I remember the moment I fell in love with Julia Child.  Before then, Julia Child was “that cooking lady on TV”,  and while I felt a vague kind of approval for her  I'd  never actually watched a whole show.  I had been too young to pay much attention when her pilot series, The French Chef  had aired in the 1960’s. That changed late in the afternoon one autumn Sunday in 1979  when I was in High School. Being an ace procrastinator, I was not eager to go to my room and tackle the homework-laden desk I’d been ignoring all weekend, so I turned on the TV to delay the inevitable a little longer. And there was Julia Child & More Company.  When I tuned in, Julia was constructing her dessert called Gâteau Mont St. Michel, a complex, multi-layered high rise of crepes, butter and sugar-coated sautéed apples, and a crumbly brown sugar and almond streusel mixture.  Being on one of the maternally mandated  diets of my teen years at that time, my mouth was watering as I watched her assemble this.

            “Now we want to caramelize the top for a nice crunch as with a Crème Brulee,” Julia announced in that wonderful hoot of hers. “You can always do this under the broiler, of course, but I find this works much better.” 

            To my amazement, she then produced a blow torch and lighter and pulled on a pair of goggles.  She clicked the lighter a few times, picked up her lit blow torch and darned if she didn’t caramelize that cake’s top and sides with it.  

I watched, delighted and completely agog:  Julia Child is blow-torching a cake on TV!  Blow torches might be old-hat as a tool in restaurant kitchens, but  at that time, they had never been in the batterie de cuisine of any cook I knew. Right then, Julia became the coolest middle-aged woman ever in my eyes.

I kept tuning in on each of the next several Sundays, even though she never pulled out the blow torch again. I was charmed, anyway. Julia  Child was relaxed and pleasant yet had a natural authority while she talked about all that fabulous food and how it would taste together. She looked as if she was from some much happier universe where nobody had ever even explained the concept of dieting to her. I was enviously certain nobody had ever insulted her palate with the artificial-tasting horrors of 1970’s vintage Weight Watcher’s substitute-laden food. At the end of each show when Julia stood by her feast-laden table and wished her audience “Bon Appetit,”  I always felt a moment of indignant dismay when her arm and hand didn’t  poke out through the TV screen with a plate of food for me.

Although I became a late follower of Julia Child as a TV chef, my mother had always kept her two volumes of Mastering the Art of French Cooking on her kitchen bookshelf. The original volume, bearing the flyleaf inscription  “To Connie, Happy Ides of July from George” in my father’s handwriting, was always used far more than  Mastering II.  Many of its pages containing favorite family dishes are now dog-eared and recipe splattered.  The true sign of a beloved, well-used cookbook.

In 2001, I went up to Portland Oregon to visit Leslie, my former college roommate, and spent a happy morning there rummaging around at Powell’s City of Books.  I made a wonderful find on the cookbook floor; a near-new condition hard cover copy of the original Mastering the Art of French Cooking V. 1 still in its crisp, new-looking paper dust jacket.  I’d never even seen the dust jacket of my mother’s copy. I bought it for fifteen dollars, gleefully knowing I’d found a real bargain. I was   more chuffed yet a few weeks after my vacation while I was browsing through the cookbooks at William’s Sonoma and discovered that a mere paperback copy of Mastering  cost $29.95. (!)

 My copy of Mastering has now lost its’ dust jacket, and the pages are getting respectably creased and splattered on the pages for Gratin Dauphinois, Crème Renversée au Caramel and the splendid chocolate and almond cake, Reine de Saba—are we detecting a pattern, here? By contrast, the page for Oie Rôtie Aux Pruneaux  (roast goose with prune and foie gras stuffing) is still spotless and crisp, since I’ve never had the opportunity or desire to roast a goose. It’s hardly weekday night fare for a single cook.

The recipe for today though, is one of my mother’s and my own favorite stand-by desserts.

Biscuit Au Beurre

 (Butter Sponge Cake)

From Mastering the Art of French Cooking V.1By Julia Child, Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle 

            I don’t know how many times I’ve eaten this vanilla-kissed sponge cake in my life, but it must be into the hundreds by now.  It has a light, airy texture and is simply delicious. It can stand by itself with a dusting of powdered sugar when you want an unfussy dessert for an occasion that warrants something better than store-bought cookies.  It makes a most superior birthday cake for a person of any age. You can substitute the rind and juice of any citrus fruit for the vanilla to flavor it. It is a versatile base for fancier desserts, as well. You can slice it in half and serve it in the summer with strawberries and cream for one of the best strawberry shortcakes imaginable.  You could substitute Crème Anglaise for the whipped cream, also.  Any kind of berries, nectarines and peaches could stand in for the strawberries according to your taste, or you can make a fruit compote to go with it. It is neutral enough to compliment almost any flavor of frosting, ice cream or sorbet. You can slice it in half and spread jam, marmalade or lemon curd in the middle then reassemble, frost and decorate the cake according to your preference.   You could even use it as the base for a Baked Alaska.    

