The Secret Ingredient is Fire
A special Just a Bite from Lauren Schofield
Cake friends,
This week in the newsletter, we’re sharing a special Just a Bite interview with Lauren Schofield. Lauren is a true baker’s baker—creating pastries in some of our favorite New York City spots like Flora Bar, King, Marlow & Sons and Diner. Recently, she left the restaurant world to go freelance, working on special cake orders and events, including a towering dessert table for Andy Baraghani’s wedding last weekend.
Lauren is also the creator of a transfixing black forest cake inspired by the Hansel and Gretel fable, originally appearing in Wicked Cake and available for purchase at our birthday party/reading at the Invisible Dog Art Center on Thursday. Unfortunately, due to strict capacity and a smaller than usual event size, no tickets will be available on the door. If you missed a ticket, please know that we have more events in the works. And thank you to everyone who sold us out so fast!
Read on for Lauren’s thoughts on transitioning out of baking in restaurants, including her no-recipe recipe for bananas foster—perhaps the most dramatic but simplest dessert you can make at home.
1. You’re making dessert. What is it? How do you make it?
Right now, I’m obsessed with bananas foster, because we’re not quite at the time of year where strawberries or stone fruit are starting to come in, and I’m a little citrus-ed out. It’s such a classy dessert with a little glamour and very few ingredients. It comes together quickly, great for when you’re already making dinner and don’t have time to go all out prepping dessert.
All you need is bananas cut lengthwise, butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, and rum. You melt the butter and sugar in a pan and sauté the bananas until they get some color, then add some cinnamon and a pinch of salt, if you like! Then you add the rum and light the sauce on fire—either with a lighter or carefully with your already-lit gas burner, if you have one—and move the pan a little bit to coat the bananas in the sauce. The sauce is done when the alcohol burns off and the flame goes down. Serve the bananas and sauce over vanilla ice cream. It’s not traditional, but I like to add some chocolate sauce, which I make by melting together 70% chocolate, sugar, water, and salt. Shortbread cookies are very nice on the side.
2. Someone is making you a dessert. What do you ask for?
The easiest possible thing! Anytime someone else serves me a dessert, I’m so thrilled. I went to a dinner party at my friends’ house recently and they had made this incredible meal, then for dessert they served these little cakes they’d gotten in London that came in these flat tin cans. One was almond and one was chocolate. We passed them around, taking bites with our after-dinner drinks. It felt so novel and fun—I think dessert doesn’t always have to involve a lot of effort. I’m so delighted when it’s just surprising or amusing, kind of like an inside joke.
I do love my dad’s strawberry shortcake, which he makes with Bisquick. If I’m visiting my parents in the summer months that’s what I dream about !
3. You’ve transformed into a pastry. What are you and how are you consumed?
Plain croissant very hot from the oven, torn and enjoyed with reverence!!! I used to make viennoiserie at a bakery and the first time I had a fresh croissant I was so blown away — it’s a luxurious thing to be able to enjoy. If I had my way, that’s how I’d like to go. Also: A very good reason to get to your neighborhood bakery early in the morning.
4. Tell us about a dessert scene in a work of art/cinema/culture/literature that you’ll never forget?
My mom used to read me this book Thunder Cake when I was a little kid. It’s about a girl and her grandmother on their farm in a thunderstorm. The girl is scared, but the grandmother tells her it’s “baking weather” and makes her thunderstorm-specific chocolate cake. The story is about the little girl collecting all of these ingredients from the farm to make the cake as the thunder is rumbling, and being brave about it even though she’s frightened. But what made a huge impression on me as a kid is that one of the ingredients in the cake is TOMATOES!
5. Share with us a baking hack you can’t live without?
Every cookbook will tell you this, but you really do have to organize yourself first. In a restaurant, you set up your station the same way every day, and your job is easier because you are so familiar with your tools and surroundings. At home I always have to start with a clean kitchen, a cutting board set up, and whatever tools I need so I don’t get stuck digging around in my cabinets when I’m in the middle of making something time-sensitive like crème anglaise.
6. How has your work as a baker inspired or influenced your relationship to cooking at home?
I have a tendency to get frustrated when working in my apartment because a lot of my instincts fly out the window when I’m in a space where I don’t bake every day. It’s something I’m working on! Disorientation aside, baking at home is such joy because it normally means you’re baking for friends or loved ones, which is so much more satisfying than baking for people you don’t know!
Misc cake content:
Learn: We’re excited about Future Bakery Cooperative, a worker-owned bakery gearing up in Austin, Texas. We loved seeing one of our Death by Chocolate shirts in a video from their recent meeting session.
Watch: Chef Kayla Phillips make piloncillo crème brûlée while talking about childhood, moving, and cultural exchange.
Bake: Sarah Jampel’s brown butter rhubarb bars; the season is just around the corner on the East Coast.
Watch: Our buddy Laith Zuaiter is running a monthly Palestinian film series at Cobble Hill Cinemas in Brooklyn, with each film benefiting a different aid organization. Follow The Friendly Strangers on IG to hear about upcoming events, and buy tickets for the next two screenings: 3000 Nights by Mai Masri (4/17) and Mayor by David Osit (5/20).
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