A Cake Fit for Julia Child

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It might be mistaken for a brownie, if not for its powerful, sophisticated flavor.CreditCreditGentl and Hyers for The New York Times. Food stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. Prop stylist: Rebecca Bartoshesky.

By Dorie Greenspan

Oct. 10, 2018

Early into the first meal I had with Julia Child, she asked me if I’d ever seen the “Saturday Night Live” episode in which Dan Aykroyd imitated her. “I’m sure I’m the only person in the world who hasn’t,” I told her, and then, in a flash, she stood up, her six-footish frame looming over our small table, and re-enacted the best moments of the skit in full trill, saving her most dramatic voice for the famous last line: “Save the liver!” Julia was a master of many things, and as she proved that night, one of them was the art of making a newcomer feel comfortable.

It was 1991, my first book, “Sweet Times,” had come out and I’d been invited to be part of a day of baking demonstrations for culinary students at Boston University, and then to attend a dinner for the presenters, one of whom was Julia.

The recipe I chose for the event, 15-Minute Magic, was my favorite from my debut book and among the simplest ever invented, because the single skill needed was the ability to push buttons on a food processor — everything happened in the plastic bowl. I knew it wouldn’t be dazzling, but I knew I could get through it. And I was sure of the cake’s appeal. It was a slim, flourless chocolate cake, dense and chewy, like a French or Austrian nut torte. It was made with almonds, dark chocolate and the small Italian cookies known as amaretti. While it might have been mistaken for a brownie, it was more sophisticated and powerfully flavorful — amaretti make themselves known. Over the years, I’ve tweaked the recipe, adding a glaze and a topping of crushed cookies for more style, but it remains its essential self. I figured that because Julia made short work of her portion at that first encounter, it must have been fundamentally fine.

I saw Julia now and then, here and there over the next couple of years, not enough to call her a friend and certainly not enough to be anything less than dumbstruck when, in 1994, I was asked to write “Baking With Julia,” the book that would accompany the television series of the same name. At our first planning session, sitting around the table in Julia’s kitchen in Cambridge (I couldn’t stop staring at the legendary pegboard that held her pots and pans), it was Julia who set the tone for the work ahead, saying, quite sternly, “Our project must be serious.” And then she proclaimed what would become our mantra: “This is not for fluffies!”

CreditGentl and Hyers for The New York Times. Food stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. Prop stylist: Rebecca Bartoshesky.

She might just as well have said, “Let’s be pioneers!” because in those days, there was almost nothing on television about baking and little that was meant to do what Julia always did: teach.

I didn’t grow up with Julia. Her books were not my bibles, and I didn’t own a television until 1993, when I went to work for the fledgling Food Network, so I wasn’t a devoted fan. I came to know Julia, who was then in her 80s, as a colleague, not a star. I came to know her curiosity, persistence, intelligence and commitment. I never took her perfect comedic timing for granted, but in working with her I came to appreciate it as a tool for keeping an audience focused on what they might not otherwise have stuck with — the precise temperature for tempering chocolate, for instance.

Julia wanted to tackle everything and take her viewers along with her. And so, over the course of two months, during which I lived in Cambridge and was on the set daily, taking notes and trying to imagine how I’d turn the work into words, we taped chefs from across America baking breads and desserts, some of them things the bakers thought could never be done at home. We always proved them wrong! In “Baking With Julia,” we taught everything from how to make meringues to how to layer perfect puff pastry. We covered muffins with as much detail as we did the various stages sugar goes through on its way to caramel. And we documented Martha Stewart creating a three-tier wedding cake with hundreds of pastel-tinted marzipan fruits. Julia made sure to get the most out of the moment when Martha ran a wood stake through the layers and then banged it securely into place with a mallet that would have been suited to a game of croquet.

Julia let the chefs work, showed the steps and asked the questions any novice would — she didn’t consider herself a chef and, in fact, once put her arm over my shoulder and declared, “We make such a good team because we’re just a pair of home bakers!” She gave herself up to the satisfaction of completing a recipe and to the pleasure of eating it. She cried when she tasted Nancy Silverton’s cream-topped brioche; it reminded her of her beloved France.

Sometime later, while I was writing the book, I made a 15-Minute Magic for Julia. After all the polished sweets we’d shared, after all the complex desserts the professionals had made, I was touched that Julia still liked my easy-enough-for-fluffies cake. When I told her this, she gathered herself in what I’d come to think of as her declarative posture and announced: “All that matters is taste.” She waited a beat and said: “And this tastes very good.”

Recipe: 15-Minute Magic

Dorie Greenspan is the On Dessert columnist for the magazine. She has won five James Beard Awards for her cookbooks and writing. Her new cookbook, “Everyday Dorie: The Way I Cook,” will be published in October.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page 24 of the Sunday Magazine. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe