The unofficial Birthday Cake of the Test Kitchen comes to Bake Club this month as Shilpa Uskokovic shares her recipe for Strawberry Roll Cake.
“I just love this cake,” explains Shilpa to co-host Jesse Szewczyk. “It has everything you could want! Tender cake, really nice cream…lots of fresh fruits. It's perfect.”
Shilpa and Jesse answer your questions and also award the inaugural Baker of the Month to one lucky listener whose bake stood out on BA Bake Club Substack page.
And in our segment, Baker You Should Know, celebrated author and food stylist Donna Hay stops by to talk about her latest book, Sunshine, Lemons and Seasalt. Donna introduces us to her favourite cooking utensil, the spoonula and shares how she first fell in love with cooking. You can find more of Donna’s work on her website.
As always, we’d love to hear from you! Send your questions to BA Bake Club! Find us on Substack or send us a voice memo to [email protected].
JS: I'm Jesse Szewcyk.
SU: And I'm Shilpa Uskokovic.
JS: We are both senior Test Kitchen editors at Bon Appétit.
SU: And this is BA Bake Club.
JS: Bake Club is Bon Appétit's community of confident, curious bakers.
SU: We're creating the nerdiest and most wholesome corner of the baking internet.
JS: Every month we publish a recipe on bonappetit.com that introduces a baking concept we think you should know.
SU: Then you'll bake, send us any questions you have, or pictures of your finished creations.
JS: And then we'll get together here on the podcast to talk about the recipe.
SU: The May Bake Club recipe for whole lemon bars is live now on bonappetit.com. And we'll tell you a bit more about it at the end of the episode.
JS: But today we're getting our hands dirty and we're talking about Shilpa's strawberry roll cake. Shilpa, why this cake?
SU: Okay. I've been saying this to everyone and I also said this on Substack, but this strawberry roll cake, I've dubbed it the unofficial birthday cake of the Test Kitchen.
JS: It is, yes.
SU: It all started with Hana. Hana Asbrink is our deputy food editor. She requested something with strawberries and cream for her birthday a couple of years ago, and I made this roll cake. And we all loved it so, so, so much. And then we decided right then, and this was a couple years ago. We decided right then that we should have it for Bake Club.
JS: Yeah, this was a long time ago.
SU: It was a long time ago. And then ever since then, I think two other people in the Test Kitchen also requested it. And then I made it again for Hana's birthday. So essentially, a lot of us in the Test Kitchen love this cake and it became our unofficial birthday cake. And I just love this cake as well. It's perfect, perfect, perfect.
JS: It's a very beautiful, little dainty, somewhat understated, but still quite bold.
SU: Yeah. It has everything you could want, tender cake, really nice cream, lots of fresh fruit. It's perfect.
JS: I love it. Okay. And before we get too far, maybe let's go through the basic steps very quickly. So cue the music. It is time to walk through the basic steps of the recipe. Shilpa, where do we start?
SU: Okay. For this one, you have essentially two main components. You have a cake, and you have a whipped cream filling. The cake is a chiffon cake, which you make by separating the eggs, whipping the egg whites, and then you fold in the rest of the ingredients, the yolks, the flour, and also oil, which is what really makes a chiffon cake, a particularly amazing versatile sponge cake. And then you make a filling with lots of heavy cream, and my favorite ingredient that I always rely on, instant pudding mix. And I use a little bit of it just to stabilize the filling. And then you just bring these two things together. The baked cake, you spread this filling on, put lots of fresh strawberries on top, roll it up nice and tight, then you pipe a little bit more cream and more berries on top. And that's it.
JS: And that's it. I mean, that's the short version.
SU: Okay, Jesse, before we get too deep, I think we need to have a little disclaimer, caveat, call out, because there's two versions of this recipe that exist in this world.
JS: Right.
SU: There's one that's in the magazine in the print issue and one that's online. Okay. I'm really sorry to everybody listening and who may have made it and experienced some trouble if you baked out of the print version. There is an error in that one. And the recipe that's online on bonappetit.com is the correct version. It'll make more sense later in the episode when I go through how it's made, but essentially the print version has you whisking the egg yolks and the flour first, and it makes a really thick, sticky, clumpy paste, which you can never get the lumps out of. And the digital version, you do it the right way. And so I'm really sorry for this mistake, but the digital version is the right one.
JS: There you go. So maybe let's do more of a little deep dive into this recipe and maybe we start with the cake.
SU: I have a recipe for a chocolate Swiss roll on Epicurious, which really did very well, but I've always wanted to develop a vanilla version of this. And something about me is that I love watching YouTube at the end of the day.
JS: Really?
SU: I love watching-
JS: Like in bed?
SU: No, I never watched any screen in bed.
JS: Oh, healthy.
SU: But after we've finished dinner and we're sitting on the couch, I love watching YouTube, especially-
JS: What do you look up?
SU: Always it's cooking videos.
JS: Always.
