June Cookbooks: Momofuku Milk Bar, Milk Bar Life and All About Cake by Christina Tosi
Surprise, I’m doing THREE cookbooks this month! Christina Tosi’s Milk Bar is an award-winning bakery known for its familiar (yet unexpected) cakes and cookies. So since it’s my birthday month (c’mon 30!) and since the Milk Bar birthday cake is my favorite cake, it just made sense for June.
Week One
I’ve only been to the actual brick-and-mortar Milk Bar once while in DC. I made my friend walk with me through the frigid winter weather so that I could get the cereal milk ice cream (pg. 38, Momofuku Milk Bar) with cornflakes on top. Heaven. I figured recreating that would be a great way to kick off the month! Like most of the recipes in the original Momofuku Milk Bar cookbook, this recipe requires some specialty ingredients (freeze-dried corn powder) and equipment (ice cream maker). Luckily, I was able to order the corn powder on Amazon and I already had an ice cream attachment for my stand mixer. (This was my first time using it because one of my favorite passions is buying gadgets and not using them. <3)
If you have an ice cream maker and a willingness to spend a few minutes steeping cornflakes in milk, this recipe is actually pretty simple! I will definitely make this again and experiment with different cereals. (I’m also having visions of a fruity pebble whipped cream…) I reserved some leftover milk to make a cereal milk white ruskie (pg. 40, Momofuku Milk Bar) aka a White Russian. Cheers!
A friend’s birthday was the perfect opportunity to make the chocolate cupcakes (pg. 145, All About Cake) because as the book states, nobody hates a chocolate cupcake. I usually find cupcakes to be pretty blah, but I gotta admit, when they’re good they are really good. I could tell from the batter that these were going to be deliciously light and fluffy. I have never seen batter so light! I kept a few of these unfrosted babies in the freezer for some weeknight treats later.
I’m a big fan of desserts that have a touch of savory so I was excited to try the salt and pepper cookies (pg. 70, Milk Bar Life). (If you’re ever in Houston, I recommend the parmesan cheesecake with black pepper honey from Nancy’s Hustle.) These came together in about 20 minutes – including bake time! They’re still sweet enough to be considered a cookie, but with a nice peppery touch at the end. I made a small batch and then kept the rest of the dough in the freezer for any la carte cookies I may need in the near future.
Week Two
This may be embarrassing, but hot dogs are one of my favorite foods. Even during my decade of being a vegetarian, hot dogs were my one and only weakness. So clearly that meant that I had to make the haute dogs (pg. 94, Milk Bar Life), which are basically giant pigs in a blanket. These probably would have been just as good (or better) if I had used Pilsbury crescent rolls instead of making the dough from scratch. But like I said, I love a hot dog so I enjoyed these.
I made the gretas (akasugar cookie squares) (pg. 61, Milk Bar Life) because the photo in the book really jumped out at me. Plus, I really wanted to use some fun sprinkles! But then…chaos ensued. I wasn’t anticipating having such a hard time with these. After all, they’re just sugar cookies. After the suggested 20-25 minutes, the batter was raw, overflowing and just plain ugly. Not wanting to waste ingredients, I tried to bake it for another 20 minutes in hopes that it would at least be edible. No luck, these went in the trash.
The next day I attempted the sugar cookie squares again because it just didn’t make sense how I could mess up something so simple. I ended up using the halved recipe from their website and had much better luck. I’m not sure I would consider these to be sugar cookies. It seems more closely related to a sugary gooey butter cake – which I’m not complaining about! I’m glad that I tried making this a second time (even if it was just to heal my bruised ego), but I probably wouldn’t make these again.
As I have mentioned previously, cake is not my jam. I prefer pies, cookies or even just a regular ‘ole rice krispie treat. However, if I have to eat a cake, I hope that it’s the famous Milk Bar birthday layer cake (pg. 102, Momofuku Milk Bar). I had a little birthday celebration this weekend with my friends here in Denver, so it was the perfect opportunity to make this cake! This recipe is pretty involved and I had to order some supplies on Amazon (a cake round and a roll of acetate). If you’re going to make this cake, you’ll need a full afternoon and at least one day ahead of when you need it. But, if you enjoy baking then an all-day cake activity probably doesn’t bother you. I started late Saturday morning and popped the final product in the freezer by 3 pm. We devoured this cake at the party!
