite other people to come into our kitchen and show us how to cook the right way.

And Briana Holt loves to do that.

She's from the Tandem Bakery in Portland, Maine.

And you're going to make some of your fabulous scones, which I eat every summer-- they're delicious.

- Oh, they are.

- And they're unusual, too.

- Yeah, I like to pack them full of some weird and fun stuff.

Crystallized ginger, and dried ginger, fresh ginger, dark chocolate, a little crunchy sugar on the top.

So they're going to be really good.

- So ginger chocolate, okay.

- Yep, yep.

We're going to get some sugar and some salt, some dried ginger, some nutmeg, a little black pepper, just for a kick, and then baking powder and baking soda.

So we got all this stuff in here, and we're going to whisk it together.

You can sift if you like, but I save a tool and a step, and I just like to whisk my dry ingredients.

- How long has Tandem been there?

Just a few years now, right?

Two or three years?

- Yeah, four and a half-ish, yep.

- And so it's an old gas station.

- Yeah, it's this really cool building.

It's got the big overhang over the parking lot, some big windows.

- Your partner Will is a coffee roaster, right?

You got a coffee-roasting business?

- Yeah, so Will and his wife, Kathleen, they started the coffee-roasting company first, and that's in another really cool old brick building on the other side of town, in East Bayside.

And that was open for about a year before we got the bakery up and running.

♪ ♪ We're going to grind it in the food processor with some cold butter, so we're just going to put most of this flour in here.

You don't need to put it all in-- just enough to grind up.

- Actually, I've never done it that way before.

Why are you not adding all the dry ingredients?

- You really only need enough of the flour in here to get the butter to grind up successfully, and then you can... you dump it back in here with the rest of this flour mix.

It makes a nice, homogenized mixture.

So just use your pulse.

One, two, three.

- It's going to take six.

- You think it's going to take six?

- Yeah.

- At the bakery, I like to listen and keep my hand on it, and I kind of feel how big the butter's... Or how small the butter's getting.

- You're at five.

- Oh, my God, just one more?

(pulses) So we've got... Our butter is these nice kind of small bits.

That means that once the scone dough hits the heat, that butter is going to melt and create flake and texture.

- So your scones are different.

- So it's almost more like breakfast cake, crispy breakfast cake.

Really crunchy, buttery, crispy on the outside, tender with a nice kind of soft, crumbly crumb inside.

And I just find them to be the perfect foil for, like you said, some weird ingredients.

♪ ♪ So we've got crystallized ginger, really good.

I think of my scones sometimes as lots of tasty ingredients gently held together by scone dough.

This is some dark chocolate, and it's in these nice little pieces.

If you have a whole block or something, you can chop it up, rough-chop it.

And then we're going to have buttermilk here.

It's about a cup and a quarter.

And then we've got some freshly ground ginger.

That's going to add a kick.

A little spice, a little flav.

And some orange zest.

It's chocolate and orange.

Very classic, very delicious.

And I like a little citrus zest in a sweet scone.

And we're just going to kind of make a little well here.

And we're going to pour in most of it.

And then a nice spatula is a good tool for this job, because you're just trying to fold this mixture.

You don't want to smash it together or be too rough with it-- you want to be gentle.

And if you've ever made biscuits, or you kind of know how to make biscuits, you kind of want to hold a similar process in your mind.

Kind of form it into a somewhat cohesive shape.

- So how do you go from Brooklyn, from Pies'n'Thighs Bakery in Brooklyn, to Tandem, in an old gas station in Portland, Maine, especially in the winter?

- Will and Kathleen and I have been friends for a really long time, and we had worked together in a really funny little coffee shop on Martha's Vineyard.

The whole time, kind of always had this little daydream about having a place together.

So they fell in love with, with Maine, and, and set up shop with the little roastery.

And then we really lucked out with this awesome building.

And it all kind of happened from there.

So you're basically looking for almost like a giant hockey puck.

And you can use your fingertips.

Did you want to try it?

- Yeah, sure.

- Get in there.

Perfect.

- You know, I just wanted to say, she's not thinking, "Perfect."

She said, "Perfect," but she's not thinking, "Perfect."

- And you do want your scones to be crumbly and tender, so you're not trying to work it too, too hard, which is why it's okay to have little cracks here and there, imperfections.

- Believe me, I believe in imperfection.

Imperfection's my middle name.

All right.

- Okay, perfect.

They're ready to get egg-washed.

This is just an egg with some water, and that's going to seal the top of the scone and give it a nice little bit of a shiny crust.

And these are going to be pretty hearty.

We're going to cut these into six pieces.

So we're going to bake these at 400 degrees, about ten or 15 minutes, turn the tray, ten or 15 minutes.

- So do you get bored showing up early in the morning, making 8,000 pounds of scones or pies or other things or... - No.

- I guess the answer is no, because you keep shaking your head.

I don't know.

I guess that's a no.

- No, that's the thing I like the most.

- So, so why do you still love it?

- Let's be real, I don't love getting up early.

But once I'm up and I'm there, and I brew a pot of coffee, it's dark, it's just me, but there's something special about being in your kitchen alone, zoning out, and just kind of getting into the flow.

And I really love that.

And so it keeps me coming back for more, no matter what.

And then the reason I love baking is because it's so immediate.

You do this thing with your hands and then you pull it out, and you just, like, can see all your steps blossoming into this one little thing, and that's, that's why I love it.

It's like a drug-- you just keep opening the oven and pulling out this thing that you made, and, um...

So I never get tired of that.

- It's your handiwork.

- Your handiwork.

Which one do you want to eat?

- That one.

- That was a fast decision.

- I've been...

I was looking at this the whole time thinking which one.

- All right, we can't deny you... Let's crack into that one.

- Yeah.

- Craggy on the outside, kind of cakey on the inside, a little bit of crunch.

- Mmm.

- I love those chewy bits of crystallized ginger in there.

And like I said before, it's almost like a whole bunch of tasty ingredients, kind of just barely held together by scone dough.

- So for great scones from the Tandem Bakery in Portland, Maine, you have some techniques, which is a slightly drier dough than I'm used to.

Very craggy.

- Mm-hmm.

- You form them into pucks... - Yeah.

- Use a lot of egg wash on top.

I mean, you drowned them in egg wash, cut it into sixes, and then baked them in a hot oven.

- Mm-hmm.

- Briana, thank you.

- Thank you.

- Best scones in the world.

♪ ♪ So the answer to the question is, "Is there a finite number of chocolate cookie recipes?

", the answer is no, it's infinite.

There's infinite number.

We found a recipe we really loved.

It's sort of a holiday cookie, spice cookie, in Switzerland, in Basel-- chocolate, almonds, and spices.

We like it a lot.

They actually whip up egg whites and incorporate that into the dry ingredients, so it has sort of a crispy exterior.

We did it a little bit differently, but we loved that basic concept-- chocolate, almonds, and spices.

And so how do we get started?

- That's right, Chris.

So it's the same basic flavors, but we just streamlined it a little bit.

So the first thing we're going to do is mix together some spices.

We have three-quarters of a teaspoon cinnamon, and then a half-teaspoon each of ground ginger and cardamom.

And I'm going to just take a quarter-teaspoon of this, after I mix it up a little bit, and mix it into the sugar.

I just have a quarter-cup of sugar here, and this we're going to set aside to roll the cookies in at the end.

Now, I have two-and-a-half cups of almond flour here.

Traditionally, in this recipe, I think you'd grind up whole almonds.

But what's great, Chris, is, you can find this at pretty much any grocery store now.

Just almond flour, they're blanched ground almonds.

So we're going to toast this in a skillet with the remaining spices, just over medium heat.

It's going to take about five to seven minutes.

You got to watch it really carefully, as you know, but, honestly, your nose is your best friend here, because you will see it become a little golden-brown.

But the spices already make it a little brown, and it's when it gets really nice and fragrant, that's how you know that it's all toasted.

- So we're toasting the almond flour, and we did this with a chocolate chip cookie, too.

We toasted the rye flour because it adds depth of flavor, is that right?

- Definitely, and it's a trick we use a lot at Milk Street.

Toasting, of course, the spices, because you want to release all those oils, but really the same thing with flours, with nuts.

It makes a really big difference, and it's a step you don't want to skip.

So, Chris, you can see that both the almonds and the spices have gotten a little more golden.

You can really smell... - I can smell it, yeah.

- You can smell the almonds.

So I'm going to pull it before it goes any further and add it to the bowl.

All right, Chris, so it's really important now that we give this a good 15, 20 minutes to cool.

Because if we were to mix everything together now-- you'd mentioned those egg whites we're going to be adding-- they would cook.

So we have to just sit and let this cool, and then we can mix the cookies.

♪ ♪ All right, Chris, so this is nice and cool.

Time to make the cookies.

We have a quarter-cup of cocoa here.

You can use Dutch processed or natural, it doesn't matter.

We also have one-and-a-third cups of granulated sugar, a teaspoon of kosher salt.

Just going to mix up those dry ingredients.

I love with this recipe that you don't have to get out the stand mixer or, you know, whip any egg whites, or really...

It is kind of a dump-and-stir recipe.

And speaking of that, we're going to add the egg whites.

We just used whites here because there's enough fat with that almond flour that you don't need the yolks.

