Mix masters
Gary Tucker reports.
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| Let them eat art |
| Ice ages |
| Gender mender |
New York City—Two of today's top pastry pros have masterminded upscale renditions of the familiar packaged mixes typically found on display in supermarket baking aisles. What's different about dessert diva Rose Levy Beranbaum's and pastry chef–turned–chocolatier Jacques Torres' foray into the wide world of box mixes, though, is the alignments they've made with the makers of premium ingredients. That and their superior skills and ideas allow consumers to produce excellent baked goods with relative ease.
Beranbaum, award-winning cookbook author and host of the PBS series Baking Magic with Rose, teamed up with Coastal Goods to launch Rose's Heavenly Cakes—French vanilla ($10) or rich chocolate ($10.50) cupcake kits to mix or match with golden silk buttercream ($10) or chocolate silk buttercream ($11.25) frostings. The kits contain premeasured packets of choice ingredients including Valrhona chocolate, pure French Bourbon vanilla extract from Madagascar, calcium-based Rumford baking powder, superfine sugar, Green and Black organic cocoa powder, and Lyle's Golden Syrup. Introduced at the NASFT Fancy Food Show in New York City in July 2006, they're now widely available in specialty food stores or online at www.coastalgoods.com.
Torres, former executive pastry chef at New York City's acclaimed Le Cirque and dean of pastry studies at The French Culinary Institute, collaborated with developers and testers at King Arthur Flour in Norwich, Vermont, to bring three chocolate baking mixes to the market: Pure Bliss Fudge Brownies, Mudslide Cookies, and French Kiss Cookies, items previously available only at his two Jacques Torres Chocolate locations. His mixes ($12.95 each) use King Arthur's signature unbleached all-purpose flour and the finest Belgian chocolates (all with at least 62 percent cacao content) that he uses in his shops. They are available through The Baker's Catalogue or online at www.kingarthurflour.com and www.mrchocolate.com.
Taste tests conducted unofficially by editors at this magazine solicited unanimous kudos. Now, if someone could just come up with tiramisù in a box&elip;