I ended up making the cake two layers instead of the standard three so that I could use some of the leftover cake to make the b’day truffles (pg. 161, All About Cake)! A friend sent me these for my birthday one year and they were so incredible I needed to squeeze this recipe in.
Week Three
his was a lighter week since I headed off to my birthday trip this weekend! But the mac ‘n’ cheese pancakes (pg. 246, Milk Bar Life) needed to happen. I mean, need I say more? I already had a box of Annie’s in my pantry but I wish I used classic Kraft. I feel like it has a cheesier flavor. To make up for it, I added some extra shredded cheddar to the pancake batter.
I was headed off on my birthday trip to Tennessee this weekend so I wanted to make some fun cookies for the plane ride. Since I was already on the Fruity Pebble train, I landed on the fruity pebble marshmallow cookies (pg. 55, Momofuku Milk Bar)! I took a few nibbles of the dough before baking and I could tell these were going to be delicious, but I struggled to make the cookies look…appealing. They spread a lot and the marshmallow melted and burned in an unappetizing way. After adjusting the cooking time down to 10 minutes, they still weren’t picture-perfect, but at least they looked edible. (The below photo is of the raw dough.)
Growing up, we weren’t allowed to have the fun, sugary cereals that were all the rage in the 90s. Unless we were at my grandparent’s house (where the occasional Fruit Loop box could be found), I would have to watch the commercial for Cookie Crisps between cartoons while sadly eating a bowl of soggy Mini Wheats. Sigh. Over twenty years later, my favorite cereal is still Raisin Nut Bran but I have managed to sneak in a few of those childhood classics just to see what I was missing. There’s only one cereal that stands the test of time in my opinion and that cereal is Fruity Pebbles.
Milk Bar seems to agree since there are many recipes that call for Fruity Pebbles, but the fruity pebble meringues with passion fruit curd (pg. 56, Milk Bar Life) really jumped out at me. I liked these in theory but I would make a few changes if I were to ever make them again. First, I would grind the cereal into a powder before adding it to the meringue. The cereal got very chewy and it was really unpleasant to eat, but the flavors were great. Second, instead of trying to pipe passion fruit curd into the bottom, I would try making the meringues a little bigger, cut them in half and then sandwich the curd in between.
Week Four
I had a bunch of birthday cake crumbles leftover from the birthday layer cake, so I made the confetti cookies (pg. 100, Momofuku Milk Bar) to use them up! These were much more successful than the fruity pebble cookies last week in that they actually looked like cookies, but I still wasn’t impressed with their texture. I’m sure it’s an error on my side, but I’ll just leave these cookies to Tosi from now on.
My mom makes the best hot fudge sauce ever. No, seriously. It is life-changing. She has passed the recipe down to me (although I never feel like mine is as good as hers) so I don’t often branch out and try new fudge sauces, but the earl grey fudge sauce (pg. 138, Momofuku Milk Bar) did catch my eye. This came together very quickly and tasted great on my Blue Bell Natural Vanilla Bean (the BEST ice cream, hands down). My mom’s fudge sauce is still better, but you won’t ever find me complaining about chocolate sauce on ice cream.
And for the last recipe of the month, I made the molasses-rye bundt cake (pg. 51, All About Cake)! I substituted the caraway seeds with cardamom and for the glaze, I used bourbon instead of stout. I loved the flavor of this cake…but unfortunately, I had issues getting it cleanly out of the bundt pan. A tale as old as time.
I was expecting the Momofuku recipes to be complicated, and while they aren’t for beginners, I actually had an easier time with them than I thought. If you like to bake and don’t mind buying a few one-off ingredients, I would recommend it! I only did a handful of recipes from All About Cake, but the ones I did were great. If I ever need to make a cake for a friend, I will reach for this book. Unfortunately, the Milk Bar Life was the one I had the most trouble with. While it is marketed to be easier for the home cook, I either found them to be overly simple (like grilled cheese simple) or they were just flat out blah. If you’re a Milk Bar fan, I recommend leaving this book out.
You should buy these cookbooks if…
You have a sweet tooth.
You’re not afraid to spend all day on a project.
You want to try their famous layered cakes without getting one shipped for $50.