SU: Always.
JS: Wow.
SU: Almost always. It's very calming to me.
JS: Okay. Okay.
SU: So then I stumbled across this recipe for this Swiss roll cake, and we're going to link the channel, and their Swiss rolls looked impeccable, perfectly round with a shiny brown surface on top. So I ended up using one of the recipes from there sort of as a base for this roll cake. It's a chiffon cake. And then the filling is my now tried, true, tested, always plugged, whipped cream filling.
JS: The Big Club's going to start calling us one-trick ponies.
SU: Yes. But that's the thing about baking though. Sometimes when you... Most of baking is just a few simple foundations that you then build on or do variations on.
JS: Yeah, totally.
SU: And I hope that's something that people take away in bake club. When we talk about being curious and confident, the confident part is once you nail certain things, we hope that you can build...
JS: You know how to tweak them.
SU: Exactly. So for instance, I found that using instant pudding mix or powder in heavy cream makes for a really lovely whipped cream filling that not only is it stable, but it also has the sort of... I always call it as a mouth filling sort of quality, and it gives you this richness of flavor that you can't quite replicate with just plain whipped cream. And I love it so much that I just keep using it in places where it makes sense for me. And to me, I consider it as a nice foundation that I can then build off of.
JS: Yeah, totally.
SU: So that's the filling. And then the fruit part is, it's really just simple. It's finding the best fruit that you can. And this is a strawberry roll cake. So of course it's strawberries. And I always put a note. I put a note in the recipe that said, "If you can't find good strawberries, just use raspberries instead."
JS: Sure.
SU: Because I often find raspberries are a bit more consistent throughout the year.
JS: They're always the same. Yeah.
SU: They are. Reliably juicy and deep red and they have this nice balance of sweet and tart flavor. So if you can't find good strawberries, and when I say good strawberries, I mean they're really sweet and they don't have white shoulders. Just use raspberries instead.
JS: White shoulders. Love that.
SU: They do. And then the last part I guess is the wait, which, well, you don't really have to wait that long for this cake. The steps go by pretty fast, but by holding the cake, after you roll this cake, by holding it for a couple of hours, it really sort of sets the structure. And I think the cake, which is quite porous, sucks up some of the moisture from the liquid and everything is much more cohesive. All in all, a really lovely cake for spring, especially.
JS: It is. It's a very delicious cake and it's so cute and twee and proper.
SU: Oh, God.
JS: Yes.
SU: You can imagine it with a cup of Earl Grey tea, Jesse?
JS: Yes, she's lovely.
SU: Oh, wonderful.
JS: Okay, great. So let's start at the beginning. You told us kind of the inspo origins, but want to talk us through the development of the cake. So you said you slightly adapted this from that recipe.
SU: Yeah.
JS: So what was developing this like?
SU: This one, to be very honest, it was a very easy recipe to develop.
JS: Yeah, it came to you.
SU: It came together very fast because I already knew a lot of these elements and then it was a matter of putting them together and presenting it as a whole. And strawberry roll cake is not an unusual format. I wasn't breaking new ground. I was certainly approaching it in a different way in terms of using a chiffon cake. And I will say that that is perhaps the most revolutionary aspect of this recipe, so to speak, is that you don't have to roll the cake while it's still warm.
JS: Because traditionally a jelly roll is quite temperamental.
SU: Yes.
JS: It comes out of the oven, you plop it on a dish towel while it's hot, you roll it up while it's hot and hope it doesn't crack.
SU: Exactly. And then you're supposed to unroll this cake.
JS: Without cracking it.
SU: Without cracking it and it still has to be kind of warm, but not too warm that it'll melt the frosting and then you put this filling in and then you have to roll it back again. I don't have the patience for that.
JS: So what do you do?
SU: So instead, by using a base of chiffon cake, which is, most cakes are split into two categories, butter cakes and then foam cakes.
JS: And Shilpa, what is the difference between a butter cake and a foaming cake?
SU: Okay. I will say this. All cakes in the world can be split into these two categories, foaming and butter cakes. Foamed cakes start with a base of whipped eggs, whether that's whipped egg whites or whipped whole eggs. It always starts with a base of foamed eggs to which ingredients are added. And butter cakes, on the other hand, start with creaming the fat and sugar together. And then you add the rest of the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients and so on and so forth. What happens is because you're foaming the eggs in the foaming method cakes, those cakes are typically light and fluffy, whereas the cream cakes usually have a high ratio of butter and sugar to the other ingredients. They tend to be very dense and tender and rich.
JS: Like a pound cake.
SU: Like a pound cake.
JS: Versus a Dacquoise.
SU: Oh God.
JS: Or Chicaned.
SU: Or a chiffon.
JS: Or a chiffon.
SU: And then our cake.
JS: All the ones with the whity names.
SU: Yes. I think foaming method cakes aren't as prevalent in American baking, but I love them because they have a special ability to absorb a lot of liquid in the form of syrup.
JS: Hence the name.
SU: Hence the name. So I think they can provide a foundation for very complex architectural cakes.
JS: That's cool.
SU: But the great thing about the chiffon cake is it has so much fat in it, like a liquid fat, like oil, that it almost eats like a butter cake.
JS: Yeah, it's not dry.
SU: It's not dry.
JS: Because sponge cake typically, some of them, you want them to be dry.
SU: Yes.
JS: Because it's a sponge.
SU: Yes, exactly.
JS: To suck stuff up.
SU: It's a sponge to soak up syrups or creams or other moases. And I love them for that reason. Most European cakes are built that way.
JS: Yeah, they have a purpose.
SU: Yes, they have a purpose. But in this particular cake, it's quite... I mean, I know it's crazy to call it something lean when it has so much heavy cream in it, but it's really quite an austere cake in that it's cake, it's cream filling, and then it's fruit. So I really wanted each element to be very tasty on its own. That's why I selected a chiffon cake, which is quite delicious even plain, because of its high ratio of fat. So by using a chiffon cake, which is built on this sturdy protein structure from high ratio of eggs and which has moisture from the oil, it really helps you roll the cake when it's fully cooled. You're not forced to work with the cake when it's still warm or rolling it to set its structure or so forth. You bake the cake, you let it sit until it's cool. You can even come back to it in a few hours, and then you fill it, roll it and move on.
JS: I love that. You also add cream of tartar to your eggs.
SU: I do add cream of tartar to my egg whites. And this is a tip I actually picked up from Rose Levy Beranbaum. And I'd always seen cream of tartar in recipes, but I never understood why fully, and I would often just leave it off. But Rose explained to me that when you add a little bit of cream of tartar in egg whites, you can almost never over-whip the egg whites. And that's actually really great because it is actually easy to over-whip egg whites. And when you do, you always know if you've done so because the egg whites, they go from this shiny, billowy mass to something that is now sort of, it still looks like clouds, but it's somewhat dry and broken up. And when you get to that stage, it's very hard. It kind of loses its ability to expand and grow in the oven.
So to avoid ever reaching that stage, adding a tiny bit of cream of charter is really fabulous insurance when you're whipping egg whites.
JS: I love that. So let's talk about the rolling part.
SU: Okay.
JS: So you mentioned it's cool. You don't need to worry about the cake cracking or anything.
SU: Yeah.
JS: Now what?
SU: So when the cake is fully cooled, it's in the sheet tray. You put a piece of parchment over and then you flip it. So the top is now the bottom on your counter. And then you trim the very edges of the cake off, because the edges tend to be a touch more dryer naturally, because they're touching the metal. And I've found that by trimming those edges off, it's sort of like everything is then the same texture from edge to edge, and it's easier to roll. And then you put your filling in and berries on top, kind of smush the berries in a little bit just to sort of make them sink into the cream, and then you roll. And the thing is this, nine times out of 10, this cake has never cracked on me.
JS: Oh, that one time.
SU: And the one time Jesse, was when I had to do it for video. Of course it cracked.
JS: Worse.
SU: But here's the thing. The thing is there's so much cream filling that you just got to keep going and it'll rarely crack towards the end of the cake where it actually matters, which is the most visible part. If it ever cracks, it'll only crack in the very beginning when you make the first or second roll.
JS: Because they're the tightest rolls.
SU: The tightest rolls.
JS: Yeah. So it's like a brief change.
SU: Yes, yes. So that's when it'll be most likely to crack. And if it does, just keep rolling, honestly. Once you get to the end, your cake should look very smooth. And then the whipped cream is going to be the fixer of any flaws.
JS: There you go. Yeah. Pipe a little something on it.
SU: Yes.
JS: Shove a strawberry in it.
SU: Yes.
JS: All good. Okay. And after you assemble it, yours is quite posh looking. You decorate it. Do you want to talk about that?
SU: Yes, I do indeed. Listen, the thing is I use the laziest trick in the book, which is to use this huge tip to do a little lazy twirl on top of the cake. And it's actually, I can't even remember the number at this point of the tip, but it's actually like an icer.
JS: Yeah. It's very distinct.
SU: Yes. It's called a flat icing tip. And usually you use it to frost the sides of a cake. And essentially the frosting comes out in this ridged sort of ribbon, and you can get it in different widths, but bakeries use it to frost the sides of the cake and you can build up the sides really quickly before you smooth it out again. But by using this dramatic white ribbon and just piping a few scrolls on top, your cake automatically just looks very fancy. You certainly don't have to do it with the tip. You can just run a dollop of cream on top and then plop some berries on, but doing it with the tip sort of just takes it over the edge.
JS: Yeah. I mean, why not? You're there already.
SU: There we go. We are going to take a quick break.
JS: And when we get back, we'll answer some listener questions all about strawberry roll cake.
SU: Welcome back to BA Bake Club.
