Baking Preppy Recipe and Tips

All right, John, you're live. Oh, hi. Very excited to do a live. It's been a while. Today, I'm making a recipe from Preppy Kitchen. Everyday Baking comes out in 12 days, but you can order a copy if you talk Chuck Live and have it signed by me if you can't make it to one of the uh book signings. And really favorite recipes. I love German chocolate everything. It's a magical frosting on top of the fleshy brownie. It's going to be great. First off, my oven's at 350. It's nice and hot. This recipe comes together quickly and the brownie is getting mixed together all in one bowl, which is very nice because I don't want to do a lot of dishes.

To a small pot, we're going to add a couple ingredients. Starting with German chocolate. By the way, if you have any questions, feel free to pop them in and ask away. Someone's going to be helping me here to uh answer your questions so I can do two things at the same time. Audience too low. The audience too low. I'm going to raise my voice. Can you hear me? Okay. I have some German chocolate here. We're going to give this a nice chop. It has to melt.

This recipe does not come from Germany. It's actually named after Samuel German who um made this delicious chocolate. It's a dark chocolate but it's a little bit sweeter. And German chocolate cakes came from Texas. Whenever you're chopping chocolate, it's important to have smaller pieces that are pretty uniform because we want this to melt together. Okay, this can go into our small pot. When I do the book tours, which is my favorite part of making a book, uh I love getting suggestions and hearing stories about making food and having, you know, some time together in the kitchen.

One of the most requested things was a book just for baking. So that's really the reason why this book came about is because people were asking for it and I thought, you know what, it's an excellent idea. We'll follow the suggestion. Okay, we have about 10 tablespoons of butter here. Going to cut it into smaller pieces just so it melts together. This goes into our pot as well. This is going to form like a lovely fudgy base for our brownies. You want to have tons of chocolate here. And when it's nice and warm, we're going to add the cocoa powder in. And that is going to give us even more intense chocolate

flavors. Blooming the cocoa powder. Okay, that's what we have inside here. This is going to go over like medium low heat for a few minutes. I'm going to stir occasionally and it just needs to be nice and melty. Are there any neverbeforeseen recipes in the book? Someone asked if there are any neverbeforeseen recipes in the book. There are so many new recipes in the book, including this one. I made sure to include some fan favorites. Like, there are peanut butter cookies in here. There's the classic German chocolate cake and many others. But we have a lot of new recipes, too, including new ways of presenting them. Like, I love an angel food cake, but a lot of people

have told me they do not have angel food cake pans. So, I made a recipe where you can have an angel food cake made in a loaf pan. It comes out perfectly. It's so easy to make and everyone can do it. I hear things bubbling. So, give this a nice stir. Okay, I'm going to tend to that. But in the meantime, we're going to chop some pecans. Give these a chop. And by the way, whenever you use pecans, you really should toast them. I toasted these ahead of time. It intensifies the flavor and they smell so nice. They're also crispier and just have like a lovely texture. So, give those a medium chop.

These will go into my brownie towards the end. Now is a time of prepping. This is your third book. Does it get easier or does this one starting from scratch? Dan, so this is my third book. Someone asked if they get easier as you go along or if it was like starting from scratch. Making a book is always like a daunting process because you want to have a nice balance of recipes and also like I'm used to having a website where we can edit recipes and like tinker with them. People will give us feedback sometimes and you know we update recipes regularly. This is set in stone. So the daunting part is really the recipe testing. So I will make a recipe up and then refine it so I'm happy with it. Then it gets sent for testing to

different parts of the country and I want to make sure it works with different types of flowers in different areas with different types of stoves and once it's been like successfully tested and adjust as needed then it can go into the final dock. So to answer your question it does get easier because you kind of know what to expect as far as the process goes. The first book was like having your first child. Um, but it's still daunting every time cuz you want to put your best foot forward and have the best product possible. While it's heating up, just stir. It's almost there. I'm just going to prep my pan. Just a little baking spray.

I have a parchment paper piece here that fits in nicely. That'll be my sling. Just this pulls out. Fold that. And fold that. And it fits nicely. Okay. Set that aside. Do a little cleaning. How long did it take to put your boat together? How long did it take to put the book together is one of the questions. It took about a year of development. And once stir, search, stir, don't forget. Very important. You can see it's almost completely melted. Whenever you have chocolate and you're melting it, once it's almost there, you can take it off heat because the residual heat will finish melting things up. So, that's nice. But to answer the question, it takes

about a year of development, but then you give it to the publisher and they take another year uh because it takes a year for them to edit it and then to have it produced and shipped over via boats. Okay, we're going to pour our melted chocolate, you can see it's nicely melted, into a large bowl. Can you tell people what you're making that are just logging in? Oh, yeah. If you're just joining me, I'm so sorry. We're making German chocolate brownies from my new book, Preppy Kitchen, Everyday Baking. So, I love a German chocolate cake. It's one of my favorite cakes. And this is the brownie version of it.

It's so much quicker to do. I'll be honest, like the German chocolate cake for me should have one this amazing frosting like you can see here. We have that coconut pecan kind of caramel frosting. It's so good. But the cake itself should be like impossibly tender, which you do through some nice baking techniques. But it does take a little bit more effort than a regular stir together cake. This is going to give you the perfect fudgy brownie which has that lovely like dense chocolate texture, but it's all going to happen in one bowl and it is so easy.

All right, so my melted chocolate and butter are in this large bowl. Are all the books ordered through here autographed? All the books that you order through talk shop live are autographed. Yes. So, I'm very excited because I would love to go to like every city in the country as it is. I'm doing like a pretty big book tour, but um I'm not able to come to like all the different areas. I would love to. If I'm not coming to you, it is the easiest thing to order from Talk Shop Live and you'll get an autograph book by me.

All right. How much sugar goes into it? You need 150 gram or 3/4 of a cup. Okay. Zero your scale. We're going to add 150 g of sugar right now. That's 3/4 of a cup. as well as half a teaspoon of salt for some nice contrast. 2 tablebsp cocoa powder. Two tablespoons of cocoa powder. And here I'm using a natural cocoa powder. You could use Dutch process if you wanted. And I'm going to whisk this together. Now, this is going to have a couple things happening. The sugar is going to melt into that warm chocolate, and the cocoa powder is going to bloom from the heat and the butter. Whenever you add cocoa powder to a hot fat, you're going to

make it taste that much better. Okay. Mix, mix, mix, mix, mix. Any Greek recipes in your book? There is a few Greek recipes in the book. Yes. Let me see if I can find them. We have baklava, of course, which I know is a Mediterranean recipe. You know, it originated in Turkey, but Greeks love it, too. And I have another Greek cheesecake in here that's so good, so easy to make, as well. There might be a couple more. So, mix, mix, mix. We just want this to not be super hot before we add our eggs in. Okay. All the recipes in this book, like I said earlier, have been really well tested, so we know they're going to work.

And as usual, I give you like all my tips and tricks on how to make things right and how to make the recipes yours. I always think of a recipe as a starting point. Like this recipe would be delicious as is, but you have so many options for different add-ins, different ways of making a lot of the recipes, and just kind of ways that you can play with things to make them yours to have flavors that you love. Where can I find the list of book tour cities you're visiting? Well, the list of book tour cities I'm visiting is on preppyitchen.com as well as uh highlighted in my sort. saved it as a highlight, but I'm going to be going to Richmond, New Jersey, Manhattan, uh, Weta, which is really close to

Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Seattle, Darian, Connecticut, and we're working one more stop potentially, but that's not been confirmed. I think that's all of them. Did I mention Seattle? Seattle. Okay, once this has cooled down a bit, we can start adding our eggs in. And one of the main questions I get for brownies, aside from like the correct way to bake them to get a fudgy texture, is the glossy top. People want that glossy top because it makes the brownie just look delicious. It's very easy to get, but it requires some strenuous mixing because after the eggs go in, you will be mixing your little heart out. And what you want to do is dissolve the sugar. If I look at

this bowl here, I don't know if you can see it, there's lots of little dots of the sugar that are exposed. And what you want to do is stir either using your hand or an electric mixer and mix until the sugar is mostly dissolved in that matrix of egg and butter. And once you do that, you'll get a glossy cracky top. Normally, it's one of my favorite things to do for brownies. I like to expect that end result. But for this one, it doesn't really matter because we're going to be completely covering this in a German chocolate frosting. It would be so good. At what age did you get into baking? And was it because of your parents?