You will need the following equipment: 

1 10 inch cake pan two inches deep.

1 medium and 1 large mixing bowl.

Measuring spoons and cups

1 mixer for beating egg whites. (You can use a wire whip for the egg whites, but your arm will be really tired.)

1 wire whip

1 large mixing spoon

1 rubber spatula

1 small saucepan to melt your butter.

1 wire cake rack.

And the following ingredients:

4 eggs, separated. (Make sure they’re at room temperature for maximum volume.)

2 TBs Sugar*

4 TBs butter

2/3 cup granulated sugar

2 tsps vanilla extract

1 ¼ cup sifted cake flour

Grease and flour your cake pan while you melt the 4 TBs butter over medium heat.  

Remove the melted butter from the burner to cool, and set prepared cake pan aside.

Roughly measure 1 ¼ cups of the cake flour, sift it, then measure it exactly and return flour to sifter. 

 

2. Measured Precisely...

3. And Returned to the Sifter.

       Put any excess cake flour back into its box for another day.  I find it helpful to set the sifter full of flour on a plate until I need it. I have very limited counter space in my kitchen, so I often put the sifter and plate on the dining room table until the recipe requires it.

Separate the four eggs, putting egg whites in the smaller bowl, and the yolks in the larger one.  Set egg whites aside.

Beat the egg yolks and vanilla together then add  the 2/3^rds  cup sugar gradually. Whisk the egg yolk and sugar mixture until the batter is thick, pale yellow and forms a ribbon. 

 Forms the Ribbon

Set aside.

(*NB: With all due respect to Julia and Mme.  Beck, I find the 2 TBs of sugar at this stage unnecessary.  Add it or leave it out at will.  I’ve made the cake successfully both ways without a noticeable difference in the flavor.)

Using the rubber spatula, divide the beaten egg whites into four roughly equal parts like this:

 Divide into four  roughly equal parts.

Scoop 1 fourth of the beaten egg whites into the egg yolks, sift on approximately ¼ of the cake flour:

then gently fold them into the eggs with your large mixing spoon or rubber spatula until partially blended. It’s important to fold rather than stir, here.  You want to incorporate the egg whites and flour, but, you also want to keep as much volume in your egg whites as possible as they are the sole leavening for this cake. Stirring breaks them up too much and you'd end up with a too-flat, dense cake.

On Folding: For anyone unfamiliar with  folding technique, where stirring and beating are chiefly clockwise or counterclockwise whirlpool motions with the spoon or whisk, folding is more of a down-under barrel-roll motion for the spoon or spatula. Hold your spatula or spoon like this:

Folding,  Step 1  

 Dip it down into the batter leading with the side, then bring it back up and over, covering the egg whites and flour with a scoop of batter from beneath, like this:

When the first batch of egg whites and flour are mostly incorporated, repeat this step twice more with the next two equal portions of egg whites and flour.   When you have just one part left each of the flour and the egg whites  add them to the batter as with the previous three batches, then add approximately half of the melted butter as well before folding everything together:

 Add First Half of the Butter

 Then fold in the rest of the butter. 

 Do not over mix the batter.

Turn the batter into your prepared cake pan, smoothing it out so the bottom of the pan is evenly covered:

Bake for 30 minutes, then check. Cake is done when the top is brown and puffy and shrinks from the side of the pan. This is how it should look:

 Give it another five minutes if it’s not quite there, yet.

      Allow the cake to cool in the pan set on a cake rack for 10 minutes or so. Then carefully run a knife around the side of  the pan to loosen it, and turn it out onto the wire rack. If you’re not going to ice the cake, turn it right side up again and allow to cool completely. 

3 Tbs butter

3 Tbs Mascarpone cheese.

Grated rind of one lemon

Juice of ½ lemon.

1 cup confectioner’s sugar.

 Please note, the proportions given for the ingredients in this recipe are simply a suggested starting point, and thus fully adjustable according to your taste.  The ultimate aim is to produce a smooth and spreadable butter cream consistency with a nice lemony tartness so that the frosting will not be too sweet.  You may find you need more butter and Mascarpone and less sugar or perhaps less lemon juice to achieve this result. Feel free to experiment. 

The method is to measure your butter and Mascarpone into a mixing bowl and beat them together until blended, then add the rind, lemon juice and sugar gradually until you are satisfied with the flavor and consistency. Spread it on the cake and serve when you are ready.

And as Julia would say, Bon Appetit!