833: The Sheet Cake Plot Twist with Zola Gregory

19:58Zola Gregory:But what do I do? Okay, I find out that maybe it should have come out. You know, I guess I could come out all night. Like it's too late. I just feel like what really am I going to be able to do at that point in the process to make things? 75 % of the way through, you should be able to save it. Okay. So that's basically me checking to make sure it hasn't overbaked. Yeah. I mean, you can look at it a little earlier, but like, yeah, I mean, the worst case scenario is that your oven's running like 100 degrees too hot. There's kind of like no help for you. This happened to my sister. Her oven was running 100 years old.

20:28Zola Gregory:This happened to me at Thanksgiving a couple years ago, and I made puff pastry. Never will do this again, actually, because it was so horrifying that I spent hours on it. You made your own puff pastry? Like, literally, it was a rough puff, and I will still never do it again because it was blackened. Yeah, that's kind of traumatic. If you're not a baker and you go through the trouble and then it's burnt, it's always good to just, like, check out what's happening in there, you know? I feel like we jumped into my anxiety really quickly, and I want to maybe go back. Because baking is clearly such an interest and a passion of yours.

20:59Zola Gregory:What do you like about it? When I first started to love baking was when I think I realized as a teenager that, like, cooking is very dynamic. Like, cooking dinner is very, like, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Oh, I don't have parsley. You know, I can use this instead. Or how do I want it to taste? And especially when you're first starting out with baking, there's no wiggle room for, you know, I always tell people if you want to experiment with baking, like, start with, like, the spices. you know like don't start with anything structural you know it's really follow the recipe and it's kind of I'm such an anxious person with such a busy brain that it's almost meditative for me not anymore because now I'm making the recipes but when you follow a recipe you just turn your brain off and and do what you're supposed to do yeah you know and there's something I really like about that and then there's also the you know like you're working with your hands even more So like you're taking nothing, essentially.

21:54You're taking like these disparate elements that are like, you know, a cake looks nothing like the ingredients. And I think that's kind of like a magical thing about baking. Like you wouldn't ever know. Like who thought of it?

22:07Zola Gregory:You just did a gesture of rubbing your fingers together. It made me think about rubbing citrus zest into sugar, which is probably my favorite part of baking is that exact specific. It smells so good. It's so tactile. It's funny. I was thinking about making pie crust. See, I can't even think about it again. You're like, trauma, trauma. So I think you really are the right person to be making this book, which is Sheet Cakes! Sheet Cakes. Sheet Cakes, yeah. What about Sheet Cakes makes it such a good topic for a book? That's a good question. You know, Sheet Cakes are such an accessible form of dessert.

22:47like a sheet cake is something everyone's had you've had it at an office party you've had it at school you've had it at a graduation party um and like the ones you've had though have probably not been like amazing you know like i'm i personally am not a fan of a costco cake i respect people that are a fan of a costco cake i think it's the nostalgia that people are really

23:06Zola Gregory:drawn to but i didn't grow up with that so for me it's like too sweet yeah yeah yeah but i think like it's a familiar format but kind of one that hasn't you know it kind of has always taken the same shape you know so there's actually like a lot of room to modernize or to to make it better and and there's actually so much you can do you know I hadn't this had never occurred to me before like I was approached about writing this book like how many ways you can make a sheet cake but you can have your it's a rectangle like a flat rectangle with frosting on top um you can also make a larger sheet cake, cut it into pieces and make a layered cake or you can roll it up.

23:45I mean, and there's probably more that you can do with it. Those are kind of like the three things that I focused on in the book. But like, it's such an adaptable format. And like, even if you do it layered or even if you make a roll, it's not really that much harder than just like the single layer cake, you know?

