play doh cooking set etarigan Monday, January 9, 2017

michael brenner: so welcome. so my slide says that it's week 10of the lectures of this series, which i find remarkable that we'vebeen going for 10 weeks already. and this week, the topic for this week,the scientific topic for this week, is emulsions and foams. and we're very fortunate to havechristina tosi from milk bar who's here [inaudible]. [applause] christina has all of these remarkablethings that she's going to show us,

i think perhapsculminating in this cake. is that the culmination? and this cake, which is somesort of a chocolate chip cake is full of emulsions, not foams,but it's full of emulsions. actually it's sort of also fullof foams, kind of foams too. and so what i want to dofor the next 10 minutes while you're getting ready to listen toher, which is going to be much better, is to tell you a little bit aboutthe science of emulsions and foams so you have something to thinkabout while you're listening.

with that as introduction, i'm goingto start with emulsions and foams. and so it turns out thatwith emulsions and foams, the important ingredient, theimportant thing to control is also volume fraction. it's the same idea. and i want to demonstratethis before we go into it with a very strange sort of experiment. so these are m&ms. itwas just halloween. and you'll notice actually, theinteresting thing about m&ms is that

when the volume fraction islow, like it is it is here, then it pours like a liquid. the m&ms are liquid. but if you've pack them together in ajar, now the volume fraction is high and now the thing is a solid. it's basically a solid. you could stand on it. if we had a big container of m&ms,we could stand on it and jump around in it.

so the volume fraction of m&ms,there's a critical volume fraction when a material becomes a solid. and it turns out, form&m's it's about 70%. so the volume fraction-- there'sabout 70% air in this thing. so if anyone's ever entered a countthe number of m&ms in a jar contest, the thing you really need to know,besides being very good at being able to estimate the volume of thejar, is that 30% of this is air. but when you make anemulsion, you have to get-- there's essentially a little thing ofm&ms that's inside of it that's playing

the essence of it. and i now want to justshow you what it is. would anyone like some m&ms? that's fine. ok, and actually there's an equationthat we have that describes this. and actually christina, youmight be impressed by this. so what do we do herewhen we see an equation? yeah. it's pretty good.

this equation is the elastic modulus. it's basically how solid something is. and you have to be about a criticalvolume fraction for it to get there. and that's what that equation says. so actually in our lab in theharvard class, we make lime foam. i already to you about m&ms. this alsoworks for marbles, m&ms and marbles, volume fraction. turns out for spheres, the volumefraction, the critical volume fraction, is 64%.

that's actually closer towhat's going on in the things that christina is going to make. the things that are playing the roleof particles in the emulsions that christina will make are notactually the shape of m&ms. they tend to be more like spheres. and basically the point isthat of course, as i said, this thing has no elasticmodulus, and the one on the right has an elastic modulus. and when you're makingthis-- what is that?

cream? cream. christina tosi: there is some passionfruit curd and coffee frosting. michael brenner: right, thefrosting is cream and it better basically, be a solid, becauseotherwise the whole thing will squish. christina tosi: that's right. michael brenner: that's right. and so it's all abouthaving an elastic modulus. now you can make a plot.

this is what i like to do. you can plot elasticity as afunction of volume fraction. and if you do it with m&ms, you seethere's a critical volume fraction, which for m&ms is about 70%, atwhich the thing becomes a solid. and that's what you need to do. you need to get thevolume fraction up to 70%. now, it turns out that-- you think thisis so silly, he's talking about m&ms. but it turns out the physics ofemulsions is basically the same thing. because, so all of thesethings are emulsions.

so these are-- somayonnaise, an emulsion, aioli is an emulsion, whipped creamand cappuccino foam are all emulsions. but the analog of the m&m that'sin these things are bubbles. and so this is a picture of mayonnaiseunder a microscope, hellman's mayonnaise. i don't know if you've ever seen this. and look at it. it's amazing. there are all of these littlebubbles that are in there.

and the bubbles are packingjust like m&ms pack. and my claim is, the volume fractionof this bubbles it has to be above 64%, because otherwise it won't be a solid. in fact, in mayonnaiseit's much higher than 64%. i don't know what it is. it's probably 70%. you can look on therecipe and see actually. it's the volume fractionof oil that's in the dish. what i find amazing is,look at the scale bar.

it's 100 microns. so christina, in her icing,right, there's little particles, there's stuff in there. and the size of it is ona scale of 100 microns, and she's going to showyou how to make it. and just by doing that, justby doing whatever she does, she's making 100 micron sizedobjects, just by stirring basically. that's what happens. and i think it's importantto just take a step

and wonder about things that happen. i mean, it's so ordinary, that youwouldn't normally think about it, but that's what happens. now here's a picture of aioli, whichactually is even harder to make, because the emulsifier isactually in the garlic. it has bubbles, which areon an even smaller scale. so ok, so these things are allpacking of little droplets. and so this is a picture of what itlooks like, droplets in the background. the droplets can either beoil and water, water and oil,

or air in a solid. that's fine too. and so they're packingsof little droplets. and they're really twodifferent scientific questions that you have to ask about these. the first is, how are the droplets made? and the second thing is,why don't they come apart? i mean, the m&ms don'tapart because they're solid. but droplets are not solid,so how do they come apart?

and so to make droplets, youuse all of the standard methods that you've used yourself,whisking, blending. there's a kitchenaid overthere, that works fine. that's how you make little droplets. that's a droplet-making machine. that's how i think about it. or it's a bubble-making machine. and that happens becausethe thing-- what happens is you take these bigdroplets and you shear

them and they come upapart into little droplets and presumably thathappens again and again. now the other thing that's important andthis is the last thing that i will say and then i will shut up, is thatdroplets, when they collide, when two little droplets collide,they become a big droplet. and you don't want that to happen,because it'll break your mayonnaise or it'll mess up the icing. and so you have to somehow coat thedroplets with armor, a sort of armor, that basically keeps them apart.

and that armor are moleculesthat are called surfactants, which like to live on theinterface and this is like coating the thing with armor. now, when you make mayonnaise, doesanybody know where the armor is? it's in the egg. and it's an amazingthing, because i don't know if you've ever made mayonnaise,but you take oil, water, you just pour it in the egg. and then you stir it up, andsomehow magically, the armor

has to coat all of thebubbles because otherwise, if it doesn't coat all of the bubbles,then you don't have stable mayonnaise and the mayonnaise breaks. and so there are analogswith what christina is going to do that you shouldthink about as she's doing them. and we can talk aboutthem later if you want. although i suspect that you're goingto find more interesting things to talk about. so there's a wonderful chapterin a book the harold mcgee wrote,

that's sadly out of print, that's calledthe curious cook, in which he calls it, mayonnaise, doing more with lecithin. and harold asked a veryinteresting question of how much mayonnaise canyou make with a single egg? and so the questions is, with oneegg, how much mayonnaise can you make? now if you go look at recipes--so i googled two fancy recipes. this is a recipe from alton brown andfrom martha stewart, both of whom to me seen rather fancy. and you'll notice that with one egg,alton brown calls for one cup of oil,

whereas martha stewart calls for onecup of vegetable oil with one egg. but the question is, how muchcan you make with one egg. and so, we, last year when we taughtthe harvardx version of this class, we had a mayonnaise contest in whichwe basically said, take one egg-- and we had a competitionaround the world, who can make the most mayonnaise with one egg. and so there is a person who weonly know her by her screen name. but that's her screenname, and she said, yesterday i made mayonnaise with one eggand 200 milliliters of sunflower oil.

and she kept going, andbasically at the end she ended up with 850milliliters of mayonnaise, which is more than three cups. and this was her processfrom one egg yolk. and so this shows you that you knowyou're doing and you have patience, you can make a lot of mayonnaise withone egg and it's all about technique. and i don't know how thisis a good intro-- say again. audience: why would you want to? michael brenner: well i guess youwould want to for two reasons.

one is it's so interesting, likehow much mayonnaise could you make out of one egg? so if you take the harvardxversion of the class, we ask you do somethingelse that you probably wouldn't want to do, whichis, we ask you to calculate, on the basis of the content of oneegg, how much mayonnaise can you make. and you'll find it's even muchmore than three cups in principle. you just have to coat allof the little bubbles. so it's intellectually interesting.

and also you'll have lessegg in your mayonnaise. and if you're interestedin less eggy mayonnaise, then gotchava is afactor of three below. christina tosi: that's a good point. michael brenner: yeah. anyway, with that, i think i will turnit over to christina and to jenna, and we're really gratefulthat you're here. i don't know what mayonnaise has to dowith what you're going to talk about. although there are bubbles in whatshe's going to talk about too.

so it's sort of similar. but it's really a pleasure to haveyou and we're all very grateful. christina tosi: oh, thank you. michael brenner: so thatthing doesn't work very well. so [inaudible]. christina tosi: we'll see how it goes. hi, guys. how's it going? audience: good.

christina tosi: there's alot of you here tonight. i'm not intimidated. don't worry. hi thanks for coming out. i'm so excited thatyou guys are either so interested in emulsions or foams or justdying to hear everything about milk bar and watching me. make it or you're here because someof what the cat out of the bag and found out that we brought cornflake chocolate chip marshmallow

cookies for you guys. i was raised by a mother whowould always reward good behavior once good behavior happened. but i like to break therules, so we decided to reward you just for showing up. and so here are the corn flakechocolate chip marshmallow cookies. i'm going to be demoing these cookies. so my theory is that i'mfeeding you them now, so if you have any specific questionsabout them while i'm making them

or after, you get toask whatever you want. and my only rule about speakingpublicly is that you guys have as much fun as i have. so if at any point along the way,you just have a burning question, shout it out. or if you're feeling a little shy,we'll take questions at the end as well. so any which way you want to getyour question out loud, i'll take it. so i'm christina. this is jenna.

jenna is our director ofculinary operations at milk bar, very fancy title for a very fancy lady. she can also help answer any questions. how many of you guyshave been to milk bar? jenna: wo! christina tosi: jenna,are you impressed? i'm impressed. jenna: i'm really impressed. christina tosi: how many ofyou haven't been to milk bar

but know what milk bar is? ok. does anyone here notknow what milk bar is, but it was just completely intrigued byfree cookies and emulsions and foams. ok. good. i just like to get, you know, a goodread of how deep i'm going to go or how not deep i'm going to go. so i brought this really fun slide show. those of you that have been tomilk bar know about milk bar,

i feel like you'll appreciate thenuance of a lot of the cookies and cakes and pies and bread thatyou know and love from milk bar. and those of you that don't,this a great introduction. so milk bar actually turns60 years old in 13 days 13, 14 days, which is pretty cool. we opened milk bar as the sisterbakery of the momofuku restaurants in new york city that are ownedand run by david chang who i believe came last year to speak. and i was brought on board atmomofuku almost nine years ago,

in a completely undesdrtyrelated capacity. i was hired on to sort of workoperations and do odd jobs. and i kind of-- sometimes i haveto trick myself into things, and so, it worked outthat i was not hired to be the pastry chef of the momofukurestaurants and to open a bakery. but that's what i became. i was raised in virginia. and my family is largely fromohio, so i have a little bit of a midwestern sensibility about me.

