I am never one to pass up the opportunity for a cookie recipe experiment. When I returned from Thailand earlier this month I discovered our sweet stash completely depleted. Turns out my husband was hungry when he was home alone for a week! I was in the moodfor some simple chocolate chippers but wanted give them a little extra oomph. With a fresh bag of Scharffen Berger Chocolate Chunks and a handful of pretzels remaining in our snack jar I decided to make up a new, cool cookie variety.
This week my friend Casey Barber of good.food.stories is joining me to chat about her new book, Classic Snacks Made from Scratch. I mean, who couldn’t love a book like that?!! If I wasn’t concentrating on losing the baby weight I think I might work my way from beginning to end without a second thought. Everything looks delicious and harkens back to those alluring snacks of my childhood.
1) You did an amazing job rounding up all the classic snacks in this book. Were there a lot of these in your house growing up? How did you compile such a list?
Though my parents did their best to keep my sister and I in the realm of Grape-Nuts and whole wheat bread, my grandparents had no such compunction. Their freezer was always stocked with Pudding Pops, their fridge held treasures like three-layered Jell-O… according to family lore, any time I arrived at their house, I declared, “I would like to have something sweet!”
Putting together the list was fun and fairly easy—I brainstormed all my favorite snacks from my youth, asked my friends what their most requested (or most infamous) snacks would be, and combed the aisles of my local grocery stores with a notepad!
2) What do you think is the biggest difference between these classic snacks when they are made in a home kitchen versus the kinds we find on store shelves?
The biggest difference—and this isn’t necessarily a bad difference—is that there is a particular chemical aftertaste that I just couldn’t replicate in some snacks. You know how Twinkies would coat the inside of your mouth with a layer of sickly sweetness? Yeah, I couldn’t make that happen. But the best part about these snacks is that you can completely customize them to your liking. I’ve had people doing Milano cookies in orange as well as mint, people making Twinkie cupcakes; it’s really cool to see how everyone interprets the snacks.
3) How was the process of creating and testing each recipe? I imagine it took a lot of work since people expect these to taste just like the real deal they find at the store! No pressure there… 🙂
The process of creating each recipe started the same way: by buying the processed, packaged version of the snack in question, then dismantling and dissecting each component in my kitchen (pulling apart Oatmeal Crème Pies, cutting open Totino’s pizza rolls) to dial down to the essential flavors and textures of each snack. Sometimes it was easy to figure out that, for example, a Nutter Butter is essentially a frosting-filled peanut butter shortbread cookie, but other recipes took a lot of time. Nailing down the particular wheaty sweetness of a Wheat Thin was a big challenge.
4) Which one of these snacks has a Proustian effect on you? (For me it would be Sno-balls. So completely off limits in our house…oh the memories of buying them at the local five and dime and savoring them in my friend’s treehouse on sticky summer days praying we wouldn’t get caught!)
So funny – Sno-Balls were one of my favorites too, though revisiting them as an adult made me realize just how creepy that outer marshmallow layer is in the way it peels away from the cake inside. It’s just so… ALIEN. Funyuns were a big rediscovery; I have such fond memories of crunching into them while wasting time at the local pool, preferably alongside one of the snack bar’s crispy, buttery grilled cheese sandwiches. I probably should have only purchased a snack-size bag when researching them for the book, but I ended up eating the whole full-size bag in a matter of days. Couldn’t stop!
5) Are there any newer classic snacks you didn’t include in this book? When I shop with my daughter I am amazed at the amount of newer snack foods that have come out since we were kids!
You can probably tell just by looking at the table of contents that I’m a child of the ‘80s. I don’t understand these new snacks; like, when and why did they decide to make Fruit Roll-Ups green or blue? They were perfectly fine in regular fruit colors! Actually, I would have liked to include some even weirder snacks like Fun Fruits (remember those?) and sugar wafers, or drinks like Ecto Cooler in the book, but developing and testing 70 snack recipes was more than enough work.
6) What were some of your favorite moments from the writing and production of this book?
