Guava + Cheese, Pretty Please
A special Just a Bite with Bake Street's Chloe Rose Crabtree, plus her recipe for low-waste fruit shrubs.
Pastry friends,
By now, you’ve probably heard us talk about the shatteringly crisp, seriously creamy magic of Chloe-Rose Crabtree’s creme brûlée cookies at Bake Street in London, originally inspired by a cookie at Dough & Arrow in Costa Mesa. But she’s known for so much more. The co-founder of Sourced, a food research publication, Chloe Rose received an MA in history and literature from Columbia for her study of 19th-century cookbooks as feminist literature. Today she’s busy helming a new recipe column at our favorite newsletter Vittles and dishing up plenty of other treats at Bake Street like pastelitos de guayaba and mushroom milk bread floss rolls. Read on for her special Just a Bite, featuring her recipe for making low-waste fruit shrubs to spike compotes and jams.— AA
You’re making dessert. What is it? How do you make it?
Pie or something with pastry, always. One of my favorite last minute desserts is a frangipane and apple or pear tart. I use offcuts from my puff pastry as the tart shell and blind bake it so it is extra crispy. I add a layer of frangipane (almond or hazelnut works great here) and I quick pickle thin slices of apple or pear in a shrub I make from leftover peels and cores before arranging them on top of the frangipane. Then bake until golden and slightly puffed up.I guess this isn’t really a ‘last minute’ thing for most people but I always have a shrub (more on this below), pastry scraps and some frangipane in the fridge to use.
Someone is making you a dessert. What do you ask for?
People are always surprised to hear that I’m actually not a big sweets person. My ideal dessert is something that has bright fruit flavors or salty/bitter notes. If I had to ask for something I’d ask for a tea ice cream (like jasmine or oolong) paired with some stewed stone fruit and maybe a buttery pastry shard.
You’ve transformed into a pastry. What are you and how are you consumed?
I’m a guava pastelito — bright guava jam encased in a flaky puff pastry— sitting on a platter of other guava pastelitos to be enjoyed at a casual party or with a friend over coffee.
Tell us about a dessert scene in a work of art/cinema/culture/literature that you’ll never forget?
I was devastated when Pushing Daisies got cancelled. It was a really camp show about Ned, who was a pie maker who could also revive the dead with a single touch and return them to death with a second touch. In one of the first episodes he revives a childhood sweetheart and of course they fall in love as they solve fantastical murders and make pies together. The show is ended pretty abruptly due to the 2008 writers strike, and I think about it a lot. There isn’t one particular scene but I love how the pie making scenes always showed Ned taking a lot of care to bring life to his ingredients.
What’s a baking hack you can’t live without?
Don’t throw away your fruit bits, make a shrub! A friend of mine showed me how to do this a few years back and it is my favorite way to boost fruit flavors. Basically a shrub is a fruit vinegar made with fruit, sugar, and apple cider vinegar. I find it works best with apples, pears or stone fruits. Just weigh reserved peels/cores/pits (you can store these up in the freezer) and add half the weight in sugar to them with a dash of apple cider vinegar. Shake up the mixture and leave it for about 3-4 days at room temp before straining and putting in the fridge. You can also add different spices and herbs use this in cocktails, but I find it gives a really nice acidity boost to compotes and pie fillings. I use apple shrub in place of lemon juice for my apple pie.
Tell us about developing recipes for Bake Street London! What do you find most rewarding and what do you find most frustrating?
I live in the neighborhood I work in, so it’s really nice to hear people around town talk about the nice things we make at Bake Street. I love to be able to bring a little bit of joy to the community. It’s also incredibly rewarding to hear that people have gone out of their way to make a trip to the cafe! We try to cultivate a space for experimentation and only pursue projects that really bring us joy so it’s great when our clientele are also excited by what we put out. I also am really happy to have found a space that gives me creative freedom to be experimental, even if those experiments don’t always make it on the menu.
As for most frustrating, there is a tendency for people to think that because one product does well you should continuously produce that same product. But repetition kills creativity. When the creme brûlée cookie hit its peak, we had people who would get really upset with us when they sold out as though we were a huge chain like Pret and not a tiny neighborhood cafe. It got to a point where I almost took the cookie off the menu because I didn’t want us to turn into a creme brûlée cookie shop. It’s a good cookie though, so I’m glad I didn’t.
The reality is that viral hype is fleeting. If we stopped devoting energy to developing things like our ice cream menu, new cookie flavors, and more vegan recipes, we wouldn’t be able to sustain the business on creme brûlée cookies alone when the hype eventually dies down. Also if a small business sells out, be happy for them! The waste of not selling is money that goes straight in the bin.
Follow Chloe Rose Crabtree and Bake St.
Misc Dessert Content:
Watch: Edible mascots are the hot new thing in football.
Bake: A rosca de reyes and more treats for Three Kings Day on Saturday.
Call: When your cake falls flat, the King Arthur Flour bakers hotline is here to help. (Monday–Friday: 9am–9pm, Saturday & Sunday: 9am–5pm EST. For real.)
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Great post and interview; thanks! And it's so funny, I was just watching a YT video this morning about a rosca de reyes cake. Now I feel I really need to make one! :-)