JS: Okay. Shilpa, are you ready for some listener questions?
SU: Yes, I am. But before we get to that, I think we need to talk about how many people made this cake and how good everyone's cake looks.
JS: Yeah. I mean, there actually weren't that many questions this month because I feel like everyone kind of nailed it.
SU: I'm just so proud of our Bake Club.
JS: I mean, yeah, they really turned out, but we do have a few questions.
SU: We do.
JS: Are you ready?
SU: Yes.
JS: Okay. We're going to start with a question from Mary Louise. Okay. "My cake turned out well, delicious and pretty, but when I took this bunch out of the oven, it went from puffed to deflated. Did I take it out too soon? It was nicely browned and cooked till the suggested time." And we have a photo here of it.
SU: I see the photo. It's like a front-facing photo of the roll cake and there's cream on top, piped with a little star tip. Okay. I'm a little torn, because when I look at the picture, the height of the cake looks perfectly fine. It doesn't look extremely thin. No. It looks like the normal height. However, I do see in the very center, it may be the faintest, faintest, faintest ribbon of density. I think I need to ask Mary Louise a few more questions, but I would think if there was a dramatic difference in when it came out and was super puffy and then it really deflated, my one immediate thought would be perhaps the eggs were over-whipped. And sometimes when you over-whip egg whites, then you almost whip their ability to sort of sustain air, and then when it comes out, it deflates.
JS: Yeah.
SU: That would be my one plausible thought. What do you have?
JS: I mean, yeah, I will also say cakes of this nature, they do exhale a little bit.
SU: Yes.
JS: The slightest bit of deflating is normal.
SU: Agree. That's a good point.
JS: Even with pound cakes, you'll notice it kind of... And it settles.
SU: Another sound from Jesse.
JS: So I don't know. Perhaps we're being overcritical here. I don't know. Who's to say.
SU: Yeah. I mean, as I said in the beginning, from the picture, the height of the cake doesn't look compromised. So I think maybe Mary Louise maybe must have experienced that little bit of deflation, which is kind of normal, but I will check back.
JS: Cool. Melissa also had an issue with the cake, and she wrote on Substack, "My cake turned out very dry. No sponginess. Is this over baking or under-whipping? My four-year-old was helping throughout the entire process. So there is of course a large margin for air, but we were careful to weigh everything. Also, I used a stand mixer. The overall product was still delicious and no problem rolling. We will try it again. As a bonus, I discovered my daughter can separate eggs like a pro."
SU: Wow.
JS: There you go.
SU: A four-year-old separating eggs like a pro. That's awesome.
JS: Okay, chef. Yes.
SU: Normally I would be like, the four-year-old is the problem.
JS: Yeah, just blame it on them.
SU: But since it ends with the four-year-old can separate eggs like a pro, I'm going to say no, that wasn't the problem. I feel like there's two things to the question. One is Melissa says, my cake turned out very dry. And the second point she says there's no sponginess. To me, those are two very different things because it can be... One reason it could be dry is certainly that it's over-baked. That would be why it feels dry.
JS: Sure.
SU: And then no sponginess to me denotes that something deflated. And the thing about mixing foaming method cakes where you whip the eggs, whether it's just the egg whites or the whole eggs themselves. And when you fold in the rest of the ingredients, you really have to be not so much gentle, as careful not to over-mix. And sometimes when you over-mix the batter, you can sort of see it change. You can see it change from something frothy and with body to something kind of loose. It loosens up and becomes darker in color. And if that happens, then it's never going to then rise in the oven again.
JS: Sure.
SU: And there's no baking powder in this recipe to add an extra insurance here. So I'm going to go with maybe everything was right, but then the folding, it was maybe over mixed.
JS: Sure. So the four-year-old mixed it a little bit too much.
SU: That's the answer we're going with.
JS: Okay, great. Okay, cool. Next is a question about substitutions. Ayari writes, "Hello. I'm not able to find the cream of tartar. Any recommendations for substitute? White vinegar, nothing. Thanks."
SU: That's a good question. I would say, actually I already has the answer. They're like, "White vinegar?" I think that's a good substitute. It's certainly great to use or you could just do nothing. The cream of tartar really is not there to provide acidity, though it is a very acidic ingredient. It really is there to sort of prevent the egg whites from getting over-whipped, because it interferes with the egg proteins in a certain way that prevents them from ever being over-whipped and it's always going to be silky. As to how much vinegar I would use, I would say start with a teaspoon of vinegar for this recipe and take it from there.
JS: Have you ever heard the old wisdom of wipe your bowl with lemon juice or vinegar or something?
SU: Yes. Yeah. And that's because most people think that if there's any trace of fat or grease...
JS: It slicks it off somehow.
SU: Yes. I mean, there is something to the theory. I think that you can't have too much grease when you're whipping egg whites. It does inhibit. Does vinegar or lemon juice get rid of every trace of fats, perhaps not as effectively as soap and water, but it's certainly nostalgic to try.