i was raised by women that love to bake. and i, in turn, love to eatdessert, and from a very early age, also learned to love to bake. so much so, that i became obsessedwith it and baked from maybe five or six years old all the way upuntil i decided to move to new york to go to culinary school andbecome a pastry chef for a living. now the thing about becominga pastry chef for a living is, pastry chef is like apretty fancy word, which usually means that you makepretty fancy desserts, which

we do at the restaurants. but have a lot of my spirit and myheart is in the sort of baked goods that i grew up witharound baking and in. so milk bar, the spirit of milk bar,the sort of personality of mile bar is very much where home baker meetssomeone that went to culinary school to become a formallytrained pastry chef. so everything on the menu is in a verysimple form, a very simple vehicle, cookies, cakes, slices of pie,soft serve ice cream, baked breads, baked savory breads.

and they all start with very,very simple inspiration points. but then we take our really,really, really formal knowledge and experience and expertise fromworking in fancier kitchens that are much more technique driven, and weapply all of that skill and technique and knowledge that we have picked upalong the way, we apply it to recipes. we run every recipe andtechnique through the gamut, and then we put it back into a verysimple cookie recipe or layer cake recipe. so just a little rundown of milk bar.

this is who we are. so i'm going to just start to give youa few of my favorite creation points of what we do at milkbar because i think it's a really fun way to understand whatwe do and what i'm about to show you. so one of the first thingsthat i ever created long ago was called cereal milk. and it's milk that tasteslike what's life in your bowl after you eat all the cereal out of it. that's pretty simple, right?

i was a picky eater asa kid, and the only way my mom could get me to eatanything of nutritional value was to promise me a bowl of cereal. so i could go to thegrocery store with her, i spent a lot of my childhood goingto the grocery store with my mother. i could pick out any box of cereal. she was allowed to pour as muchmilk into the bowl as she wanted. and the only agreement was thati had to drink the bowl of milk after i ate all the cereal out of it.

and i thought cereal milk would bea really fun way to approach vanilla without giving someone vanilla. so we don't make make vanillaice criminal at milk bar but we make cereal milk ice cream. and it has that sort of like riff onthe nostalgic moment of bottoms up with your bowl of cereal. we make it into a drinking milk. we make it into an ice cream,and therefore an ice cream pie. we swirl it up in swirls of soft serve.

we also use it to make a panacotta. so essentially the creation processis, either i have a really great flavor and i know the vehicle it comes in. so for cereal milk, it's i know ihave this really great flavored milk, and then all of a sudden we godown the rabbit hole of, well, what recipes are milk heavy or whatrecipes are flavor milk forward. ice cream, drinking milk,panacotta, sky's the limit. cereal milk. another one of my favorite recipesof all time is called crack pie.

has anyone had crack pie? so crack pie and is sorta meeting and gooey butter cake from saint louis andchess pie from the south. i fell in love withthe theory of chess pie because i was reading throughthe joy of cooking one day when i was workingin a pastry kitchen and had a little bit of free time. and i loved the story behind it. it's the five that youmake when you don't

have enough apples tomake apple pie, or pecans to make pecan pie orrhubarb to make rhubarb pie. you basically leave all of thoseingredients out and you may just pie. and over time, just pie, with thatsort of strident country accent, became chess pie. and chess pie nowadays is usuallya little bit more buttermilk based, so it's a little tangy. but i really love-- myfavorite part about baked goods is that dense gooey fudgy center.

and so crack pie is alittle less buttermilk that a chess pie, but certainly the samedensity and gooey nature that you get from a saint louis gooey butter cake. it has a toasted oat crustand this gooey butter filling. one of our most popular cookiesis called the compost cookie. the compost cookie-- so wedon't make a chocolate chip-- we don't make just achocolate chip cookie. we make a corn flakechocolate chip marshmallow cookie, which by the sound it, youguys already have had a very warm,

intimate meet and great with. and we don't make a chocolatecookie, but we make a compost cookie. and a compost cookie has pretzelsand potato chips and butterscotch and oats and coffee groundsand graham crackers. and it's basically just like,you go in your cupboard, you want to make a batchof cookies, you don't have enough of any single ingredientto make that type of cookie so you just put it all in themixing bowl and hope it comes out. and that is very much the spirit of ourapproach to baking at milk bar as well.

so we have this technical background,and when we want to be intentional we certainly are. but we firmly believe in nottaking yourself so seriously. and that the sort ofcreative process can also be every bit as sort of justlike throw caution to the wind, throw all of your cupboards'ingredients into the mixing bowl and make a compost cookie. and this is a bunch of fun ingredientsthat go into the compost cookie. i think the most fun partabout creating at milk bar

is keeping it really simple. the compost cookie, i think isa great example of the mentality that i was raised with in the kitchen,where it's just waste not, want not. if you want to make a batch of cookies,you don't have to go to the supermarket to make them. you probably need some butter and anegg and some sugar, but the rest of it-- embrace the creativespirit and sort of make it work with the limitations ofwhatever is left in your cupboard. the only problem withthat, in modern day terms,

is that if you live innew york, you might not have a bunch of stuff in your cupboard. and and it's always fun to look atoats or ground coffee and go like, oh, i wonder what if, or trying tolook at it with new, fresh new eyes. and so, what we do to sortof perpetuate that theory is we come up withnew pantry ingredients that just live in ourkitchen at all times. and we use them in amultitude of recipes. one of those staple pantryingredients, we call the crunch.

the crunch is just clustersof basically anything that's dry, bound together with a little bitof fat and toasted off in the oven to caramelize. and the crunch itself is basedoff of staple pantry items. so we have corn flake crunch. that was what was in your corn flakechocolate chip marshmallow cookie. we have pretzel crunch; wehave ritz cracker crunch; we have fruity pebble crunch;we have cinnamon toast crunch; we have pretzel crunch.

anything that's a pantryitem, we'll take out and we'll crunch it down byhand, crush it down my hand, toss it in a little bit of sugar, salt. we usually use a littlebit of milk powder to add chewiness and depth offlavor, a little bit of fat to bind it all together, toast itin the oven and bam, all of a sudden you have this new souped-up pantry item. and we take the crunch and we'lluse it all across our kitchen. so we'll use corn flake crunchas a soft serve topping.

we'll use ritz cracker crunch as apie crust, as a shell for a pie crust. the middle top picturethere is your corn flake chocolate chip marshmallowcookie being spread apart with those gooey marshmallows. we'll use it as a textural ingredientin a fancy, plated dessert. one of them is a thaitea parfait and the other is a pumpkin ganache with some pearsorbet, blue cheese, and corn flake crunch. so we take these pantry items, we sortof put a magnifying glass on them,

but we'll go in when we'retrying to create, we'll be like, ok, i know i need a textural element. it could be for anything in any vehicle. it can be a textural layer of a cake. we'll basically go intoour pantry and be like, ok, what flavor is going to work best? so that's a really cool way thatwe approach the creative process. the crumb is very similarto the crunch, but it's a little more sandy in its texture.

we approach it in the same way. the crumb's basic flavor originis anything thing that's dry and a powder that has flavor. so cocoa powder, malted milkpowder, freeze-dried berries ground into a powder, milk powder. anything that is dry and pulverizeddown into a powder that has flavor can become a crumb. same type of technique. you take that powder,a little bit of flour,

some sugar, some salt, just to sortof round the edges of the flavor, bind it together with somefat, back it off in the oven, and you get a flavored crumb. we have birthday crumbs. we have milk crumbs. we have berry milk crumbs, sofreeze-dried berries plus milk crumbs is berry milk crumbs. chocolate crumbs, which we'll usein the chocolate chip layer cake. malted milk crumbs, so milkcrumbs plus malted milk powder

equals malted milk crumbs and so on. and we'll take thosecrumbs in our kitchen and we'll dispatch themin the same way that we do the crunch in the creative process. so we'll use crumbs when we're mixing upa batch of chocolate chocolate cookies, because we want sandypops a flavor and texture. we'll mold them into a piecrust to make a chocolate pie crust for a banana cream pie filling. we'll put those crumbs into layer cakesfor bits of some sort of visual draw,

but also textual nuance. i'll show you the chocolate chiplayer cake a little bit later. we'll also mix them into cookie isfor the same sort of flavor balance. the bottom left is our blueberryand cream cookie being made. so it's sugar cookie doughessentially, dried blueberries and milk crumbs make our blueberry and creamcookie, which is largely based off of the muffin top of a blueberry muffin,my favorite thing in the world to eat. i'm going to make chocolate chiplayer cake with you guys tonight, so you'll sort of see the process.

you'll see a little bit ofan overhead, but very much the way that we constructlayer cakes at milk bar is breaking down therules of traditionally how you would make a layer cake. the flavors in layers thatyou can put into a layer cake to sort of defy gravity, but alsounderstand the weight of each layer so that you don't have a cakethat bows out at the edges. you have a cake that sitsperfectly at attention. we make liquid cheesecake at milk bar.

i love cheesecake but the bestkind of cheesecake i think, is the slightly underbaked cheese cake. so we have a recipecalled liquid cheesecake. and it's essentiallycheesecake-- ti's not underbaked, it's just meant to set a little bitlooser than your standard cheesecake. so we don't make cheesecake at milk bar. but we make liquid cheesecake and weuse it as elements in other recipes. we don't make an apple pie, but wedo make an apple pie layer cake. so we have layers of brown butter cake,layers of those gooey cinnamon apples.

one of the crumbs thatwe make is a pie crumb, so it's a pie dough recipe thatwe crumb up, bake in the oven. we use that as a textural element. and then we make liquid cheesecakeand fold in brown butter bits to sort of give those sort of creamynotes that you get out of an apple pie and we make this layer cake. we make a cinnamon bun pie. so i love liquid cheesecake. i love cheesecake.

i also love cream cheese frosting,but we can't make cinnamon buns with cream cheese frosting. i mean, i suppose we can. but i feel like we can push beyond that. so we make a cinnamon bunpie, which is the top photo. and it's a bread dough that'spressed into a pie crust, and it has layers of liquid cheesecakeand light brown sugar and cinnamon and salt layered up with alittle bit of a streusel top. eaten warm, it's thebest thing in the world.

we make a cheesecake ice creamwith this liquid cheesecake that we blend into ice cream base. we make a desert that has liquidcheesecake, guava, and a cream cheese skin, sort of a takeon a cuban pastelito. and then liquid cheesecake in all ofits glory here at the bottom right. but a lot of how we create isthinking about our favorite desserts and then how we canchallenge what they are. so we don't make just a chocolatechip cookie because a lot of us love chocolate chip cookies, but we alllove a different chocolate chip cookie.

someone likes a reallycrispy chocolate chip cookie. someone-- i like a fudgy in the center,crispy on the outside chocolate chip cookie. my grandma also makes thebest chocolate chip cookie. so even if i tried to make andsell chocolate chip cookies, i'd only make the secondbest chocolate chip cookie. and a lot of you probably already haveyour favorite chocolate chip cookies. so why in the world wouldi try and open a business based on chocolate chip cookies.

that seems like aterrible business plan. you also have to sell a lot of cookiesto pay the rent, so rather than compete, it was sortof like how do we hone in on what people love aboutcheesecake, and figure out how to, rather than compete, find a way tosort of honor everyone's favorite part of cheesecake and push beyond. and i think that's a lotof the spirit of milk bar, but a lot of the secret to our success. we don't make food that speaks over you.

there's nothing worse,i think, than going out to a fancy meal or notfancy meal and feeling like the food is too smart for you, orthat there's just not the connection with the food or it's too showy. i think that a lot ofour technique comes down to being humble enough to belike, well, if it's not good and you can't eat it in yourhand and sort of ust melt, and hold that cookie close, thenit doesn't matter how much we know. it doesn't matter how skilled weare or what our knowledge base is.