H Okay, I got a question. At what age did I get into baking? Was it because of my parents? And basically since I was like a very small child, I was in the kitchen with my mom helping out. And it was a way of spending some quality time bonding with my mom because honestly she was so super busy. My mom, for those of you who don't know, is from uh a town in Mexico called Via. and she came here and when she had my brother and I, she like put herself through school, had a job, was a parent, was making our meals, very busy, but I could always spend time with her in the kitchen. So, I grew up kind of loving that and understanding how to play with flavors and make things. And it's it was like it just felt very natural.

Once I got to be like a pre-teen, I started really going and baking things on my own because it was like fun to do with my friends. Okay. Stir, stir, stir, stir, stir. And then honestly, if I was doing this without the frosting, I would break out an electric mixer and go to town. But this is good enough for now. As an added tip, if you want to, you could always add in half a teaspoon of espresso powder just to ample amp up the chocolate flavor. Okay, I'm going to pop this onto a scale now because we're going to add some of the dry ingredients into our brownie.

This is going to be a mess as well. So, I'm going to do a little bit of cleaning as well. Are there any recipes in the book that kids can make? That kids can make. So, someone asked if there's any recipes in the book that kids can make and yes, there are. But like my kids in a similar fashion love spending time with me in the kitchen and they could make with supervision any recipe in this book. This book though has a whole chapter on stir together cakes. So, we don't even don't need to bring a mixer out. You could just stir them together. A lot of them happen in one bowl. Almost every cookie, I would say, could be made by kids. There's all the muffins, all the quick breads, and even a lot of the yeasted breads, too. Like,

my kids will make pizza dough from scratch. The only thing I do for them is heat the water up to the appropriate temperature just because I'm still paranoid about them getting burnt. But a lot of these are very kid-friendly because I wanted to make them as streamlined and easy as possible. If it's if there's a potential for a recipe to not be fussy, I've taken that route because I think we're all busy. And even if we're the most proficient bakers, you don't necessarily want to spend that much time in the kitchen. You want to enjoy the time with your family or friends or just by yourself and the delicious food you made.

Zero my scale out and I'm going to add the flour in 3/4 of a cup or 90 g. You can ask by the way any savory baking in the book. There is some savory baking in the book. I don't know if you saw the real I put up or the YouTube video that went up. Uh but the Meerlemon biscuit rolls is actually from a root recipe which is biscuits three ways and it was the Meerlemon pin wheels, a sweet biscuit and a savory biscuit which has like options for cheddar, different herbs, different cheeses. Very delicious. There is a sourdough pizza crust. There are delicious dinner rolls and a few others.

It's mostly in the yeasted uh the yeasted chapter. So we wanted 90 gs. Perfect. Is it just baking or also this book is just baking? So it's not 100% desserts, but it's nearly all desserts. And my first two books were pretty well balanced between savory and sweet. They gave you things for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. This has breakfast options, but there's sweet breakfast options. And um I was just really wanting to give people a book that was baking forward. Some leavening agents as well. We're adding some baking powder here. And now we can fold this together. Whenever you make brownies, you want just enough flour to give you structure. So, we're adding the bare minimum here. And

while we do that, we want to make sure the brownie has like a really luscious texture and isn't going to be gummy. And we'll do that by not overmixing. So, is there a baking mistake you see people make often? Yes. Okay. I'm going to give you the top two baking mistakes. One is overmixing. Overmixing will kill a baking recipe because what happens is you're activating the proteins in the flour, glucen. And remember earlier I said we want to have just enough flour to hold things together. If you're overactivating the gluten, what happens is you're going to take your baked good out of the oven, it's going to look perfect, but then as it cools, it'll contract because those

proteins are pulling up and pulling each other in. And then you have a gummy dense baked good. And people will say, "Well, I followed the recipe to a tea." And they did, but because of overmixing, the texture is different. And because the texture is different, it doesn't dissolve on your mouth like a beautiful symphony. It's like gummy little balls that you just swallow and it doesn't taste the same. If you're just joining me, I'm making German chocolate brownies from my new book, Preppy Kitchen, Everyday Baking. It comes out in 12 days and through Talk Shop Live. Basically, you can order the book, but it'll be autographed. If you look in here, you can see they still have streaks of flour. That's okay.

