You scrape the bowl like a housewife. In the culinary school bakery, that’s what you heard from Chef – my Chef,  a mentor known for good brioche and painfully dirty French puns – what you heard if you worked slowly, or if you left batter lining the bowl, or if you moved like the cake was for next Christmas. And if that was you, pushing batter at an aimless pace (only me once, Miss Speedy after that) then it would be your back Chef would immediately appear behind. “YOU,” he would announce in loud Franglish, “you scrape the bowl like a HOWZE-WIFE.”

He aimed at both male and female and never explained, just moved to the next unfortunate scraper. But it was clearly an insult, this wifey business, calling you sluggish and semi-pro. You were not quick enough, not efficient enough, your arm might have been reaching for bonbons, you might drop baking altogether and go shopping, you scraped the bowl like a housewife.

I filed that phrase and would hear his words in every working kitchen, chopping fast, prepping hard and scraping every ounce of cookie dough from stainless 12-quart bowls. I would clean all the cake batter from the 20-quarts, and lose my hat peering into 60-quarts to hand-scrape the day’s baguette. Years later I too would have underlings, and if I caught a whiff of whatever or saw idle utensils, I got my chance: Look at you. The way you scrape that bowl, it’s like a housewife.

Most rankled at the scorn, worked faster and got better. Once, after watching a new girl swirl pumpkin bread batter like moisturizer, I said it and she yelled “God I HOPE I do.” This I did not see coming.

“Are you kidding?” She placed the filled bread pans on the oven rack, one by one, letting out all the heat. “Have babies and make brownies and not open a freaking shop at five in the morning? Yes, thanks. Scraping the bowl like a housewife sounds pretty good.”

I told her to shut the oven door and mix muffins.

A few businesses and a thousand bowls later I’m in my home kitchen, the kitchen we carefully planned, every knob and drawer and foot of useful space. The kitchen’s cook, she no longer opens at five; I left restaurants to get some peace but still, I move like the lunch rush. The difference now is that a door needs answering, the dog requires feeding, a daughter needs talking. Sometimes batter waits on the counter. Some days I put the bowl in the fridge and bake later, and at some point I began leaving batter in the bowl, just a few chocolate stripes up the side. I might call loudly to the other room, “I think there’s some batter left,” and Josie will run in and grab it, jump on the counter, swipe it like finger food.

Then I think about Chef, and how he’d unfurl wallet pictures of five kids, and how often he mentioned his wife. He told us stories of his family’s bakery in Provence, how he had learned baguettes from his uncles and croissants from his father. He told us about the cake his mother baked at home, an ugly chocolate affair with a sunken middle and crusty sides. She wrapped him a piece every morning, and when his uncles gave him a break from kneading, he sat on flour sacks in the back and ate cake with his hands.

I imagine they were proud to see him succeed, to work as a great chef and teacher, speeding through perfection and showing us the same. As his student I thought of him that way, wholly efficient, but now I consider his drive home, and remember that we were surprised to hear his wife was the dinner cook, roasting chicken and mashing potatoes, simple things he liked. I think of him pouring a glass of wine and hugging five small children, some at his leg, some in his arms, all hunting for the little cakes and treats I knew he toted home in white bags. And now I think at the end of the day he loved the housewife, and messy hours, and the sly disorder of long, lazy strokes.

Moments after finishing my first pot of caramel sauce – first melted sugar, first caramel anything – I pulled up an apron corner, wrapped the burning handle and carried it down twenty-seven steps, past an audience of snickering older students, past my teachers, not breathing until the pot finally reached the hands of a famous West coast chef standing onstage, waiting with a microphone and tapping a plate.

At twenty-three I cooked more than most and baked swell pound cake, but the fact remained that I’d been in culinary school just 32 days. Famous Chef was visiting to perform a cooking demo, his advance food prep so demanding that a scroll-length memo was issued to teachers, lists and diagrams attached.

Shari was my bench partner, and we were deep in earnest chopping, piles of 1/4-inch carrot dice, when our teacher, Chef Karmin, pulled my jacket from behind. “You two,” he said, handing us a stapled sheaf, “I have a job for you. Make sure your knives are sharp.”

He turned to leave, and I glanced at the list.  Searing tuna, burning sugar, chopping exotics. “Um. Chef,” I said, “it’s just…Chef, we haven’t done any of this. This stuff.”

He talked out the door as he left. “It’s not too bad,” he said, “and you’ve got oh, two hours. You can do it.”

We gaped. Shari looked sick. I regretted those gobbled croissants off the sheet rack, now rising as we grabbed steels and began frantically honing knives. I finished quick but Shari kept sawing, blade flying like a mad violinist. Back and forth, back and forth, five minutes gone and the list untouched.

My assigned partner was ambitious but nervous, moved slow in the kitchen as she thought before moving. Shari asked permission to peel potatoes, carried tiny handwritten points on scaling fish. She measured the carrots. Now she ground knives while I studied the list, bobbing her tiny head and huge dark brows. It would be a long two hours.

The list gave her fits. We were to prepare complete versions of Famous Chef’s dishes, all requiring various first-try skills: searing tuna with lavender and peppercorns, shaving priceless deep woods fungi, braising eggplant he’d carried in-flight.  I flinched at the clock, flabbergasted. Why would the powers entrust rookies, one more neurotic and green than the next, with their crucially high-priced plans? The last task was dessert, a bread pudding. Soak currants in rum, okay, bake brioche, I don’t think so, and make caramel sauce.  Caramel sauce from scratch. Melting sugar. I looked up and saw Shari across the room, hunting for books about tuna.

The brioche was mercifully baked by advanced students who, delivering bread and surveying our challenged kitchen, got the best laugh of their day. We struggled down the list, producing a string of near-disasters until there was fifteen minutes left, and we’d finally reached the caramel. A little butter, some sugar, how hard could it be? While Shari mulled the perfect pan, I dumped sugar in the pan we had. She returned to the stove and saw me cranking the heat.

“We can’t do this,” she said. “We don’t know what what we’re doing. I don’t want to do this.”

I told her me either. I have no idea, but we have twelve minutes left. They are waiting for us.

“What, we have to go in there?” Good god, I’d met someone crazier than me. Stirring water into sugar, I was lifted by this thought.

“Okay,” I said, “let’s watch it. It’s supposed to bubble, then turn colors.”

“Someone set a pan on fire last week,” she said. “They walked away and it caught fire.”

“Uh-huh,” and I looked at the clock. “It’s bubbling.”

“Take it off,” Shari said, “it’s turning!”

“Not yet,” I said. It doesn’t look right. I had no idea how it was supposed to look. But not yet.

The clock ticked and the color inched forward with each second, now gold, now golden.

“TAKE IT OFF,” Shari begged, “we’ll get it wrong. It’s wrong.”

I swirled the pan, by now pleasantly deviant, blind but going for broke.  I didn’t know anything but knew enough to keep going, despite Shari yelping and the hot breath of time. Better too much than too little, better mahogany than beige, trust whatever it takes to get this thing done.

Now the color was toffee and it smelled like caramel, only better. I showed Shari. “What do you think?”

“OH MY GOD they are in the auditorium.”

“Okay…now.”

We yanked it off, whisked in the butter, the vanilla and cream. Shari! I think we made sauce.

She nodded her brows – well, I guess – but would not walk in there.  So I ran across the hall clutching an apron-wrapped handle, running as fast as any person who is late with scalding liquid. The sauce shimmered left to right as I wobbled down the aisles, passing students step by step. Most had already interned, already worked the line, and here’s me with unsupervised caramel, not breathing, feeling naked but getting it done. Finally, I climbed three stairs to the stage and gently set the pot on the table. Empty-handed, I stepped back to leave.

“Let us thank our little helper,” Famous Chef boomed, and while the students were roaring, he glanced at the sauce and whispered to me. “Color could have gone longer.”

My face burned. Hey – if it was up to my partner, you might have been looking at clear.

