DORIE GREENSPAN:
Thank you so much.
Hi, thanks for coming.
This is the first
time you're seeing me
but it's not the last
because I'm moving in.
Yeah.
I like it here,
except that I was
told that I would be called--
what was it-- a Graygler?
Graygler-- yeah.
I don't know, that might
keep me away, not sure.
So this is the 43rd
year since my first trip
to Paris, the trip that
just changed everything--
everything.
From the minute I stepped foot
on Paris soil, my life changed.
And my relationship
to my mother changed.
Previous to that trip, I
thought my mother was swell,
I thought she was perfect.
One day into that trip, I
realized that my perfect mother
had made a tragic,
tragic mistake--
she had had me in Brooklyn.
I was meant to be born in Paris,
there's no question about it.
And I keep thinking
about all that I
missed by not being
born in Paris.
I mean can you imagine how
charming it would sound
if I were speaking to
you with a French accent?
I mean it be great.
If I had been French, I would
know how to tie a scarf.
It would be-- the scarf
gene would be in my DNA
and I wouldn't have
had to buy this.
This is the how to tie a scarf
deck of cards from Hermes.
I also would have known the
proper way to cut cheese.
The French are very fussy
about how cheese is cut.
So you know a slice of
brie, kind of triangular
slice-- cut that point
off, call it the nose
and you'll never be invited
to anyone's home again.
So to make sure that I still
got invited I bought this.
It looks like your
geometry textbook,
but it's called
"L'Art de Couper la
Fromage"-- the art
of cutting cheese.
I was serious about learning.
I would have known the
difference between boeuf
bourguignon and boeuf a la mode.
A la mode's one big hunk if
beef and bourguignon is just
little chunks.
I might even have
been able-- maybe,
maybe-- to walk in high
heels on cobblestone--
all the French women can.
I mean it's like they
get the scarf gene
and they get the
high heels gene.
I have none of that.
But had I been born
French, there's
one thing I wouldn't
have learned to do,
and that would
have been to bake.
The bottom line-- actually the
punchline-- is French people
don't bake.
They don't bake
anything tricky, they
don't bake anything complicated.
They don't bake-- they buy.
So here's the line
outside of Pierre Herme.
My favorite is this woman
over here with her hand
out like I want
money for desserts.
For the first 20
years or so so-- so
I've been living in Paris
part time for about 20 years--
and for the first I'd say maybe
5 or 10 years that I was there,
no one invited us to dinner.
You have to really get to know
French people to be invited--
is anybody here French?
Oh, I can say anything I want.
OK.
It takes-- this is
changing, but it really
takes a long time for
someone to invite you home.
And so you'll meet in a cafe
for a drink or for coffee,
you'll go to a
restaurant together,
and then eventually you'll
be invited to someone's home
for dinner.
And when you are, they will
make a fabulous meal for you
and they will cap it
with beautiful desserts.
So you might get an eclair.
So these eclair are from a
shop called L'atelier de Genie,
and the shop sells only eclairs,
or maybe a strawberry cake
like this.
This is from Hugo and Victor.
Or the ispahan, which is Pierre
Herme's famous, famous cake.
So it's a macaroon.
It's rose, the cream inside
is rose, there's fresh lychee,
and there's a raspberry
trim-- fresh raspberries.
Or do you love this?
This looks like this
would be perfect
for Halloween, actually.
Pauline, maybe you
should go for this.
This is a lemon tart
with meringue on top.
Or you would get macaroon.
Macaroon are very,
very popular in Paris.
So these are from Pierre Herme
and these are macaroon from
McDonald's.
McDonald's has a
cafe and they have
Laduree make their
macaroon for them.
And I'm hoping when
I go back somebody is
going to treat me to this.
Isn't this gorgeous?
This is also a
Pierre Herme dessert.
It's called Venus and
it's apple and quince,
and that's all fresh apple
forming the flowers on top.
So I loved-- of course, I mean
who wouldn't-- I loved all
of these very fancy, very
polished pastries that I was
treated to at friends' homes,
and they make me feel pampered,
they made me feel
truly like a guest.
But at some point I
started to wonder,
what are my friends having for
dessert when I'm not there?
You know, what are they
doing on a Tuesday night
when the kids come
home from school
and have homework and mom's been
working all day and dad's been
working all day and they're
not having this for dessert?
Not only does mom not
have time to go buy it,
this stuff is really expensive.
So this little
lemon meringue tart
is 20 euros, so what, about $27.
This gorgeous cheesecake
is only about this big
and it's 27 Euro.
And one little macaroon
from Pierre Herme
is 2 Euro 10, or
something over $3.
So I figured this isn't
what they were doing.
I already knew that
they weren't whipping up
complicated desserts,
because one night I
had some Paris friends
over for dinner
and I made a chocolate cake.