24:01Zola Gregory:Yeah, you are mentioning roll. And I think that to me is the scariest thing in this book by far because maybe i've seen great british bake off and sometimes people have the crack or something bad that happens like what draws you to a rolled cake and how do you do it in the best possible way they're so good i feel like all my favorite cakes in the book are roll cakes but it's because that's a sponge cake texture to me is so addictive and they're also like usually a rolled cake is filled with a cream or a curd or something and i'm not like actually a huge frosting person me either yeah so like they're not like a frosting centric cake they're kind of they're more simple than that and i kind of like the kind of more like asian style asian bakery style um a little less sweet like my cakes are very eggy so you're afraid of rolling um most of the cakes you see on bake off like you you roll them in a towel while they're hot yeah pre-roll most of the cakes in my book that are rolled up don't require a pre-roll but like that was a special I was really happy I was able to figure that out like engineered them that way they have enough oil and enough eggs and and a very small amount of flour that keeps them flexible but like all that egg keeps them strong okay so they don't crack I mean you really just you just do it you just do it and like if it cracks so be it and you cover it with frosting or you cover it with powdered sugar you know I do think I'm very drawn obviously aesthetically to them but also the ratio of what you're speaking about with this kind of creamy custardy, curdy interior.

25:34Zola Gregory:It's kind of like whenever I eat a cupcake, I take the bottom off and then I put it on the top like a sandwich. So it has that kind of built in kind of cake, not cake thing happening. Right. And if you have a lot of frosting, like in my Funfetti cake, like it's like half cake, half frosting. That's a whipped white chocolate ganache. So this is a different mouthfeel. It's really not that sweet. So it's an appropriate, you know, not you don't want always this much frosting on a cake. I like thinking about like the ways that you looked at ratio or maybe structure as I think when you hear sheet cake, maybe you picture one kind of cake, but there's actually such a variety within it.

26:08Zola Gregory:Would you say there are any other like core types of cakes in the book or maybe like how are the sections of the book created? Yeah, this, you know, every time I have to approach a project like this, creating the sections is like such a hard, how do you sort things? Like, how do you divide things? It's such a hard question. And like, initially, we had talked about doing it by shape. So, you know, flat, stacked, or rolled was kind of how I thought about it. But like three big sections kind of felt too, like, like too big of sections, you know? So we broke it down into flavor sort of categories.

26:43So the first one is a sweet and subtle, which is my like vanilla, you know, vanilla adjacent chapter. But it's not just vanilla. There's like honey. There's a mochi cake. It's like the subtle, the vanilla-ish, the vanilla-esque flavors of the book. And that was actually a chapter where I was like, oh, no, it's going to be really hard for me to come up with. I wanted to have like about 10 cakes in each chapter. And for a long time, I was like stuck at eight. like I just like couldn't figure out like what else to get in that chapter that didn't feel boring and I can't remember how I did it but in the end it worked out beautifully it was fine but then we have um fruit it was hard to keep that chapter short conversely chocolate um which was also hard I struggled with the chocolate chapter because in my mind I think I'm just like such a simple person.

27:33I was like, there's chocolate cake. I mean, how many ways can you have chocolate cake? And it's such a distinguishing flavor that, I mean, you can do like a fruit and a chocolate or a nut and a chocolate, but it's still kind of like the cake is still chocolate. Right. So for the chocolate section, is the sponge all chocolate or chocolate just appears in the cake? Oh, that's a good question. I think that one of the cakes is the almond. I think the almond cake is in the chocolate chapter and that is with a chocolate ganache on top yes yes yeah yeah and that's one of my favorites and that's you know chocolate is appearing it's a little it's a little open to interpretation there's also like a chocolate cake in the stacked the layered and stacked section so you know you don't want to be too tied to the theme no yeah and did you just think about cake constantly for like a year like how did you yes um this is so crazy that you that you bring this up but okay so I was looking at a lot of rolled cakes when you when I put my hand like this like I would be like sitting here with my fists like rolled up like this and I would look down and I'd be like I see a rolled cake like looking at my own in your hand yeah I was dreaming about cakes like like in a nightmarish sort of way how did this go for for your your new husband