JS: Sure, sure, sure. Okay, cool. We have a question from Katie about the parchment paper extraction. Katie writes, "Super fun bake. My only problem was the parchment paper I used to help roll the cake stuck to it and ripped off some of its skin, for lack of a better word. Should I have let it cool a little longer? I'll definitely be making this again." Okay. For context, the skin is cracking me up because I watched Shilpa rub the skin off of a whole one.
SU: It was like the Swiss roll had a Turkish bap and I was peeling the skin off.
JS: She microdermabrasioned this roll. And I don't know if this was a test or just a moment of...
SU: No, because the same thing happened to me as what happened to Katie. Some of the skin, the skin-
JS: Yes. So then you said just screw it, go all the way, take the whole skin off.
SU: Yes. So I peeled all of the skin off and actually-
JS: She tried to feed it to me. She said I have scraps.
SU: The skin is the best part.
JS: And then she gives me like a shag carpet bowl of bits.
SU: They're good though. I will say, yes, this happened to me, Katie. It's kind of unavoidable, to be honest. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't. There's really no perfect way to control it. I've often found that if you leave the cake, the rolled cake overnight in the fridge, and if you've had plastic wrap on it, for instance, touching the surface of the cake, and when you go to peel it away, it will almost always 99% of the time rip the skin away. There's something about how the moisture interacts with the skin after an overnight rest where that happens. But if you experienced this before you've refrigerated the cake at all, I will say maybe let the cake cool a bit longer. Sometimes if it's a bit too warm, the skin can peel off. Honestly, when this has happened to me, as Jesse said, I have microdermabrasion, microderma, whatever.
JS: She chemical-peeled it.
SU: I really did. And it looks beautiful.
JS: So just go all the way. I mean, the next question is from Liam. Same issue.
SU: Yeah.
JS: He said, "My first Bake Club, quite happy with how it turned out, especially after seeing these go wrong. Everyone thought it was beautiful and delicious. I had the same cake skin peeled off issue." And it looks maybe like Liam leaned into it and peeled away.
SU: Yeah, yeah. Liam mostly waxed his skin off. I would say just take it all off.
JS: I mean, honestly, I agree.
SU: Yeah.
JS: Yeah. And finally, a question from Tim, not related, chef check.
SU: And not related to chef check.
JS: He says, "Yet another fantastic cake. I think I might have under-whipped the meringue a tad. I don't really have much experience making meringue and I don't own any satin pajamas. It's another desert sand incident."
SU: It really is. Okay. To anyone listening, Tim is mentioning satin pajamas because in our video that we did for social, I do say to whip the egg whites until they have the sheen of satin pajamas. I think Tim is asking that because if you look closely at the photo of Tim's cake, first of all, it's spectacular. It's a perfect even roll, beautiful-
JS: It's very pretty. Yeah.
SU: Beautifully golden on the outside, lovely strawberries scattered on top and inside. So when I look at the picture of Tim's cake, which is otherwise really beautiful, and I see that there's a slight volume loss and it looks slightly, just the slightest bit gummy. I do agree that maybe Tim did under-whip his meringue. Under-whipping is not as bad as over-whipping, and there's nothing at that moment that you can do. I would certainly not whisk the batter anymore after I add the rest of the ingredients. But all in all, I think the cake looks really beautiful and I don't think it was a big loss.
JS: Yeah. Oh, just a little minor thing.
SU: Yeah.
JS: She's pretty.
SU: She's a beautiful cake.
JS: Okay, great. And last we have decided to create a new award.
SU: Yes.
JS: The
SU: Baker
JS: Of the month.
SU: We have a baker of the month.
JS: So we picked through all the photos and decided which one we thought was...
SU: The prettiest.
JS: The prettiest.
SU: The most creative.
JS: Would you like to award the Baker of the Month?
SU: Oh, Megan Moore. You are the Baker of the Month for April.
JS: You win this.
SU: Yes.
JS: The shout-out.
SU: You win the shout-out. Yes. There's nothing else to it actually. But we really loved Megan's roll cake. Megan sliced her strawberries lengthwise, so they're little hearts. And then she ran stripes of them down the length of the cake. And you know what I liked most? The one that got me is not the strawberries themselves, but the fact that Megan spackled the front of her roll cake in almost like a little modesty garment.
JS: Yeah, she closed it.
SU: Yeah.
JS: I do love that.
SU: It was lovely and it was a little extra attention to detail, which I really appreciated.
JS: Beautiful.
SU: We are going to take another break.
JS: And when we get back, we're going to introduce you to a baker you should know.
SU: Welcome back to BA Bake Club.
JS: It is one of our favorite parts of the show. It is time for us to introduce you to a Baker We Think You Should Know.
SU: And this week, Jesse, I feel like my voice is actually shaking, but this week it's a hero of ours. It's Donna Hay herself.
