540: Baking Is Like Karaoke with Abi Balingit

0:00This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. Resi is a digital platform that connects restaurants to restaurant lovers by elevating dining experiences, providing original industry content, and helping to fill some of the country's most exciting dining rooms. Because restaurants have always been more than just places to eat. The amazing world of restaurants is just a few taps away in the Resi app and at resi.com.

0:32There's a lot of ways to balance like sweetness in a dessert. You can kind of overwhelm like the balance one way or the other if you do way too much salt or way too much smokiness where you can't taste anything else. It's kind of like that trial and error that helps me kind of get through of like, oh, next time I'll do this and next time I'll do that.

0:51This is Taste. I'm your host, Eliza Varbanel.

0:59Abby Belinket is the author of Mayumu, Filipino Desserts Remixed, a delightful cookbook full of maximalist personality and transfixing sweets, like the adobo chocolate chip cookie. She's a singular force in the New York City baking scene, and today it's so fun to have her in the studio to talk about what she's been up to since publishing her first book, her love of kitsch, and more.

1:28Abbey Belingut, this is Taste. Thank you for coming on the podcast. Thank you, Liza. I'm so happy to be here. I'm so happy to have you here. This is like my first time recording in our fancy new studio, and you are dressed to impress, as always, with fuzzy strawberry earrings. They're actually pizzas. Oh, no. It's fine. Oh, no, I should start over. No. They do look like, I guess if they were strawberries, they'd have to be the pine berries. That's true. That are mostly yellow with the red spots on them. It's hard to like 3D. I guess pizza doesn't really make sense. So the shape, I would imagine you would like it seems like a strawberry.

2:03It's not your fault. It's like a pizza berry. Pizza berry. Yeah. You also have cookie earrings that I've seen you wear before. How extensive is your food accessory collection? Oh, my God. It's quite extensive. I feel like earrings were really like my go to accessory during the pandemic. and I really gravitate towards it on Zoom calls, just like nothing else to show off. And so I have a lot, just a lot. What's your latest, greatest addition to the food accessory wardrobe? I would say it was really nice. Someone, one of my friends made my cookbook, just the cookbook title and with the little hola hola baked Alaska, like as an earring for me.

2:38And I was like one of the sweetest like polymer clay kind of earrings I've had in my whole collection. I love that. And I love that you have other polymer clay earrings. It's true. collection I know you do um and I would imagine that over the course of your book tour last year you maybe were gifted other earrings or food accessories I feel like when you can become known for something it's such a fun totem that people can bring to you did that happen one of my old roommates in college when I went to LA um she got me like a bedazzled you know like those coffee mugs that are like extra large um it had like myumu like all printed all over it And like other people were dressing up kind of in like the colors like pink and hot pink and like lime green.

3:18So it was really it was really such like a beautiful thing to witness in real life. I love that. And because you're on my podcast, I get to ask you all the questions that I've always wanted to know. One of which is, have you always been such a like colorful maximalist dresser? And do you think that impulse is a similar impulse in terms of the flavors and the kind of colorful desserts that you make? I feel like in high school, I was very like scene kid, like wannabe scene kid. And I really wanted to be emo. And I was just like on Tumblr a lot. So I feel like dark grunge was kind of like what I was going for.

3:53Didn't execute very well with what I had. But I think lately in life, like in my 20s and onward, I feel like color is just something that I love and gravitate towards. And definitely in baking, I feel like it's subconscious almost that it's like, oh, like I think there are certain spices that just like have so much flavor and they end up being like bright red or like ube, for example, is so purple. And I feel like that's just it comes with the territory, I guess. And I think it's just like an interesting kind of thing to always think about. And for me, when I first started baking, I remember just like covering all my mistakes with like sprinkles and like rainbow sprinkles, any kind of sprinkle I could get.

4:30like Wilton from like Michael's, Joanne's. And so it is something I love to use. I also ascribe to the covering up mistakes with Sprinkles School of Baking. So it makes me feel very seen and comforted that you operate from that same place sometimes. And I also love knowing that you had this kind of scene era because I find that so endearing. And I do think there is a similar impulse, even though aesthetically they're different. There's this like total commitment to wanting to execute a certain vibe in your aesthetic of something and just kind of wanting to say something with clothing. And I think like that's a really fun place to operate from.