28:53Zola Gregory:was he just like feasting on cake or does he not even like it anymore he doesn't even like it anymore at first he was like this is gonna be amazing because he has like a huge sweet tooth like more than anyone he really lucked out with me like he he like loves sugar he he's also a baker he made his he bought his first laptop with the proceeds of selling like shortbread like under the table at middle school that's such a british thing yeah yeah he was like he had like a short bread operation he's actually like the he's like the hobby baker in the house which is really funny but anyway he was like I would be like you have to try this and it would be like four cakes and like one would have a little more baking soda and one would have like a little more flour and it was really really minute differences and he was like nobody could tell the difference between these cakes and we would get in arguments like towards the end it would be like you have to try this and he'd be like I'm done with cake I'm not gonna eat any more cake and I would be like well that's lucky for you like I can't I can't draw that line and I got I became pre-diabetic and I was like I'm literally putting my health on the line for this book Sola no I even was spitting it out it didn't matter you just absorb sugar by osmosis like yeah I think most pastry chefs or bakers that I know reach a point where they just want to eat a salad yeah I know I mean I was like there days when I would I'd be spitting out the cake but I would I would kind of at the end of the day be like I think a whole sheet cake was in my mouth today like I didn't swallow it but it was in my mouth and that was like enough to just feel disgusting you know yeah well maybe the cake specific focus the sheet cake focus was such a narrowing device that you just become obsessed with cake like it's hard to maybe if you're doing a more like general book and you had savory and other things going on, like you, your palate would have more places to go.

30:46That was part of the part where I did start to feel like I was going crazy at one point because I would be like, I've tasted so many cakes, like they all just kind of start to bleed together, even like in your mouth. Like, like you're like, yeah, it's a cake. Like, what am I, what am I tasting here?

31:01Zola Gregory:Yeah. Well, okay. So we're talking a lot about how maybe they all became one, but I still want to ask you about specific recipes. I'm curious if they're out of all of the cakes, if you were gonna have to eat cake again which cake would it be it was funny you say that like two weeks after the photo shoot i was like i miss cake she's back i feel like that is like a testament to the fact that they're pretty good yeah um there's some there's some really good cakes in there like i do stand by them i feel really proud of of the recipe development i eat that funfetti cake i've been serving it to people a lot lately like since the launch of the book it really is a great cake and people will look at it and be I had a friend come up to me and say at the launch party she was like you know this isn't an insult but when I looked at this cake like I didn't really want to eat it because it looks too sweet and she said then I tasted it and I was like not what I was expecting and I really thought that was like an excellent uh endorsement of the cake can we talk about funfetti is funfetti does it have a flavor I feel like the flavor of funfetti cake is like box cake flavor yeah and it's normally like a vanilla cake with rainbow sprinkles yeah but it has that like extra artificial flavor to it which i didn't really succumb to like what i did do i didn't use a lot of people a lot of bakers really like artificial vanilla um i actually don't i don't love it um so i use real vanilla but i do a drop of almond extract in the batter to just kind of like round it out, give it that sort of nostalgic flavor without, I actually, I don't like box cake.

32:36You know, I feel like it's like almost scary to admit that in front of an audience. It's okay. It's the safest. You want people to make your cakes. My cakes are good. They're better than box cakes.

32:46Zola Gregory:Yeah. Okay. So vanilla, funfetti, that's a great example. Is there a recipe that you think was the hardest to perfect, but you got there? Absolutely. It was the anytime chocolate cake because I was so in my head like, why would I make a new chocolate cake recipe if it's not going to be like amazing? And like trying to make something that's amazing and basic at the same time is like a really high bar. I think I made at least 17 variations of that cake. Wow. That was like definitely the hardest. Chocolate is really hard to work with, in my opinion. Yeah. What were you kind of narrowing in on maybe in some of the later variations?

33:29Well, what I'll say is like, I think more than flavor in cakes, texture is important. A lot of the time I was honing in the texture, not the flavor. And with the chocolate cake, the issue kept being like, it's tender, but there's like bits left in my mouth after I've swallowed a bite. And that really bothered me. Like it's sticking to my mouth. and like isn't that why people drink milk when they have cake though yeah but like a cake shouldn't disintegrate in your mouth you know yeah i spent a lot of time thinking about this really hard um so like tweaking the texture um and my cakes use a lot of eggs for this particular uh purpose like like to kind of keep the structural integrity of the cake without adding a lot of flour and i was making the i was writing the book during the the great egg shortage so that was stressful.