This is not my chocolate
cake, but it might as well
have been because
this was the style.
This is my friend
Betty's and it's
a recipe from "Baking Chez
Moi." but I brought out
a cake like this and
I put it on the table,
and one of my friends said,
where did you buy that?
And I said, I made it.
And around the table the
response was the same-- why?
Why would you do
something like that?
That's what pastry
shops are for.
So it was only
after really years
of living in Paris
that I-- you know,
I was having friends
to dinner at that point
and we were being invited to
friends' homes for dinner,
and it was only then that
I got a taste of what
they were making.
And I came to think of
it as a parallel universe
to all of those
beautiful patisserie,
pastry shop desserts
that I showed you.
Here's what my
friends were serving
at home and to their dearest
friends-- moi, one of them--
loaf cakes.
These are called-- I love this--
in France, anything that's
shaped in a loaf pan
is called a cake.
And cakes like these,
which are good keepers,
are called either weekend cakes
or gateaux voyage-- travel
cakes.
And so even if the travel is as
far as the park for a picnic,
this is the kind of cake
that French people will make.
These are little
matcha financiers.
It's my version of a
traditional French pastry
that's really easy to make
and that a French person would
make at home.
So financiers were created in
late 19th century in Paris.
There was a pastry chef
who had a shop right
across from the stock exchange,
and every afternoon-- see,
they didn't have Pauline
and Charlie's and they
couldn't just go for
pastries on campus--
so they would cross the
street, go to the pastry shop,
and get something to
eat as their treat.
But they were always
complaining because it
took too long to eat
what they bought.
They needed a knife and
fork, and sometimes it's
spotted their ties if
they weren't careful.
So they wanted,
essentially, grab and go.
And so the owner of the shop,
his name was [? Lanya, ?] I
think, created the financier.
It can be eaten out of
hand, a couple of bites
and it's finished-- no
crumbs, no knife, no fork.
And he named it for his
stockbroker clients,
he called them financier.
He made them originally
in ingot shaped bars
so they would kind of be
familiar with that shape.
I make mine in mini
muffin tins-- easier.
And he made them as
rich as his clients.
There's a huge amount
of butter in them.
Palmiers, so this
is puff pastry.
No French person has ever
made puff pastry at home,
I'm convinced of it.
They go to the corner market,
they buy it ready made,
so do I. They buy all their
tart dough ready made.
So this is really just an
arts and crafts project.
You buy the puff pastry, sugar,
fold it, bake it-- beautiful.
These are cookies,
French cookies.
So these were given to
me by Edouard Bobin, who
owns a great little bistro
in Paris called Pantruche.
And he had served a little
hazelnut cookie with coffee
after a meal, and I said,
oh Edouard, I love these,
can you give me the recipe?
He said, I'll give
you a better recipe.
I'll give you a
recipe for cookies.
I though, I don't want
your recipe for cookies.
When the French
say cookies, they
mean only one thing--
Toll House cookies,
chocolate chip cookies.
That to them is a cookie.
And so when Edouard gave me
this recipe, I looked at it
and I thought, he just
gave me the Toll House,
you know, the back of the
Nestle's chocolate chips
bag cookie.
It had the brown sugar in just
about the same proportions,
it had white sugar, but
these are really different.
These have almond flour
in them, and almond flour
is so common in
France that if you
go to the corner convenience
shop, the one that's open 24/7,
you can buy almond
flour in that shop.
Maybe you'll get
a creme caramel.
This one-- this are all
pictures from the book,
by the way, because these
are recipes from the book.
A creme caramel-- this
one is milk chocolate.
This was one of the
recipes that surprised
me the most when
I discovered this.
This is-- I think of it as
the French equivalent of Rice
Krispies treats.
They're called desert
roses, rose de sables,
which is the name for
gypsum, and they're
made with corn flakes.
So it's corn flakes,
dried fruit, nuts,
and melted chocolate.
And so it's a great
thing to make for kids.
You can make it and put
it in the refrigerator
and it will keep forever.
And in fancy
restaurants in Paris,
they're sometimes made so
that they're really tiny
and they become the
after dessert dessert.
So they're on a platter
after you've had two desserts
and when coffee comes around.
This is actually one of my
favorite recipes in the book.
So I loved these desserts
that my friends were making
and I did-- you know
I was grateful to them
for making them.
It really made me feel
like one of their family.
And so you can only imagine
how I felt when I asked them
for the recipes
and they said no.
These were my friends.
So I'd say, I love this
cake, may I have the recipe,
and they'd say, no, no, you
don't want it--too simple,
it's too simple for
you, you don't want it.
And I'd ask and they'd
say, too simple.
No, no, this one's not for you.
So I thought maybe this
was-- all the years that I've
been in Paris as a
faux Frenchwoman,
I thought maybe I've missed
this little point of etiquette.
Maybe there's some
ritual to this.
