“There are no second acts in American lives." - F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Last Tycoon”
Maida Heatter’s career certainly makes a bum out of Fitzgerald’s more clever than profound words. “Maida Heatter’s NEW BOOK of Great Desserts," published by Alfred A. Knopf at $17.50, is her fourth to come along since 1974 — all of them thumping successes.
This mid-life bloomer is the daughter of Gabriel Heatter, mellifluous radio newscaster of the '40s. She studied at Pratt Institute and set her cap for an acceptably fashionable career in illustration and design. But her heart was always in the kitchen and her hands in the flour and sugar. Culinary careers were considered rather unthinkably lower-class in those days, so Miss Heatter married and kept her career hobby-like.
She made all the desserts for her husband’s Miami Beach restaurant (it was always an okay thing to help your husband in business) and gave a few lady-like cooking lessons. Her daughter, Toni Evins, whose line drawings decorate all her mother’s books, became the professional illustrator of the family and Maida finally gave in to her baking passion full-time.
Solid Experience
Miss Heatter’s lifelong pastime has turned into a wildly successful career as the books and cookies, pies and cakes come tumbling out of her Florida kitchen. It is clear that her recipes have been repeated many times —and in her own kitchen, not in some hi-tech lab surrounded by adoring sycophants. Her warm, direct style and practical tips are the obvious result of 40 years of solid experience. Miss Heatter remains endearingly “non-professional,” striving for perfection in a more-or-less ordinary kitchen with conventional equipment. She explains with infinite patience just what she means by “fold.” And why the butter pastry cracks at the edge and what to do about it. Do you know how to ice a cake without leaving a sloppy trace? Or that you should STAND, rather than sit, to cut cakes, pies, and bar cookies? And dip your knife in hot water and wipe it clean too, between slices?
I am transported into the glorious, guilt-free, calorie-laden American culinary past by recipes for “Hawaiian” cake filled with pineapple and adrift in clouds of snowy boiled frosting showered with coconut. And, jelly roll, and old fashioned butterscotch pie by Gad!
The past decade or so has been such a celebration of foreign, especially French nouvelle, food and cookery techniques, our native triumphants — such as the properly flaky, fruity, and great classic American pie — have got lost in the shuffle. Maida Heatter’s recipes revive and burnish the deserved image of unabashedly American desserts.
Some Aids
Our desserts, it must be admitted, are frequently over-sweetened. This is partly because commercial bakers, in their debased translations of the originals, have substituted “sweet” for the taste of the more costly eggs and cream that lent the home-made article its lush flavors. It is also possible that the American sweet tooth is the legacy of Colonial cooks for whom happiness meant never having to skimp on sugar again. White sugar was an imported luxury that had to be chipped off a large block, pounded, and sifted, before it could be used (sparingly) in cookery. Some of Miss Heatter's “Great Desserts,” however wonderful, could benefit from a little less sugar. (And her book could have used some sorely needed “technique” illustration.)
But I wouldn’t delete even one ounce of the whipped cream that embraces so many of the gorgeous pies and cakes in this book. Imagine! Chocolate whipped cream swirled on orange chiffon cake, an almost forgotten treasure that was developed in California in the ’20s, a cross between rich pound cake and feathery angel food.
Whipped cream was a way of life in Germany when I lived there years ago. And the waiters weren’t rotten enough to ask if you WANTED schlagsahne; they simply left the bowl on the table. One could observe happy matrons from Cornwall to the Rhineland tucking into “teas” that included two, or even three, selections on each person’s plate — Americans are not the only “sweet freaks” in the world.
Maida Heatter retains the sweet enthusiasm of an adult who never got bored with the circus. And if the following excerpt from her new book doesn’t make you want to boot the next kiwi sorbet you see, I don’t know what will.
Creamy Coconut Cream-Cheese Pie*
“This easy pie, in a spicy crumb crust, is filled with a mixture of coconut, cream cheese, whipped cream, and Cognac and creme de cacao, which makes it a sort of a Brandy Alexander Cheese Pie (if you use gin in place of the Cognac you will have a Gin Alexander Pie). It has an optional chocolate sauce. All in all, it is a delicious and unusual dessert.
Eight Portions
Crumb Crust
1 1/4 cups graham-cracker crumbs
1 tsp. ginger
1 tsp. cinnamon
2 ounces (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, melted
Adjust a rack to the center of the oven and preheat over to 375 degrees.
Mix the above ingredients.
Use a nine-inch pie plate to prepare, bake, and cool the crust.
Filling
6 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
2 Tbs. granulated sugar
1/4 cup milk
3 1/2 ounces (1 to 1 1/3 cups) shredded coconut
2 Tbs. Cognac or brandy
2 Tbs. creme de cacao
1 envelope unflavored gelatin
1/4 cup cold tap water
1 cup heavy cream
Place the cream cheese, sugar, milk, coconut, Cognac, and creme de cacao in the bowl of a food processor or in the jar of a blender. Process or blend for 30 seconds. The mixture should be thoroughly mixed and the coconut shreds should be cut into smaller pieces, but should not be too fine. Transfer this mixture to a large mixing bowl.
Sprinkle the gelatin over the water in a small heatproof cup. Let stand for about five minutes to soften. Then place the cup in a little hot water in a small saucepan or frying pan over low heat. Let stand only until the gelatin is dissolved. Then remove from the hot water and set aside for a moment.
Meanwhile, as the gelatin is dissolving, remove and set aside about two tablespoons of the heavy cream. In a chilled bowl with chilled beaters (it can be the small bowl of the electric mixer if you wish), whip the remaining cream only until it holds a very soft shape. Quickly stir the reserved two tablespoons of cream into the gelatin and quickly, while beating, add the gelatin all at once to the partially whipped cream, and continue to beat until the cream holds a definite shape, but not until it is really stiff.
Fold the whipped cream mixture and the cheese mixture together. If the mixture is runny, place some ice and water in a large bowl, place the bowl of filling in the ice water, and stir/fold very gently only until the mixture thickens enough so it can be slightly mounded in the crust.
Pour the filling into the crust, mounding it slightly.
Refrigerate for four to ten hours.
Serve just as it is, or with the following sauce.
Bimini Chocolate Sauce
1/2 cup heavy cream
6 ounces semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped or broken (see note)
2 Tbs. unsalted butter
Place all the ingredients in a small, heavy saucepan over low heat. Stir occasionally until the chocolate is melted. Then stir the sauce briskly with a small wire whisk until it is as smooth as honey.
The sauce should be served at room temperature, poured or spooned over the top of the pie. (If you serve this sauce with ice cream, it may be served cool or warm.)
If the sauce thickens too much while it stands, stir it with a wire whisk to soften, or, if necessary, stir over hot water to soften.
Note: I use Tobler or Lindt extra-bittersweet, or Tobler Tradition, or Lindt Excellence (both semisweet) — you can use any semisweet.”
*Copyright, Maida Heatter. 1981, 1982, 1983 by Maida Heatter
