♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - This week on Milk Street, we visit with Briana Holt at the Tandem Bakery in Portland, Maine.

We start with an amazing pineapple upside down cake, the perfect marriage of cake to fruit, and then maple-glazed muffins, so please stay tuned as we do a new take on American bakery classics.

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♪ ♪ - Portland, Maine, and Portland, Oregon, do have a lot in common.

They're both smaller towns where the food scene has been transformed over the last 20 years.

From Sam Hayward at the Fore Street Grill to Mike Wiley at Eventide, from the sprawling farmers' market to great bagels at Rose Foods, Portland, Maine, is perfectly positioned to benefit from local ingredients, sophisticated consumers, and proximity to Boston and even New York.

Now, perhaps the most appealing aspect of the Portland food scene are the myriad bakeries.

I'm talking Standard Baking to Tandem Bakery, which is located in a converted gas station.

Head baker and co-owner Briana Holt plays with flavors and textures.

Her famous custard pie is infused with maple syrup and brown butter.

I stopped by Tandem and I found Briana as confident in the kitchen as she is in life.

She leaves absolutely nothing on the table.

And that's a pretty good thing, because her scones, pies, and cookies are so good that not even a small crumb is overlooked.

Briana, how are you?

- I'm very well-- how are you?

- I came to you, this is your... homeplace.

- This is my-- yeah, it's my evil plan to get everyone to come here.

- This is Portland, Maine-- you didn't really grow up here.

You grew up in Martha's Vineyard.

- Yes, I did.

- Which you talk about in idyllic terms, right?

- I love it there so much.

You know, I look back on it now and I think of it as beautiful, and as an adult living here in Portland, it's really similar.

So I think that's why I feel really at home here.

It's a seaside community.

A lot of food, a lot of agriculture, a lot of carpentry artists, so it's really similar, and I really love that.

- So you are known for putting interesting things together.

You might have, you know, rosemary with pineapple or kale with parmesan.

Is your interest in balancing sweet and savory, or it's just what, whatever appeals to you at that moment?

And what's the takeaway from that?

- I think balancing sweet and savory kind of is a by-product of the thing that really excites me, which is just, kind of, like, to play and to really cherish the idea of irreverence.

I don't want people to feel like the things that they eat or the things that they might wanna make have to kind of, like, fall into a certain, you know, guideline of what goes together and what doesn't.

There might be exceptions, but you can make almost anything go together.

- What about flour?

You use a lot of whole-grain flours.

- Well, I mean, there's all kinds of grains.

The more you experiment, the more you learn what works.

Here at the bakery, we use a few things, like a sifted whole wheat flour that is, you know, it's a little lighter of a whole wheat flour.

It's got about 75% of the bran sifted out, so it has a nice flavor, a softness.

Um, it does absorb a little more liquid than, um, all-purpose flour, but it makes for a really good cake.

We also use a lot of rye flour, which I love.

I just love rye a lot, I love its flavor.

It's a beautiful color and... - You like it on ice in a glass, too, probably.

- I love it on ice a lot.

It's one of my favorite whiskeys.

But it just has a tang that is so delicious, and a snap that's really nice when it's baked into a shortbread.

- So pineapple upside down cake does not sound like Briana Holt.

- (laughs) - It sounds like Betty Crocker, 1952.

Why do a pineapple upside down cake?

- Well, I often do pineapple upside down cake as the large-format dessert for a hot dog night that we have here sometimes.

- Hm.

- And it's just got this, like, really beautiful color.

It's a big, thick slab, it's got the pineapple ring on it, and it's really fun.

And it sort of plays, you know, at that, like, '50s kind of baking pamphlets, with all the hot dogs standing in cottage cheese, that kind of thing.

That's what, that's what I think of when I, when I think of pineapple upside down cake.

So I like to play with that, making that cake with cornmeal, just a fun kind of switch.

You know, the texture of the cornmeal is really nice.

The flavor of the cornmeal, along with the kind of caramelized pineapple, is really special.

I think it's kind of fun and different.

- Thank you, Briana.

- (laughs) ♪ ♪ This is a cornmeal and pineapple upside down cake that we're gonna make.

I like to make these sometimes large-format for events or catering, because they're really dramatic and fun.

It's also really adaptable.

You can put almost anything in there.

Today, we're gonna use pineapple, which is pretty classic.

I really love that kind of vintage cake vibe, but the thing we're going to do today is make it with cornmeal.

I feel really lucky here in Maine.

There's a lot of really great corn, which is a really special ingredient.

There's all kinds of corn varieties here.

There's the flint corns and the flour corns, all of which have been developed and grown and cultivated for thousands of years here in Maine by the Wabanaki people.

The corn grows really well in the river valleys here in Maine, the Kennebec, the Penobscot, the Androscoggin.

We get ours from Skowhegan, so it's a local cornmeal.

Um, a little medium grain, not super-fine, not super- coarse, really flavorful.

So that's what we're gonna use today in our cornmeal pineapple upside down cake.

So the most important thing is to use a pan that's gonna make your life really easy.

If you have a nonstick cake pan, you can use that.

But what I like even better is a springform pan.

It comes in two pieces, so that you can take it apart, and there's not gonna be all this kind of, like, swearing and banging your head against the wall and being really sad that your cake is not coming out, because it's just gonna pop open.

It has this bottom piece, so you just drop it in there.

And then you seal it shut.

And this is parchment paper that I've just traced, literally traced it and cut it out.

So get your arts and crafts vibe going.

Trusty pan spray.

We're going to give this... Maybe a little heftier spray then you might normally, because we do want this to come out of the pan, and then we're gonna put this parchment paper right in there, just nestle it in.

And then, important, layer number two of spray.

So now our pan is ready because we're gonna put some caramelized pineapple in there, and we don't want to it to stick.

We wanna be able to pop it out and have a beautiful cake, so...

Here in this bowl, we're gonna mix our cornmeal with our buttermilk and ricotta.

All this dairy is really flavorful, really fatty, nice and acidic.

And all those things are gonna help make our cake kind of bouncy, really flavorful, really tender.

But we do want to soak this cornmeal a little bit for a few minutes.

It can really absorb the liquid that we're putting into the recipe.

So we're just gonna dump it in, and whisk it and let it sit while we do all the other parts of this recipe.

That way, the cornmeal will absorb.

Plump, if you will, get nice and plump.

We're fattening it up.

Okay, so we're gonna let that sit right there.

And the next thing we're gonna do is, we're gonna caramelize our pineapple.

We've got some dark brown sugar, we've got some butter, and of course, we've got some salt, because we wanna have that seasoning.

Everything that's sweet is gonna need a little bit of salt to help jump, have the flavors jump out.

And so I try to never leave salt out of my sweet recipes-- in fact, I probably, I'm a little bit of a salt fiend, but I think that's okay.

So we've got our pineapple here, which I cut from a fresh pineapple.

I'm no carpenter, quarter-inch...ish, half-inch?

And you wanna cut the core out, the really firm core of the pineapple.

Heat the butter and the brown sugar in a pan until it caramelizes, melts, gets a little bit creamy.

And then we're gonna toss this pineapple in, shake it around, and let it do its thing for a few minutes till it softens and gets caramelized.

♪ ♪ So now that we have caramelized our pineapple slices, we're gonna pour this dreamy, buttery, sugary mixture right into our prepared pan, so you can dump it on in.

And if you've got fingers of steel like me, you can kind of arrange your pieces.

You kind of want them single layer if you can.

Remember, this is gonna be the top of your cake.

Get your slices where you want them.

We've got our pineapple slices all nicely arranged.

They look beautiful.

And now we're gonna pop this in the oven just to let that brown sugar caramel really start to do its thing in the oven while we're gonna mix our batter.

♪ ♪ All right, so now we're going to mix the actual cake batter.

We've got our butter and sugar in this bowl.

And we're gonna turn that on and start to cream it.

You wanna let it go here for 60 seconds, maybe, the butter and the sugar to combine.

It will start to lighten, get a little aerated, but you don't want to be super-fluffy, otherwise, your cake will rise in the oven and then sink.

So we're just gonna mix it here until it's combined.

And we don't wanna forget to scrape our bowl just to make sure everything that's down on the bottom is mixed in, it's not hiding.

So we're gonna put our eggs in one at a time, slowly.

Let it mix.

♪ ♪ And we've got our dry mixture here.

And then we've been letting our cornmeal kind of hydrate with the buttermilk and the ricotta, so that it really plumps up and gets a really nice, soft texture.

So we're gonna put our dry stuff in, and this is a really adaptable batter.

It's got allspice in it, which I think it goes really nicely with the brown sugar and the pineapple, but you could put almost anything in there.

Cinnamon if you want, a little ginger.

I've also made this cake with blue cornmeal, and that's really nice, it's got a really nice flavor, and bonus, a really awesome color when it's done baking.

And just a quick mix here after our dry goes in, and then we'll lift this up and put in this plumped cornmeal.

Let this go for about 40 to 60 seconds, and don't forget to scrape.

I like to do that about halfway through.

Seems annoying, but it's very helpful.

So our batter's done.

And we're gonna pour this batter directly on the hot pineapple.

It's been cooking in here for a few minutes, it's gotten a little extra caramel-y.

It's gonna help the fruit layer stick to the batter, and it's gonna help the batter start to cook immediately upon hitting the pan.

Almost like when you're making corn bread, and you get your cast iron skillet really, really hot in the oven with bacon fat or something like that, and then you pour that batter in and it... (hisses): Right away, it starts to cook.

That's kind of what we're doing here.

It's gonna really help the cake start to rise and really stick to that fruit layer.

I'm gonna be a little careful not to disturb my beautiful arrangement of pineapple slices.

You can just kind of spread your batter.

No need for it to be super-flat.

It's gonna even out in the oven as it bakes.

And then we're gonna put it right back in.

♪ ♪ There we go.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - Maple-glazed muffins.

Now, that has a very whole-grain flavor.

So, so what's in it, and how did you come up with that?

- They're kind of a tender, almost delicate crumb of a muffin.

I don't love muffins in general.

- Because you made 80 million of them on Martha's Vineyard?

- I just-- yes, I just, I worked at a really, uh, unfortunate place.

(laughs) And I, I just had to make all these horrible muffins in these five-gallon buckets, and I was younger, so I was always hungover-- may have contributed to me disliking them-- but I just found muffins to be, um, kind of, like, uh... - Just say it, say what you're gonna say.

- I just-- I think, I think people abuse them.

I think they're abused as a breakfast treat.

- They're a dumping ground - They're a dumping ground.

- There you go.

- And I think people will buy a (no audio) muffin over and over, you know?

And I just, I think they can be delicious.

For me, if I'm gonna have a muffin, you know, I don't want a big honkin' thing.

I kind of want, like, a small, really delicious, like, really interesting-flavored treat to have with my coffee or my tea.

So this whole wheat that I mentioned before, the kind of sifted whole wheat that's a little softer, I really like that in, in the muffin recipe.

It's, it's tender, it's soft.

Um, it has its own sweetness, and then the maple syrup in the muffin batter has, like, a earthy sweetness.

And so it's kind of a really, like, grown-up and demure muffin.

But then I like to top it with a super-tart, really, really tart lemon icing.

- Now, let's talk about salt, because I think you put salt in that glaze.

- Yes, yeah.

- Now, a lot of bakers will say everything sweet needs salt, right?

- Yes, I... - And people often leave salt out.

- I'm a firm believer that you're... You need to season everything properly, and I think that the salt can help balance out the sweetness.

But it can also help bring out the, you know, the kind of piney, lemony flavor that that icing is gonna have.

I think every component of a dish needs to be seasoned for the most part, when you're cooking.

You know, you salt your onions as you sweat them.

It's the same with baking.

- Right.

- I think if you're gonna top your muffin with a glaze, you want that glaze to be able to stand on its own.

And the tartness is balanced by the salt, and in turn, they balance the sweetness of the muffin.

♪ ♪ This recipe is for a whole wheat and cornmeal muffin.

It's sweetened with maple syrup, dunked in a lemon icing.

So we're gonna start with the lemon icing so that it's done.

We don't have to worry about it, we don't have to think about it.

We can set it aside, it'll start to thicken up just a little bit as it sits, which will be good for dunking.

So in this bowl of my mixer, I have confectioner's sugar, a lot of it.

Don't worry about it, it's fine.

It's a lot of sugar.

So we're gonna whisk this confectioner's sugar with lemon juice.

As always, a little pinch of salt.

You want to season all the stuff you make-- even if it's sweet, it's gonna want some salt.

It really helps your tongue and your brain find that flavor.

And then this is my secret ingredient-- it's not that secret, it's citric acid.

This is gonna help the lemon icing taste really tart, really bracing, really thrilling.

If you wanted to put zest from your lemon in here, you could do that.

Sometimes I just don't want the actual zest in there.

I don't want the color or the texture of the zest.

I just want the super-tart flavor, and that's where citric acid comes into play.

And just a tiny little pinch of it in here.

That's maybe, like, a quarter-teaspoon.

And citric acid is not that hard to find.

It should be in the spice section of a grocery store, or if you're lucky enough to live near a good spice store, but also very easy to find on the internet.

And we're just gonna whisk this together.

If you don't have a mixer, you can whisk it by hand.

Just make sure that you put a little elbow grease into it, so it's not lumpy.

And if you happen to have a strainer, you can strain it after you whisk it.

But because I have this mixer here, I'm gonna crank it and really get it whisking.

I could eat it with a spoon.

The tarter, the better.