5:07But really, I want to talk to you about Mayumu, which is such a special book and I think has had a really great reception since it came out last year. It's this technicolor celebration of modern Filipino-American desserts, like the hollow, hollow baked Alaska that you mentioned. And then, of course, the adobo chocolate chip cookie, of which I got to interview you about at a cherry bomb panel. But I only got to eat the raw dough because they were devoured so quickly by the class, which is honestly a testament to the cookie. It's very heartbreaking. When I heard that, I was like, let me do this again.

5:37Let's redo this whole session. I feel so bad you didn't get one. No, I mean, I just need to bake them myself, clearly, is the answer. And also raw cookie dough is kind of my preferred way of trying cookies. Maybe that's sacrilegious to say. No, no. Also, same, same, same. But I do feel like there are so many standout desserts in your book. And I'm curious, like being on Instagram, getting to see what people are making, what were the desserts that you were kind of getting tagged in the most? Yeah, I was surprised that I think that like, first and foremost, I feel like the Adembo chocolate chip cookies really got a big run because the New York Times like published the recipe, which is really helpful.

6:12But the other things like the unsung heroes of the book, I would say people were really interested by like the buco pandan cathedral jelly cake and so it's kind of a mishmash of two separate like filipino desserts whereas like cathedral um jelly is kind of like spanish origin and everything for the holidays it's basically like gelatin and like a mold with all like the colorful jello kind of like shards of it all interspersed in this milky base but then i love buco pandan which is like kind of just like a chilled like refreshing dessert that has like tapioca pearls and like a coconut like pandan sauce with just like all the coconut jellies you can imagine.

6:50And so mine is like a monochromatic kind of version of it. And then someone literally DM'd me two days ago and was like, I didn't realize I don't have like your pandan extract that has the green food coloring. So it came out just pure white. But it was like beautiful. It was kind of like an ice sculpture. And I was like, it's fascinating to see like where like things people are like apologize first when things go slightly wrong. but it's not wrong it's just like different and I think that's really empowering to kind of see as like a cookbook author just like these are your creations in theory but like other people kind of it takes on a life of its own yeah I know and imagine as somebody that cooks other people's recipes as well like you've done similar tweaks or substitutions for things and it's part of the way that people live with recipes yeah yeah it's not stagnant it's like constantly like a living thing that you just get to tweak and change and I think that's really beautiful I'm trying not to be too much of a stickler about rules, especially I guess with baking, you kind of have to be with certain parameters, but it's okay to do what you can with what you have.

7:48Yeah, I'm trying not to be a stickler about rules, says the person with the like pizza berry earrings. Not shocking. I feel like there are a lot of chilled or kind of set desserts in your book, which is probably the area of dessert making that I have the most fear and least amount of experience with beyond like maybe puff pastry, which I would never touch to begin with. Do you have any like tips or advice on how you can approach those recipes to have them be successful. Yeah, I know it's like I'm even afraid sometimes of like jellies not unmolding. Because I've seen like Great British Bake Off and I think watching it go wrong has just instilled the fear in me.

8:22I think like under pressure when you're really under a time crunch, it sucks when you you just honestly it takes time. I think with jellies, you just have to let it set sometimes overnight and it's going to be OK. But like sometimes I like to like jiggle it a little bit and just like kind of feel it in the pan. Like whether it's sloshing, then it's maybe wet. And so I think your instincts are always right when it comes to that. And sometimes I do like a spray of like Pam to be like extra greasy. Like, please come out. Please come out. But when you're about to overturn your like pan, just make sure that you kind of heat it a little bit in like hot water, like a little Mont-Marie or something.

8:56And it'll help it kind of ease out. Oh, I like that. And I also like the Pam idea, which I've never done before. Yeah, yeah. It helps. It definitely helps. Yeah, I feel like I had one traumatic experience trying to unmold. what was it? It was an old Martha Stewart recipe. I think it was like a cake bomb, but it was filled with chocolate mousse and you set it in a bowl and turned it out. And the experience of slowly waiting for this thing that I had spent two days making to come out of the bowl, I almost had a heart attack. It was so overwhelming for me. So it was kind of like, maybe I would never do this again.