Still, I was grateful it hadn’t been said at the mike. Chef isn’t too bad, I thought, everyone has to fly blind sometime, he must know. The Chef motioned for me to stay, stay up there; things seemed to be working out.  Then he drizzled our sauce on the plate, and held it up to show the crowd. “It should not look like this.” 

Okay. Maybe not.

He paused and raised it higher, so caramel stripes dripped off the rim. “But alas, this is how it looks today.”

Josie’s sundae: vanilla bean ice cream, caramel sauce and fresh cherries

Make your own caramel sauce – it’s taste years away from jarred and the perfect pair for ice cream. Think you can’t? Of course you can. As in all caramel matters, I recommend not thinking at all. Run sweet and blind. It comes out better that way.

Classic Caramel Sauce

1 cup granulated sugar

1/4 cup water

1 cup heavy cream

5 tablespoons unsalted butter

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

pinch sea salt (optional)

Put the sugar in a medium-sized heavy saucepan. Pour water over the sugar, swirling until sugar is “moisturized.” Cook over high heat until sugar dissolves. Dip a pastry brush in hot water and use it to brush down any crystals from side of pan – OR – cover pan with tight-fitting lid to steam off crystals, then remove to continue cooking.

Continue cooking over high heat, watching closely, until mixture starts to turn a rich amber color, but does not smell burned. Remove pan from heat and carefully add the heavy cream, whisking. Mixture will puff and steam, and some sugar might harden. Return pan to heat and cook, whisking, until mixture appears smooth. Remove from heat and add butter, stirring to smooth. Finish by whisking in vanilla and, if desired, generous pinch of sea salt.

Serving: serve sauce hot, first cooling to desired thickness. May be refrigerated for several weeks and reheated in microwave or on stovetop as needed.

Makes 2 cups, enough for several ice cream bowls and more than a few spoonful snacks.

adapted from Favorite Old-Fashioned Desserts, by Pat Bailey

Today we review a fortnight stab at my dream job, an experience which, if your dreams are too cloudy, hell is delighted to provide. The original September 2008 post, in all its whiny glory, can be found here.

—————-

A plate was flying toward me, so I ducked. “No sugar!” hissed Dieter, the headwaiter. “No….sugar!”

That was the night I mixed two soufflés – whip, fold, stir, I know how. I smiled when they left the kitchen and nearly choked when they came back wrong. When one orders a $17 dessert, one can expect sugar. I’d been an intern for fourteen days at this five-star restaurant – and between two botched soufflés and one smashed plate, I assumed I had about fourteen seconds left.

Second-year culinary students did internships, and this was the one for me – a place famous for gracious service and the second mortgage you’d need to eat there. There were a thousand city kitchens but I’d fought for this spot, and lobbied to win. It was plum, an expensive organic plum of a chance, and on the first day I laced my Doc Martens, tied back my hair and jumped.

Jumped fast, and fast was good. When you are the only woman in a cramped kitchen of men, it’s like working on a nuclear sub. Down in the lockers I learned to grab two towels, an apron, and get the hell out. In the darkest corners of the walk-in, I whistled loud and carried a peeler.

And on the line, I was invisible. “I’m here,” I told Mario, the pastry guy, “let me do something.”

He gave me a case of club soda and a stack of chargers, and I spent the day buffing Limoges. When I went for new plates, the dishwasher leered. He was a sulky, strung-out French cousin of a saucier’s cousin, but he smoked with the bakers and drank with the chefs. I prayed for a tragic scalding at the sink.

Though my shift started before noon and dragged past midnight, I began showing up early, when the produce arrived. Chef – the chef – would climb through the alley on wooden crates, pinching herbs and squeezing fruit. Safe behind the ovens, the pastry guys whispered and mocked.

“Oh yesss…yes, we must kiss the ass of every strawberry. Mwah!”

If I joined in - strawberry ass – ha ha, that’s good! – they turned and went back to work.

Without leadership and dying to be led, it occurred to me that Chef himself should be my teacher. He’d be flattered by questions, enchanted by curiosity, why yes, he’d say, but of course you are most natural. So much talent for one so young. And your shiny nose, tres chic. One morning I stood with my little notebook, watching him snap dough into onion tarts.

“Is that pate brisee?”

“For you it is NOTHING.”

“Creme fraiche?”

“Go to hell. MOVE.”

Thanks, mon ami! I started stealing into the tiny fish kitchen, scaling three-foot tunas that hid me from view. In twenty years Alejandro had gone from dishwasher to fish boss – let’s see Le Dish Cousin do that – and his manner was shockingly kind. “They won’t let me do anything over there,” I whined, “they hate me.”

“You’ll make it.” Elbow-deep in sea bass, he yanked out some guts. “You will.”

Certainly I could make it as a plate shiner. Not counting club soda, I hadn’t touched an edible in seven working days. But just ten minutes before dinner on the eighth, Mario grumbled “you plate tonight.”

My head swam. Desserts…now. Plate.

On the line. That’s what I wanted, right? I’d watched them all week, the battery of sauces and garnishes, tart shells and torches and berries. I test-plated a poppyseed tuile on the sly and it shattered to the floor. I kicked the pieces under the counter.

When the dessert rush hit I was nauseous. Tickets poured in and Mario barked orders while I frantically tore mint leaves, piped swirls, curled chocolate. Line work requires the hustle of a trader, the fight of a bull and in my case, a skin of steel that I did not have.

“Move, MOVE!” Dieter snarled. “I will not SERVE this SHIT!” For a man who resembled a cadaver, he was surprisingly alive. “Why so slow, PIGS?”

“Yo estoy solo!” Mario yelled. I am alone.

I spoke decent Spanish. I’m on the line and he says he’s alone.

“I’m trying!” I wiped my hands and grabbed the next plate. “Look, I’m on it!”

Thirty-seven desserts later, I was given a five-minute break and flew down to the locker room, drenched and shaking on the…ashes. Every cook, waiter, and busboy topped this floor with Marlboro butts. Maybe if I just started smoking.

I threw up over a trashcan. Then I sat on the floor, pressed my face on a locker and cried.

Four minutes later I was back on the line. I drove down empty Lake Shore Drive at two a.m. each day and returned at ten a.m. the next. My body found a new brand of numb; even my skin hurt from the daily rounds of try, scream, fail. Maybe I did not have what it takes. Maybe I did not want what it took.

For two weeks, every man over twelve and under eighty welcomed me with open arms – hairy arms. Each night I worked between three dripping necks, boasting in three languages over my head what they’d like to do with me, for me, to me.

The day that Dieter fired a sugarless soufflé at my head I untied my apron, hung it on the peg and walked out to the night.

I sat five minutes in the car, breathing frost in my wet, filthy whites. The restaurant window showed in my rearview mirror, catching a diner raising her glass and a man clinking it, smiling. I yanked down my hair and sped off to the highway, thinking quitter. You burned your fancy bridges. Schooling was what I’d come for and schooling was what I got. I would quit my way into a different kind of kitchen, reasoning that if this was it, what I had was something else.

Even now – mortgage, silverware, thank-you notes – we still floated on a hazy and curious feeling of promise, still carried the remnants of a beer-soaked dance floor, and they would remain our guide on this day, when one  “I do” minute might make the world briefly irony-free.

Or “I will,” or whatever – seconds later I thought, isn’t dinner going to be in this room? Thirty rows of family down there would be whisked away into cocktails, and return here for dinner.  Would the room be ready? Would there be enough ice?  Could I get a snack?

The staff would in fact transform the space – currently holding one bride, one groom, a rose-covered chuppah, a photographer, a video guy, a Rabbi and two hundred guests – back to a regular ballroom in time for soup.  The grand old 1920’s girl, with her gilded ceilings and lighted dance floor, had seen both Al Capone and my parent’s prom night.

They knew what they were doing.  By the first toast, draped tables and clinking china hugged the smoky mirrored walls.  In the center, the dance floor built for Capone was lit for our newly married entrance, and at the other end of the ballroom, calling me, was our cake.

