CONFECTIONS OF A CLOSET MASTER BAKER: GIVEAWAY AND YUMMY!

GIVEAWAY HAS ENDED!
CONFECTIONS OF A CLOSET MASTER BAKER
One Woman's Sweet Journey from Unhappy
Hollywood Executive to Contented Country Baker
by GESINE BULLOCK-PRADO

ABOUT THE BOOK:
A former Hollywood insider trades the Hollywood Hills for Green Acres—and lives to tell about it in this hilarious, poignant treat of a memoir.

As head of her celebrity sister’s production company, Gesine Bullock-Prado had a closet full of designer clothes and the ear of all the influential studio heads, but she was miserable. The only solace she found was in her secret hobby: baking. With every sugary, buttery confection to emerge from her oven, Gesine took one step away from her glittery, empty existence—and one step closer to her true destiny. Before long, she and her husband left the trappings of their Hollywood lifestyle behind, ending up in Vermont, where they started the gem known as Gesine Confectionary. And they never looked back. Confections of a Closet Master Baker follows Gesine's journey from sugar-obsessed child to miserable, awkward Hollywood insider to reluctant master baker. Chock-full of eccentric characters, beautifully detailed descriptions of her baking process, ceaselessly funny renditions of Hollywood nonsense, and recipes, the ingredients of her story will appeal to anyone who has ever considered leaving the life they know and completely starting over.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
GESINE BULLOCK-PRADO's delicious confections have been featured on the Food Network's hottest new show, Road Tasted with the Neelys and in such publications as In Style, People, Vermont Life, and Boston Common. Gesine still lives in Vermont and is preparing to open another bakery in Austin, Texas.

AN INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR:(from Publisher, RANDOM HOUSE)
An Interview with Gesine Bullock-Prado, author of CONFECTIONS OF A CLOSET MASTER BAKER

1: What makes your book different from other memoirs, and different from other cookbooks?
I’m not a recovering drug addict and there’s not one pasta dish included. And it’s more than just a memoir about baking, it’s about finding out what I wanted to be when I grew up when I was already a grown up. Who says we have to be just one thing in our lifetimes? What’s wrong with becoming a lawyer and then running an entertainment company and then transforming into a master baker and a writer? There are plenty of things wrong with me but that’s not one of them. And I’m a better and happier woman for it.

2: Is writing a book at all like baking?
Putting the obvious and sadly inedible component of writing aside, it’s all about practice and screwing up, learning from mistakes and editing out bad habits. Baking is fiendishly precise, though. Writing can be a little more loosey goosey. But I have to say the discipline I’ve gleaned from baking professionally has helped enormously in writing. I take my time over the process. In baking, if I screw up I get right back in and approach the recipe with more patience and understanding. With writing, I do the same. I’ll edit and massage the same sentence until it’s right. It’s just not as tasty.

3. What advice do you have for readers who, like you once were, are trapped in jobs that don’t suit them?
Be fearless but also be excruciatingly honest with yourself. As a home baker, I was clueless when it came to running a food business. So what did I do? I opened a pastry shop with ZERO experience. I’m an idiot. You don’t have to be. Arm yourself with experience in the trade you think is your life’s work. Say you want to open a bakery like I did. If I’d been sane, I would have volunteered as a bakery slave on the weekends just to get my feet wet in commercial production. Any experience is better than none and it’s essential to have a decent grasp on the business side of the venture. It ain’t just sugar and butter. There’s payroll, taxes, permits, food handling issues. Lordy, sometimes hairnets are involved. I thank the pastry gods that despite my utter inexperience, my unrequited love of baking prevailed notwithstanding some boneheaded moves in my early days. But there’s something to be said for just jumping in. If you can survive and still love your chosen path, you’re golden.

4. Be honest: how did you adjust to that super-early-morning routine? Were you always a morning person?
I can’t wake up at 5am or 6am. Just can’t. Not without the assistance of a forklift and vat of coffee. But for some reason, 3:30am works for me. No problem. I’m not even going to try and figure out the woo woo reason why.

5. You write poignantly about your mother. How was your understanding of her transformed after you became a professional baker?
I don’t think that if my mother had survived cancer I’d be a professional baker. In losing her, I got a kick in the ass. Life’s too damn short to complain about being unhappy and do nothing about it. At first, baking was my way of communing with her. Of working through my grief at losing her and finding myself lost in LA. Some people pray; I bake. The gift that came from my flour dusted meditation was the revelation that I wasn’t just baking; I was a baker. Which brought it’s own sadness because I wanted so badly to share that with her. She was damn good baker herself. But for all I know, she’s opened her own swinging pastry joint just inside the pearly gates.

6. How did you decide which recipes to include? Any chance that you’ll write another book featuring the recipes omitted from this one?
I originally wrote the book without recipes. I know, go figure. The book had a rhythm to it that dictated which recipes would just comfortably slip in. The same holds true for a second or third book. More stories and more recipes that spring from my tales of growing as a woman through sugar and butter.

7. You produced beautiful descriptions of your relatives’ baking. Where is the artistry in baking? How have you found room to be creative, despite the constraints of customer demands and measurements in recipes?
Well, my philosophy is pretty much “my house, my rules.” So in my shop, I baked what I loved and my customers got on board. This only works if what you’re making is tasty, of course. But I also took inspiration from customer requests. You notice I said request. I don’t respond well to demands. So you want a coconut cream pie. I can do that. But I’ll do it my way and make it better than you expected. And that’s artistry to me, to mine joy and creativity from constraints.