34:18Zola Gregory:Were you coming to blows in the grocery store? Yeah I was like going in Trader Joe's and then out of Trader Joe's and then back in like because they had a one egg carton policy. Were you putting on disguises? No I would kind of just like go to a different checkout. I went to Costco one time and they were like out of eggs and I was like what is someone like me supposed to do right now? Somebody who has 17 variations of a chocolate cake to make. Yeah exactly like that's a heavy burden. And I had a whole mini fridge in the basement like for eggs. You know, I was wondering about that. Yeah. And also the extra cake.

34:51Don't ask me about the extra cake. It, you know, only so many. You'd be shocked. You think in the beginning like everyone in your life is going to be like, yeah, I want cake. And then like it's shocking how quickly they find it unexciting. Weak constitutions. Yeah, weak constitutions. I would invite people over and they'd be like, I'm busy for cake.

35:10Zola Gregory:A lot of the recipe developers that I know here in New York will put excess recipe testing in like the community fridges around them, which is maybe a nice alternative to all of that. We try to do stuff like that. But, you know, in all honesty, a lot of it was like, you know, cakes that weren't frosted, cakes that had like bits clawed out of them. Right. The tests that maybe weren't as successful. It's like, you know, nobody really wants this. Well, you're going through this so that us, the audience, can make the perfect cake once. One time. Yeah. Yeah. The first time, most importantly. I wanted to ask you about the photo shoot because the photos are so beautiful in the book and they are the result of a pretty iconic long running collaboration, I would say.

35:51Zola Gregory:Can you tell me about that? Yeah, so my sister and her partner, Eli, took the photos. And we had been working together for over a year doing column photos together. When I first envisioned the book, you know, it's a book about cake. So I was like, this has got to be, my key word was whimsy, whimsical, that I kind of couldn't shut up about. But I wanted it to be colorful. one of my inspirations visually and i don't know if this really shows through in the end but one of my original inspirations is the otolenghi and helen go sweet just so they love the simplicity and like the drama that they create just with the with the desserts but um you know sheet cakes come in you know they're often beige rectangles depending on on what you're working with so so we had to incorporate a lot of you know color and props and other ways but it was it was quite an experience doing the photo shoot because it was my sister, her partner.

36:48My dad was like the dish guy and like errand boy. And I hired this one girl who's an amazing, you know, professional. Like she went to the CIA, you know, to do, to be my styling assistant, to do kind of all the heavy lifting. And I was like, welcome. You are the only person who's not entangled in, yeah, my actual family well now she's like an honorary member i would hope how many days was the shoot i think it was eight consecutive days and i had we had never taken on anything like that before and i bought all the props myself um because like i'd heard you can rent props or whatever but in seattle it's it's not like here like there's a lot less option um i couldn't afford to hire a stylist or

37:35Zola Gregory:now you can have your own prop rental house i do and then you know now that i work with charity She also has like a huge amount of props. So we're set. But I just didn't know what to expect, you know, like I didn't know how long the days were going to feel. I didn't know like if we were going to have enough props. I didn't I just didn't know anything. So I went in really blind. And I think all in all was really successful. Like me and my sister, we kind of grew up in an artsy family. And it was kind of beautiful to to have like a collaboration together. I think we work really well together. it was challenging uh we encountered our fair share of intense you know there's conflict it's your family yeah um but you know i think we created something that was you know we we fulfilled the we did the brief like i think the resulting book is really beautiful and i would have said whimsy even if you had not just mentioned it to me so that comes across thank you hearing about the photo shoot and everything that you maybe did and didn't expect going into it i'm curious you talked earlier about how making a book has been kind of a lifelong dream of yours.

38:40Zola Gregory:Looking back on the book process, what was a part of it that you really enjoyed and what was a part of it that maybe you didn't, you still could have enjoyed, but that you didn't expect was going to happen? That's a tricky one. I'll start with what I enjoyed. You know, it was really gratifying to just set out to do something and then do it. It was like a, it was a hard process. It was a long process. I'd never done a project of that scale before. So like planning, it was just, I looked at the calendar and was like, I have to do, you know, two to three cakes a week and, you know, for X amount of months.