As an overeager apprentice pastry chef, I’d planned to make my own wedding cake.  I fought everyone’s warnings, including chatty taxi drivers  – don’t even think about it, baby – up to the last minute.  Consumed by important tasks like hot-gluing 400 tiny peach satin roses to 200 place cards, I finally admitted defeat, and though it killed me to do it, I reluctantly turned the job over to a well-known European bakery.

And now the haughty not-my-cake taunted me from across the ballroom.  During the reception I’d sneak peeks at it, and hug guests on that side of the room to get closer, edging across the floor; finally, my train rustled against the table’s skirting, and there it was.

We eyed each other. That cake was wearing nothing but an ivory buttercream robe and a wholly indecent – no, completely insane – shower of white chocolate curls.

I pursed my over-lipsticked lips. Really, it’s over the top. Kinda gauche, a bit much. Surely it could have used a more restrained hand, you know, say, mine, and then…the damn thing winked at me.  Winked like Alexis Carrington in four tiers and frosted shoulder pads.  Dark chocolate perfume and white ruffled lashes.  I kid you not, the sly thing smiled.

I stifled the impulse to laugh – I’m nuts, I thought, I’m married and freaking nuts – but out came a giggle, then a chuckle, and a full-on, doubled-over, can’t-talk guffaw.  Aunt Ruth, Aunt Margaret, Aunt Rose – all the aunts watching the bride clutching her princess-waist, teary and gasping, likely whispered “dear batty little thing…she’s overcome.”  And I was.

Overcome with all this more, all this larger-than-life more that was suddenly now. I stared at the cake thinking this is it. This is me and I’ll be cranking out many happy endings like this one – big, moussed, and circa ‘85 – and each time I do I’ll think of us, sharing endless runs for cheap, hot doughnuts in the dark.

Now we fed each other chocolate cake from forks in the air, white chocolate curls falling off our lips like rose petals, laughing and laughing at this hilarious circus, laughs you belt out once or twice in life and never see again – all the while cameras clicking and crumbs dropping.  Our private delicious laughter, and one sound moment for a sweet life ahead.

——————

A plate was flying toward me, so I ducked.  “No sugar!” hissed Dieter, the headwaiter.  “No….sugar!”

That was the night I mixed two soufflés – whip, fold, stir, I know how.  I smiled when they left the kitchen and nearly choked when they came back wrong. When one orders a $17 dessert, one can expect sugar. I’d been an intern for fourteen days at this five-star restaurant – and between two botched soufflés and one smashed plate, I assumed I had about fourteen seconds left.

Second-year culinary students did internships, and this was the one for me – a place famous for gracious service and the second mortgage you’d need to eat there.  There were a thousand city kitchens but I’d fought for this spot, and lobbied to win.  It was plum, an expensive organic plum of a chance, and on the first day I laced my Doc Martens, tied back my hair and jumped.

Jumped fast, and fast was good.  When you are the only woman in a cramped kitchen of men, it’s like working on a nuclear sub.  Down in the lockers I learned to grab two towels, an apron, and get the hell out. In the darkest corners of the walk-in, I whistled loud and carried a peeler.

And on the line, I was invisible.  “I’m here,” I told Mario, the pastry guy, “let me do something.”

He gave me a case of club soda and a stack of chargers, and I spent the day buffing Limoges. When I went for new plates, the dishwasher leered. He was a sulky, strung-out French cousin of a saucier’s cousin, but he smoked with the bakers and drank with the chefs.  I prayed for a tragic scalding at the sink.

Though my shift started before noon and dragged past midnight, I began showing up early, when the produce arrived.  Chef – the chef – would climb through the alley on wooden crates, pinching herbs and squeezing fruit.  Safe behind the ovens, the pastry guys whispered and mocked.

“Oh yesss…yes, we must kiss the ass of every strawberry.  Mwah!”

If I joined in - strawberry ass – ha ha, that’s good! – they turned and went back to work.

Without leadership and dying to be led, it occurred to me that Chef himself should be my teacher.  He’d be flattered by questions, enchanted by curiosity, why yes, he’d say, but of course you are most natural.  So much talent for one so young.  And your shiny nose, tres chic. One morning I stood with my little notebook, watching him snap dough into onion tarts.

