Welcome to the new By the Book, where the Sauce editors choose a monthly theme and pit cookbooks in a head-to-head battle to see who comes out on top. And the winner? We hand the champion over to you in a By the Book Facebook giveaway. This month, we’re tackling all things sweet. Last week, Chocolate Pot de Crème couldn’t stand up to the fruit-packed Blueberry Apple Pie from Pastry by Nick Malgieri. Today, it takes on Sarabeth’s Good Morning Cookbook by Sarabeth Levine.
Having brunched at Sarabeth’s on New York’s Upper East Side many mornings, I was excited to get my hands on Sarabeth Levine’s latest cookbook, Sarabeth’s Good Morning Cookbook: Breakfast, Brunch, and Baking. She’s packed 12 chapters with easy-to-follow recipes fit for novices or more experienced home cooks looking to fill their repertoire with options for everyday breakfasts to a weekend entertaining menus.
Levine walks readers through basic techniques for common but tricky recipes such as clarified butter, blintzes, omelets and even the hard-boiled egg, but she also challenges cooks to more ambitious projects like a yeast-risen Hungarian coffee cake similar to babka and streusel-encrusted French toast. I found her recipes precise and well written, and I appreciated the simple but stunning photographs. Thankfully, most ingredients are easily accessibly, and she rarely calls for any equipment not found in the standard kitchen. She also provides the ingredient weight in grams, as well as cup measurements for those of us who prefer to use a scale to take the guesswork out of measuring.
I decided to test her quintessential New York Crumb Cake. Her goal was to find the perfect proportion of cake to crumb topping, and she achieved it beautifully with a stunning crumb topping. She calls for superfine sugar in most of her baking recipes, and I think it helped the recipes stand apart. The texture was light with a fine, delicate crumb, thanks to the sour cream-based batter. Watch your baking time carefully, though – my cake was overbaked after 55 minutes. I tend to take my cakes out of the oven when a few dry crumbs appear on a toothpick, not when it comes out clean as instructed.
The Rundown Skill level: Perfect for the beginner or advanced home cook.
This book is for: Cooks looking for basic everyday to company-ready brunch entrees.
Other recipes to try: Cranberry Cream Scones, Double Salmon Rillettes
The verdict: Levine’s classic crumb cake took down Malgieri’s blueberry and apple pie thanks to its light texture, generous cinnamon topping and buttery sour cream cake.
New York Crumb Cake 10 to 12 servings
Crumb Topping 1½ cups (213 g.) unbleached all-purpose flour
? cup (65 g.) superfine sugar
? cup (65 g.) packed light brown sugar
½ tsp. ground cinnamon
¼ tsp. fine sea salt
8 Tbsp. (114 g.) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
Cake 2 cups (284 g.) unbleached all-purpose flour
1½ tsp. baking powder
¼ tsp. fine sea salt
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
1? cups (261 g.) superfine sugar
? cup (152 g.) unsalted butter, cut into ½-inch chunks, at room temperature
2 large eggs, at room temperature, beaten
1 cup (242 g.) sour cream
• Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 350 degrees. Butter and flour a 9 by 9 by 2-inch cake pan and tap out the excess flour.
• To make the crumb topping: In a medium bowl, whisk the flour, superfine sugar, brown sugar, cinnamon and salt. Add the butter and vanilla and mix with your fingers until combined and crumbly. Set aside.
• Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into a medium bowl. In a small bowl, rub the vanilla into the sugar. In the bowl of a heavy-duty stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter on high speed until smooth, about 1 minute. Gradually add the sugar mixture and continue beating, scraping the sides of the bowl often with a silicone spatula, until the mixture is very light in color and texture, about 5 minutes. Gradually beat in the eggs, scraping the sides of the bowl occasionally.
• Reduce the mixer speed to low. Add the flour mixture in thirds, alternating with two additions of the sour cream, scraping the sides of the bowl and beating briefly after each addition. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan. Smooth the top with the spatula. Squeeze handfuls of the crumb topping, then break into small clumps and sprinkle the entire surface of the batter with the clumps and crumbs.
• Bake until the crumbs are golden brown and a cake tester inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean, about 55 minutes.
• Cool completely in the pan on a wire rack before serving. The cake can be stored in the pan, wrapped in plastic wrap, at room temperature for up to days.
Reprinted with permission from Rizzoli Publishing
This article appears in October 2015.