Cinnamon

All of the best flavors of an American Thanksgiving are featured in this fall soup. The benefit of using vegetable stock is twofold: most important to me is taste—vegetable stock, as opposed to rich chicken stock, melds seamlessly with the pumpkin, thinning its body without competing with the flavor. It also means that this soup is a perfect option for vegetarian guests. Trust me; everyone at the table with be happy with this tasty offering.

The cocktail takes its name from the single-barrel ninety-proof bourbon whiskey Eagle Rare, but any high-quality bourbon can be substituted. The small amount of fresh lime juice is needed to add brightness to the drink, not flavor.

This mother recipe is a breeze as long as you follow the steps and understand when ingredients are added and why. Melted together, the white chocolate and butter create a basic bond. The addition of glucose, needed for the texture it imparts, then breaks that bond. Cold heavy cream comes to the rescue, emulsifying the broken bond and forming a new, stronger bond. The pumpkin puree and seasonings are added last for flavor and additional body. Note that you must use a hand blender in this recipe, and for the other ganaches in this chapter.

When we first opened Milk Bar, at 4 or 5 o’clock every morning we would make fresh cinnamon buns with liquid cheesecake rolled up into the dough instead of applying cream cheese frosting on top. Cinnamon buns are something I feel very strongly about, since my mother started a tradition of making (not-so-great) ones for breakfast on every holiday. (Sorry, Mom, but you can’t give a kid a Cinnabon and then expect her to be OK with cinnamon buns made with margarine and skim milk!) We’d make them before the crack of dawn so they’d be ready for breakfast . . . and then we’d sell most of them to people on their way home at night, ready to tuck in with dessert and some TV. So we decided to get smart and create something that was delicious, available, and fresh at any hour, and didn’t have to be made to order every morning: the cinnamon bun pie.

My mama is a busy, busy woman. If she were baking this cake, she would probably opt to buy preshredded carrots from the grocery store. She likes baking shortcuts and, in this case, it’s quite possible she doesn’t know where her box grater is (or if the handle is still attached to it). I’m not going to lie. I’ve bought preshredded carrots, and the results weren’t one bit terrible. But at the farmers’ market, they’ve got yellow carrots and purple carrots and orange carrots that actually taste like something. And they will make your cake better if you use them.

One of our favorite things to do is to make a frosting with an unexpected flavor. For this one, we puree graham crust down to a liquid form and then paddle it into whipping butter with a little seasoning.

The cereal of the same name is excellent stuff, but this recipe is an homage to the cinnamon toast my grandma and ma made me as an after-school snack in my younger years. It is impossibly crunchy, and it plays into one of my most comforting flavor pairings: butter and cinnamon sugar. The one-minute butter-soaking step makes for a much different crunch than the others in this book.

If you really want to replicate the Chef Shack’s most popular fall dish, go organic with the eggs and milk, try to get your hands on some bacon beer brats (they use Fischer Farms), and crisp up the bread in a deep fryer. If that sounds out of reach for you, your favorite pork sausage links will do, and a griddle or frying pan should work almost as well.

This versatile fruit sauce is excellent with both Pumpkin Waffles (page 138) and Buttermilk Waffles (page 135). Try stirring it into yogurt, spooning it on top of ice cream, or serving it as you would a fruit cup. Bosc pears work the best here because they are juicy, yet they hold their shape. Use a softer pear and you may wind up with pear sauce, which certainly tastes good, but it isn’t as visually appealing as this raisin-flecked chunky compote. If storing for later use, cool the compote completely before covering it with a lid or plastic wrap. This will keep in the refrigerator for up to one week. If the compote is cool, reheat it over low heat to serve hot. Or you can serve it chilled or at room temperature.

Use this sweet spiced butter for the most amazing cinnamon toast. After you toast the bread of your choice, spread on some cinnamon butter and stick it under the broiler for a few seconds to melt. Store the cinnamon sugar butter in the refrigerator for a week or freeze it for several weeks.

When our neighbors made this recipe on Saturday mornings when we were growing up, the entire neighborhood smelled like cinnamon heaven. These frosted cinnamon rolls are a little more complicated to make than scones or muffins, but they are definitely worth the effort. The cream cheese makes the dough flakier than that of many cinnamon rolls, and the filling is rich and delicious. You can prepare these the night before and let them rise for an hour before baking them in the morning. The uncooked cinnamon rolls also freeze very well for a couple of weeks.