“Is that pate brisee?”

“For you it is NOTHING.”

“Creme fraiche?”

“Go to hell. MOVE.”

Thanks, mon ami!  I started stealing into the tiny fish kitchen, scaling three-foot tunas that hid me from view.  In twenty years Alejandro had gone from dishwasher to fish boss – let’s see Le Dish Cousin do that – and his manner was shockingly kind.  “They won’t let me do anything over there,” I whined, “they hate me.”

“You’ll make it.”  Elbow-deep in sea bass, he yanked out some guts. “You will.”

Certainly I could make it as a plate shiner.  Not counting club soda, I hadn’t touched an edible in seven working days. But just ten minutes before dinner on the eighth, Mario grumbled “you plate tonight.”

My head swam.  Desserts…now.  Plate.

On the line.  That’s what I wanted, right?  I’d  watched them all week, the battery of sauces and garnishes, tart shells and torches and berries.  I test-plated a poppyseed tuile on the sly and it shattered to the floor.  I kicked the pieces under the counter.

When the dessert rush hit I was nauseous. Tickets poured in and Mario barked orders while I frantically tore mint leaves, piped swirls, curled chocolate.  Line work requires the hustle of a trader, the fight of a bull and in my case, a skin of steel that I did not have.

“Move, MOVE!” Dieter snarled.  “I will not SERVE this SHIT!” For a man who resembled a cadaver, he was surprisingly alive.  “Why so slow, PIGS?”

“Yo estoy solo!” Mario yelled.  I am alone.

I spoke decent Spanish.  I’m on the line and he says he’s alone.

“I’m trying!” I wiped my hands and grabbed the next plate.  “Look, I’m on it!”

Thirty-seven desserts later, I was given a five-minute break and flew down to the locker room, drenched and shaking on the…ashes.  Every cook, waiter, and busboy topped this floor with Marlboro butts.  Maybe if I just started smoking.

I threw up over a trashcan.  Then I sat on the floor, pressed my face on a locker and cried.

Four minutes later I was back on the line.  I drove down empty Lake Shore Drive at two a.m. each day and returned at ten a.m. the next.  My body found a new brand of numb; even my skin hurt from the daily rounds of try, scream, fail.  Maybe I did not have what it takes.  Maybe I did not want what it took.

For two weeks, every man over twelve and under eighty welcomed me with open arms – hairy arms.  Each night I worked between three dripping necks, boasting in three languages over my head what they’d like to do with me, for me, to me.

The day that Dieter fired a sugarless soufflé at my head I untied my apron, hung it on the peg and walked out to the night.

I sat five minutes in the car, breathing frost in my wet, filthy whites. The restaurant window showed in my rearview mirror, catching a diner raising her glass and a man clinking it, smiling.  I yanked down my hair and sped off to the highway, thinking quitter.  You burned your fancy bridges.   Schooling was what I’d come for and schooling was what I got.  I would quit my way into a different kind of kitchen, reasoning that if this was it, what I had was something else.

“Fines.”

“Not us! It’s yours.”

“Oh? We’ll see.”

…ph-chtt-ph-chtt-ph-chtt…

The three of us watched the tape go up, up and over like a gymnast, finally hitting the counter in a dramatic heap.

…ph-chtt…ph-chtt…PH…chtt.

The clerk tore off the tape and all three of us grabbed for it – Josie actually jumped for it. The clerk looked startled.

(goodbye crazy family – yeah we’re, um, closing now. Right now.)

Greg held the tape high above his head, saying in his most embarrassing dad voice, “now we will JUST SEE what we have here.”

One glance and Josie was elated – eleven dollars, some me and mostly him. It wasn’t her – no Nancy Drew under the bed, no Judy Blume behind the seats. “Ha!”

Greg produced the money – “it’s our donation to the library” – took the new books, and we left. On the way out, Josie loudly recited the shameful yellow list. Satisfied that she was least at fault, she gave it back, asking “Isn’t there some kind of day where you bring the books back and they, you know, forgive you?”

Ah yes. We all know Library Fine Amnesty Day, right? That’s the day you sheepishly put the books on the counter and say thank you, I really enjoyed The Thorn Birds…as a matter of fact, I’ve been enjoying it since 1981. Thanks!

But I have a book that I can’t bring back. One that I checked out of the culinary school library in 1993 – maybe no naming the school just now – and it just…stayed. I was exploring international cookies that semester, and liked their spritz recipe. I liked it so much that I baked those cookies….about 2,000 times.

I meant to bring it back, I did, and could have copied the recipe, I know – but that folded-down corner, buttery and torn, marks so many days in the kitchen. A lot of back page crumbs.

Forgive me, Miss Culinarian Librarian, but they piped so beautifully, browned so golden and melted on the tongue. Blame it on the spritz.

Now I know I’m not alone in my tasty wrong-doing — what’s overdue on your shelves?

Spritskakor (Butter Spritz Cookies)

from The International Cookie Cookbook by Nancy Baggett (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1988)

8 oz. (2 sticks) unsalted butter, slightly softened
2/3 cup powdered sugar
1 large egg yolk
1 1/4 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
2 cups all-purpose or unbleached white flour
optional: 1/2 cup finely ground blanched almonds

decorations: pecans, chocolate sprinkles, crystallized ginger, coconut, etc.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Grease several baking sheets with baker’s spray (or line with parchment paper) and set aside.

Place butter in a large mixing bowl and beat with electric mixer on medium speed until very light. Add the sugar and egg yolk and beat until very fluffy and smooth. Beat in vanilla and almond extracts (and ground almonds, if using). Gradually beat in flour until thoroughly incorporated but not overmixed.

Fit a pastry bag with a large (about 3/8″ diameter) star tip. You may also use a cookie press fitted with a star or other tip.

If using a pastry bag: stand the bag, tip down, in a tall glass and turn down a deep cuff at the top. Spoon the dough into it until the bag is no more than two-thirds full. Unfold the cuff and tightly twist the bag closed at the top. Pipe 1 1/4-inch diameter rosettes onto a baking sheet, spacing about 1 1/2 inches apart.

Press any decorations – pecans, coconut, candied cherry halves, etc – into the center of each cookie, if desired.

Place in the center of the oven and bake the cookies for 7 to 10 minutes, or until slightly browned at the edges. Remove baking sheets from the oven and let cookies stand for 2-3 minutes. Then transfer them to wire racks and let stand until cooled completely.

Store in an airtight container for up to a week. Freeze for longer storage.

Make 50-60 1 3/4″ rosette cookies (fewer if using a large, open tip or press)

———

My notes: After making these, literally, some 2,000+ times in every shape and size imaginable, I’d like to offer a few pointers.

Mixing: Beat the butter until the color changes, until it’s nearly white and whipped so soft it makes a slap-slap sound against the bowl. After adding the flour, continue to mix and combine until it is very soft and smooth – don’t worry too much about “overmixing.” Better over than under, because you need a smooth dough that will pipe cookies without breaking your hand.

Ingredients: I never use the ground almonds – I believe the smoother all-butter version pipes better shapes. About the almond extract – a tiny amount can be very strong. If you’re one of those people who think almond extract tastes like cough syrup, leave it out.

Piping: I can’t stress enough how much more beautiful these cookies are when piped with a pastry bag, but a cookie press is also nice. If you do pipe with a bag, experiment with large rosettes, star shapes, s-shapes and horseshoes.

Decorations: There are two ways to go here, pre-bake decoration and post-bake decoration. Pre-bake might mean flaked coconut or chocolate sprinkles, or pressing crystallized ginger, pecan halves or candied cherries into centers. Post-bake includes sifting powdered sugar, drizzling simple glazes or dipping cookie ends in chocolate.

The best cookie trays have a little of both – but you know what? If you’ve no time or inclination for fuss, these cookies are absolutely perfect with nothing at all. That is the true meaning of the words all-butter – all good.