it doesn't matter if we can'tconnect with you through what we do. and the things that youremember that are food-based are either food that you haveyour memories with already made, or the things thatyou can get in the moment and make that relationship with. you'll walk out of any restaurantor any bakery excited and ready to talk about what you just experienced. if you have something that'stoo fancy or too overdone or there's not a story that you get andthere's not a connection that you make,

then that moment's lost. and all of that hard work and effort tomake something delicious and thoughtful and all these things is gone. so hopefully that comesthrough what we do. we also make savorybreads, like i was saying. we start all of our savorybreads with one dough that we call the mother dough. and so i thought, well, i want tohave savory breads at milk bar, but you've got to see a lotof bread to pay the rent.

and making bread is very time-consuming. and a lot of what-- and we'renot going to make a croissant and we're not going tomake a pana chocolate and we're not going to make danish. because those things already exist. and you guys probably already haveyour favorites of all of those. so how do we figure out howto challenge the status quo and have a sort of pay honorto the classic pastry staples that came before us when we create?

so we start with themother dough and we sort of make it a vehicle for abunch of different things. we make a bread called the volcano,which is exactly what it sounds like. it's a flavor explosion. it's a cheesy potato gratin. it has some pancetta and somecaramelized onions in it. and we take the motherdough, we portion it out. and then we wrap it around thispotato gratin, flip it over, these are the top two photos.

and then put a littlegruyere cheese on the top. that's mother dough in volcano form. we make bagel bombs. we can't boil and bake them. we don't have time. we don't run the bagelbusiness and we're not trying to compete withthe bagel business. but i love an everything bagel withsome bacon, scallion cream cheese, favorite thing in the world.

so we make a bagel bomb. it's this mother dough, we put a littlebit of sodium carbonate in the dough so that you get a little bitof the chew and the bounce that you might get in a bagel. we make rounds of baconscallion cream cheese. we wrap them around the dough,paint the dough with some egg wash, put everything, bagel seeds onit, and we baked the bagel bombs in a combi oven so it getscombination steam and convection. so it gets some of the nuances ofa bagel without competing with it.

that's a bagel bomb. and then in this lovely corner, youwill see some crescent shaped breads, which are croissants in theory. but we make a compound butter. i love croissants. they're so good. the thing about croissants is, it'ssort of like a chocolate chip cookie. it's already made and i get so excitedabout how croissants are made, right? you take this breaddough, you take butter

and you start folding layers in, almostlike you're playing double dutch. and i love that, butmy favorite croissants are the ones that arestuffed with ham and cheese. so i thought, well, obviously, we'rein the business of stuffing things into bread so why not challenge? so if i have butter, butter'sdelicious on its own, but man, we know how to makebutter taste even better than its original form. so we make compound butters.

this croissant, we make a kimchi butter. and we layer that into the mother dough,and then we stuff it with blue cheese when we're going to roll itup into a crescent shape. jenna: it's amazing. christina tosi: it's amazing. we make a pastrami and rye croissant. we take caraway seeds that areground down and almost polarized, we mix those into the butter, andagain, layer it into the bread dough. and then as we're going to roll thebread up into its crescent shape,

we stuff it with sliced pastrami,russian dressing, and sauerkraut. i hope you guys ate before you came. it's probably a terrible, terribleidea to talk about so excitedly. but again, we like to challengewhat exists and why it exists. and it's this sort of just spiritof curiosity with why does this work and how does it work andwhat if i try something new? and understanding whythings work, but also not being afraid to challenge how youcan evolve that thought process even further.

so that's our mother dough. yes. first question of the night. audience: how long did it takeyou to perfect your mother dough? christina tosi: how long did ittake us to perfect the mother dough? it's a constant work in progress. no. the theory of it, i thought, wedon't make shortcuts in our kitchen unless we really need to,unless they really matter.

i had been working on thetheory of the mother dough long before milk bar started. i'd worked as a pastry cook in akitchen and every night before service, i'd have to make this lavashdough, so this sort of bread dough, that i would spread apart onsheet pans and bake in the oven to make crackers for service. and i'd make these huge batches. but lavash is-- i mean it's paper thin. and i made this big batch ofdough and inevitably, there

was so much dough thatwould never get used. and so i'd sort of hoard it. and that night if i hadtime, or the next day, i'd come in and sort oflook at it and be like, i wonder what i can make you into? and so i would takethat dough and basically just like adulterate it inevery way you could imagine to wonder what else i could do with it. how forgiving would it be?

because a lot of time, it'slike, what's the breaking point? how forgiving can it be? but it's always been a work in progress. i think the fun part about milk barnow is because the mother dough was a work in progress longbefore milk bar opened, the fun part is getting to takewhat the mother dough was to me and seeing how other members of my teamtake it and look at it and go, like, oh, i wonder what if? i saw a few other hands.

ok, we're going to get shy. that's cool. what do we got? audience: do you use the samemother dough for the croissants? christina tosi: we do. we use the same motherdough the croissants, we do. we do. so we call them croissants,but they're not the same. they have the same layering.

so they get the same puff on the topfrom when the water in the butter bakes off and createsthose steam pockets that then create the sort of flakynature of the croissants, but the center of thecroissants are always like dense and stuffed full of blue cheese andpastrami and all these other things. and so that's always fun. we called them croissants becausethat's what they look like. i'll go back to that soyou guys can look at it. audience: is thereone pastry or anything

that you love that you thinkis already great as it is that you wouldn't want to [inaudible]? christina tosi: i think everypastry that exists largely is great as it is, which is why we don'tmake any of those pastries at milk bar. but why, we'll take our lovefor the-- i love apple pie. we don't make the applepie cake, because jenna is like, you want to knowwhat's overrated, apple pie. she always has an attitude about that. jenna: yeah.

christina tosi: we look at it,and we go, fall is coming up and how are we going to celebrateour favorite fall desserts? and we brainstorm what ourfavorite fall desserts are and then we go, ok, well how arewe going to best celebrate these without competing with what'sso beautiful about them in their original pastry form? so i would say largely,we love every pastry. and that's why we don't make any ofthose pastries one for one at milk bar. then i'm going to keep going.

you guys can shout itout whenever you want. ok, so we just opened our sixthstore in new york city in soho, which is this one. and the east village, isour original milk bar. in over six years, we've opens sixstores in the us and one in toronto. so if you guys are in new yorkcity, you should come and visit. williamsburg-- i keep getting it wrong. williamsburg is also wherewe do all of our baking. so we sort of operate ona hub and spoke model.

we realized really early onthat the best part of a bakery, if you strip down all of the fun flavorsand textures and the creative process, you have to have the mostconsistent product possible. and we realized that the onlyway we're going to do that-- and also we didn't want to saygoodbye to each other every time we opened a new store, --was tocreate one central kitchen that we all bake in together. and we do that behindour williamsburg store. and we also offer bakingclasses there on saturdays.

so if you guys are in the city--all of our stores are fun to visit, but the williamsburg store,depending on when you come, you might get a little peekinto the back of our kitchen. it's an 11,000 square foot kitchen. so we made more-- these cookies thatjust fed you was like-- jenna said, no problem. i got that. this is our team. some of you might recognize jennain some of these fun photos.

you get a little peek into a little bitof our kitchen in the photo up here. but we very much live inthat philosophy of how you do anything is how you do everything. and oh, that just disappeared. well, ok, there you go. and so how we live lifeand how we approach life and how we approach the relationshipsthat we have with one another, is how we approach time in the kitchenis how we love making desserts. and working in a kitchenis really hard work.

it's usually grueling and it'sonly fun if you make it fun and it's as fun as you make it. and it's as challengingand rewarding as you make it and you get to celebratethe successes and the failures with each other. so that's our team. but i'm feel like it'stime to get baking. enough about me. audience: how do you find great people?

christina tosi: how dowe find great people? that's a great question. it is always a work in progress. i think that if i had to stripdown all of the technicalities, i'd say great people attractgreat people, just in general. case in point. you sort of figure it out. we're very protective aboutwho we let through the doors and who we let on our team.

i am a long distance runner. i always want to ask peoplelike, what are your parents like? how did they raise you and areyou a long distance runner? because those are things that i know. i know for sure that are like,jenna's parents are amazing. and she's not a long distance runner,which is not a strike against her, at all, jenna. but there's somethingabout how you're raised. and the long distancerunning for me, is just

like the endurance of like just neverquitting and always going and just strong and steady. it's tricky to read that intopeople and to read that out of people in the moment. but a lot of it is also trained,where like if you're inspired, amazing things can come out of you. where like, even in someone thatyou might think is questionable, i think that if you area good person and you can inspire the love of what wedo in the kitchen, a lot of that

comes out of people in really cool ways. and that's part of thefun of hiring new people and watching then developinto these amazing people. so sometimes it's not just hiring greatpeople, it's hiring great potential and watching them become great people. that's hard. that doesn't pay the rent. i mean, it pays the rentin some way, but if it's by far the most valuable thing, themost valuable element, of our business.

i think probably of any business. it's corn flake chocolatechip marshmallow cookie time. how many of you guys have made cornchocolate chip marshmallow cookies at home? jenna: oh, yeah. christina tosi: how did they turn out? did anybody have cookiesthat fell flat or laced out? be honest. it's totally fine.

yeah, i know. it happens some times. so the reason that we wantedto bring this recipe with us, the corn flake chocolatechip marshmallow cookie is-- don't tell any of theother cookies, --is my favorite cookie. don't tell any of the other cookies. they're not here with us tonight. it's one of my favorite cookiesfor a few different reasons. it's the most-- it's a cookie that'sthe most similar to a chocolate chip

cookie for sure. it's also my favorite cookie becauseit has more butter and sugar in it than any of the other cookies we make. and that's a really trickysort of like-- like, you have to really defy all of thesort of elements of the universe in order to force that muchbutter and sugar into a cookie to make it taste that delicious. it is, because it just is. i used to work for a chef, and he sworethat his wife made the best chocolate

chip cookie. i was scarred at an earlyage as a pastry cook. and i'd always try to get to thebottom of why they tasted so good. and one day he was like, i think shesneaks extra butter into them when no one's looking. that's why they're so good. i thought, huh, that's areally interesting approach. what if i'd been using the wrongamount of butter the entire time, and all i need is to use more butter?

the problem with butter is, if you don'tmake the bonds in the mixing process, it's just going to bakeout onto your baking tray and your cookies are goingto fall flat and lace. and so we're going to get justa little dorky about what we do and how we create a nice protectivearmor around the butter and the sugar and how we help it defy gravity in thecorn flake chocolate chip marshmallow cookie in the process. so this cookie recipeis online for any of you that are going to feel superinspired after eating your cookie

or watching this stunt on stage. so all of our cookies,all of our baked goods, start with unsaltedeuropean style butter. pastry chefs usually--there's usually two camps. i'm in the camp ofpastry chefs that loves to bake with european style butter. and i also like to bake with salt. other pastry chefs swear by theexact opposite for their own reasons, which are completely legitimate.

european style butter is madewith dairy that's cultured before it's churned into butter. so it already has thisreally great depth of flavor. and i think a lot of thatis what adds to the sort of like, just depth of flavor thatyou taste in any of our baked goods. they're not good, they're great,because of this european style butter. now, we love to bake with salt, but welike to be able to control the salt. baked goods aren't just aboutbeing sweet and adding salt to a recipe that is a baked goodis not about it being salty.