Can add in my chopped nuts now that we chopped up earlier. These are chopped pecans. They're also going to be in the frosting. If you like your brownie to be purely fudgy, you could omit this. And I also have I think half a cup of chocolate chips here. In. You go. fold that together. Any recipes for someone who basically has one bowl and limited counter space? I would say this to be honest like everything is happening in one bowl for the brownie. The French yogurt cake as well was like I think basically uses one bowl. And right now I have a ton of stuff out because uh we prepped it out so I would not be like opening things and going to the pantry. But really, this recipe could be

made with the one bowl, the pot, and then the pot we're going to use for the frosting. It's pretty good. There are many recipes, though, that are really streamlined, especially in like the Stir Together Cakes chapter and maybe the bars as well. This is my batter. It smells delicious. It looks basically like melted chocolate, which is exactly what we want. This can go into my hand right now. Okay. Can I find this book in Canada? believe you can buy this book in Canada. Uh, for sure. Yeah. Uh, it's usually available on Amazon.ca at the very least, but I know that other retailers as well. As someone who's half Canadian,

I would be horrified if that wasn't the case. And I know that yes, you can. Yes. Is there a baking smell that reminds you of home or feel nostalgic? Okay. So, you're going to think I'm saying this just because of the recipe, but my mom always had this baker's sweetened coconut in her freezer because we make German chocolate cake all the time. Also, like there other coconut desserts. So, my brother and I will constantly be like going into the fridge or freezer, having some coconut. It's like a little after school treat. And then when it was time for my mom to make a German chocolate cake, she was

confronted with like a completely empty blue pack of this. She was not happy about. It went to the market. We buy some more and would repeat. Okay, this is going to go into the oven. Now, let's look at the bake time. 28 to 30 minutes on the shorter side. If you want that kind of like slightly underbaked, melty situation. Going to pop this in. And now we can do a little reset because we're going to make an amazing German chocolate frosting. What's your favorite recipe make in the world or from the book?

My favorite recipe is really seasonally dependent. Like we I'm like still not understanding that it's fall even though it's very much fall in Connecticut, but during the summer I love something really light and bright. So I would say angel food cake is what I make almost every weekend, especially if we have guests over, which we usually do. A big slice of that. A giant dollop of whipped cream and some fresh berries. We have that recipe in the book. Also love making a pavlova during the warmer days in the winter time. Like this is anything German chocolate is going to be for a birthday. We have a chocolate cake recipe like a devil soup cake that lock.

I love the tiramisu. And as we're getting to a colder month, this one I had to kind of like fight for it to be in the cookbook, but there is an espresso martini granita. It is so good. A granita is going to be This is the German chocolate cake. A granita is like an icy like sweet dessert, but it's not overly sweet. And it's basically like a frozen espresso martini slushie. It is delicious. Very busy. Not for the kids. I have a medium pot here. This is where the magic will happen for my German chocolate frosting. So, let's grab some of these things.

Can any of these be made gluten-free? Uh, the cafeya cake is definitely gluten-free. A lot of the recipes, especially the more forgiving cakes, you could definitely use a one to one like Bob's Redm Mill substitute. And yeah. Okay. So, the magic here happens from some evaporated milk. Add that into your pot. This is like a caramelly just amazing frosting. It's great on cupcakes, too. So, one egg yolk, two egg yolks, and if you're just joining me, I'm making German chocolate brownies for my new book, Preppy Kitchen, Everyday Baking. Thanks for stopping by, everybody. Any last minute dessert ideas for tonight?

Other than this, we're making Oh, a last minute dessert for you. Okay. Um, I would whip together. Gosh, if you have yogurt, a French yogurt cake is so easy to make and it is just like it's a very clean, simple dessert that whips up easily and bakes pretty fast, too. Other than that, I would say gosh, like a batch of cookies. Kind of depends on what you have in your uh in your pantry. All right, medium pot. We're going to make the sugar, the milk, the egg yolks, and the butter and a pinch of salt. Okay, adding in the butter now.

Everything just goes onto the stove top and it's going to melt and thicken. What are his favorite recipes in the book? So, Lachlan's favorite recipe, as I said earlier, was that devil's food cake. He will devour any sweet item. Especially if there is chocolate in it. He's obsessed with chocolate. And it's funny. George does not have as much of a sweet tooth. So, he likes like a lighter, brighter dessert. He loves angel food cake. He loves the juicy fruit upside down cake, which is imagine like a pineapple upside down cake, but instead of that, you're using like a nice juicy fruit like a strawberry for example. It bakes. You flip it upside down and it's perfectly moist. No need to decorate it. And he also loves coconut just like me. So,

there's a coconut sheetcake in here. There's some coconut cookies and those uh myer lemon pin wheels. The biscuit rolls are so good and they're not too sweet. He loves those, too. Okay, zero my scale out. I'm going to add some sugar in now. And I want to have half a cup or 100 g. Someone asked earlier like the most common mistakes from bakers. I went on and on a tangent on um over mixing. The other thing is adding too much flour and which happens when you scoop things out. I can show you in one second. I'll show you what happens when this is on the cook top.

What would be your go-to recipe to win a bake off? Oh my god, I would feel so much pressure if I was at during a competition. I don't know for that. I feel like you have to go with something that you love. Uh I think we have a chocolate pie in here. Like I love a nice chocolate pie. I would add that in. Just like go with something that you feel that really speaks to your heart because that's what you're going to be able to like refine and do the best at. Okay.

This in here. So, we have our granulated sugar, evaporated milk, my egg yolks, my butter, a little pinch of salt. Make the worst hunter. Where is salt? Right there. Just a pinch for some flavor. Someone said they got a kitchen scale because of you and they love using it now. Why is that important? That's I'm so happy that you discovered the magic of a scale. Scales do a couple things. Someone earlier asked about not I'm just mixing this together before it goes on the heat, by the way, because we don't want the yolks to cook unevenly.

Someone asked earlier about um kind of like less clean up and having less dishes. When you use a scale, you're not going to use those measuring cups. And what also is nice, you're going to have completely accurate results. If I say one cup of flour, that's 120 grams. And you can be accurate to the gram. If you're scooping up flour, it's much more difficult to add that amount in, which means you can easily add more flour. And flour is not delicious. It's not sweet. It doesn't have a lovely flavor. It's there to provide structure. And when you add too much, you get a denser, breier, less pleasant, tougher dessert. and you can feel let down by that. So, scale it until the point that okay, mix, mix, mix.

I'm going to pop this onto heat now while I mix. So, you'll follow me over to the cook top and we are going to add the 35 minutes over medium heat. What dessert would you eat straight out of the pan with zero regrets? Someone once told me that regret is a lost emotion. So, I don't often regret things. I ate so many desserts from this book uh recipe test. We just entered pumpkin season, so I'll give you a pumpkiny answer. Uh I make a delicious pumpkin muffin, but I wanted to really up the ante here. So, refined the recipe a little bit, added a brown sugar cinnamon swirl through the middle of the muffin, and

then topped it with a brown sugar pumpkin spice strusel. Oh my gosh, I made that and I've never seen a dessert disappear as fast because my kids and my husband were like, and I was like disappointed because I wanted to have several of them as well. was not able to squirrel any away. All right, this is gonna mix up pretty quickly. I want to make sure all the butter is melted and it'll start thickening up. What's a recipe from the book you'd recommend for beginners to start with? Let's open this book up and see because my heart is going to the same recipes that I've just been thinking.

Oh, by the way, that's the espresso martini granita. If you want it a foolproof recipe, it is just stirring together some liquids, popping it into the freezer, and raking them with a fork. This could work so fast, you have no idea. And like most of the recipes, like this was the Greek honey and ricotta pie. So simple. Okay, this thickens up super quick. if you can see, but it became a little bit lighter in color and the texture is nice and thicker now.

Now that it's off heat, we can add some vanilla in. I started sharing these recipes on my YouTube channel as well, so they're just beginning to trickle out. I'll have a playlist for my new book, and uh I'm really excited to get the book into people's kitchens and start seeing some of the things that are made. I love having the audience that follows along on Preppy Kitchen. It's like it really touches my heart. But having something physical that lives in people's kitchens is just like it's astounding to me because um I grew up in a house that was full of books. And I really think that my mom explored the world through recipes in her cookbooks. And at my last book tour in LA, she came, of course, and she reminded me that every

