David Tamarkin
speaker
1,765 appearances
15 recordings
2 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard 5d ago
David Tamarkin’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 9 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 3.
Appearances
So that would be my first course of action is to pull back on the baking powder, see if that makes a difference.
I do. But it's because my leaveners are from like 2015. And honestly, they're still kicking. But you got to check.
I know. It's about 99 cent box of baking powder. I don't know, Jessica. Maybe next year. Maybe for my maybe as a birthday gift.
It's such a bummer. That the pat test, the gentle press in the middle is so key. And I understand why you don't always trust the toothpick test. But I just want to tell bakers, if you have not sort of gotten used to the feel of a well-baked cake in the oven, get used to it. It's so helpful. And if neither of those things works, break out the maple syrup.
Yeah, exactly. Let's go to our next caller.
You hear bakers talk about reverse creaming because it's one of the best things ever. I love a reverse cream cake. And I don't think I really understood just how delicious and the impact of reverse creaming until our 2022 recipe of the year, which was a coffee cake that used reverse creaming. The texture on a reverse cream cake is, I mean, it's buttery.
It's decadent in a way. Yes.
Yes. So many traditional cakes start by creaming the butter and the sugar. And the point of creaming the butter and sugar is to incorporate some air into the cake. That helps it rise. With reverse creaming, you cream the butter and the flour and the other dry ingredients first.
This can be counterintuitive because we're all told, for good reason, to not overwork our flour because then gluten will form. And as Jessica was just talking about with cake flour, it can lead to a texture that you don't want. However, when you cream butter and flour together, the butter coats the flour and therefore prevents gluten from forming when you add the wet ingredients.
So that's the trick here. Reverse creaming, which is also known as the paste method, prevents gluten formation, resulting in a more tender cake. It is a texture unlike other cakes and it's delicious. One other thing about reverse creaming is that the cakes tend to dome less, which can be a benefit if you're trying to stack them.
Shout out to Rose Levy Birnbaum who really spread the word about this technique. If you want to try reverse creaming, King Arthur's Vanilla Birthday Cake and Tender White Cake are two great options. We'll put those recipes in the show notes for you.
Every episode, we like to check in with Jessica to see what wildly surprising and full-throated ideas are in her head. But today, we're going to a different person for these wildly surprising and full-throated opinions. It's not Jessica, but it's Jessica's protege, Rossi Anastapulo, also our podcast producer.
Rossi, before you give us your Jess opinion, I have to ask, were you this opinionated before you started working with Jessica? Yes.
Yeah, I can vouch for that because I knew you for a full year before Jessica joined the team and you were much more mild-mannered. And now look at you. You're coming on the podcast with a hot take on cake. What is it?
Oh boy. Okay. So we already established at the beginning of the episode that this is not okay.
This is spoken like a true person who has mastered pie crust, but plenty of people out there, the pie crust shrinks, it looks shabby. How do you get around that?
You're actually convincing me a little bit here because you could also press that cookie crust into a tart pan and get a very beautiful scalloped edge and then fill it with cream. Okay, I'm actually being convinced.
That's a good point.
You know, do you stick a candle in your pie, Rossi?
Thanks, Rossi.
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