so it's not about making asalted caramel every time. salt just helps bring out the flavor. it helps sharpen the edges of flavor. we don't add salt to make thebaked good taste salted or salty. but we like to be able to controlthe amount of salt that we put in. so we start with unsaltedeuropean style butter. we like to add the salt in withsome of the dry ingredients. audience: [inaudible]? christina tosi: we use plugrabutter, which is actually

made in pennsylvania, which is close. close. i like to always say,when you're baking, and you're at the grocery store,if you can make one choice, choose unsalted butter. because it's really important to beable to control the salt after the fact. if you make two choices,unsalted european style butter. all of our recipes start with it. sugar.

so this is-- if you were to comparethis recipe with the standard toll house cookie recipe, it looks almost the same. i just said that we add, that wesneak extra butter and extra sugar into the mix. it looks like the same onefor one amount of butter, if you're going to compare tothe toll house cookie recipe. but what we do is add less flour. so depending on how you lookat it, we either add less flour or, i like to describe it asadding more butter and sugar

because i think that'sa more fun and easy way to comprehend why it tastes so good. so light brown sugar,regular sugar, go to the bowl and we start the creaming process. most baked goods start bycreaming together fats and sugars to help start the batter. these are the hardestingredients to break down and to incorporate, which iswhy you start with them first. i'm going to crack-- we're goingto let this go for a few minutes.

one large egg. we bake with large eggs in our kitchen. i like the ratio of an egg whiteto egg yolk and vanilla extract. all baked goods, in myopinion, taste delicious and taste like home when theyhave vanilla extract in them. most of our recipes have alittle bit more vanilla extract than the average tollhouse cookie recipe. i realized-- one day, i was justlike, i wonder what would happen like, what's the breaking pointwith vanilla extract?

and i realized in doing so, that vanillaextract really adds-- it's not about it tasting like a vanillacookie, it's just something about the scents and the flavor thatit does sort of set in place in a cake batter, in a cookie batter, thattastes like, just a delicious baked good that your mom or your aunt oryour uncle or your neighborhood bakery made, that you have a relationship with. we learned really early on thatyou have to paddle the heck out of the butter and the sugar inthis stage to really make them like each other, to makethem bond together so

that they can defy gravity in the oven. i'm going to let jennatake over this part, so that you guys don't have tolisten to the whole mixer over here. what do we got up top? audience: what's the breaking point? christina tosi: what's the break point? that's actually a really good question. i don't know we've been goneso far with butter that we haven't been able to force it together.

audience: [inaudible]. christina tosi: say that again. audience: vanilla extract? christina tosi: oh, what'sthe vanilla extract, [laughing] i would say it's a matter of opinion. it just comes down to your palate. for like a standard batch ofcookies, like two sticks of butter, you can go as deep as three teaspoons,but it gets a little like you

kind of, start to winkat it a little bit. it's a matter of opinion,but we usually like to use like close to two teaspoons,which is almost twice what a standard chocolate recipe calls for. it depends on what you'reusing it in and what other flavors your offsetting with it. audience: what likeportion of your time is spent in recipe developmentversus production? christina tosi: whatportion of our time is

we have an 11,000 square foot kitchen. we have an entire production kitchenthat operates seven days a week. we also have a classroom, thisclassroom that i was telling you about that we teach classes in on saturdays. usually monday through friday,we develop recipes in there. so we have laundrylists of things that we want to create, either curiositiesor points of inspiration, like the black and white cookie. like i got to figure out whatour black and white cookie is.

because i love a black and white cookie. i haven't figured that out yet. all the way down to like actualtasks, where it's like, ok, we're going to change our menu. we need to come up withsoft serve flavors. or we need to changethe menu at ssam bar. what are some ideas? and we start to play in that process. but there's usually two or threeof us that are working on stuff.

i'm here tonight so i'm definitelynot part of the r&d process today. but i usually am more of like theidea and the taste tester now, more so than like the idea, thestarting point of recipes, ok, let's taste through them. bring the recipe. let's talk about what's happening. so i feel like i've become more of likethe michael, where everyone's excited. but then sometimes peopledon't listen for sure. pop quiz?

failed. but it's a completelycollective process. so five out of sevendays a week, we actually have individuals that are workingtowards recipe development and menu development. but i sort of always like to think ofit as well as like all day, every day. because it's amazing whereand when lightning strikes. when someone accidentallyadds molasses to a recipe. i hate molasses.

when somebody accidentally adds it andwe taste it, because we're like, well, we can't throw this away. we taste it and it's like,ok, this is disgusting. but it tastes like somethingmalted or malty or pretzely. and then all of a suddenit's like, all right, molasses is our new secretweapon ingredient when we want to make pretzel cake or wewant to make malted chocolate peanut butter soft serve or what have you. so at any point intime in our kitchen, we

could be just moments awayfrom a kitchen disaster that then turns into a really coolr&d uncovering which is really fun. how are we looking? jenna: good. i just added the egg and the vanilla. and now we're in a really crucialpart of our mixing process. christina tosi: ok. i was worried that ifi told you how long it was going to take that you guyswould stop paying attention.

so jokes on you. when we mix the corn flakechocolate chip marshmallow cookies and we're forcing all of thatextra butter and sugar together, we call it the 10minute creaming process. because we cream it for 10 minutes. and we don't cream it likeon medium for 10 minutes. we are agitating that suckeron high for 10 minutes. the butter and the sugarstogether, they start to get fluffy, they start to aerate, as youcan sort of see maybe down

into jenna's bowl a little bit. jenna: can you see? christina tosi: oh,yeah, you're good, girl. and then we add that one largeegg, cold, into the mixture. because if you cream the heck outof butter and sugar for 10 minutes, the friction that you're creating onthe sides of the bowl, at some point are just going to keep that butter upand it's going to start to liquefy, which is not going to be a good thing. so we use that egg as the armor.

it helps keep the mixturecold and that egg yolk really helps coat the butter andthe sugars that we are just trying to make love each otherand bond together in this process. christina tosi: say that one more time. can you over cream thebutter and the sugar? i would say, my definition ofovercreaming the butter and the sugar would be the butter andthe sugar liquefying. so usually, three to four minutes intothe process is when we add an egg. or in an our kitchen we make--this is probably a five quart bowl.

we make our cookies in 140 quart bowls. so it's a bowl that's big enough,jenna could take a bubble bath in it. jenna: it's like that. christina tosi: so we're addingmany, many, many cold, large eggs. and those egg yolks are reallywhat helps the process bond. audience: the [inaudible]theory about cooking is that you don't wantto cream the butter and the sugar for very long becausethe sugar boring holes in the butter is what aerates somethinglight and fluffy like a cake.

so, she mixes it togetherfor like 60 seconds. christina tosi: andthen is done with it. audience: what is your thought on that? christina tosi: what'smy thought on that? i love [inaudible] ithink she's amazing. when i make chocolate chip cookies athome, 60 seconds, 45 seconds, i'm done. to get the butter and the sugarsto bond together in this ratio, absolutely will not happen unlessyou start to incorporate air into the mixture in this capacity.

so part of it is ratio based. and then the other part of it is,what you want that and product to be. there's a really greatwebsite called serious eats. one of their writers did,i think, it's something crazy like a 10 page study on how tomake the best chocolate chip cookie. and he and has a diary of allthe things that he figured out. and one of them is creamingthe butter and the sugar. so it depends on the ratio of the two. and it's not just butter to sugar.

it's butter to sugar to therest of your ingredients, largely your dry ingredients. audience: you know what would happenif you creamed the butter and the sugar here for like 60 seconds and then addedthe egg and creamed for 10 minutes? christina tosi: oh, if i justcreamed the two together quickly and then added the egg? it'll still go like this. we start with cold butterand it's really hard to get cold butter just to evenconsider liking sugar if you only

mix it for 60 seconds. so part of it is also the temperatureof your butter in that stage. christina tosi: so westart with cold butter because we know that we're goingto be paddling the heck out of it for 10 minutes and wedon't want it to liquefy. it's largely that, butit's also easier for us to use cold butter because we store ourbutter cold, and it's harder to-- we get a more consistent product knowingthat every cook walks straight into the walk-in, grabs all thebutter cold and pulls it out.

rather than getting tothe point of, well, what i think is room temperature buttermight be different than someone else. and then all of a sudden,you have to probe the butter to understand whatthe starting point is. christina tosi: andusually-- in the question was, just going backto the comment of us baking with unsaltedeuropean style butter and then adding salt after the fact. and what the other camp that-- theother camp, that i mentioned is.

it's usually pastry chefs--well, the salts factor is usually a matter--now, no one get mad. but it's usually a matter oflike european style pastry chefs versus american style pastry chefs. i think american style pastry chefsare not as afraid to use salt. or that's just part of-- welike really sharp, bold flavors. and i think often times,you don't find that as much. the european style butter versus thenot, depending on what you're making, a lot of pastry chefthat make cakes and that

make really, really fluffy, delicate,like almost spongy, or foam cakes, european style butteralmost has a heftiness to it and will weigh down a recipe. we make american style cakes. so we're starting withbutter and sugar and then we're adding oil and other fats. it makes the crumb structure more dense. it makes those holds andair pockets much smaller. but that's the styleof cake that i prefer.

but usually the camp that dosnot like european style butter, doesn't like it because ofthe weight that it sometimes brings in more delicate recipes. ok cool. what do we got over here? jenna: one more minute. christina tosi: all right,we've got one more minute. i make, when i'm athome, if i'm not even willing to give 60 secondsto the creaming process,

i will melt the butter and go. again you're going to get adifferent texture in your end cookie, depending on how long youmix the dry ingredients, how cold the dough is before youscoop it and form it and bake it. you might get a littlelacing on the outside of the cookie, which is basicallyjust the butter baking out a little bit because it wasn'temulsified properly with the starch. it wasn't mixed infull and some of it was left to basically lace outand bake on the baking tray.

but that's essentially-- youcan do it with some recipes, but this cookie recipe has somuch butter that there's not-- if you don't create this bond early onin this process, you've got no chance. i, mean they'll be fine. they'll just be flat and lacy andyou'll see all the extra butter that you spend your money on your sheet tray. they end up tasting alittle greasy as such. so we're 10 minutes, done. so it's light, it's fluffy,it's glossy, it's voluminous.

all of these things have happenedduring the 10 minute creaming process. jenna: it's like lighter whenyou go to scrape down the bowl. feels lighter. christina tosi: feels lighter. and then, just like any cookie recipe,we're going to add our dry ingredients. so we have an all purpose flour. our all purpose flour actuallyhas a pretty high protein content. it has a protein contentthat almost makes it eligible to be a bread flour,which helps because we don't want

to add a lot of this flour and we wantit to-- if you think about what bread flour will do in abread recipe, it's going to hydrate and start to developthe gluten strands of bread dough that you think about. it's very strong. it wants to become bread, i supposeis the best way to think about it. all purpose flour isa little bit weaker. if you think about trying to makebread with all purpose flour, it's harder to get that formation.

it's harder to makethat sort of dough ball. we like to use a high protein flour,especially in this cookie recipe, because we all thisextra butter and sugar and it's going to want tobreak down and melt out. but we want to give it a littlebit more to sort of bond to. so we use this higherprotein all purpose flour. kosher salt, we alreadytalked about that. we like to use kosher salt as opposedto sea salt or our table salt, which is iodized salt.