8. Did running a production company prepare you at all for running a confectionery? What did both careers teach you about creating a great workplace?
It didn’t prepare me for bubkis. It’s such a niche, Hollywood. On the other hand, it did give me perspective on what it means to treat everyone with respect. Not just the A-listers, everyone. I learned a great deal by watching my sister honor the contributions of everyone on a film, from the grip to the director. Everyone’s working towards the same goal.

9. You’ve lived in many parts of America, and overseas. Where do you feel most at home?
With my husband Ray. If he’s around, no matter whether we’re sacked out on the couch at our home in Vermont or on a rickety train barreling through Poland, I’m home. There are those few places in the world that really speak to me, though. Vermont’s at the top of that list. Bavaria is too.

10. What’s in store for you now?
I sold the storefront in Vermont and Ray and I packed up the dogs for a few months to consult on the opening of a place called Waltons in Austin. Ray did coffee. I did pastry. And now we’re back in Vermont looking at part two. Or is it part three now? I’ve stopped counting. But I’m looking for a new space to bake. Just a little commercial space where I can churn out goodies and ship them around the country to anyone who needs a lovingly made treat. And I’m taking time to travel around the world to visit with the great master baker’s who can teach me a few new tricks.

A RECIPE TO DELIGHT

A special concoction by Gesine Bullock-Prado
just for Reading Group Choices book groups!
(from READING GROUP CHOICES September, Newsletter)

At 10:45, just as George Michael’s “Sports Machine” was finishing up on Virginia’s channel five, members of a clandestine society would filter into my college living room, students of Mr. Jefferson’s University all and each bearing an offering of Moon Pies and a bumper of Colt 45. At 11pm, when the strains of the Star Trek: Next Generation theme song squeezed themselves from the mono speaker of my crappy t.v., a hush fell over the room as we nibbled, sipped and fell under the spell of Captain Picard and his travails with the Borg or poor Data struggling under the influence of human emotion. These were heady things, made more memorable with the inclusion of our ritual treats.

I’ll be honest with you. I don’t know what spurred on the specifics of our ritual meal. I’m hard pressed to tell you what’s tasty about a Moon Pie. I’d never gone out of my way to eat one on any other occasion. And the Colt 45, forget about it. I want to. But the combination of elements, the Star Trek, the cardboard sandwich cookie and the malt liquor, made for a beloved communion of friends that we’ll cherish forever.

Now an adult, a professional baker with access to a better selection of alcoholic beverages, I’ve reimagined my youthful gathering: A book that brings friends together instead of Roddenberry, a generous glass of juicy Pinot Noir in place of the Colt 45 and a luscious, spongy, fluff filled homemade chocolate Whoopie Pie in the shrink-wrapped Moon Pie’s stead.

So I’d like to share this recipe with fellow book lovers so that your next literary gathering may be infused with Whoopie goodness. Enjoy!

Chocolate Whoopie Reading Group Pies
(makes 2 dozen sandwiches or
6 sandwiches and 1 large whoopie)

For Chocolate Whoopies:

3 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 ½ cups unsweetened cocoa powder
2 sticks unsalted butter (room temperature)
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 ¼ cups non-fat buttermilk
¾ cup hot coffee
½ a bar (or 2 ounces) of Ghirardelli 4 oz bittersweet premium baking bar, cut into small pieces and melted in the coffee

Preheat oven to 350 (convection) or 375 (traditional)
Whisk together flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt in a large bowl and set aside.
Add chocolate to coffee and set aside for it to melt.
In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Scrape down bowl and add eggs one at a time. Mixing until fully incorporated. Combine buttermilk and coffee and alternate this mixture with the flour mixture until all elements are incorporated.
Whisk quickly on high to insure perfect distribution.
On a parchment lined cookie sheet and using a large ice cream or cookie scoop, place cookies onto parchment lined baking pans, 12 per pan.
Bake for 15 minutes or until the cake springs back when gently touched.
Pipe a generous dollop of Marshmallow Fluff or Seven-Minute Icing (recipe to follow) onto half the Whoopies and sandwich with the remaining cookies.
These will keep up to 2 days in an airtight container.

For Seven Minute Frosting:

1 ¾ cups sugar
2 tablespoons corn syrup
¼ cup water pinch salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
6 egg whites

In a heavy saucepan, combine 1 ½ cups sugar, corn syrup and water and heat over medium until (1) sugar has melted and (2) reaches 230 degrees on a candy thermometer.
This can take from 5 to 10 minutes.
In a mixing bowl with the whisk attachment, whisk egg whites with the salt and vanilla until you reach soft peak stage.
Slowly add the remaining ¼ cup sugar.
Add the molten sugar mixture the instant it has reached temperature while the mixer is on medium speed.
Make sure to pour the syrup down the side of the bowl so that it doesn’t splatter and it’s incorporated more gently (i.e. doesn’t scramble your eggs).
Beat until the fluff is cool, thick, very stiff and shiny.
This can take up to 10 minutes. Sometimes more!

THE GIVEAWAY
Thanks to David and friends at
Crown Publishing, I have 3 copies
of this yummy book to give away!

RULES:

---U. S. AND Canadian Residents
(I am doing the mailing so wanted to give my
Canadian followers a chance at this one!)
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