(mixer stops) We've got a nice, drippy, smooth, clean lemon icing.

It's gonna thicken up just a little as it sits.

This muffin batter is gonna be pretty easy, almost like a pancake batter.

We've got cornmeal in here.

We've got whole-wheat flour.

This is a 75% sifted wheat flour.

That means 75% of the bran has been sifted out.

It's a nice, fine grind.

It makes a really soft kind of bouncy, really flavorful pastry.

So it's always nice to keep some nice whole-grain flour in your pantry, you never know where it's gonna make your baked goods better, more fun, more interesting.

We've also got the leavener in here, a little bit of cinnamon, and we're just gonna whisk it really well.

And then... We've got our wet stuff.

Here we got eggs-- in here with the eggs, we're gonna put some yogurt, and this is where the maple syrup comes in.

That's how these muffins are sweetened.

The maple syrup has a really earthy, slightly bitter sort of a sweetness, unlike sugar.

The yogurt in this recipe is both really rich and flavorful, but also, like buttermilk, is acidic, so that's gonna help react with the leaveners in the dry mix, as well as kind of keep that gluten structure pretty tender.

And then we're gonna fold it into our dry mixture.

It doesn't need to be done in any kind of fancy way.

It's okay if it's a little lumpy.

Our last and final ingredient, my favorite ingredient, my number-one ingredient, butter.

So this butter has been melted and cooled slightly.

You don't want it super-hot when it goes into the muffin batter, so you're just gonna pour it in.

And again with the folding.

You just wanna mix that in.

This is why I said it's kind of like a pancake batter.

You put that butter in last, but you're not creaming it like you would for a cake.

You're not looking for the kind of rise in structure that a cake would have.

You want it to be a little wetter, a little softer, a little more tender.

And then we're just gonna set this batter aside for a minute while we prep our muffin pan.

You can make this batter in any size muffin pan that your heart desires-- these are smaller and deeper, so it's gonna be a little pointier on the top.

They're gonna come out really cute.

We just give this a nice spray inside and the edges, just like this.

And then a little bit of flour.

And I just go like this all over.

Just tap it... (taps pan on counter) so that flour gets all over each side, and then... Don't forget to tap it like this to get the excess out.

Nothing's sticking.

We are gonna scoop this muffin batter into this prepared pan with one of my favorite tools.

It's an ice cream scoop, so we're just gonna scoop right in here, and we're gonna fill these muffin cups relatively full, almost to the top, a little-- you want a little room from the top.

And just remember, when you're eating a muffin, you're having cake for breakfast.

I don't want anyone to... think they're being healthy just because it's a muffin.

I feel like that's a, a lie that America has told itself.

It's cake-- you're having cake for breakfast, and I just want you to be honest with yourself.

Now that we've got our muffin cups full... Bang it like that, it'll settle the muffin batter, and they'll bake up a little nicer.

And so now we're just gonna pop this right in the oven.

♪ ♪ So our muffins have baked, they've cooled just a little bit in the pan.

And then we popped them out, and now we're gonna glaze them.

So we're just gonna take our muffins.

Pretty simple.

It's not too thick, it's not too thin.

It's gonna drip down the sides, and it'll settle and dry with a little bit of a sheen.

Tiny bit of a crackle, kind of like a doughnut glaze.

The citric acid, lemon juice.

Not much more than that.

So it's gonna really offset the kind of mellow, earthy maple sweetness of these muffins.

There we go.

12 adorable little whole-wheat cornmeal muffins with a bracing lemon icing.

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♪ ♪ - Ladies and gentlemen, we'd like to be the first to welcome you to Tel Aviv... - Welcome to Oaxaca's airport.

- Welcome to Beirut.

♪ ♪ (man speaking Hebrew) - (speaking world language) - Bonjour, je m'appelle Chris.

- We call it supa kanja.

It's the word for gumbo.

♪ ♪ - Christopher, you have to make the authentic, original cotoletta alla Bolognese for me.

♪ ♪ - So this is the Eduardo García blender.

- This is the no electricity.

♪ ♪ - Next is dessert.

- That is really good.

♪ ♪ I notice when you cook sometimes, you add a little bit of something, and then you just put the whole bowl in.

- I like to be generous with my food.

Generosity is important in cooking.

- That's true.

♪ ♪ - Can start building bridges, and food is definitely a perfect common ground.

♪ ♪ - This is a generational thing.

It's, it's something that you inherit.

♪ ♪ - Yeah, that was great.

(woman speaking Mandarin) - What was this for?

What did she say?

- You get one more chance.

- Salute.

- How is it?

He's speechless.

- I'm speechless.

That's so good.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