mostly because koshersalt doesn't really taste salty, whereas i thinktable salt and sea, for my palate, it tastes salty. and again, the goal is not to makesalted corn flake chocolate chip marshmallow cookies. it's to make corn flakechocolate chip marshmallow cookies that are well balanced. kosher salt is the saltthat we use in our kitchen. there's some baking powderand there's some baking soda.

those are going to be leavenersthat help the cookie puff and spread and give great textureand flavor, believe it or not. so we mix these dryingredients together. we mix them together for avery short period of time. remember, we're adding thisflour that's pretty high protein. we're not trying tomake bread, so we need to be very conservativeabout the amount of time that we spend mixing the flourinto the butter, sugar, egg bond that we just made.

i like to stop when it'sthis weird shaggy mixture. does that look mixed? absolutely not, but guess what? we still have corn flakes, chocolatechips, and marshmallows to add. so the thing to think aboutwhen you're mixing is not just, ok, i know i need to adddry ingredients and i know it needs to be anice homogeneous mixture. it also has to beconsideration with what else you're going to do with thedough before it's done mixing.

so i mix it to this shaggy space. we're going to add our corn flakes. these are corn flake crunch actually,which is like a caramelized corn flake. they were on the crunchslide that we looked at. corn flakes. sugar and salt like we talked about,not a lot, just to round out the edges. milk powder, like wetalked about, just to add depth of flavor and some chewiness. some melted, unsalted european stylebutter, toasted off in the oven.

mini chocolate chips. we like to use minichocolate chips at milk bar. i like fancy chocolate, buti have the hardest time-- i don't like to adulterate chocolate. i like chocolate-- ifeel like chocolate chips are meant for chocolate chip cookies. and i feel really bad takingreally fancy chocolate and putting them into cookies. i also like mini chocolate chips.

they distribute nice andevenly, so you get a little bit of chocolate chip in every bite. and mini marshmallows. and these just get mixed together untilthey are a nice homogeneous mixture. christina tosi: that's a great question. so we have some cookie recipesthat we add glucose syrup to. glucose syrup is sort of-- i earned it. it's good. chef, it's good.

we add glucose syrup tosome of our cookie recipes. my favorite cookie is fudgy in thecenter and crispy on the outside, like i mentioned before. some cookies have a harder time,depending on the makeup of them, they have a harder timemaintaining that fudgy center. based on what we're mixingin, based on the ingredients based on the makeup of the formula. so in my head i wasthinking, all right, well, how am i going to get thiscookie to be fudgy in the center.

and glucose syrup is sort of likea less sweet version of corn syrup. it's less fluid so it's thickerand it's not very sweet at all. and i thought well, glucosesyrup, if i put it in a recipe, it makes it seem likeit's going to be fudgy. it has almost fudgy, likeclear, fudgy quality to it. so we added it to the cookiesoriginally to keep them fudgy in the center and crispy on the outside. and then we also realized thatwhen we were doing-- it worked, it worked great.

we also realized when we were doingthat, that they also helped keep them fudgy in the center for a longer periodof time because of the makeup of what glucose is, which is pretty cool. the cool thing about glucose isit has a very low water content. when you're mixing thingsinto a cookie dough, the thing that youreally don't want to do is add something that has ahigh water content because it's going to make your cookies bakeoff into almost like cakey, cookie-- i don't like cakey cookies.

i like fudgy in the center,crispy on the outside cookies. and so glucose syrup is a cooladd-in to get the right texture, but not to add such a water content thatit would sort of make the cookies puff or it would hydrate thecookies in a way that they would puff into cakey cookies. christina tosi: oh, there she is. sorry, i couldn't figure outwhere the voice was coming from. why do we use both baking powder andbaking soda and not one or the other? part of it is flavor.

i love the flavor that thetwo of them bring together. in like a standard toll house cookierecipe, it just calls for baking soda. baking powder, or baking powder thatyou usually find in grocery stores is double acting, so itacts, usually immediately, when it's hydrated in a recipe. that usually happensmore on the cake end. but then it also happensagain in the baking process. it provides-- it releases a gas,which helps your baked good puff. baking soda reacts the most whenthere's an acid introduced to it.

so in cakes, buttermilk, or lemonjuice or something like that. so i like what baking sodadoes from a flavor standpoint, but i find that the baking-- we putbaking powder in as well, because it helps give a little bit extra lift. and the way that webake our cookies, we'll bake them-- we almost underbake themslightly so that you get that lift and you get that crispy top. but we underbake them justslightly so that when they cool, there's still a fudgycenter and they almost

sink into themselves just a little bit. so you get the crispy element,but still the fudgy center. so the baking soda is there for purpose,but also because it's the flavor that you-- believe it or not,i know you don't probably think about baking sodabeing an awesome flavor. but it really does shape anuanced flavor of a cookie. and it's there for that reasonand for the leavening purpose. but we use baking powder as well toget a little bit more of that height when it acts the secondtime in a hot oven.

ok, so these corn flake chocolate chipmarshmallow cookies are in the oven. if we were at all worried about them,we would take them-- in our kitchen, we'd scoop them and we refrigerate them. sometimes we even freeze them. so we get the mixturesuper, super, super, cold. because what happens when youbake room temperature butter, well, it starts to melt a lot quicker,because room temperature is already a lot warmer than butter that's comeout of a 40 or 41 degree refrigerator. so we usually take this cookie doughand we refrigerate it in our kitchen.

that really helps sealthe deal and the bond that we made between thebutter, the sugar, and the egg. and it's an insurance plan so that thesecond those cookies hit a hot oven, the butter doesn't want tostart-- the butter doesn't want to sort of break up with thebutters and the egg and bake out. it allows the outside ofthe cookie to bake first before the butter starts to melt downand break down in the baking process. audience: what temperature do yourhave your kitchen [inaudible]? christina tosi: you'regoing to love this answer.

so the question was,what temperature do we have our kitchen and ourrefrigerator and our freezer? our kitchen is whatever temperatureit happens to be at that time of year. we do not have centralheating or air conditioning, which anybody that's ever-- anybody outthere that's a baker, i want a standing round of applause for that, because thatis a gravity-- that is like a-- that is the largest accomplished--creating baked goods in an un-temperature controlled kitchenis a very difficult thing to do. our refrigerator is usually live inthe 38 degree time, temperature range.

and our freezers, ourwalk-in freezers, usually live between negative five,usually negative 10 and zero, but usually largely inthe negative five zone. a lot of our units arelarge units, so they always go into defrost timeonce or twice a day. and the temperature willraise a few degrees. but we bake and an un-temperaturecontrolled environment. so there's no reasonwhy you can't get it done at home, unless you alsohave an temperature controlled

kitchen in your home. ok so the cookies are goingto bake for about 10 minutes. we bake then at 350in a convection oven. a convection oven is an oventhat has a large fan somewhere on one of its sides, above, below, thathelps distribute the heat of the oven, largely. some of you might have aconvection oven at home. some of you might havea conventional oven. a conventional oven is an oven thatjust has a heating element somewhere.

my heating element is inthe bottom of my oven. it's just like almost like alittle-- you can see it heat up pink when it starts to get warm. i had a conventional ovenbefore that heated from the top. it's basically just like a hot box. there's no fan that's distributing heat. if you're baking in aconventional oven, you want to bake and 25 degreeslower than a convection oven. so if you're baking these cookies athome, you want to bake them at 325.

a lot of that is just heat distribution. all right, jenna's goingto bake those cookies. and we're going makechocolate chip cake. christina tosi: yes. so the question was,have you played around with baking temperature for the cookies? we haven't played around with thebaking temperature of the cookies too much from a textural standpointand to get just the right crispiness, mostly because they cameout great the first time.

truth be told. we're in a safe place here. i'll just give it to you straight. we do bake in convection ovens thanare combi ovens and that are electric. so their sense of temperature and theirrecovery time is incredibly acute. it's very, very accurate. when we open the door, therecovery time is very, very short. that's part of the process. when we bake the crack pie, the piethat i showed you after the cereal milk,

because of the sugar in thatpie, the nature of that pie, we start the baking process at 350. but the top of the pie starts to-- thesugars in the pier start to caramelize, so we actually turn down thetemperature to 325 to let the center of the pipe finish baking. so we do play around withtemperature, but with cookies. yes, in the back. christina tosi: yes, the armor. say that again.

audience: do you need the whites? christina tosi: that'sa really great question. do we need the whites in the recipe? we have not-- i have not triedthe recipe without egg whites. i do think the egg white inthe recipe does help provide a little bit of the lift in the cookie. an all egg yolk cookiewould be super, duper rich, i would say maybe if we were makingthe cookie without the egg white, and just egg yolks, we'd need toadd either a little bit more egg

yolk or a little bit lessflour, because the whites also provide a specific moisturecontent that helps the formula. " we chose to add just yolks, i mightalmost think about taking away a little bit of the butter, not because i'mworried about the sort of armor quality of egg yolks, but more just therichness and the balance of flavor. because there such a thing islike too- too rich, too much. but that's a really good question. jenna write it down. we're going to test it out.

we'll be your cookie testers. ok, so chocolate chip cake. have any of you had thechocolate chip layer cake? it's a sleeper. jenna: not in my world. christina tosi: not in-- oh, none ofyou exist in jenna's world right now. you hurt her feelings. so we make these funlayer cakes at milk bar. they all make 14 differentflavors of layer cake.

and they all follow the same formula. one, they look funny. what happened here? why isn't there anything there? we don't frost any ofthe sides of the cake. i love cake. more than cake, i reallylove frosting, hands down, i could eat a tub of frosting. i think the thing that alwaysbothers me a little bit about cake

or before i decided that ishould do something about it instead of complainingabout it in my head, is that typically with cake, youget cake, frosting, cake, frosting, cake, frosting. or you just get get cake, frosting. and sometimes the cake'sdry, or the cake's fine. it's just fine. when was the last time youhad a cake that was awesome. it's usually just fine, in alayer cake capacity, right?

i'm not talking about likea flourless chocolate cake. i'm talking about layercake, capacity cake. it's usually just fine. sometimes it's dry. the frosting is almost always the bestpart, but then it's also usually like, ok, maybe it's vanilla,maybe it's chocolate, maybe it's lemon if you're lucky. there was never a lot offlavor personality in cakes. and that always sortof bummed me out, like,

where's the perspective,where's the point of view, where's the flavor and the texture? cake is also usually just soft, right? it's like soft cake, softfrosting, soft cake, soft frosting. so i thought, ok, what is my-- justm what's my cheesecake going to be, if i know i can't makecheesecake, if i know i can't make apple pie, what is itthat i am going to make with it? so with cake, i thought,ok, layer cakes. i can do that.

and i'm going to break it open. why not question what can orcan't be a layer in a layer cake? why does it just have to be frosting? how can i make fun flavorsof frosting and fun elements that could be layers in a layer cake. the one thing i didn'tshare with you guys is, i'm definitely a don't take yourselfso seriously person, but details, details, details, whenit really matters. i just am not fussy about cakes.

i could never understandgoing to culinary school-- i'd say 80% of my class wereobsessed with cakes, wedding cakes. and it was all about like,ok, i'm going to make this kind of boringcake frosting and then i'm going to drape some fondant over it. like, i get it, it's beautiful. it's beautiful. but like, i went toculinary school to eat and to learn how to feed you guysto eat and so, i was like ok, ok.