39:16And I didn't know if that was realistic or not. You know, I could, I could make more in a week now, now that I have all this experience. Yeah. But I really, I didn't know, but creating the recipes, some of those flavor combinations are just, you know, I'm proud of them. And then like, I'm really proud of the recipes. I really like can confidently say like I think they're all really delicious and I would happily eat any of them so that was just I don't know if it's the most enjoyable part but the most gratifying part totally for sure yeah what was the other question was there something that you just totally didn't expect was going to be a part of the process hmm maybe the shoot itself in terms of the shoot itself was kind of like the big question mark there was the question mark of like can I can can I do this?

40:01I mean, like, I knew I could and I knew I would. Like, I feel like I'm kind of the kind of person that will just, like, say yes to something and figure it out later. But the part that I really enjoyed that I didn't expect was actually writing all the front matter. I feel like I find writing really challenging. Writing to me feels like a really big responsibility. And, like, knowing what to write is really hard for me. You know, the act of writing is whatever, but, like, you know, obviously deciding what to write is the hard part. But that front matter

40:29Zola Gregory:just flowed like it's like here's everything i think here's everything i i like and everything i know and everything i want you to know and um just like telling people my opinions about ingredients or or you know this is how you make a cake or these are this how you're going to be successful like that's all easy it was shockingly easy yeah i mean i think it probably feels good after putting in all the work to be able to write everything out and really see this is what i stand behind and this is the ethos that is present in these recipes. Yeah. And it echoed my love of teaching because like there's, you know, I didn't love teaching cooking classes because like the hours, like weekends and evenings, but like I love teaching and like meeting people and I love watching them be like, oh, I made that, you know, like that's really exciting to me.

41:15And it felt like that was coming through in that part of the book.

41:18Zola Gregory:Yeah. And, you know, hopefully around the book release when people start to make the recipes, maybe you'll get to see them like it is you are still teaching just in a different kind of way. Yeah. I mean, like when I when I used to teach classes, like my big class is my croissant class, which is a crazy thing to teach in one day. But we do it. But people would like send me pictures of their croissants afterwards. And it was made me so happy. That's so sweet. I really like that. And this is not the only project you have coming out. You also have this pasta box that you're working on for taste. Yeah, it was the savory side.

41:48Zola Gregory:What was that like to be doing? Were you doing like cake and pasta at the same time? No, but it was crazy because I submitted my manuscript. And then I think like we had a meeting, like, I don't know, a couple weeks later, me, you and Matt to talk about photography for the column. And he was like, oh, by the way, we're doing this pasta project. Like, what do you think? Like, could you be on board for that? And I had been planning this like big vacation, like post book. And then I was like, yep, I'm down. Like, I'm jumping right in. It was back to back, but it was kind of a relief. Like I felt Matt was like, we're going to do this in two or three months.

42:23And I was like, oh, shit. Like because I could have never done the cakes in that amount of time. Like that was I could never have pulled it off. I would have said yes. I don't know how I would have done it. But the pasta was just there's so much faster to make.

42:37Zola Gregory:Yeah. When I say pasta box, it's a physical box of recipes that use dried pasta. It's like recipe cards. Yes. A deck of recipe cards. Exactly. Exactly. And you and Matt will have a whole separate conversation about that that people can listen to later on. But I just had to point out the fact that you are such an accomplished and industrious recipe developer that immediately after finishing the cake project, you went on to do something else. Yeah, I pivoted pretty fast. But that was really fun. And I was so happy it was so different. I couldn't have jumped into a cookie project. I would have been burnt out.

43:07That will be for the future. No, yeah. And then you can churn the pasta recipes out. You can do like several in a day. Like if I got two cake recipes done in a day, it would be like an amazing day, the best day ever.

43:17Zola Gregory:Well, the time is just so different. Yeah, because you have to wait for it all to cool. And like, you know, I'd have to when you taste a cake like you can't even if you want to enjoy it while it's warm, it still has to taste good while it's cool. And like, you know, getting a real feel for the texture, you'd have to wait for them to cool down all the way. Well, I love how much of a cake scientist you are. I've become a cake scientist. I was thinking, you know, originally, like, something that I feel like is just fun to mention is back when I used to dream about writing a cookbook. I was always like, oh, I would never write a cake cookbook.

