Award-winning baker Dorie Greenspan knows how to make an elaborate tiered wedding cake cascading with flowers, or a sculpted Darth Vader cake. But she’s pretty clear that she doesn’t want to.
Her true love, she says, is the simple cake, often beaten by hand, full of flavor and tradition, and served every day of the week, not just weekends.
Fifteen cookbooks into a storied career, Greenspan celebrates that passion with her beautifully illustrated new cookbook, “Dorie’s Anytime Cakes.”
She talks to host Robin Young about her book, her cakes and her tips for success (plump your dried fruit!)
Book excerpt: ‘Dorie’s Anytime Cakes’
By Dorie Greenspan
I’d often come home from school to find my mom sitting in the kitchen with a friend, the aroma of coffee in the air and a bakery cake on the table. A marbled Bundt cake (see page 107 for my version). A lemon loaf that had cracked down the center in a way that I found beautiful even as a kid (try the one on page 61). A bready kugelhopf with raisins — my father would pull them out the way my mother snagged the honey cake’s almonds. (It’s funny, but the Olive Oil Dunking Bundt, page 103 so different from anything from my childhood, reminds me a bit of those kugelhopfs.) Crumb cakes, crumb cakes and more crumb cakes, some with fruit, some just covered with spice-scented nuggets. (I’ve never stopped loving crumbs and never stopped baking with them.) From time to time, there’d be a layer cake or a single round cake with frosting, and sprinkles if it was a special occasion. If there was a blackout cake from Ebinger’s, the long-gone, legendary Brooklyn bakery, we kids would jockey to grab the biggest slice. (The Devil’s Chocolate Cake, page 135, has a flavor that whispers Ebinger’s.)
My mother loved cake, and she understood the power of cake, even the simplest ones—perhaps most especially the simplest ones—to welcome, warm and comfort the people she cared about.
Me, too. I believe in cakes’ powers and charms.
I also believe in simplicity. My first and most enduring love is for simple cakes. I made a towering wedding cake with sleek frosted sides and cascading fresh flowers—once. I made a coal-black cake sculpted to look like Darth Vader—once. I made an oversized sheet cake with seventy-eight buttercream roses—once. But I’ve made hundreds and hundreds of simple cakes over the years. Loaf cakes and the kinds of cakes that you can serve right out of the pan, the ones that we now call snacking cakes. Brownies, for sure. Swirly Bundt cakes. Layer cakes and cakes that have only one layer. Little cakes—I made baby cakes for my granddaughter Gemma’s first birthday (see page 215) and a mini-layer cake when her sister, VV, turned one (see page 219). Sometimes I frost the cakes and sometimes I fill them. Sometimes I top them with fruit. But most of the time I leave them plain, letting their color and shape, their bumps and dips, their baked-in personalities sparkle. These are the kinds of cakes you can cut into without fretting about precision—and go back to for another nibble. The kinds you can eat out of hand or put on a plate and break into morsels with your fingers. The kinds that go with coffee in the morning or tea in the afternoon. And even cakes to have with wine: salty, savory cakes; cheesy and herby cakes; mini muffins made with seaweed; and pull-apart scones with miso—each of them holds a little surprise and a full measure of deliciousness. (Please don’t miss the Feta, Sumac and Za’atar Loaf on page 254.) They are truly “anytime cakes.”
Cookie-butter blondies
Apple custard cake
Marble cake
Excerpt from “Dorie’s Anytime Cakes.” Copyright © 2025 by Dorie Greenspan. Used with permission by Harvest, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.
____
Karyn Miller-Medzon produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Todd Mundt.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
Copyright 2025 WBUR
