Reminisce and Remake to Celebrate

This morning, while paging through an old cookbook called Heritage Southern Cooking, a recipe with the name Chocolate Whispers appeared. What a name. I want to make that today, or at least make it for someone I would like to whisper to. Chocolate Whispers. How romantic. How perfectly inspired to conjure an emotion from the perfect assemblage of simple baking ingredients.

I began to think of pastries that were inspired by artists, like the Pavlova, the Russian ballet dancer Anna Pavlova. A Pavlova is a baked meringue that resembles a billowy tutu that gets mounded with sliced kiwis, berries, and fresh whipped cream. It’s glorious. There is the petite French cookie, the Sarah Bernhardt, made in honor of a famous French actress while she was visiting Denmark. It’s an almond macaroon domed with a chocolate truffle and dipped in dark, crisp chocolate. We made our own version of this cookie in honor of our talented operations manager and pastry chef, Mary Lee. We called them Mary Lees and mounded our own almond macaroons with an orange-imbued chocolate ganache, dipped in dark chocolate and finished with a tiny slice of candied orange rind on top. Even our Opera Cream Torte pays homage to that most perfect confection, the opera cream candy, which was created to celebrate the operas performed in Cincinnati.

One of the perks of owning a bakery has been honoring many people and places that have inspired me over the years. My maiden Aunt Marie, who cooked for Saint Lawrence School in Price Hill, never wasted a thing. Once, as a girl, I peeked in her ancient gas oven. Inside were puffs of the most glorious-looking things I had ever seen. "Aunt Rea," I asked, "What are these things?" Her raspy voice, always full of mischief, answered, "Kid, those are wind cookies." At her house for dessert that night, I was transported by that wind of sugar and crispy egg white cookies forever. When we opened the BonBonerie, I immediately made wind cookies and put a sign on the jar that identified them in her honor: Aunt Rea’s Wind Cookies. So many customers asked about their name and origin. I could only answer that it was pastry poetry.

My mother-in-law always outdid my apple pie at Thanksgiving. I respected her prowess. She understood how to balance the flavors between her apples and the right amount of sugar and spices. And of course, there was her absolutely perfect pie crust. We make her pie recipe, Lucretia’s Apple Pie, twice a year in her honor.

Coney Island Hearts have nothing to do with anything I ate at Coney Island, but I just loved Coney Island as a child so much and wanted our customers to know it was once such a wondrous place. I am still fascinated by the magical feeling I get when I place a puff of cotton candy in my mouth. No, our Cotton Candy Pigs are not made out of cotton candy, but that soft, simple, sweet vanilla flavor you get when you bite into that cookie is a reminder of something I loved eating my entire life. Pastry names are allowed to embrace artistic license.

Throughout July and August, it will be your turn to celebrate what you loved from our collective pasts. We encourage you to reminisce and give the proper recognition to some of your favorites in our repertoire. It doesn’t matter how long ago you enjoyed it. If we still have the recipe and enough people mention it, we will make at least one batch and let you know when we plan on making it during the month of September. Who knows, perhaps we will rediscover something that needs to be back on the menu.