time she makes a recipe from a cookbook, she'll write the date that she made it. Just that very easy. Turn your stove off. Very easy. It's an index of time. And I love the idea that my books are going to be hanging out in the kitchen, getting used, getting splattered, have flour in them, like little butter stains, and just be objects that are a part of the family. This, by the way, is like an easy fruit tart with a classic custard inside. Use some Perfy Kitchen Magic to make the recipe easier. So, it's like a nice classic French one, but it's much simpler. Oh my gosh. One of my favorite recipes that I have not mentioned is the almond quissant. Oh my gosh, they are so

good. It's taking a store-bought croissant, which is kind of like super hoham, as you know, and then making amazing with an almond filling. They're like dipped in a syrup with some rum and it's like out of this world. So good. Okay, that's in there. I'm going to add my coconut in. Now, I want to add in one cup or 110 g. Going to eyeball it. This is some magical stuff. Do you have a favorite dessert or dish that you'd love to give as a gift? So, when you're friends with me and I'm coming over, you get to make requests. And I'll tell you that my vanilla cake and cupcakes are frequently requested, which is funny

because it's like it's such a simple recipe, but um I might say it's done well and people really like it. We have some more toasted pecans. This frosting is so good because you have the gooey like basically like a milky caramel with the chewy coconut and the crunch pecans. He's been toasted as well. That's very important. With the holidays coming up, are there recipes in the book that you think would be good for the holidays? Yeah. And then we have like a molasses uh chocolate chip cookie. We have all of the cookies that you would want on your cookie platter.

Um even things like the Vietnamese coffee cake. Um there's so many like special occasion desserts that I put in here so they can really be made to shine. Good. Now going to add my pecans in. By the way, if you think you'll be able to make it to my quick tour, let me know in the comments. Test my memory when I see you in person. Let's fold this together nicely. anything that could be made ahead and chilled or frozen. So many things especially. Okay, one of the nice things about making desserts is you can do so much of it in advance. If

I have Thanksgiving, which I do every year, or a Christmas dinner, I am going to be having a full freezer of things that'll get pulled out, including pie crusts that have been completely formed and ready to go into the oven, cookie dough that's ready to be either popped right into the oven or sliced like my shortbread recipes in the book. And then a lot of the cake layers can be made in advance. So the day of or closer to the time that you're going to have people over, you can just pull things out of the freezer, do some assembly or baking, and be so much less stressed out. I think when you host, your goal should be for your guests to have a good time, but also for you to have a good time. you

know, like if you're so stressed out, even if everyone else is having a good time, you're not going to want to host again. Like it's not the memory isn't living in your heart the same way. So find ways that you can make things easier. So I always give you storage instructions for every single recipe on how long can this live in the fridge, how long can this live in the freezer. And I think that's so important. No one wants to do things everything at the last minute. It's very hectic. By the way, this smells so good. And if you're joining me right now, we're making a German chocolate brownie. So, it's a beautiful brownie. It's from my new book. It comes out in 12 days. Fudgy

with some pecans for a little bit of a play of texture. And it gets topped with the most incredible German chocolate frosting. Look at that. It's glossy. It's chewy. It's crunchy. It's gooey. It has everything you want. What is the best chocolate to bake with, bar or cocoa powder? Okay, so someone asked what the best chocolate to bake is if it's a bar or cocoa powder. It's really what the recipe from someone who you trust calls for. In this brownie recipe, we're using both melted chocolate and cocoa powder.

And a lot of cakes, for example, you're going to use maybe just cocoa powder because the chocolate is too heavy. So, it's going to weigh your batter down. That doesn't matter for a cookie really. That doesn't matter for a brownie. But for a fluffy, melt in-you mouth cake, you're going to want to use the cocoa powder. So, it's about using the a nice cocoa powder, blooming it if you can, and using the correct amount of cocoa powder or chocolate because you used a scale. Do you have a brand that you recommend? Um, there are a lot of good chocolate brands. I think the giant mega chocolate, you can grab one if you want to pull it over is uh is it calon? That's guitar.

Oh, it's guitar. Um, and I get, this is actually a question I get quite a bit, like where do I get these massive bars of chocolate? You can get them at restaurant supply stores or you can order them on Amazon. Like, it came in this giant thing. I've been whittling it down. So, like all I have left now is this tiny little piece of my chocolate bar. Um, but it's very important to use a nice chocolate. If it's like a chocolate chip cookie, you could use chocolate chips, but you could also just chop the chocolate up and, you know, if it's a star ingredient, use one that you love. German chocolate, anything will use German's chocolate, but between you and me, don't tell other people this,

you could use a semieet chocolate or a bittersweet chocolate, and the recipe will still come out great. This will get set aside. So, right now, it's too hot to use on a brownie. So, we're going to pop this into a bowl. And because we're live, you're seeing like the real me, which is even messier than on my YouTube channel. So, I'm not clearing things away as I should be, which I really should be, but I wanted to answer your questions. Um, and that's just the way it is. So, pop off that there. Now, they don't exist anymore. And this just needs to cool so it's like more room temperature. So good though. Really quick cuz they're super coconuty.