The asker asks, the askee
refuses, the asker asks again,
the askee refuses, the asker
gets down on her knees,
begs, and finally gets it.
Well finally, I did
get recipes and I
realized that my
friends' modesty was--
I'm taking it as modesty--
was actually genuine.
The recipes were so simple
but they were also so perfect.
So here's a recipe
for a gateaux Savoie,
which is one of the oldest cake
recipes in the pastry cannon.
And this was given to
me by a friend, Martine.
It's normally made
in a savarin mold,
so what we would think of
as a Jello mold-- you know,
just an oval ring.
And I made it in a bundt pan
when I got back to America,
thinking that it would be so
much easier for us to find
these pans, though I do
have my mother's Jello pan.
My mother did not
bake, she did not cook,
she used the oven
as her bread box.
But she made Jello.
So I have her mold.
I could have done this.
I love this picture.
So these are canistrelli.
They're cookies from
Corsica and they
were given to me by
my friend Leticia.
And they are made with olive
oil, white wine, and pastis,
which is an anise
flavored liqueur.
And they're may be
totally by hand.
So I love anything
that you can just
get your fingers
in and play with.
And so you start with a fork,
you finish with your hands,
and you can just bake them
in any shape you want.
And they're really
great and they're not
sweet, really not sweet.
So you can have
them as a dessert,
you can have them with
fruit, or you can have them
with a drink, which makes
them, I think, super nice.
And then this is the orange cake
from Bernard's sister-in-law,
Odille.
Odille came to our
house for dinner
and she didn't know
what to bring us
as-- it was the second
time we had met her
and the first time she
had come to our home--
and she didn't know what
to bring as a hostess gift
and she brought
recipes, and I thought,
that's the best gift
you can give someone.
Right, so handwritten,
beautiful, and this
was one of them.
And so this is a really
very plain, very simple
cake that get soaked
with orange syrup.
And when I was testing it with
my recipe tester, Marry Dodd,
the wonderful, we
thought wouldn't it
be fun to put
oranges on top of it.
And so we poached oranges--
you could do oranges,
grapefruits, blood
oranges, tangerines--
we poached the
oranges and then use
that syrup to soak the cake.
And this is one of my
favorite recipes in the book.
So this is Laurent's slow
roasted spiced pineapple.
Laurent-- well, Laurent
is not my hairdresser,
he's actually Patricia
Wells's hairdresser--
Isabel cuts my hair.
So in Paris there's
Isabel at the hair salon,
and Isabel never cooks but
she's great for restaurant
recommendations.
Right next to her is Laurent.
Laurent cooks all
the time when he
has time, which is the weekends.
So after the
weekend he comes in,
he's got his pictures on
his phone of what he made,
and so I try and make
an appointment for right
after the weekend so I can
see what Laurent has made.
And one day I came in
and the Laurent said,
I made this pineapple
for dessert.
And I looked at it and
it just spoke to me.
And I said, how did you make it?
He said, pineapple-- cut it,
some jam, some orange juice,
some booze, spices, whatever
you've got-- just really,
anything you've got
in the cupboard.
And I said, little bit
more info, like how?
You just put it in the
oven, couple of hours,
baste it now and then.
I said, OK, how much jam?
He said, jam.
I said, how much orange juice?
He said, like this.
I said, how much alcohol,
what kind of alcoholic,
do you need to use alcohol?
He said, well you
know, rum, Armagnac,
cognac-- whatever you
have-- more orange juice
if you don't want
to use the alcohol.
I said, how much?
He said, about the same
amount as the orange juice.
So I went home and I made it.
It was tasty but I knew it
wasn't right so I went back
and I asked Laurent.
He said, I told you--
you know, like jam.
He wasn't in a good mood.
So the third time I asked him,
I said, Laurent, I made it with,
like, three or four
tablespoons of jam.
He said, no, the whole jar.
You need the whole jar.
I said, you didn't
quite mention that.
He said, you should've known.
So it's the whole jar of jam
and about this much orange.
So I went home and I actually
turned it into a recipe.
But it is the kind
of desert that you
can make with truly anything
you've gotten the house
and there's always extra syrup.
And it's fabulous
over ice cream.
And so this is the other recipe
that really surprised me.
This is the Mocha DuPont.
Forty years ago, when we went
to Paris for the first time,
we met Martine Collet.
About 10 years after that,
she married Bernard Collet.
Well, her name was
Martine, I've already
forgotten her maiden name.
Martine, we call her Martine.
And she married
Bernard Collet and they
are best friends in Paris,
we see them all the time.
And for 30 years, Bernard
has been telling me
about his birthday cake
called the Mocha Dupont.
And I said, and what is it?
He said, oh you
know, it's the cake
that my mother used
to make for me,
and it's called Dupont
because she got the recipe
from Madame Dupont,
who lived next door.