JS: Donna is an icon in Australia and so far beyond. She started as a food stylist, then became a food editor, then launched a magazine and has appeared on award-winning television shows. She has her own line of homewares and baking mixes, and please correct me if I'm wrong, has written 28 award-winning cookbooks.
SU: That's crazy.
JS: Yes, we are both big fans of Donna and we fell in love through her beautifully styled and photographed food. Honestly, that was our entryway in. It's so singular, so timeless. So Donna, welcome to BA Bake Club.
DH: Thank you. And what an introduction. My goodness.
SU: No, we are serious fans.
JS: Okay. Let's go back to the very, very beginning. So how did you fall in love with food and baking and cooking?
DH: Well, I was the kind of kid that loved just mucking around in the kitchen. My mom always let me make the most insane amount of mess. And for me, I think it was that real childlike fascination and the kind of magic that cooking had. Mixing egg whites and sugar and making these giant fluffy clouds, it all seemed so magical and so fascinating to me. So I used to bake up all these crazy concoctions and make so much mess. And my mother, who's quite a smart woman, used to say to me, "I'll help you clean up if you help me make dinner or if you make dinner." So most kids don't transition so quickly into savory. They like to stay in sweet. I get it. It's fun. It's magical, but I kind of started cooking family meals from quite a young age, but not cleaning up.
JS: I love that.
SU: That's a great story.
JS: That's the motivation I need.
SU: Is there a person in your life then that motivated you to then follow this childhood start in food and to transition it into a career?
DH: I would like to say that I have an inspirational mother or grandmother, but my grandmother was a fantastic gardener. She had the most amazing vegetable garden. So my love of fresh produce came from her, but my mother was one of those kind of cooks, and I guess that's why you'll see my kind of empathy towards people who need to get dinner on the table. She didn't really love it. And I get it. She was feeding a family. She just didn't love it. And that's okay. You don't have to love it. You can love other things. So I think it was out of necessity that I was kind of guided into it and I was maybe just lucky that my grandmother had the most amazing garden and I just loved cooking.
SU: I mean, I'm actually really fascinated to hear that because many of your books are exactly this union of really fresh and very fast and simple cooking. We want to talk about your book. It's called Sunshine, Lemons, and Sea Salt. And the philosophy in it is one hero ingredient, one unexpected accent, and one simple technique. How did you land on this?
DH: I landed on this project like lots of things in my life. It was a bit of a happy accident. This isn't the first book that I've actually photographed and created at home. I have always had a big studio, I guess that was a hangover from magazine dates. But when I was filming my series for Disney, I moved everything to home for the first time because I live by the ocean and I like a very casual house to entertain in. So when my friends came over for Sunday lunch, I like them to feel really relaxed and really just that they're having a moment before the week starts. So it's great food, good company, lots of laughs and really casual. Kick off your clothes, not clothes. Shoes. I know. Wow, that's a party that we don't want to talk about right now. I promise you it's not.
But kick off your shoes, you just lounge back. When you're in someone's home and it's a Sunday, I really feel like it's that opportunity to just be really chill. And so after I filmed my series, I kept going and I created the book here. So I think it has that touch of sunshine and lightness. And as you said, it's summer produce. In summer, you can just really hone in on one fantastic ingredient because there's nothing like that kind of sunkissed real flavor of summer produce, whether it's a tomato or a zucchini, a courgette, or a fig. Did you hear me self-correct?
SU: No, no. Yes, I did. And I loved it.
JS: Shilpa's entranced.
SU: Yes. Suntranced is the right word. That's a good word.
DH: So I just think there's something so unique about summer produce that it doesn't really need much because I don't know, the sunshine just shines through a really ripe tomato. I think it's more in just the simple preparation, maybe holding back than adding. So I think that this book is a real celebration of that kind of ethos of how I cook at home and the long summers that we have here in Sydney.
JS: I feel like you feel it when you look at it.
DH: You do. It really comes through.
JS: It's like it's breathy and romantic and bright. Yes.
SU: When you spoke about how you wanted to create a space for your friends to come over, and that's what sort of was the inspiration behind the book. I'm curious to know if other people invite you to their homes.
DH: Oh, I wish they would, but let's just face it. Not often. Not often at all.
SU: They're probably too intimidated.
DH: Actually, I did. I got invited to dinner the other night, which was amazing. So Warwick and Robbie, thank you very much for having me for dinner. That's the first time in quite a few years.
SU: Oh, wow.
DH: But I think that I have fostered that thing of come to mind that I'm always cooking. I think it's partly my own fault. They just know that I'm cooking on Sunday.
JS: I love that. Okay, Donna. This episode of Bake Club is all about Shilpa's strawberry roll cake, which we have kind of dubbed the unofficial birthday cake of the Test Kitchen here at Bon Appétit only because so many people have requested it. So what is your favorite birthday cake that you've made or that you request?