How do you store your chocolate? Okay. So, chocolate should be stored in an airtight container or a bag at room temperature and it really should not get too warm. If it gets too warm, it you know, it has that beautiful tempered structure and that tempered structure will kind of like deteriorate and you'll lose, you know, it makes the chocolate kind of funky. The chocolate start blooming. You get those white spots on there. So, it's better in a cooler, consistent environment in an airtight container. Okay. So, we talked about the brownies. We made the frosting. Do you think that we have to wait for it to come out of the

oven or that I have a swap out? Out. I'm going to grab it right now. Left. You're at 45. Do you have any advice for us? One ingredient that all bakers should have on hand. One ingredient that all bakers should have on hand. H Oh, there's like so many. In book two, I have like a my whole first chapter is on how to set up your pantry. And I have a copy right here. But that's like the foundation. You know, one of the reasons that I called the website Preppy Kitchen is because it's being prepared. How can you set yourself up for success? I used to be a math and science teacher I loved teaching. I still think of myself as a teacher, but I thought what I saw was like kids were coming

into class and they didn't have the prerequisite skills they needed to succeed. So my job, this is book two and the whole first chapter. Um so good recipes. The whole first chapter is just like how to like set yourself up so you have everything you need like your equipment like the different types of butters, what that means, the different types of salts and what that means and how you use them. Um, in this book we talk about that as well. But for having the correct Yeah. For having like the right things I would say check your expiration dates, have your flour, have your leing agents, have your salt and your cocoa powder,

chocolate and nuts, and like all your non-p perishable things will last quite a long time. And then you can expand from there. So that's the answer. I did I promised I would show you the deal with the flower. So this happened at the beginning of the video and there were some questions about using a scale. I'm going to show you exactly what I was talking about here. Zero down. I have my allpurpose flour here. I have a scale. I have a measuring cup and for half a cup of flour that should be 60 g. This was the mistake that people make at home and it's so simple to fix. So, one, if you want to use a scale, you

put 60 g of flour in the perfect amount. If I'm using a measuring cup and I just scoop it up like that and I level it off. That's half a cup, right? So, I put that in there. And you can't see, but it says 80 g. So, I added 20 more grams. 20 over 60 is 33% more flour than I needed. that will make a very different recipe. Your cookies will spread differently. They'll have a different density. So would your cake. And that's for half a cup. Imagine if I made four cups of flour. If I had three cups of flour, I would have added four cups. It's like you're just adding more and more. And it totally changes the characteristic. If you want to make something at home and you don't have a scale, you can

still get a pretty accurate result. This is what you do. You grab your measuring cup and you grab a spoon. Fluff your flour up in your canister or your bag. Fluff, fluff, fluff. Sprinkle it in slowly. Sprinkle, sprinkle, sprinkle, sprinkle, sprinkle, sprinkle, sprinkle like that. Now we can level it off. Now we can add it in. Oh yeah, I need you to see this. It says, I don't know if you can't see it, but it says 61 gram. So I was within one gram by doing. So you can still get an accurate result. I'm so proud of myself for that, by the way. You can

still get an accurate result, but you can never soup flour up. It sounds so simple, but that is the main thing that people are doing at home that is giving them a less than optimal end result for whatever dessert you're making. If you're making a rue for a soup or for a sauce, it's not as important if you scoop a tablespoon out. That doesn't matter. But if you're making anything more refined, it does matter. So, if you took one thing away from this live, even if you're not going to get the book, I would just say like use a scale or have your measuring cup with the flour sprinkled in and leveled off and you're going to find so result from your baked goods. It'll be amazing. That was my little show and tell.