I said, we're
really good friends,
Id like to taste
your birthday cake.
And his wife said--
you know what
she said-- it's not for
you, it's too simple.
I said, come on.
So when I was
working on this book
and when I had had most of the
recipes put together, I said,
you know I don't want to do this
book without Bernard's birthday
cake.
Please tell me about it.
This is an icebox cake.
I mean this is just--
I couldn't believe it.
These are petit
beurre cookies, they
can be any kind of
cookie you want.
They're soaked in espresso-- I
don't know why you would soak
a cake in espresso
for a two-year-old,
but c'est la vie en France.
So it's espresso soaked
cookies with a little espresso
buttercream and you
just constructed
it any way you want.
And when I made
it the first time,
Bernard said, it's not right.
And I said, what did I do?
He said, we like
to put the icing
along the side of the cake.
I said, OK, fine.
And I did it.
He said, and we like
chocolate shavings on top.
So I did that, too.
But when we did
it for the book I
wanted everybody to see
the pretty scalloped edges
of the cookies.
And so I showed him the picture
in the book and he said,
that is not my birthday cake.
I said, Bernard, I made it for
you so that you could taste it
and you said it
was good, you said
it was just what you wanted.
He said, yes, but it
didn't look like that.
He said, you have revisited it.
It is-- how would you say it--
[SPEAKING FRENCH] or something
like relooked.
And I said, what bothers you?
The ice cream.
We never had ice
cream with the cake.
He's still a good friend.
He's forgiven me.
So because my friends
had been so generous
and they had given
me these recipes,
I wanted to create
recipes for them
and I wanted to play
with some of the classics
in French pastry.
So this is my version
of a gateaux Basque.
So a few years ago
Michael and I were-- oh,
it's more than a few years
ago because the recipe is
in "Around my French Table"--
we were traveling through
the Payee Basque, the
Basque country in France,
and we passed a sign that
said, Gateaux Basque Museum.
If there's a museum devoted
to a cake, I have to go.
Who wouldn't stop for this?
And we went to what we
thought was the museum
and we discovered that it
was really a cooking class.
There were just rows
of, like, church pews,
and the place was
packed with people.
And the chef was there with
a stack of dough like this,
and he made a gateaux Basque.
He also did things that you're
not allowed to do in America.
He grabbed a hunk of dough and
said, I want you to taste this,
and just passed this hunk around
so that every person grabbed
the hunk, right, and tasted it.
Then he passed the cream
around, we all double dipped.
It was tons of fun.
So the traditional
gateaux Basque
is two layers of a pastry dough
that has baking powder in it.
So a, it means it's really
forgiving-- no matter
what you do, it's going
to bake up beautifully.
And two, the
texture is somewhere
between tart and cake.
And in the traditional
gateaux Basque,
it's filled with either
pastry cream or cherry jam.
And if it's filled
with cherry jam,
you use some of the pastry
to make a Basque cross
over the top so you can tell
you've got a jam cake, not
a cream one.
So mine is filled with dried
fruits, nuts, and apples.
It's a great fall dessert.
And these are apple
croustades, so they're, again,
another kind of arts and
crafts project-- strips
of phyllo dough brushed with
butter, sprinkled with sugar,
and filled with sauteed apples.
In the Perigord,
the southwest, this
is sometimes filled with
prunes, which is also nice.
And I make a caramel
tart, which is not really
a riff on a classic,
but caramel is
like-- you find it
everywhere in France.
I once said that I
wouldn't be surprised
if I walked into a drugstore
and found caramel toothpaste.
It is like the
flavors of France,
and so this tart is kind of
an homage to French caramel.
And when it's
strawberry season, you
see a fraisier, a strawberry
cake in just about every shop.
And so this is my
version of the fraisier.
The layers of cake are based
on a recipe for French yogurt
cake.
It's the only cake that
every French person
knows how to make by heart.
Right, they know
the recipe by heart.
Because they get yogurt,
pour it into a bowl,
clean out the yogurt
container, and then they
use it for the four, they
use it for the sugar.
It's like a one,
two, three cake.
And a yogurt cake
is the birthday cake
of choice in France, that's
what most French mothers make
for their kid's birthday.
And they can make
it in any shape
and just stick some
candles on it-- it's great.
So this one is made
with rose flavor.
So the inspiration was that
ispahan that I showed you,
the rose macaroon with
the raspberries around it.
So this is rose flavored
yogurt cake with a rose cream
and the strawberries
standing up,
like a little forest
of strawberries,
which is the traditional
way that fraisier is done.
This looks more complicated
than it is to make at home.
And then the buche noel.
So this one is-- this is my
Franco American buche noel.
It's gingerbread and the filling
is cinnamon cream cheese.
So it's the buche
noel, the French form,
with kind of American flavors.