Honestly, some of the best moments were getting feedback from my testers, all of whom were home cooks with varying degrees of skill, and hearing how happy, successful, and empowered they were by trying the recipes. I had people deep-frying, boiling sugar and making marshmallows, tempering and enrobing chocolate, shaping and baking pretzels—all of these things that they’d never tried or thought they could do and they all pulled it off!
7) What is next for you? I vote for a Classic Snacks vol 2!
I don’t think I can put my mind and stomach through the process of recreating any more classic snacks for at least a year—the number of Twinkies I’ve been making for my book events is reinforcing my decision to move away from the snack recipe development for a while! I’m still trying to pin down my next book topic; I love baking as much as I love cooking savory food, so it could be anything.
Images by Judi Swinks. Used with permission.
To Enter to Win A Copy of Classic Snacks Made from Scratch:
1. Leave a comment below sharing your favorite classic snack!
Picnic season is finally here and I, for one, couldn’t be happier. We love taking our meals from home “to-go” in the warmer weather. Our sandwiches always seem to taste a little bit better in the fresh, salty beach air. Lunches beneath the oak trees at the playground have an enjoyable, relaxed vibe and we swear that couscous salad always tastes best eaten out of take-out containers on a boat. When we are feeling particularly ambitious we dress up our daughter for a mini-hike and enjoy meal overlooking a vista of rolling hills with distant glimpses of the Atlantic.
There are a few key things to picnicking I’ve learned over the years and I want to share them with you. Picnics shouldn’t be complicated or stressful. Preparing for them should be easy and fun so you can enjoy your time outdoors with your family, not worrying about food.
Picnic Essentials:
– Blankets: If you are planning to picnic on the ground it is good idea to bring something to sit on. In woodland areas a waterproof surface is ideal. I picked up a simple oilcloth at our local Homegoods for just such occasions. It is cheap and easy and can easily be wiped clean. Light cotton blankets or large beach towels are great for beach picnics, breathable fabric is key for sandy surfaces that can get hot on a summer days.
– Sharp Knife & Cutting Surface: If you are planning on eating hard cheese or meats remember to pack a portable, sharp picnic knife. I like my Opinel 9 knife, it is easy to use and cleans well. Plus, it folds tightly so my daughter is unable to open it. Be sure to pack a plastic or wooden board for cutting your food.
– Plates, Cutlery & Cups: I like to pack recyclable one-use plates, cupcakes and forks for picnics. They are durable to eat with and can be stuck in the recycling bin instead of the trash can at the end of the night. A lot of times I like to use individual plastic containers to transport our food and we are able to eat straight out of them.
– Flashlights: If you are planning a dinner picnic be sure to take a flashlight along in case you happen to finish after dark.
Last week I had a couple days of play time in New York. Well, I can’t say it was all play, I did squeeze in a dentist appointment, but I didn’t let a little teeth cleaning get in the way of my fun. The neat part about my New York adventure is that it spanned the course of two days. I miss living in my old Upper West Side neighborhood so much that it was a real treat to come in one evening for dinner and then back the next morning for breakfast. It was like being back home again!
Tuesday:
3:21pm: Scramble to make the Metro North train to Grand Central. Because of the snow storms several of the trains are out of commission and the regular train schedule is reduced making everything so much harder. Make the train by the skin of my teeth and it is smooth sailing from there. Use the train ride to catch up on emails, Facebook and Twitter. All this technology time makes me wonder what I ever did before blackberries were invented?!
4:40pm: Arrive at Grand Central later than planned because of an unexpected rail stop in the Bronx. Dash to catch a cab to meet Cara & Phoebe for coffee at City Bakery. I am so excited that their new book cover is on Amazon. Everyone start pre-ordering tout suite! The three of us try to meet up every few months to shoot the breeze and catch up on life. It is also a good excuse to indulge in the offerings at City Bakery. It is one of my favorite spots in the flatiron district – I lived 7 blocks away for 6 years! – and I am deeply devoted to the pretzel croissants and hot chocolate.