i'm not playing that game. i also just i don't have the capacityto make something look perfect. i'm a very comfortably human person. like i describe the milk barstyle as we're comfortably human. we are perfectly imperfectand we're not going-- i can't create a business based on cakesthat look perfect and don't taste good. it just doesn't make any sense to me. so i was like, i'm not going tocover the sides, i'm not doing it. i'm not doing it.

and if i'm going to take allthis time trying to figure out flavors of cake and flavorsof fillings and layers and textures, why would i hideit behind a bunch of frosting? i'm going to save the frosting and bringit home with me and eat it after work and then we'll leave the cakesto sort of speak for themselves. so all of our cakeslook a little like this. people call it naked, which makesme feel uncomfortable personally. they're not naked, they're good. they're good.

they are what they are. but so this is just a littlebit of a story of a layer cake. i just don't want anyone to freak out. this is what they look like. 14 different flavors,they're all different colors. each of them is meant to sort of drawyou into the flavors that are inside and layered up. so the cake batter, i think isa really fun study in emulsions because it's all about bubblesand it's all about space,

so we'll talk about that. so it starts off, just like the cookies,with unsalted european style butter. this cake, like i mentioned a littlebit earlier, is an american style cake. so it has a lot of fat it it. it's not a sponge cake,it's not a foam cake, it's not based on aegg whites or aeration. it gets its height from leaveners,so baking powder and baking soda, just like the cookies, but in alittle bit larger of capacity. it also gets its height from eggs,which we'll talk about in a second.

so unsalted european stylebutter, light brown sugar, granulated sugar, easy enough, this, we start the creaming process. it gets three large eggs, easy enough. let's crack those here. and then vanilla extract. i don't know if you can see how much. there's a lot of vanillaextract for a layer cake. but the layer cake itself ischocolate chip layer cake.

so we're making a chocolatechip cake to start. and i want this chocolatechip cake to taste almost like a chocolate chip cookie, soi'm going to add a lot of vanilla extract to it. this cake itself is chocolatechip, passion fruit, and coffee. and the inspirationbehind this cake is sort of a riff on a fancy pastrychef triumvirate of flavors that is often used coffee,chocolate, and passion fruit. if you think about if, they'reall bitter, they're all sweet,

they're all floral. and so, i figured it wouldbe fun to make a layer cake in our fun, comfortably human way,based off of very fancy pastry chef tastes and flavors. so the mixture gets creamed together. we're not creaming it theway that we would the cookie. we're not going for the 10minute creaming process, we're just looking to incorporatethe butter and the sugars together. i'm going to add the eggsone by one into the mixture.

i don't add one egg until the eggbefore it has disappeared and dissipated into the mixture. easy enough. do any of you guys makecakes from scratch at home? that's impressive. the one thing i didn'ttell you is, i was never taught how to make a cakefrom scratch in this capacity until-- not even actuallyin culinary school. in culinary school, they teachyou how to make a genoise

or a lot of these european style cakes. i had to figure out the americanstyle cake a little bit for myself. but i'm always impressed by thosethat make cakes from scratch at home. i don't know why. it's not that hard. but i just never-- sorry,it's not that hard. sorry. that wasn't nice. it's mind over matter, whereit's a very simple technique.

but i think it shows just likea capacity to get in there and get in the kitchen. and i just never, ever-- it alwaysseems like the most glamorous thing to do in your home kitchenwhen i was growing up. so american style cake, we addedone egg, we added two eggs. after we add the second egg after thefirst egg disappeared into the mixture. so after we are confidentthat was well mixed, we're going to add this last eggwith a little bit of vanilla extract. at this point, the batteris starting to get we,

but we have a lot morewet ingredients to add. we still have buttermilkthat we're going to add. and we still have grape seedoil that we're going to add. the buttermilk that we'readding is for flavor. it also has an acidity that willhelp react with the baking soda later on in the recipe,that'll help create those foamy bubbles and thatheight that you get from cake. the problem withbuttermilk is when i add it in this stage, the butter and thesugar and the eggs get really pissed.

they don't want-- they do not wantthe buttermilk in the mixture. but the buttermilk's got to go in. and buttermilk, we know,is not an emulsifier. wasn't on that list. it's not providing any sort ofarmor, but we need it in the mixture. a lot of times in recipes, they'llhave you alternate wet and dry. so they'll have you alternatebuttermilk, flour, buttermilk, flour, buttermilk, flour. i can't.

it's just, why? it's too much. i don't feel like doing it. i don't want to do it. so what we do do, we stillhave grape seed oil to add. it's too fussy. i don't like doing it,so i'm not doing it. we don't do it at milk bar. we do have grape seedoil that we need to add.

we use grape seed oil andcanola oil, vegetable oil, an oil that is flavorlessand odorless, we'll do here unless you want the odor or theflavor to incorporate into the cake. so pumpkin seed oil, if you'remaking pumpkin seed cake or olive oil, if you want olive oil cake. i start to add some ofthe grape seed oil in, and the grape seed oil,funnily enough, really helps the emulsification ofthe batter at this point. it's like the social lubricant forthe party that's happening in here.

if a cook adds too muchbuttermilk, it just starts to look like a crazy separatedmass and my favorite thing to do is to walk over and startpouring in the grape seed oil and letting the mixture go, becauseit makes it look like miracle worker. all i did was add-- so i'm just going to show you know howcrazy it looks right now because you get you guys are superimpressed when the grape see oil comes into play a little bit more. you see that?

it looks like it's curdled. it looks like i just made cheese. let's get a little spotlight in here. yeah ok, it;s not going tolook like that in a second. audience: what does the buttermilk add? christina tosi: what does it add? audience: yeah. christina tosi: so if it addsflavor, believe it or not. it's similar to the leaveners.

that we add, where it will add flavor. it also adds the acidity thatbaking soda needs to react properly in that leavening process. so i'm just going alongwith the buttermilk. i'm sick of taking my time. and grape seed oil's comingin so get ready, guys. it's about to happen. a european cake is usuallyand largely egg-based. there's usually not a tonof fat in a european cake.

and it's usually very delicate. there's usually not baking powder andbaking soda in it to act as a leavener. you typically take egg whitesand you whip them up over here. if there even is egg yolks in therecipe, you'll aerate them separately. you'll very delicatelyincorporate the two so that you don't deflate the batter. because you're reallydepending on that height that you've established to maintain inthe baking process so that it keeps on. every once in awhile you will fold ina tablespoon or two of melted butter.

you can't taste it. why would you put butter insomething that you can't taste? i don't know. ok so, we're almost there. this is looking a little bit better. you guys see that? a little bit better, it's almost there. we're going to let it gountil it's nice and glossy. i'm going to let jenna to take overthis, so i can ask you guys questions

or you guys can ask me questions and notbe bored by watching grape seed oil go. michael brenner: can i say something? so i've got to say this. christina tosi: get in there. michael brenner: i've got to say this. michael brenner: ok,i'm allowed to say this. so, do you know what it iswith the grape seed oil? christina tosi: tell me. michael brenner: it's avolume fraction thing.

christina tosi: oh, slamit's a volume fraction thing. michael brenner: because you know,it's the volume fraction of-- it's the volume-- i have my own mic. i don't think it works though. does my mic work? so it's a volume fraction thing becausewhat matters, remember i told you 63%? remember i told you 63%? christina tosi: i've got anapron over here to prove it. michael brenner: you guys didn't know.

that's going to be the questionnext week, what percent. so if you calculate-- people should gohome-- i'm sure your recipe's online. christina tosi: yeah, it is. michael brenner: so i'm sureyou could go and calculate the volume fraction of oil inthere and the buttermilk has water, so you've increased the amountof water, so the volume fraction has gone way down. so you've got to push it up. christina tosi: you'vegot to push it back up.

michael brenner: andit's going to go up 63%. anyway-- christina tosi: volume fraction. michael brenner: volume fraction. christina tosi: homework for next week. i feel like as aprofessor, you're not even supposed to tell them what they'regoing to be tested on next week. you all got a free pass. 63%.

in the back. christina tosi: how dowe feel about macarons? i think they're deliciouswhen made properly. i think often times-- i think dessert,in general, when made properly is delicious. it's hard, it's hard withcertain desserts that become so trendy that peopleget so excited about them, that they forget techniqueand nuance and they're supposed to have certaintexture and consistency.

we don't make macarons. we don't make them for the same reasonthat we don't make other things. i know that other peopleare super excited about them and they often choose flavor orinspiration over technique or end product. and i think that has largely mademacarons a tricky subject matter because people either love themor they like to be haters on them. i love a delicious macaron. macarons are really, really difficultto make and to make properly, but--

christina tosi: the techniquethat i was raised and taught, was, after you go throughwhipping the egg white, and after you delicatelyfold in almond flower and so on, and afteryou grind down the 10x and the almond flour together and pushit through a sieve and then fold it, and you go to pipe these macarons,it's to let them sit for two hours, so that a very thin skin forms. and that skin forms because theair is drying out the surface. aside from the composition of therecipe, that is the number one--

that's how you can alwaystell me a good macaron from-- audience: what about thebeating of the egg whites? christina tosi: questionable. audience: there is a breaking point? there's a breaking point, that'sthe temperature of the egg white. it's how much sugar, salt you're addingto help keep it stable and stiff. it also comes down tohow often you're folding in your 10x and your almond flourthat have been ground together and sieved out.

so many factors that couldbe a success or a failure. i love them but it bums meout when someone calls-- i learned in culinary school-- i learned many things, butone of my favorite takeaways was when you havesomething on your menu, you're making a promiseto your customers. so if you're going tocall something ice cream, it damn well better be ice cream. or if you're going to callsomething a cake, of if you're

going to call something a pie, orif you call something a macaron, that's what it needs to be. it can't just be like your best attemptat it or your kind of attempt at it. if you're going to call it something,you're making that promise. you're creating that expectation. there's nothing worse than when youorder like a dessert at a restaurant and you're like, i thought it wasgoing to be something different because the menu said it was something. and i think sometimes that's whathappens with macarons because people

get so excited about thepotential enthusiasm behind them that they forget that theyalso have to be macarons. nice and glossy. look at that, volume fracture. coming back up. buttermilk has been saved. jenna: you're getting an a plus. now, teach. christina tosi: so, it'sdry ingredient time.

we're going to add cake flour. we're going to add kosher salt. we're going to add bakingpowder and baking soda. same reason, but different reasonsfor the baking powder and baking soda in this recipe. for leavening, forheight, the baking powder is going to start to reactwhen we add it to this mixture. the baking soda and the bakingpowder in its second iteration will react when they hit theoven, the baking soda when

it hits the acidity of thebuttermilk, the baking powder when it hits the heat the oven a second time. i'm going to let jenna takethis away and look at these. oh, did you guys see these, by chance? we're going to give thoseaway at the end of class. so i hope you guyswere paying attention. jenna: i'm just adding a little slower. so jenna's adding thedry ingredients and then she's going to add-- she'sgoing to paddle them together.

we're going to get the cake baked off. what other questions do you guys have? christina tosi: in thesupermarket, we get-- christina tosi: doubleacting baking powder. double acting baking powder isprobably the most common baking powder that you find in grocery stores. single acting, i think stillexits, but not so frequently. single acting baking powder onlyacts when it hits and hydrates. it doesn't react again in the oven.