9:28And it came out though, right? I would say it did come out, but not in one piece. Yeah, it happens. It's deconstructed. Back to the school of sprinkles. Yeah, I just added a lot more of the chocolate boost on top, which was not part of the original recipe. But it looked festive and then nobody could tell that there was like kind of a divot missing from the top. Yeah, you got it. So I also want to talk to you about using savory ingredients in recipes. I think the like adobo cookie is a really great example because it has vinegar and soy sauce and bay leaf and all these things in it. In general, how do you approach incorporating savory qualities into desserts?

10:02Yeah, I feel like I think of it like one element at a time. And lately I've been kind of like fixated on like smokiness. I did a collaboration with Tanya at Little Egg and I did like a smoky pistachio kind of smoked paprika kind of a cinnamon bun. And I think that there's a lot of ways to balance like sweetness in a dessert. you can kind of overwhelm like the balance one way or the other if you do way too much salt or way too much smokiness where you can't taste anything else. It's kind of like that trial and error that helps me kind of get through of like, oh, next time I'll do this and next time I'll do that.

10:34Tasting and tasting and tasting along the way is really helpful because, for example, the adobo chocolate chip cookie recipe, as you let the cookie dough rest overnight, the balance of flavors, they kind of just meld more and especially like the bay leaf and like the herbal flavor. And So I feel like savory is just like a tool for you to like better your dessert in terms of like rounding out the edges of I think sometimes things can be way too sweet. And then that is like a temper for it for sure. Yeah. And I know I'm not a professional recipe developer, so maybe this is not a good swing. But I would imagine that if you want to have a dessert that isn't too sweet, sugar is providing structure and all of these things into the dessert.

11:12So taking out the sugar doesn't necessarily get you to the ideal texture and consistency that you want it to be at. So adding in the savoriness or the smokiness maybe helps temper out those qualities while still letting you use the amount of sugar that you need. Correct. Yeah. Especially that. I forget about that. That is also very important. You're right. You're right. Oh, my God. Gold star for me. I like that idea. I'm curious about smoky. So you did smoke paprika. Is there anything else that you're experimenting with? I have gone. Do you know, like when you go to like a seafood place and they do like charred lemons?

11:41Yes. And I'm like, I'm obsessed with that. And I feel like I really want to implement that in a future thing, maybe like a lemon curd or something like that. Charred lemon bars. Charred lemon bars. I just feel like it's just fun. And I think there's even like different woods where you could, like I get really into it, I could go into like a whole like smoking thing. But I recently also got like a dehydrator from my parents for Christmas. And so, yeah, there's so many possibilities with that that I'm kind of just like there's so many things I do want to try, which is overwhelming. Yeah. Have you dehydrated anything cool?

12:10Yeah, I actually tried dehydrating like idam cheese, which is like in Filipino culture, it's the equivalent of casu de bolo, which is like a fiesta kind of cheese. And it's working. It's working. I will say the oils kind of still stay. And so like I'm trying to like pulverize and get it as dry as possible. But sometimes you need like the silica gels if you're going to store it so it doesn't like get clumped and like wet again. It's a scientific experiment for sure. The silica gel packets, I think, as something that people use in baking and styling is one of the biggest realizations that I had recently when I was talking to Tanya at Little Egg and also my friend Pearl Jones, who's a food stylist.

12:53They both, whenever they're making meringue at scale, are just keeping the silica packets and throwing them into the fish tub or whatever to keep the moisture out, which I just love that there is a use for these things that I've been throwing out of my baked goods. So now I'm collecting them in a little drawer and I'm hoping that one day I can give them to somebody to be of use. No, I think it will definitely come in handy. You got it, Eliza. I mean, I'm not personally going to make meringue, but maybe. Someone will. I will. Yeah, you will make meringue. And then I think I had a pink meringue that you did one time.