And when I was in
Paris in September,
it was not only Fashion
Week, it was buche noel week,
and all the top pastry chefs
were showing their buches.
And there was a press conference
and pictures were taken,
and then in November,
magazines and newspapers
will start showing-- it's
like a dream catalog.
They'll show all the
pictures of the buche
so you can decide what you're
going to buy for Christmas.
We're there for Christmas
usually so I always buy a buche
and I make a buche.
And some recipes
I just invented,
just because I was in Paris,
the ingredients were there,
and I wanted to.
So these are granola
bars-- actually,
delicious granola
bars-- based on granola.
And there's a recipe
for my granola
there that I started to
make for French friends.
So I started to
make this granola
and I would bring it as house
gifts and people would say,
it's so great, I
love it, I love it.
And I'd say, here's the
recipe, and then I'd say,
did you ever make it?
And they said, no, we
want you to do that.
Would you do that for us?
So I stopped giving
out the recipe.
This is a blueberry
corn cream cheese tart.
So about two years ago,
Philadelphia Cream Cheese
became the cult
ingredient in Paris.
Before that time, I
used to have to bring it
on the plane with me.
I would travel with 10
pounds of cream cheese
and I would travel with
Graham crackers, too.
Now they can buy it themselves.
So when it was like-- you would
see ads for it on bus stops
and on the buses themselves,
it was really a big deal.
And so I made this no
bake cream cheese filling
and I put it in a delicious
French pastry tart,
and then thought, I'm just
going to surprise them
a little bit-- them
being my French friends--
blueberry and corn,
and it turned out
to be something that
they truly loved.
And then these little--
well, I caught them pielets.
So they're little apple pies.
They're filled with apples
and raisins and spice.
And I said, look, don't you love
the idea of an American pie?
And my French friend
said, oh you mean a torte.
A covered pie or a covered
tart is called a torte,
and so the French immediately
claimed this as their own.
And some of the
recipes in the book
are recreations of things that
I love in French pastry shops.
So this is the tart Tropezienne,
and years ago Pierre Herme--
I worked with Pierre Herme,
we did two books together--
and at that time he wasn't yet
known as the Picasso of pastry
or the Karl Lagerfeld
of macaroon.
Now he's got a million
names-- sometimes
referred to as
the God of Pastry.
So it was Pierre who
said to me, have you
ever tasted a tart Tropezienne?
I had no idea what it was
and he said, it's mythic,
it's absolutely mythic.
And as usual, he was right.
So it's like a brioche.
It's a yeast, very rich
butter and egg dough.
This is a little bit less
rich than regular brioche
and it's filled with cream.
And it was invented
in Saint Tropez, which
is why it's called Tropezienne.
And the story that
goes with it is
that when Brigitte
Bardot was filming
"And God Created Woman,"
this was her first film,
Roger Vadim was the director, it
was his first film, Jean-Louis
Trintignant, Alaine [INAUDIBLE].
I mean all of these people
who became great stars were
in Saint Tropez filming
and they used the caterer
across the street to
supply the craft table,
to bring food to the set.
And it was Alexandra Mika,
who had come from Poland,
and every day he would
bring a tart Tropezienne
because the crew just loved it.
And it was Brigitte
Bardot who said to him--
I forgot what he used to call
it, but it was Bardot who said,
you should call it
the tort Tropezienne.
Now when you go to Saint
Tropez, every other shop
is a shop that sells only
tart Tropezienne-- little ones
like this, big ones like this.
It is like the
food of St Tropez,
but there's only one Mika,
and that's the label.
When he packages you've
got Brigitte Bardot.
Somebody called me the Bardot
of baking the other day.
That made me happy.
This is an Alsatian tart
flambe, but a sweet one.
And Michael-- hello, Michael--
that's my husband over there.
We were in Alsace, in
the east of France,
and the tart flambe
is a signature.
It's a specialty
there, usually made
with fromage blanc,
caramelized onions, and bacon.
But we stopped at a restaurant
called Flam and Co. that
served only tart flambe and
served savory and sweet.
And so we each had
a savory tart flambe
and then we were going
to have the dessert.
But by that time, I had asked
the server so many questions
that when I said, we'd
like an apple tart flambe,
he said to me, would you
like to make it yourself?
And so I got to be with
the tart flambee-er
and watch how she made
it and put it into-- they
had a wood fired oven,
which was fabulous.
And so as soon as I
came back, I started
to figure out a recipe so that
I could make this at home,
and so can you.
And this is the grapefruit tart.
Remember the beautiful
strawberry dessert
that I showed you earlier
from Hugo and Victor?
This is a version of
their grapefruit tart.
So the filling is a grapefruit
and Campari cream-- very, very
light cream-- delicious.
With Ruby grapefruits.
And these are crackle
topped cream puffs.
I think everyone should learn
how to make cream puff dough.