and the reason they createddouble acting baking powder was because if it only reactsonce when it hits the mixture, it means like jenna's going way tooslow for single acting baking powder. like, you got to hit it in thebatter and get it in the oven because that's the only opportunityyou have for that baking powder to release the carbon dioxide tocreate those big gas and the tunneling that you get and the heightthat you get in cakes. michael brenner: let's tryto mics, because otherwise-- audience: accordingto your book, you seem

to be a very big fan of americanbutter cream frostings as opposed to look like a baked frostingor a european frosting. christina tosi: yeah. audience: can you talk about why? we have-- what's thebest way to put this? i clearly had an issue with thecake unit of culinary school. there was this huge lead upto the butter cream unit, like you are going to go crazywhen you have this frosting. it;s the best frosting you'veever had before in your life.

and i just-- it was socomplicated and over the top and it didn't taste that great. i mean it tasted great. there's butter in it, there'ssugar in it, it's fine. but it was so tricky and it seemsso froufrou in a way that was like, ok, well, you have to bring yoursugar to the right temperature. and then you have to pourit into your whipping egg whites that have to be just so. and then you have to add yourbutter chunk by chunk by chunk

until it dissipates. and i just thought, like, i knowhow to make icing taste good. i've been eating it all my life. and i just-- also the nuanceof a european style buttercream is harder to get additional flavors in. and we're going to makecoffee frosting next, which is one of my most favoritethings to make because it's simple, but also to really helpexplain emulsifications and how they affectwhat i do for a living.

i just didn't like the parameters andthe makeup of a european style butter cream. i didn't like the fussiness of it. there were way too many pitfalls inthe process and it was too fussy. and i also found thatbecause of the makeup of it, it's really easy to break down. it's really hard to make the day beforeand then bringing it back to life takes almost as mucheffort and then trying to get other flavors into itbecame very, very, very difficult

and i just thought, get rid of this. i can make frosting andbutter cream on my own. so we are going to make-i'll show you guys- and i was raised by this funnymom that loved to make box cake and i was raised by grandmothersand they made frosting one way. and honestly, that is the waythat we make frosting today. we don't make boiled frosting. we don't make anythingother than this frosting. it's really simple and it's reallyeasy to alter the flavors of it.

it's butter, unsaltedeuropean style butter. it's confectioner's sugar. we paddle those two suckers togetheruntil the butter has broken down and we're going to make thisfrosting in a coffee frosting. when we are creatingrecipes and we're trying to figure out what flavor we want inwhat vehicle, so in this case, coffee into a frosting, we have so manydecisions we have to think about. one, what type of frostingdo we want to make? inevitably, it comes backto this very simple style

of frosting and how are wegoing to get the flavor in? so when you think about coffee, i couldskin this cat so many different ways. i can just add coffee, butcoffee is largely water-based. so it's going to alter my volume. it's going to plummetmy volume fraction. michael brenner: plummetthe volume fraction. christina tosi: it's not good. it's going to separate. it's not going to emulsify.

this is not good. no one wants an unemulsified frosting. can you hand me one more spatula? jenna: yeah, of course. christina tosi: i can add espresso. espresso works. espresso is a little bitbitter and i don't know. i don't want it to taste like espresso. i want it to taste like coffee,i could-- what else could i do?

i could melt the butter andtry and brew coffee through it or try and do like apour over with coffee. i start going in all theseplaces of like how can i do it? we tested so many differentrecipes for coffee frosting and we ended up taking whole milk,instant coffee, and some kosher salt, and the instant coffee really allowsyou to get a depth of flavor in there without having to add too much milk. so you can really, reallycontrol the depth of flavor against the amount ofmilk but you're adding in.

now, the hardest partabout creating something is it's really easy todream up an idea, but it's really hard to make it into a reality. i'm going to let youfinish while i talk. and the hardest part aboutsomething like this coffee frosting is i know i need to addcoffee in some degree. the instant coffee really needsthe milk to dissolve itself, right? maybe some of you eatinstant coffee granules, but i don't-- i want it to be smooth,and i want it to have the flavor

of coffee. so i can't just paddleinstant coffee into my butter. i need enough liquid to hydrate thatinstant coffee into a coffee flavor. but i also know that i onlyhave a certain allowance for the amount of liquid that i canadd into this frosting before it breaks and it separates. and this coffee frosting likeliterally comes right up to the line, in terms of keeping that emulsificationintact and separating it out. and that is the hardestpart of the job, where

it's like knowing when to say when. i wish that more ofus took these classes to be able to be able toreally calculate the math and understand-- weunderstand why it's happening. we understood how it'shappening, but sometimes we don't understand what the like, whatthe very, very, very, very, very-- what the tipping pointis and what amount we can add before it tips over and so on. and that's the coolestpart of the job too,

is sort of getting to learn about thescientific process through something as simple as like, i wantto make a coffee frosting, but it needs to be able to besmooth enough to spread and so on. coffee frosting. how are we looking over there? are we good? are we making it happen? jenna: yeah, we're making it happen. christina tosi: butfrosting is one-- frosting

is one of those funny things where itreally is all about-- unless you just want your frosting to taste like butterand sugar, which is what we have in here, you really have to figureout how you're going to get that sucker to emulsify and what you'readding in it, and how you're adding it, to really tell the flavorstory that you want. so it's sort of likemaintaining your imagination, but also understanding whatis and what isn't possible, and why it is or isn't possible. and understanding allthe different vehicles

that you can bring thatflavor into the picture and how you're goingto get maximum flavor for the consistency and the texturethat you want your end product to be. audience: i have a question aboutone of your other frostings. i don't know if youconsider it frosting, but i had the opportunityto try your popcorn cake. and it was amazing. i'm wondering what thecorn fudge is and how that that's made if youwant to go into detail.

i would love that. christina tosi: sure. so, we have a cake onthe menu at momofuku ssam bar that is a popcorn cake. it was born entirely frominspiration at the movie theater. and we make the cake itself bychallenging what a flour can be or challenging whatstarch in a recipe can be. we basically take popcorn and wegrind it down, popped popcorn, and we grind it down intowhat we call a flour,

and then we pass itthrough a sieve or a tami, to sort of keep some of the kernels upand try and create a flour out of it. we do that with a lot of things. we do it with pretzels. we do it with anythingthat can grind down, we'll use as a partial flour replacementto really get that flavor in. one of the layers of the cake-- so wedon't only make cakes with frosting. some of our cakes, or a lot of ourcakes don't even have frosting. we'll use curds, we'll usejams, we'll use jellies.

we'll use, in this case,what we call a popcorn fudge. the popcorn fudge is very muchlike a ganache, in that it's a white chocolate based. a ganache is justtypically chocolate-based and there's some fat in it. so you're almost making like apliable or spreadable chocolate. we take white chocolate. we-- jenna: sorry.

christina tosi: she gets so distracted. did you guys hear me ask her to help meand then she was like, i'm out of here. we make a fudge or a ganachewith white chocolate and butter. we add some of that popcorn. we actually take some of the popcornand we blend it with heavy cream. so we make like a popcornflavored heavy cream. we blend it. we strain it. because we don't want the mouth feel ofthe popcorn, we just want the flavor.

and where you would typicallyput heavy cream in the recipe, we put this popcorn cream. and we make this popcornfudge or popcorn ganache. so that's very similar to thecereal milk theory, right? it's like i know how to make thisflavored milk, and in this case, it's popcorn milk orpopcorn heavy cream. and where can i put it ina recipe that is subtle, the recipe itself is subtleenough that it's just waiting for flavor to come in this vehicle.

in this case, it's heavy cream. popcorn fudge. audience: birthday cake trufflesare my personal favorite. how did you create those andany other history around those. christina tosi: we make a birthdaylayer cake, which is on the first slide that i showed before wegot into cereal milk. the birthday layer cake and thereforethe corresponding birthday truffles are born from the boxcake mix of my childhood. my mother always made funfettibox cake and she topped it

with that sort of like tub, thatshelf stable tub of frosting, that had little rainbow bits in it. it took us two yearsto develop that recipe. i know it sounds crazy. because we could get it very,very close and almost just right. but when we would do aside by side tasting, we could never quite get there. we learned that clear vanillaextract, which does not naturally occur in this environment, was thesecret in place of your standard,

like darker tahitian vanilla extract. and we also found that thingslike citric acid and baking powder in the frosting werenuances that we found by looking at the backof the box of cake and the back of the box offrosting, that brought flavor in ways, in little nuances of flavorthat we would have never expected. so for every layer cake thatwe make, we make cake truffles, which are little bites of cake. and i will sort of show you when i cutthis cake-- this is our chocolate chip

cake here. i'm just going to give youguys a little look see. we made it for you ahead oftime just so you didn't have to wait for the real thing to bake. we make these layer cakes--we bake all of our cakes in pans like this,whether it's birthday cake or whether it's chocolatechocolate chip cake. so that we have a niceeven bake across the board. the other thing thatbummed me out about cakes

was that when you go to bake themin a traditional round cake pan, you pour all the batter in, sometimesyou even pour it across three, but the problem when you're sitting ina metal or aluminum of some sort tin, is that you get weird heat conductivity. and depending on how muchyou're baking, you're getting cake that'soverbaked on the outside so that's perfectly baked in the center. or you're getting cake that'sunderbaked in the center to be perfectly based on the outside.

so we got smart and said, well,what if i just take the cake batter and pour it into a sheetpan and bake it like that? that's how i know i can get themost even consistent bake of cake. the only problem is that youget this rectangular cake and you're trying tomake this and you're trying to make it into a six inch round. so when we make this cake, we punchout the rounds of cake that we need. one, two, and the third round wepiece together with two halves. but what happens after the fact is,i have all this delicious cakes scrap

left over and it's still good. it's still servable. but i have but everytime i make a layer cake. so to make the birthday cake truffleor the chocolate chip cake truffle, we take the scraps from the layercakes, and we mix them together with a liquid that wechoose that has flavor and that's going to add to theflavor profile of the layer cake and therefore the cake truffles. in chocolate chip cakes,it's passion fruit puree.

this is also what we use tosoak the layer cake with. so we bind these cake scraps together. for a birthday cake, we takethe birthday cake scrap, we bind it together witha vanilla scented milk. so we take some whole milkand mix it with a little bit of that clear vanilla extract thatwe found was the secret weapon. bind it together, roll itinto fudgy little cake balls, and then we toss that in a thinlayer of melted white chocolate. that acts as a glue forthe outer coating which

is just a sandier version of thecake that we call birthday sand. and that, melted white chocolatelayer, it acts as a glue, but when it sets up, when it'schills out and it changes its phase, it creates a freshness anda shell and a freshness seal to keep the inside of the chocolatecake truffle or the birthday cake truffle, nice and fudgy and in thebirthday cake case, vanilla scented. audience: [inaudible]--with brown butter. and so when you make it any likebaked good with brown butter, you're melting the butter and thusbreaking the emulsion into the milk

solids and the butter fat. so i was wondering how youcombat like creaming method. do you like switch overto quick bread method or like how do you usually combat that? christina tosi: when we makecakes or cookies or something that we add brown butter to,because brown butter is butter that's literally browned in a pan. and browned is probablya generous description. it's burned.

and you have to burn it to bring outthe nuttiness of the caramelized milk solids. that's sort of what you getwhen you get brown butter. but when you do that, you arechanging the makeup of butter. typically you do it as well all thewater content in butter goes away. it evaporates it inthe browning process. when we make recipes with brown butter,we don't just use a one for one. like ok, well, if i'm using twosticks of butter and i'm browning it, then i'm just going to use those twosticks in my corn flake chocolate chip

cookie recipe. what we do is we'lltake that brown butter and we take it further thanyou maybe you might imagine. like it's burned, it's burnedto the bottom of your pan. and then we have adifferent ratio-- we then also use regular butter in the recipewhether it's a cookie or cake or a pie and we start the process just as thoughbrown butter was an additional add in later in the process. and we add those sort of brownbutter bits as flavoring elements.