DH: My goodness. I change my mind a lot. But at the moment, I like this whole lemon cake. I've got it on serious rotation and it has just been my birthday not long ago. And it's like the classic whole orange cake. It's just a little reinvention of that where you get thin skin lemons and you boil them and then you blitz them up with tons of almond meal. You make a gorgeous lemon syrup served with really thick, creamy Greek yogurt. And it's just zesty, sunny yumminess.
JS: Our next episode of Bake Club, spoiler here, is actually a whole lemon recipe too. So you're on our wavelength.
DH: Oh, wow. We are connected, see.
JS: We are connected.
SU: With the strawberry roll cake, the big takeaway for our bakers this month is we really tried to demystify rolled cakes. And I developed a recipe with using a chiffon cake as a base, which doesn't really crack. Rolling, it is an intimidating technique. Do you have any tips when you're undertaking a roll cake?
DH: Can we just have a quick side note about this? That you have touched on a trauma for me that still lives to this day. Can I show you a very quick story. But when I was at culinary school when I was 18, we had lots of practical exams. Some of them you knew which things you were going to cook and other things, you had to pick a piece of paper out of a mixing bowl and whatever you got, you had to bake with a recipe, but it had to be perfect. I got roll cakes twice. The trauma is still real, people. And then I looked at your recipe and I thought, well, that's genius. I love the addition of the oil because I feel like that is going to give you that extra stretch that you're going to need to avoid any cracking.
SU: Yes. Thank you for totally getting that right away. Maybe, who knows? Maybe DH will make the strawberry roll cake.
DH: Great. I am going to make the strawberry roll cake as some kind of therapeutic get over your childhood trauma thing. After all these years, maybe I should face the music and make your version with the oil because I'm sure mine was like a dry sponge cake-based recipe. You couldn't riff. You had to follow the recipe they gave you. And I'm sure mine was a traditional English sponge with butter and it was kind of dry around the edges. It was too much drama coming out. Can you hear it in my voice?
JS: Do you still enjoy eating roll cakes or is there too much going on here?
DH: Oh no, I think roll cakes are magical. I remember as a little girl loving how the spiral was just so beautiful. And I remember her wanting to get the spiral absolutely perfect. You don't want a lazy spiral in the middle, do you? You want it to tuck in and around. Sorry, perfectionist, not apologizing actually because-
JS: You're on the right podcast.
DH: [inaudible 00:36:43] Great recipes. Yeah. But I'm coming back. I'm making a come back this weekend.
JS: I love that.
SU: Okay. We have a question from a listener, Alysia. Can it be done gluten-free? And if so, which flour do you recommend? Are there any other changes? We get these questions a lot in Bake Club, specifically about gluten-free baking and converting regular recipes into gluten-free versions. Do you have any advice, Donna? It doesn't have to be specific to a roll cake, of course, now that we've unpacked all of your trauma. We don't need to bother you with it. But do you have any advice about gluten-free baking in general?
DH: I do, because I find that if you choose a gluten-free flour and premix that has a higher quantity of protein and has a little bit more complex and it's mixed than just potato starch and rice flour or something like that. I find if you use something a little bit more thoughtful, like a Bob's Red Mill one-to-one, that kind of mix, it's got a little bit of sorghum and it's kind of a little bit more complex. It gives you a bit more... It's just got a bit more texture, maybe a bit more protein in it. But I find that that works a lot better. I often freestyle and add a little bit more of the fat to gluten-free baking just because that flour is usually super absorbent and it dries out your mix. So I would probably start by just a little splash of extra oil in that roll cake. I think you would be fine.
SU: That's a smart tip.
JS: I do like the one-for-one mixes are typically, I feel like, yeah, the safest route.
SU: Yeah, I agree. Then making your own blend or anything.
JS: I endorse this.
DH: Yeah. You don't want to go out and buy nine different flours and well, I'm not going to. Sorry.
SU: I think we may move into a few rapid-fire questions for you. Are you ready?
DH: Okay. I'm ready.
SU: Okay.
JS: Okay. Number one, what is your favorite utensil?
DH: The Spoonula.
JS: Spoonula.
DH: I know. Random. I was going to say zester. I was going to say microplane. Oh, I don't know. There's so many.
JS: Wait, okay. For our listeners who may not know, can you describe what a Spoonula is?
DH: It's part spatula part cooked spoon.
JS: There you go. It's in the name. Our producer's absolutely losing her mind to the concept of a Spoonula over here.
SU: Our producer is like, is it silicone?
DH: I'm bringing you some. It's silicon, yeah. I am going to bring you some.
SU: Okay. Next question. What quality do you most admire in a baker?
DH: I guess people really want to succeed when they're baking. So probably precision.
JS: I like that.
DH: But then I'm so casual, I'm a bit torn, but you have to be precise. Just do it while you're smiling and maybe singing. So let's not get too serious.
JS: There you go. There you go.
SU: Yeah.
JS: What is your perfect cake?
DH: Not dry. Can you say what it isn't? It's not dry and it feels slightly nostalgic.