It's like a life skill--
you learn how to drive,
you learn how to make
cream puff dough.
It's important.
These days, there
are cream puff shops.
The cream puffs are made on a
regular basis during the day,
and then when you come in they
fill them for you on the spot.
And where cream puffs
used to be glazed,
they now have this crackle top.
It's kind of an innovation
on a desert that's
got to be more
than 500 years old.
So it's a little almond cookie,
and you roll the cookie dough,
you roll it really, really
thin and you cut a circle,
and right before you put the
cream puff into the oven,
you put the disk on top.
And it breaks apart as
the cream puff puffs.
And these are
cream puffs crackle
topped from a shop
called Popelini,
after the Italian pastry chef
who came with Catherine de
Medici to Paris and introduced
cream puffs to France.
They're beautiful, aren't they?
Don't they remind you of
the sprinkles cupcakes?
Yeah.
And these are my bubble eclair.
So because it's unlikely
that I'll be making eclair
like I showed you before,
and maybe you will,
but I thought it would
be fun because eclairs
are so delicious, to just do
something that would be super
simple and everybody would be
able to make them and enjoy
them.
And so it's cream
puff dough just
scooped with an ice cream
scoop or a cookie scoop,
and the scoops are placed
close enough together
that when they bake
they bake together.
And macaroon-- so "Baking
Chez Moi" is my 11th cookbook.
I have never put a recipe
for macaroon in a cookbook.
I thought everyone
should just buy them.
I did one recipe, it was
Pierre Herme's recipe,
it was in the chocolate book.
I tested it-- I can't remember
whether it was 11 or 13 times,
but it was one of
those numbers that we
know is supposed
to be good luck--
but it took me a long
time to get to good luck.
The recipe ran
about seven pages.
This one is a long recipe,
too-- not because it's hard,
but because I was spooked by it.
I was so spooked by the recipe
I took a macaroon baking
class in Paris, even though
I had made them before.
I went to Pierre's
pastry shop to watch
everybody make macaroon.
I wanted to really get
it right, and I did.
And I put them in the book
mostly because I realized
I was being a wimp, that I was
just spooked but by macaroon,
freaked by them,
but no one else was.
When I started to look
around the internet,
there were people posting
pictures of the most gorgeous
macaroon and with lines
that said things like,
I've never baked
before but I thought
I would try making macaroon.
And all of these people
made such gorgeous macaroon
I thought, I can do it,
I can do it, I can do it.
So this is the first time
I've had a macaroon recipe.
And last month-- no,
it's now two months ago,
in September-- when I was
having dinner with Pierre Herme
and he said that he was--
I guess it's out now--
he was just publishing his
second book of only macaroon.
And I said, oh, Pierre,
that's fabulous.
And he said, yeah, but I
believe people should buy them.
Even though this
was his second book.
So I usually agree with Pierre
on everything, but not on this.
I think you should go
home and bake macaroon.
In fact, I think you should
bake everything chez you.
So thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
MALE SPEAKER: It
seems that you're
a little bit of an internet
phenomenon-- there's
a Tuesdays with Dorie,
there's a whole community
that's built up.
Would you like to say a little
bit about how that started,
what your relationship
is with that and--
DORIE GREENSPAN: Thank
you for mentioning-- this
is the most fabulous thing.
So when "Baking From My Home
to Yours" came out in 2006,
a young woman named Lori
Woodward, a young mom-- where
she found time to
do this, I don't
know-- of three little boys,
she got "Baking Chez Moi"
for her birthday
and she liked it--
She got "Baking From My Home
to Yours" for her birthday.
She liked it.
And she wrote to
me and she said,
I have two friends who also
have your book and we like a lot
and we'd like to bake
from it every week.
And we'll put a
recipe up on our blogs
and just bake through your book.
Is that OK with you?
I thought, sure.
I mean I knew the
internet was-- I mean you
guys were born with it and
you actually make the internet
now-- but I wasn't, so
for me to see people
baking-- I mean I thought
only my mother, the non baker,
bought my books.
But you know, I
looked on the internet
and there were people
baking from my books,
making beautiful things
and posting pictures,
and I was so excited.
That's actually why
I started my blog,
to be able to be in touch
with all these people.
And so when Lori said
she was going to do this,
I thought, oh,
this is just great.
And I asked my editor, and
she said, yeah, and my agent,
sure, why not?
None of us thought, what
are the repercussions
of having every recipe in
your book available online?
We just thought, oh
this was really fun,
and it's only three people.
Well, they called their
group Tuesdays with Dorie,
and there were
only three people.
And then there were 30,
and then there were 300,
and then there were thousands
of people baking their way
through "Baking From
My Home to Yours."
Oprah wrote about the group,
"The Wall Street Journal"
wrote about the group,
and it was so special
because I didn't start it.