they certainly still havea fat content to them. so the formula is different. we wouldn't just take it and addit into the chocolate chip cake batter in the same way. but we don't treat it asthough it is butter, even though it's butter in a different form. and that's the secret i've learned. i have worked for pastry chefs thatmade brown butter cake or this or that, and it never came out the same,because they were basing the butter

content of the recipeoff of brown butter, and depending on whomade the brown butter, you're taking it further or lessfar and so it's makeup changes, and we'd always get aninconsistent product. so we started treating it at milk baras almost like an add in ingredient. and we'd burn it, we'd take it further. we'd take it super, super, super, far. and we don't treat it as thoughit's a butter in a recipe. audience: do you guys useexclusively combi ovens

and what besides the [inaudible]? christina tosi: we do useexclusively combi ovens. we use exclusively combi ovensbecause all of our recipe testing, it's sort of one of thosefunny accidents where those were the only ovens thatexisted at the restaurants when i first started at momofuku andso all of the recipe testing that i did happened in those combi ovens. in the restaurants we use them to cookproteins, we use them to steam eggs and so on and so forth.

we use the combi ovenslargely on convection to bake. for the combinationfunction, we only use the combination function of steamand convection to make bagel bombs, but we use the steamfunction to steam buns. we make pork buns and veggie buns. steamed buns are essentially like breaddough that is steamed instead of baked. we steam eggs. but we don't steams eggs at 212. we'll steam them lower at 145.

and that's the coolpart of a combi oven. it allows you-- itcreates a false-- i mean, can you create steam at atemperature lower than 212? in theory, i mean,sorry, in real terms, no. but essentially the oven keeps at atemperature that's lower than 212, and it injects steam inor water in and knows how much it can inject with thatspiking above the set temperature. but we use it for many differentthings but on the combination function of steam and convection the bagelbombs are the only thing that we use

or that we back in that capacity. michael brenner: so may i justyou know what i'm going to do? can we ask christina andjenna to finish the cake because i know i think youguys could, and this is great, ask questions all night. but the only thing that worries me is,there's a book signing outside where-- christina tosi: oh, am i signing? i'm signing books. and i mean, christina lookslike she has infinite energy,

but i'm afraid at some point, she mayrun out of energy to sign the books, which might be bad. so why don't we let themfinish up this cake. and then we'll take oneor two more questions. and then christina can sign books. christina tosi: you're going to clap? michael brenner: butnot until you're done. we always clap. i mean of course, we should clap.

we should clap twice. let's clap. christina tosi: thefunny thing is i know it seems like it's going to takemore than like three minutes to make this layer, to assemble this layer cake. but jenna and i are true professionals. so you're going to watchher zoom through it. as i talk you through what's happening. so best part about layer cakes.

what? what's happening? go, go, go, go, go. jenna: did you use a timer? christina tosi: thebest part layer cake is that everyone thinks you haveto be like fancy and worried about all these things. you don't. we baked our cake evenlyin that baking tray.

we cut out two roundsthat look pretty good. truth be told, you need onereally good looking top of it. we need one really good round. that's going to be the top of your cake, when you're looking at this cake, youcan't see what's happening down below. you can only see what's happeningup top here on this top layer. so the prettiest round's for top. the second prettiest roundis the center of the cake. what people won't tell you isthat the bottom round-- no, i know

i think you're laughing, guess what? this is what we do every single day. people think that you needthis beautiful round of cake to make a layer cake. we take some of thecake scraps but enough to leave some leftover for take truffles and we piece together abottom layer of the cake. cake is a bummer when it'sdry and crumbly, right? so in pastry school theyteach you to soak a cake.

typically they teach you soak a cakewith simple syrup or liquor, a liqueur. i can get on board with that. but i just like simple syrupdoesn't taste like anything. it's sugar water andwe're not hummingbirds. you know it's true. and it's a missed opportunity, likemany things in the pastry world, in the culinary world, it's amissed opportunity to add flavor. and the story of our cake isall about chocolate and passion freedom and coffee.

so we soak the cake witha passion fruit puree. anything that's flavor and hasliquid, can be a cake soak. anything that's flavorin a liquid form can also be the binder for a caketruffle, so for cake scraps. passion fruit down. then we put three layers in the cakebefore we put the next physical cake layer on top. we have two spreadable fillingsand one textural filling. this is the formula everymilk bar cake and is made of.

so cake, soak. one spreadable filling. the first spreadable filling is usuallythe filling that's harder to spread. in this case, it's passion fruit curd. we made it before youguys came, just because we didn't want to show off too much. so passion fruit curd goes down. passion fruit curd ispassion fruit juice. it's eggs that are cooked with passionfruit juice, some sugar, and some salt.

off the heat, once theeggs thicken, we add butter, and a little bit of gelatin. the gelatin helps keepthe curd in a nice state. michael brenner: it emulsifies it. jenna: what was that? emulsified state. so that it naturally won'twant to separate out too much. but we need it to be happilyemulsified as a layer cake because it's going to changetemperatures a few times when

we make it and freeze it and defrostit and serve it at room temperature. and that helps that emulsificationwithhold the process. the textural layer that we're puttingin the cake is chocolate crumb. so crunch, a crumb, anything thathas texture and flavor and helps tell the story can be a layer of cake. it's also a really funsurprise because you can only like kind of sort of tell thatthere's anything else in there when you look at the cake, sochocolate crumbs go down. the next layer is oursecond spreadable filling.

and in this case, it's coffee frosting. and so cake, soak, spreadable layer one,textural layer, spreadable layer two, and then we build it up again. remember we're saving our mostbeautiful layer for the top, and our second most beautifullayer for the middle. all the way up. chocolate chips to garnish. what we do is we take thecake and we freeze it. we freeze it so that allof the fillings firm up.

we also freeze it because we'rebuilding this cake in a cake ring that has some acetate in it. the acetate helps provide astructure and collar to the cake because they don't make manycake rings as tall as this cake. most pastry chefs useacetate for chocolate works. you typically use tempered chocolate. you make something prettyand delicious out of it. you leave it on a pieceof this acetate to set. and then when you peel it offyou get this beautiful shiny film

on the bottom. so we apply the same theoryhere and for our cake. so that when we go to takeour cake out of the freezer, and we peel the acetate back, we getthis really beautiful finished edges. because of what wealready discussed earlier, we're not going to spend our timemaking that cake look picture perfect. and so this really helps the process. all the way back up, oh, sorry. all the way back up again, layerby layer by layer by layer.

i'm going to let jenna finish. you guys look so intrigued bywhat's going on on the screen. it's like a movie. i think a lot of people think cakes haveto be perfect, and just so and as you guys saw jenna, weuse the back of spoons that we bend at an angle as wellas our little offset spatula. and it's how about getting the flavorand the feelings in there in order, so that when you go to take a bite ofthe cake, that's what you're tasting. but it never happens perfectly.

that's not what happensin real cake world, but all of the feelings thatdo get layered into a cake get layered and just so, so that they'reall emulsified in and of themselves, but they're also and the correctdensity or the correct weight, so that you don't haveone filling that's heavier than another, that then bows out. or when you go to cut thecake, not like you smush down on a burger and all of thecondiments come out of the side. i think that's good.

jenna: oh that was really good. christina tosi: so cake, soak,passion fruit curd, chocolate crumbs, coffee frosting, and she'lllayer it up one more time. i think she gets a round of applause. michael brenner: i can't help butobserve that everything in this cake is an emulsion with avolume fraction above 64% except for one thing,which is this puree. christina tosi: the passion fruit puree? the passion fruit puree,which is a liquid.

but there's stuff inthe liquid and that's because the volumefraction is less than 63%. but it's viscous. it's more viscous than water. christina tosi: it is. michael brenner: it'smore viscous than water. and that's last week. that's what you all missed withthe question for last week. so let's do one more question.

i think, maybe two more. don't you think? christina tosi: yeah, sure. you can ask me questions-- if youdon't get a chance to ask me questions, you can ask me questions whenyour book signed out there. how's that? what have we got? michael brenner: turn on your microphonebecause otherwise we can't hear you. audience: --of beating roughlyhow small are the air bubbles--

michael brenner: ooh,such a good question. audience: and how largedo they get during baking? christina tosi: youwant to take this one? michael brenner: can i take that one? we thought about bringing amicroscope here to put on the side so that we could answer that question. i mean the one problem is that thisbatter is so thick that i think we wouldn't have been able to get athin enough layer to actually make the measurement on the slide.

on the other hand, it is true, youknow, the mayonnaise making contest that i told you at thebeginning i thought was silly when i waspresenting it, i thought why am i talking about amayonnaise making contest. i had no idea you were goingto beat for 10 minutes, which is exactly how you get the same volume. it's the same thing. so those air bubbles are getting,i'll be you they're 10 microns. and then when you bake,right, then there's

carbon dioxide gas that's releasedthat basically puffs them up. it would be a good experimentif you were taking this class, we would tell you this wasa great project to work on. christina tosi: assignments. michael brenner: no,it's not an assignment. it's a project. christina tosi: project. project. audience: can you talk a little bitabout how your design process differs

for the desserts that you design forthe mike bar versus the plated desserts at the restaurants? christina tosi: yes, i absolutely will. we typically become--the design process is not that much different is the short answer. the long answer is that wethink, often times of desserts, whether there are the desserts forone of the other momofuku restaurants or they're a new itemfor the milk bar menu as simply as a vehicle like to tella story, to tell a flavor story.

so oftentimes we'll becomeobsessed with a flavor or an idea. and it's really just aboutfinding a vehicle for it. so i'm not like sitting onmy hands and be like, oh, i can't wait to put the ssam bardessert on because i already know what it's going to be. it's more, ok, so it's time tochange ssam bar's dessert menu. what flavors are we thinking about? where are we at in the r&dprocess with interesting things? if we like a flavor story or a flavorprofile, in something like a ganache,

we almost always put it on themenu at one of the restaurants because we can't reallylive in ganache space with baked goods, justthe nature of them. they're expensive. they dry out very easily. so that's sort of a littlebit of a boring answer. but a lot of the nature ofrunning a bakery and baked goods is everything has to be fresh andhas to be able to sort of maintain and withstand a certain shelf life.

and so depending on what thevehicle is, sometimes that'll help dictate where it's going to go. but a lot of times, youjust go to the drawing board and go like, ok, whatare we excited about? what flavors are we excitedabout putting together? and then we go, ok, whatare the next opening, like what are the next spotsthat are opening up on what menu? and is it going to become asoft serve for noodle bar? is it going to becomea cookie for milk bar?

is it going to become a moremulticomponent dessert at ssam bar? and if it's a study of a flavor that wereally want to go down like the rabbit hole up of and that we love multiplecomponents m it almost always goes on one of the restaurant;s dessert menusbecause that's a space where you can have more elements and you can put themtogether and you can be a little more self0indulgent in the process becauseeverything happens all in minute when your plating a restaurant dessert. but the fun part aboutcreating stuff for milk bar is that you make it in suchbig batches and so many more

people get to experience it and takeit home and share it with others. so it really depends. but those are some of the parametersthat would help us make our decision. michael brenner: so ithink with that-- i'm sorry i'm going to just cut this off. i think we should clap.

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