13:20Yeah, I did it for a Rini's pop-up at Winona's last September, I think. But I was like a mango lossy inspired kind of rosewater meringue filled with mango curd. Kind of a curd, but not a curd. Actually, it was just the mango kind of like nectar pulp. And then I think I had like or like it was like a yogurt sauce. And that was great. Yeah, I liked that because it was a very wet meringue. Not like the meringue itself was dry, but what it was served with had a lot of moisture. So it wasn't like too dry at all, which I feel like all of my ideal foods are kind of like very saucy or like wet foods. I love.

13:54Yeah, I love that about you. I feel like there's so much to go with with that, like in terms of just like vehicles of flavor sauces, 100 percent. Yeah, when I was a kid helping my parents cook, I feel like the first thing they would let me do is make a salad dressing. And that might be why I always think about having like a sauce and then it's the vehicle of what I'm going to go with it. Were you making desserts as a kid? I was. I like there was a time when I got really into Food Network and watching like the like the cupcake baking challenges and all that. Cupcake Wars, right? Cupcake Wars. But there was also like Cupcake Wars was a thing.

14:29And also there's like Food Network Challenge where it's like the big showstopper cakes with like fondant heavy kind of designs. And I remember just like my sisters would have her friends over and she was like in high school. And then I'd be like, hey, like, can I make like a little like tasting for your friends? So it was like an amakase, like in my head, like I'm like, here's your drinking chocolate. And I just like melted down like Trader Joe's chocolate, like heavy cream. And then here's your like blondie with like ice cream and maple syrup. And it was just like Applebee's like knockoff copycat recipes.

15:00I tried so many fun things in my parents' kitchen that I don't know if I do the kind of baking where it's just like I want to make red lobsters like chive biscuit right now versus now. I'm like, I want to make more like original things. But it does feel like a good, like, I guess, jumping pad of like, oh, this is something that I love about this chain restaurant favorite into something that is uniquely me. Yeah, that was fun to just do whatever back in the day. How old were you doing these? I was like 13 when I started baking. I honestly could cry right now that you're like the little sister making dessert tasting menus for your older sister's friends because you wanted to hang out with them.

15:36I just wanted to try something. I know. I was just like so I feel like I'm just like a people pleaser. And I just wanted like affirmation. like, did you like it? Words of affirmation. Yes. Yeah. That's a great love language to have as a pastry chef because everyone has such a visceral reaction when you eat something good. You're not you're going to get that response. And you mentioned Red Lobster. In your cookbook, I feel like there's this really wonderful appreciation of kitsch. You have a recipe for molten lava cake. Tell me about what you love about kitschy chain throwback kind of culture and aesthetic.

16:11There's so much nostalgia with it, especially with molten lava cakes. I don't see those often on a menu anymore, and it makes me kind of sad. There's a certain level of skill, honestly, to do these kinds of trite, overdone, overplate desserts that I think to bring that to a home kitchen through a cookbook and through these recipes, it's kind of like reliving something that I never also got to, in general, maybe eat as much. I was just like, oh, this sounds really good, and I want to make it in a way that I would eat it. And so that one has like ube and makapuno flavors in it. But I also remember just having like a pineapple, like guava, upside down cupcakes and or like mini cakes in my book as well.

16:50And I think of desserts, like forms of expression where it's like, oh, this is like Americana to me, even though I didn't directly experience it sometimes. I just watch movies and I watch like I Love Lucy and kind of feel like, oh, I want to kind of translate that into flavors and tropical flavors that I know. So sometimes like that kind of exchange happens where I'm like, wow, like in my ideal world, this is what I would have had. But I wasn't born in like the 60s or something. Yeah, I love that you say Americana. I do think even the experience of nostalgia for something that you watch through TV feels very Americana to me in a certain kind of way.

17:24And I think that's something that I've noticed in your recipes and certainly with a lot of other contemporary recipes that have a lot of online success is that there's something that's maybe more familiar and then something that's less familiar. But what those two variables are is dependent on who the audience is. Like if you say adobo chocolate chip cookie for somebody who is like maybe not Filipino and hasn't had adobo before, that is the unusual part. And then the chocolate chip cookie is the more familiar part. But for a Filipino person, the adobo is very familiar. And then it being in a chocolate chip cookie is kind of the twist.