This is really-- to me
this is like the power
of the inter-- my
husband always says
it's the internet at its best.
It just grew organically.
It wasn't me saying,
gee wouldn't it
be great if I had a group
who-- and so they baked
their way through "Baking
From My Home to Yours,"
and then they started
on-- and they're still
baking through--
"Baking with Julia."
And then when "Around My
French Table" came out in 2010,
they started a group called
French Fridays with Dorie,
and they're cooking
their way through that.
And now, on November
1, they're starting,
they'll be baking every
two weeks from "Baking Chez
Moi" and the other two weeks
from "Baking with Julia."
And so anybody
who wants to start
baking with this group of
fabulous, supportive, generous,
adorable people, it's
Tuesday with Dorie--
you have to Google
it because I think
it's like blogspot or something.
It's got another
little word in it,
but if you Google
Tuesdays with Dorie,
the first thing you'll
get is some woman
named Dorie who's not me who
has a blog called Tuesdays
with Dorie-- I wish
she would change it--
and then you'll get the
Tuesdays with Dorie group
and you'll bake with them.
Thank you for asking
me about them, yeah.
From my husband.
MICHAEL GREENSPAN:
The thing that's
really magical
about that group is
what Dorie started
to talk about.
But Lori was really brilliant.
First of all, she-- the
thing that's magical
is that Lori was brilliant.
DORIE GREENSPAN: Lori.
MICHAEL GREENSPAN: Lori.
DORIE GREENSPAN: Not me.
MICHAEL GREENSPAN:
The person who
is the idea person and who
is the manager of the group.
It's a tribute to her that the
group is very, very supportive
of each other.
That's really incredible.
And the second thing was
that it's a tribute to her
that she said, oh
there's an author
and we can't just do this
without paying attention.
So there was one rule
that was inviolate--
if you want to be a member
of the group you had
to buy the book, which
was very nice of her.
And then the second
rule she came up
with had to do with
distributing your recipes, which
was the only person who
could do the recipe online
was the person who chose
the recipe for that week.
So that just-- all the
recipes were still out there,
but they weren't out
there in the thousands.
So it just was a nice
gesture on her part
towards the author,
which is really great.
DORIE GREENSPAN:
It's a great group.
When I spoke at on the
International Food Bloggers
Conference, and
about 20 people who
are members of TWD
and FFWD-- Tuesdays
with Dorie and French
Fridays with Dorie--
came to the conference,
so we actually
got to meet one another and
they got to meet one another.
But they already-- they'd
never seen one another
face to face but
they really knew one
another from being
part of this group.
And in fact, Lori
went to Seattle
to be the matron of honor
at the wedding of a Tuesdays
with Dorie member and
they had never met.
They only knew one
another through baking.
I just think it's fabulous.
AUDIENCE: A two parter question.
So the first part
is at your house,
when you're in France,
what do you cook when you
invite your French friends over?
And the second part is have
do you ever thought, gee
this would be wonderful,
they'll really love it,
and then not so much?
Like just their
French taste didn't
quite jive with
your American taste?
DORIE GREENSPAN: Oh wait.
OK, so that's an
interesting question.
And I was going to say,
I don't know the answer,
but Michael knows the answer.
MICHAEL GREENSPAN: [INAUDIBLE]
DORIE GREENSPAN: Yeah.
MICHAEL GREENSPAN: Um,
when I was growing up--
DORIE GREENSPAN: Oh,
I know exactly what
you're going to say, yeah.
I know.
Yeah, untouched.
Potato nik is not
a French favorite.
Do you know I cook-- when my
French friends come to dinner,
I cook-- sometimes I cook
very traditional French food,
sometimes we'll fry chicken
or we'll make hamburgers,
or we'll do something
very American.
The French are-- I was
going to say adventurous
and I'm wondering now
that I'm saying it,
are they adventurous
or forgiving?
They're usually really happy
to have anything that I make
and they're very appreciative.
Some of them are just surprised.
I mean somebody
said to me, oh, you
know how to make a vinaigrette.
I though, yeah, I know how
to make a vinaigrette, right.
I think that there's some amount
of surprise that Americans cook
and eat well, that there's
this idea that-- I mean,
it's-- we are a nation of
hamburger eaters to many people
outside of our country.
But I cook all sorts
of things, and the food
that's in "Around
my French Table"
really comes from
the food that I've
cooked for friends
around my French table.
I'm trying to think if there's
anything else that I ever
did that they didn't like.
I don't think so.
The potato nik was
just-- went over
like a heavy potato pudding.
AUDIENCE: Hi there.
DORIE GREENSPAN: Hi.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
I'm headed to Paris this
summer for the first time--
DORIE GREENSPAN: Lucky you.
AUDIENCE: --and we are
very, very excited.
My boyfriend's lived
there for some time,
but it's my first time.
And I'm curious.
I've heard a lot
of mixed reviews
about trying to speak
French with the French.
What's the best way to
not be hated, especially--
DORIE GREENSPAN: Smile.
Smile.
AUDIENCE: Just smile.
DORIE GREENSPAN: Just smile.
All you have to do is smile.
It's interesting.
Sometimes if you
try to speak French
and your French isn't
good, a French person
might answer you in English
if he or she can do that.
And when I was younger,
I used to think,
how dare you-- is my
French that bad that you
won't listen to it?
But I think they're
really just being helpful.
They want to make
it easy for you
to be able to be understood
and get what you want.
And if you say to a
French person, oh,
I want to speak French,
I have to practice--
[SPEAKING FRENCH]--
they'll speak with you.
But it's interesting--
when we first
started to go to France it was
very hard to find people who
spoke English or wanted
to speak English.
Now so many people do,
and they really want to.
We have friends who work
for French companies
but all of their
meetings are in English.
It's really become the language.
So just smile.
As long as you smile.
You have a cute
smile, you'll be fine.
AUDIENCE: I have a follow-up.
So obviously, your
cookbooks are a great start
for kind of seeing where you go
and what shops and restaurants
you like to visit.
Do you have any other kind
of guides to Paris online?
DORIE GREENSPAN: Yes.
OK, so I think you should
look at a website called
parisbymouth.com.
Do you know it?
Oh, I see a nod over there.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's a great site
for-- it's a food site.
It's a great site for
restaurants, for pastry shops,
for bakeries.
They also do tours.
So I've taken the cheese
tour and learned so much.
It's great.
They do a cheese tour,
they do wine tastings.
Yes, it's a friend who started
it, but it's a great site
and it's all in English.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
David Lebovitz's site?
DORIE GREENSPAN: Yes, David
Lebovitz's site is great.
It's David L-E-B-O-V-I-T-Z.
And Alec Lobrano,
or Alexander Lobrano's
site, particularly his
Diner's Diary-- also good.
MALE SPEAKER: I guess on the
subject of David Lebovitz,
we had him here
earlier in the year
and so it seems like
you two know each other.
Are there bake-offs or
collaborations or things
like that?
DORIE GREENSPAN:
No, no, no, no, no.
They're a happy going
out to eat together.
Yeah.
MALE SPEAKER: Great.
DORIE GREENSPAN:
Yeah, no competition.
MALE SPEAKER: Awesome.
And also how do you test the
recipes in your cookbook?
Is there a--
DORIE GREENSPAN: Oh,
that's a great question.
MALE SPEAKER: --trusted tester?
DORIE GREENSPAN: Yeah.
So all of these recipes were
either gathered, begged,
groveled for in Paris
or created in Paris
and then they were all tested,
tested, tested, retested,
retested in America with
American ingredients.
So the two ingredients
that are hardest
to kind of translate
from France to America
are flour and butter.
Because the flour is
weaker in France, and so
in some instances I had to
use less flour in a recipe,
and the butter is richer
in France than it is here.
And so all of the
recipes were tested here.
I worked with Mary Dodd,
who was my recipe tester.
And by the time I would
give Mary a recipe,
I had worked on it
and worked on it
until I thought
it was just right.
So I didn't send her things
that had holes in them.
And I would send them
to her fully written
so that she could test the
actual formula, the ingredients
and test the writing.
You know-- do the
directions make sense?
Because after-- if I've created
a recipe, if I've made it
several times, you know I
can take some things for
granted that-- so
everybody needs an editor.
And so it was really good that
she could read them and say,
do you think people will
really know-- and point out
things like that.
So she tested everything
and we tested the recipes
with volume measures--
cups and spoons--
and also with metric measures.
And I'm thrilled, I am so happy,
to have metric in the book.
It's the first time my publisher
has said yes so I'm happy.
MALE SPEAKER: Cool.
Any final questions to see
us on to the book signing?
I'll end with another one--
the photos are so beautiful.
Do you use the same
photographer with each book?
How do you approach
the food photography?
DORIE GREENSPAN:
So the photography
for my last three books,
"Baking From My Home to Yours,"
"Around My French Table,"
and "Baking Chez Moi,"
it's the same team.
So it's Alan Richardson
who does the photography,
Karen Tack does
the food styling,
Deb Donahue does the props.
But Alan and Karen wrote
books you might know-- "Hello,
Cupcake"-- yeah,
they're the cupcakers--
"What's New Cupcake-- and
yeah, so it's the same team.
MALE SPEAKER: Cool, great.
DORIE GREENSPAN: They're
great to work with.
MALE SPEAKER: All right.
Well, on this
Googleween, we were
supremely happy to have a salute
to the French baked goods,
so thank you very much for
speaking with us, Dorie, and--
DORIE GREENSPAN:
Thank you, Cliff.
Thank you all for coming.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