Is there a recipe that you're most proud of in the book? the recipe that I am I would say the most proud of. Gosh, like to be honest, there isn't one recipe that I'm not proud of in the book because this is like just the highlight. It's like I spent so long thinking of recipes developing until they were like just right and like they're all kind of close to my heart. Like this is a version. This is a French silk pie. So, it is a chocolate pie that like just it melts on your tongue like silk and it is a have to have dessert every holiday. So, I make it at Thanksgiving, I make it at Christmas, and it gets made other times of the year as well. A mountain of whipped cream on top, shaved chocolate as well. And it's like it's so

decadent, but like you know, we all deserve it sometimes. The one thing is that normally I would have this with um a crisp butter crust, which I love, but I understand that adds a lot of extra steps in. So, reconfigured the recipe and this one has an Oreo crust. And I was a little apprehensive like that's the probably a good idea, but is it going to taste as good? It tastes so good. And it's so easy to have just a pressed Oreo butter crust with this. It's amazing. Mention the name of the book again.

People are asking for it. If you're wondering, I'm talking about my new book, Preppy Kitchen, Everyday Baking. It's my third cookbook. It comes out in 12 days, and I'm doing this live. one to just like talk to you, have some fun in the kitchen, but also you can order the book and have an autographed version of it from Talk Shop Live. Salted caramel cheesecake. This is so good. Oh my gosh, you guys. I am half Mexican. I love dulce de leche. I also love a trese leches cake. A dulce de leche tresletches cake. So good. I mean, I love all these recipes. So, I can't choose just one.

One that I love, especially just because it's like my husband's birthday cake and we've had a lot of moments, is the German chocolate cake. I used a sling here. Look at that. My brownie comes out perfectly. That's the nice thing. I don't want to serve something in this. I want to have it on a nice plate. It'll be easier to cut as well. And then I'll put some on. This will be my serving platter for now. Remove your paper. And all we have to do is slather on our frosting. A big amount of it goes here. This is a little warm, but it's fine. I like it warm.

I don't mind. And need to get all of this off. Although, if the kids were here right now, they would be licking this spoon. That's like the reward for any kid. Okay, spread that over into a nice even layer or a giant amount as you please. And the nice thing is this frosting is so gooey, it'll also kind of like ooze into the brownie a bit and make it even more luscious and more delicious. There we go. Just like that. All right. What's the most popular preppy kitchen recipe that made it into the book? Oh, I actually know the answer to that.

I like the work. I might get mocked occasionally just because I used to be a math teacher, a fairly good math teacher, I would say. You ask my former students, I hope. Uh, but I am the worst first at remembering numbers. I cannot do it at all. However, I do know the answer to this. Peanut butter cookies are the most popular recipe I have. And I made sure to have peanut butter cookies in the book as well. On the last book tour, a lot of people were asking if like the most popular recipes could be in a book sprinkled in with new stuff. Of course, because it's just nicer to have something you love in a book instead of

having it in a print out or opening up your computer. Um, it's like in a treasured object that you can open up and refer to and annotate as you please. Once your brownies are all done, you just have to give them a cuss. And just like that, they're ready to enjoy. Can you see this? It's so glossy and fudgy. And I feel like a brownie should just be pure decadence. The subtitle of the book is Because it's Almost Time for Dessert. And I think we all have enough hard days that we can have a little treat and have something decadent, too. All I need now is a fork. If you have any last questions, you can ask away.

Using up all of my time. Are you an edge piece or a centerpiece for your brownie? I get a sense of satisfaction from nibbling away at the things I like less so that I can truly enjoy the thing I like most. So because of that I get like some kind of sick satisfaction of having the edge which I don't like. So I can really appreciate the center. So I like that. But if someone gave me a center piece, I'd be quite happy. Look at this. What really brightens it up are those pecans because the chocolate brownie is so fudgy and rich and it's like it's gooey and melty, but the pecans brighten it up with some crunch.

I really hope you get a chance to make my recipes from this new book. I'm so excited to share it with you. I hope I can see some of you on the book tour and you know, thank you so much for watching. If you have more questions, you can ask away on the videos that you see and I'll be trying to do try to answer. That by the way is the French yogurt cake. So good. It's so easy to make and it's so good. All it gets is a sugar topping that becomes crackly when it comes out of the oven. And the cake is soft and melts in your tongue, but the top is like crunchy and delicious. Thank you for joining me.

I really appreciate that you spent some time with me in the kitchen today. Happy baking.