JS: I like that.
SU: Do you like layer cakes or do you like single layer cakes?
DH: I think my problem is that I like all cake. I like layer cakes, but I would prefer them to have a whipped ganache. I'm not a full buttercream girl. I would like it to have a more complex flavor than just buttercream.
JS: I agree. I don't love a real buttercream. I really don't.
SU: Yeah, no.
JS: Yeah. It's just butter.
DH: We're not trying to eat that much whipped butter.
JS: Yeah. I agree.
SU: It's too heavy.
DH: There's so many more great fillings than buttercream.
JS: I agree.
DH: It's really going deep.
JS: Do you have a motto or words that you live by in the kitchen?
DH: Am I allowed to... If you want to go inside the DH little gang that we have here, we say, keep it pretty not-(beep).
JS: There you go. That's the motto.
SU: Jesse and I are going to print that out.
DH: Someone will often walk past me. We are a very casual little gang of cooks. And so someone might come past me and whisper over my shoulder. Pretty not-(beep). It just keeps it light because sometimes as well, you're testing a recipe, you really want it to work. You had this great vision and it just all comes apart halfway through testing. So I like my team to keep it pretty light.
JS: Okay. Last rapid-fire question. What is the best compliment that you've received on one of your baked goods?
DH: Oh, I think it's just really nice when you see people baking at home and posting your recipes. I see cookbooks that are really thumbed through. People apologize for having all food splatters and things through their cookbooks. But for me, that's the ultimate compliment is seeing all those food splatters. I mean, it's nice that you've got a beautiful cookbook on your coffee table, but it's kind of more rewarding for me to see that the book's been used as well.
JS: I love that.
SU: I fear I'm even more obsessed with DH now than before this conversation.
DH: You know I'm visiting with Spoonulas, don't you?
JS: Oh, please. Anytime.
DH: Imagine that call. "Security, security. We've got a crazy Australian lady who..."
JS: I'd say, "Send her straight up."
SU: No, thank you, Donna, for being here on this podcast with us.
JS: Yeah, thank you.
DH: Oh, you're very welcome.
SU: Do you want to take a moment to tell people where we can find you on the internet?
DH: Well, you can find my recipes at donnahay.com. And you can watch my new series on Disney Plus. It's called Coastal Celebrations, and I have a new book out called Sunshine, Lemons, and Sea Salt. So recipes everywhere. I'm on Instagram. I'm everywhere just like you guys, and it has been so much fun talking to you today. I've had a really great time and lots of laughs, so thank you.
JS: Thank you, Donna.
SU: That's it for this month's edition of BA Bake Club. Jesse, do you want to tell bakers about the May Bake Club recipe?
JS: Yes. I am calling it whole lemon bars. Essentially, it is lemon bars, classic shortbread with a lemon custard on top. But to really kind of reinforce the lemon head flavor, just the intensity, you use both lemon juice, obviously, and you blitz that up with two whole lemons in a blender that's chunked up to extract all of their bittersweetness, all those oils, all the good stuff. So you're really celebrating a lemon for what it really is instead of trying to just show its tartness.
SU: I love the filling on this one.
JS: Thanks.
SU: The texture of the filling is really, really good.
JS: Creamy. Yeah, it's creamy.
SU: It's creamy. It's creamy. It's custardy. It almost feels like a softly set panna cotta in many ways.
JS: Oh.
SU: And you would think I, for a minute, was worried that it was going to be bitter because of the whole lemons, but you strain it out, don't you?
JS: You strain it out. Yeah. The little bits are not there.
SU: So it really just captures all of the florality of lemon with none of the bitterness. It was really delicious.
JS: Thanks, Shilpa.
SU: Are there any special ingredients or equipment that bakers should have on-hand?
JS: Well, you'll need a blender.
SU: Oh yeah.
JS: Yeah. We usually don't do this kind of thing, but you need a blender this time around. You can get creative. I'm excited to see, but yeah.
SU: You need a blender, guys.
JS: You need a blender.
SU: Okay. Bake Clubbers, once you've baked the lemon bars, send us your pictures and questions. There are so many different ways to get in touch with us.
JS: You can comment on the recipe on the Epicurious app, or on the Bon Appétit website, comment on our Substack, or you can email us at [email protected]. And if you've made it and you loved it, rate and review the recipe on our site. We're your hosts, JS.
SU: And SU.
JS: Our producer is Emily Elias, and we had editing by Michele O'Brien.
SU: Pran Bandi is our studio engineer.
JS: Research editing by Ryan Herrington and Marissa Malanga.
SU: This episode was mixed by Amar Lal at Macro Sound.
JS: If you like the show, leave us a rating and review, and hit that follow button so you never miss an episode.
SU: And if you're not already part of the club, please head to bonappetit.com/bakeclub to find all the information you need to join.
JS: Thanks for listening to BA Bake Club, and we'll see you next month.