What Should I Bake If I’m Not a Baker? A Primer in Three Parts

Dorothy McCormick’s Cornmeal Blueberry-Lemon Bars:

This recipe is the all-time perfect cheat, as it essentially a quick and dirty version of both a pastry and a custard, in the forms of bastardized pie dough and lemon curd. It is no less delicious for this fact, and is a good sneaky way to introduce yourself to some of the elementals of baking and desserts. [Ed. Note: This is also a good time to start reading recipes all the way to the end, as the ingredients are listed before each stage.]

Equipment:

9 x 13 roasting pan or glass baking container

Sifter or fine meshed sieve

Oven:  

Pre-heat to 350°F or whatever temperature on your oven that is actually 350°F. (If you want to bake, you will need an oven thermometer. It is an irritating and immutable fact that baking only works at the correct temperatures, and trust me, that crap-ass old oven in your NYC apartment is not properly calibrated. It probably doesn’t even shut all the way, and might possibly have a dead mouse in the broiler.)

Mise I

2 cups sifted flour

1 cup fine ground yellow cornmeal

1 ½ cup unsalted butter, cut into ½’ cubes

¾ cup confectioners sugar

Three-fingered pinch of salt

Mix the salt into the flour and then cut the butter into the flour with your fingers. You should smoosh each cube of butter into the flour once between your thumb and index and middle fingers, and toss as you go. You will end up with larger and smaller chunks of butter worked into the flour mixture.

Pour this mixture into the pan and press quickly into the pan so that your butter doesn’t start to melt from the heat of your hands and forms a more solid dough. It is often easier to work with a pan that has been in the freezer for a while. If it’s really hot out, I’ll even refrigerate my flour overnight.

Try to keep the mixture even in depth, so it cooks evenly, especially at the corners. Prick with a fork all over, but try not to poke the fork all the way through to the bottom, if possible.

Bake at 350°F for 15 minutes. Rotate 180 degrees after 8 minutes. I have never, ever, in over twenty years of cooking, met an oven that cooked things evenly. Rotating while you bake is imperative, and one of the many small diligences that will result in the kinds of textures you are looking for in your baked goods.

Mise II  (Have this ready before the crust is par-cooked)

6 eggs

Zest of 4 lemons. Use a microplane, and try to only grate the yellow part, not the bitter white pith

½  cup lemon juice

3 cup white sugar

Beat the eggs and sugar until the sugar is mostly dissolved. Add lemon zest and stir. Add lemon juice in a thin stream while whisking the eggs. (It is useful to keep a wet rag under your bowl while you do this, to keep the bowl from spinning. You can also kind of hold the bowl a bit with your ribcage, belly or hip bone as you whisk. You would be surprised how much you can use your midsection to stabilize equipment when you cook.)

Mise III (You will fold this into Mise II just before the crust is par-cooked)

6 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1 ½ teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

1 ½ pints blueberries (little wild blues are better because they’re so small and potent)

Whisk the flour, baking powder and salt together until evenly dispersed. Shake about a third of this over the surface of the egg mixture. Use a rubber spatula and fold in, using a figure 8 on its side stroke. When incorporated, add the next third, fold in, and add the last third and fold in.

Have this mixture ready when your par-cooked crust comes out of the oven.

When the crust it par-cooked, pour the egg and flour mixture over the whole thing and return to the oven for 20 minutes. After 10 minutes, pull the pan out of the oven, and quickly scatter your blueberries over the top. I usually just scatter them until it looks like the amount of blueberries I would like to eat in proportion to lemon curd and pastry. Return to the oven as fast as you can, rotating the pan another 180 degrees, and cook an additional 10-12 minutes.

Pull from the oven and run a wet paring knife around the edges, and let cool. Cut into squares and dust with confectioner’s sugar put through a sifter or a fine meshed sieve.

Next week, Liza schools us on gluten chains and the five elements that lead to different textures in baking, along with a new recipe to add to your desert repertoire.