And we really like that kind of chewy crispness that you get from the egg whites.

And I'm just going to mix them in along with a teaspoon and a half of vanilla, and you're just mixing it until it's moistened.

But, actually, because it's just almond flour, we don't have to worry about overdeveloping gluten, so you don't have to be too careful with it.

You just want to make sure it's evenly moistened.

And what's funny is, this is just a naturally gluten-free recipe-- we didn't make it that way.

This is a pretty sticky, wet dough.

That's exactly how you want it.

I'm going to chop up some chocolate now.

We're not going to melt this chocolate or anything, but because of that, I'm going to chop it up pretty finely, because we do want it to mostly, you know, melt and incorporate right into the dough when we bake it.

Chris, this is five ounces of bittersweet chocolate.

- This is the hardest part of the whole recipe.

- It really is.

- Just doing this.

- But the main thing, Chris, is, you don't want any huge chunks because this is sort of, you know, those chewy, moist cookies.

It's not really a chocolate chip cookie, although I wouldn't complain if I had a chunk of chocolate in my cookie.

So I'm going to mix this chocolate into the batter, and I'm really loving this proportion of chocolate to dough right here; these are very rich.

- Because there's a lot of chocolate?

- Yes, these are very rich cookies.

All right, now, to shape these, Chris, if you have one of these smaller ice cream scoops, that's, like, two tablespoons, that's a great tool to use.

Otherwise, you can use just a couple of soup spoons.

But we're going to be making 24 cookies.

The first time I made this, I made about 12, because I got really overzealous and excited, and did big, heaping scoops.

But you really want a small, kind of golf-ball-sized cookie.

And we're going to drop it into the sugar that we mixed in some of that spice mixture.

So you get a little bit of that cardamom and ginger and cinnamon, and then we're going to place them about two inches apart on the cookie sheet.

You know, why don't I drop and you roll?

- Drop and roll?

- Yeah, but someone else is going to have to stop, but... And we're going to keep going until we get, again, 24 of these.

So we have two parchment-lined cookie sheets here.

The parchment is very important.

We don't want any sticking.

And we're going to bake them in a 375-degree oven for 12 to 15 minutes.

But you really want to keep a close eye on them, Chris.

And as soon as you see that cracking on the top, you want to take a toothpick, put it in the center, and you just want a few wet crumbs.

You really don't want to overbake these, because it's that nice, chewy texture that we're looking to keep.

And if you overbake them, they'll just get hard.

- Cookies always appear underbaked when you take them out of the oven.

They just continue baking.

- We just want to make sure that we switch and rotate the pans halfway through so that they cook evenly.

♪ ♪ - How hard is my job?

- Well, I had to let them cool completely on the rack and hide them from you before putting them on the plate, because I knew that you would just dive right in.

- Mmm, fudgy inside.

Mmm.

It's fudgy and spicy inside.

These are really good.

- And they do keep for a couple of days in an airtight container, not that they'll last that long.

But if you have a party or something you want to bring them to, you can get them done ahead of time.

- The chocolate, it's, it's, um...

It's not heavy, but it's just nice and moist and creamy.

- And that toasting really does make a difference.

- Okay, so maybe the Swiss know something about cookies.

You think?

Maybe?

So, we took the concept of a chocolate almond spice cookie from Basel, Switzerland-- a holiday cookie-- made it a little bit differently.

Instead of a rolled-out cookie, it's a drop cookie.

It's a dump-and-stir in the bowl; very simple to do.

And it has great flavor because we toasted that almond flour.

Has nice spices, as well.

Inside, it's really creamy, and the outside is nice and crisp.

You can get this recipe, all the recipes from this season of Milk Street, at MilkStreetTV.com.

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The Milk Street cookbook offers bolder, fresher, simpler recipes.

Order your copy of the Milk Street cookbook for $23.95, 40% less than the cover price, and receive a Milk Street tote with your order at no additional charge.

Call 855-MILK-177, or order online.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following.

- Ferguson's proud to support Milk Street and culinary crusaders everywhere.

For more information on our extensive collection of kitchen products, we're on the web at fergusonshowrooms.com.

- For 25 years, Consumer Cellular has been offering no-contract wireless plans designed to help people do more of what they like.

Our U.S.-based customer service team can help find a plan that fits you.

To learn more, visit ConsumerCellular.tv.

- Since 1899, my family has shared our passion for everything that goes into our Mutti 100% Italian tomatoes.

Only tomatoes.

Only Mutti.

- Designed by cooks for cooks for over 100 years.

Cookware collection by Regal Ware.

Handcrafted in Wisconsin.

- The AccuSharp knife and tool sharpener, designed to safely sharpen knives in seconds.

AccuSharp: Keep your edge.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