17:56So it works in both directions. Right, right. I feel like that's really fun. And also sometimes when you're coming up with recipes, like, do you start from wanting to combine two explicit things or is it an ingredient or a technique? It's a mixture. I feel like, like you just said, with like the double chocolate cookies, for example, like I knew that like I've made a million cookies before. And I think when it's something that like I feel comfortable with and I already know like I can nail the basis of this down, sometimes like the flavor aspects and like the like fun flashes of like, oh, yeah, there's a little pink peppercorn in here.

18:30Like that happens kind of after the fact. And and maybe in a way like I think about baking kind of like karaoke. I know the song and the lyrics are on the screen and you're just like, I can do this. And, you know, it doesn't matter who's in the room. And I do feel like sometimes when I'm cooking, I don't have that same sense of just like, it's going to be OK. There's like everything you need is like step by step by step. And not to say that there aren't directions and steps for cooking. I just feel like it's like that type A part of my brain. That's just like I need this rote kind of like process and I can do everything else right.

19:03And yeah, it's freeing in that sense. Like I like having little cubes, like squares. OK, wrong, squares where I can just like interact and like put the elements in. but it's supposed to come out as it's supposed to or like it's meant to come out. I love that metaphor so much. It also feels like a very like Filipino metaphor to karaoke. I know, it's like comfort. Yeah. Are you into karaoke? Oh, my God. I grew up singing karaoke. And it was like the karaoke that like you'd they'd give you scores, you know, like say more. Well, there's like there's like a really famous one. Like Magic Mike is like a very Filipino like branded karaoke.

19:38and like you would sing and then like you'd wait for like at the end of the song to play out and it'd be like and it'd be like a really outro of like this is your number score out of a hundred and so I feel like it's really hard to get like 90 and above unless I don't know what they're what they're calculating here but I feel like it's a lot of like oh did you sing on beat with the words on the screen or like I feel like honestly it's loudness I don't think they're really that it's not intense technology. I just think it's like, were you singing loud enough into the mic and hopefully you did well?

20:11But it's hard. I don't know. The algorithm I have not mastered whatsoever. What's your karaoke song right now? My karaoke song right now, I have it listening to a lot of chaperone. And so I think my kink is karma is probably my favorite song right now. I did karaoke this past weekend with Tanya, actually, which I don't do karaoke that often. And I did Glamorous by Fergie. Oh, that's a good one. That's great. It was a good one, except for I realized that I had to be really committed to like actually sell it. And you're spelling. And be glamorous. Yeah. And luckily I know how to spell glamorous.

20:40Thank God. That part was easy. Otherwise we would have been in big trouble. But the performance aspect, I think I needed to come a little harder, to be honest. So later this month, you're speaking on a panel that I wanted to talk to you about the theme of. It's going to be with Nassim Alkhani from Sofra and Kayla Stewart, who wrote Galagichi Home Cooking. And Mayuk Sain is moderating it, which I love him so much. Yeah, it's huge. So excited. I've never met him in person, but I love his reading and I feel like he'll be such a great moderator. And the theme of the panel is called Food Writing Across Cultures.

21:10And you're all going to be talking about kind of the path to your respective books. And I'm curious about how you approached presenting Filipino food and your book in this moment where I feel like certain aspects of Filipino cuisine, certainly like ube as an ingredient even, have had really like popular trendy moments. But obviously there's more representation to go. How did you think about like presenting your food to this broad audience? I think in like a panel setting, it's really fun to kind of like I know like I'm the sole representative here for like the Filipino cookbook. But it's almost like I find more similarities with everyone there, despite like our different cultures, that it is like exciting to kind of be like, wow, like I fit in this conversation here.

21:53And it's very like, I guess, like empowering to kind of be like, oh, you know, like I might just be this voice right now that's speaking on this panel and has the space to talk. But I feel like I also hope to like kind of bring other people into the conversation that I know, like other chefs, Filipino chefs, other Filipino authors that I love. And I think that's kind of like what you can do in the moment where it's like I feel so nervous because sometimes I just don't feel like I'm the type of person where I'm like, oh, my God, the attention is on me and it scares me. And like, I guess, like internally, but it's so cool to like share that limelight with other people and use that as like a platform to be like, hey, like you should check out these restaurants and you should check out all these like places across the country and even outside the country that are showcasing and highlighting Filipino food.