The Greyston Bakery Cookbook
by Sara Kate Gillingham-Ryan
Rodale, 2007
$26.00, cloth
200 pages
Odds are that you've had the pleasure of eating Greyston Bakery sweets and didn't even know it. Over the past twenty years, this New York bakery has shipped 25 million pounds of brownies to Vermont where they are folded in to Ben & Jerry's premium ice cream.
A chunkier, more chocolatey version of the brownie is included in the Greyston Bakery Cookbook, but the recipes are not all about over-the-top indulgence. The subtle and well-calibrated flavors of the book's cakes, tarts, and cookies reflect the sensibilities of the bakery's Bundt founders.
The bakery was founded on the principle of "right livelihood," an attentive approach to daily life that treats work as an opportunity to serve your soul and the larger community. It began as a cafe to fund the Zen community and provide jobs for its students. When the community moved to Yonkers, the cafe expanded and now employs as many as 60 residents from the local community, whose efforts improve their own lives and keep the bakery profitable, which in turn allows it to support affordable housing, childcare, youth programs, HIV services, and community gardens.
The bakery's sweets have been a long collaboration with Ben & Jerry's and have also been served at the White House. But no shortcuts or compromises just because customers want to do the right thing. The flavors are sophisticated and rich, and the techniques tried and true.
Some of the sweets will require a special ingredient, such as fresh grated coconut for the Fresh Coconut Mousse Cake or Mexican chocolate for the cinnamon tinted Mexican Hot Chocolate Cake. But if you keep a reasonable pantry, you'll quickly find recipes that can shine with what's on hand. The other ones, well they are worth a trip to the supermarket.
Grapefruit Yogurt cake bakes up dense but tender, with the slightest tang of grapefruit in the cake from a spoonful of juice and the zest, to a full tongue tingling glaze of juice and confectioners sugar drizzled on top of the finished cake. It is simple, but wit intriguing flavor and if your inclined, you can convince yourself that with yogurt and grapefruit, a slice makes a reasonable breakfast.
I shy away from maple flavored baked goods, finding them to be jaw achingly sweet. I save the syrups for pancakes. But Greyston's Oatmeal Maple Bars show just how well these flavors are balanced. The oatmeal lends the sturdy chew and a cup of syrup in the batter leaves a slight woodsy perfume, emphasized by a light maple glaze.
The cakes and tarts are the book's most indulgent and and cover a full range of styles and flavors from a very adult Olive Oil and Sherry Soufflé Cake to Red Velvet Cupcakes that will please kids of all ages.
Bermudian Rum Cake regenerates this cake mix classic to full, homemade glory. The cake is rich and eggy, studded with pecans, and soaked with a buttery rum glaze. There are chocolate cakes of all degrees of indulgence, seasonal fruit tarts, a subtly spiced Earl Grey Tea Cake, and of course, as a New York bakery, they have their cheese cake, sparked with lemon juice and zest and made just that much smoother with heavy cream stirred into the batter.
What a delightful opportunity this book presents to do good, and eat well.
© 2007 Claudia Kousoulas