43:50I was like, it's too complicated. I could never, like, figure out the science. And then, I don't know. I did. Well, now that you've done that, you could do anything. It was like a beautiful lesson in that way. Yeah. You know, where you're like, oh, yeah. You're like, you know, you can figure anything out. The same with being offered the job at a restaurant and saying no. So it's funny because I feel like I'm not I'm not that much of like a risk taker anymore in my in my old age. Not so old.

44:14Zola Gregory:And I don't know, I think making a book, obviously, there is so much time and effort that you're putting into that. It is a risk in its own kind of way. So it's nice to see it pay off. Yeah, it's really rewarding to see it pay off. And like having people, a lot of people will like, you know, email me about the book or talk to me about the book. And they'll be like, it's so approachable, but the recipes are so like impressive. And it feels like they're like pitching back to me my pitch, you know, which is really cool. I love that. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Z Biotics Pre-Alcohol Probiotic.

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46:58Zola Gregory:make you play a rapid fire game to close so you're gonna pick some favorites okay okay a favorite cookbook that isn't your own betty crocker only for sweets not for don't touch the savories okay fun a favorite summer cake it's so hard um one of the cakes in the book actually the hot milk cake I think it's called the easiest sponge cake with strawberries and cream. That's a really good one. A favorite fall cake? Banana bread. A cake that's good for breakfast? Cinnamon donut cake in the book. Really good. A favorite bakery of yours anywhere? As I said, it's all across the board. It depends on, I couldn't pick a favorite single bakery.

47:47I did go to the Violet Cakes Bakery in London. over the summer and that was the best sliced cake I recently had.

47:53Zola Gregory:Okay, that's a good answer. A favorite special occasion restaurant? There's a restaurant in Seattle called Le Pichet and it's kind of like, it's not super trendy. It's kind of like an old school Seattle kind of institution. It's French food and they have kind of like, it's very French, very simple French plating and they have the best fries in the city, hands down. Nice. something that you will never make from scratch nothing nothing I would have years ago I think I would have had like a million answers to this but now that I've like written a recipe for croissants like what can I say I don't know she could do it all you know could make it just would you want to you know I believe you have the capability I've become kind of like obsessed with projects you know what I mean but like I think like any yeah mayonnaise I actually am not that interested in making mayonnaise the zola gregory condiment cookbook i'm coming soon i know just watch out i say it now yeah uh an underrated piece of kitchen equipment paper towels an underrated ingredient to be using in dessert contexts this one's really hard i feel like i could there's nothing i could say that feels underrated now like we live in a society where like everyone like bakes with something weird yeah puts everything into everything i think like the most important ingredient in baking is eggs weirdly enough says the person with a mini egg fridge it's eggs yeah okay final question is a fictional food scene like from a book or a movie or something made up that you wish you could eat in real life yeah so the first thing that comes to mind is uh what my mother would say is the scene at the end of the big night where they're making the scrambled eggs um but i have a um a weird personal obsession with um animated food like a couple couple examples would be like the pizza in club penguin do you remember i thought you're gonna go for like miyazaki when you said that um like there's something about like cartoon pizza that just it does look good same with like the teenage meat ninja turtles pizza i've not seen it it's very floppy yeah or like animated cakes i don't know like this childhood show i watched like on pbs to get dragon tails yes there was a carrot cake or there was a cake in that show like it stuck with me like I still think about it you could never make a real cake that would taste the way that one looks I think that is like the purest interpretation of this question which is like like even if someone was going to make up a recipe it still wouldn't be a cartoon cake yeah exactly like there's no way to achieve it it's like kind of like a weird ideal I'm gonna be thinking about that for a long time and this has been such a fun conversation Zola thanks for coming on the show no problem so excited to meet you in person.

50:40Zola Gregory:This is Taste is hosted and produced by Matt Rodbard and me, Eliza Abarbanel. The show is edited by lead producer Clayton Gumbert and supervised by Pat Stango, director of media production and development at Penguin Random House. Thanks to Shalia Harris and the production team at Penguin Random House. Theme music by Steve Rydell. Episode portraits by Louise Zergang Pomeroy. Logo design by Ellie Skurzat and Ian Dingham. Visit Taste Online at tastecooking.com and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to keep updated on all cool things in the world of taste.

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