Original subtitles

Mm.

[laughter and exclaiming]

[indistinct chatter]

- [woman 1] So good. - [woman 2] It's so good.

[Zoe] I have to say, this is, like,

- such a Minnesota moment. - [man] It is.

- To be... - Barbeque with snow.

Barbeque with snow. Like, I can see your breath.

[man laughing]

[Zoe] I'm Zoe Francois.

I'm cookbook author and a pastry chef.

I've made it my life's work

to eat sweets, make sweets,

and create beautiful things out of sugar.

I want to show you how much fun baking can be.

[laughing]

We're also going to visit some of the talented bakers

and unique places around my hometown that inspire me.

It's all going to be super simple

and, of course, delicious.

Oh, my gosh.

[Zoe] And the great thing is

we can do it together.

[Zoe] Come on.

Come on, you crazy poods.

- Oh, hi, ladies. - [Heather] Hi, you guys.

Look who's that.

Hi, Ro.

I live in a very social neighborhood in Minneapolis.

-[Heather gasps] Miles and Zoe! -[Zoe] I love your hat.

[Zoe] My neighbor Heather

has invited me over for a small barbeque tonight.

And I can't think of having a barbeque without biscuits.

[Zoe] See you then.

- [Heather] See you. - Okay. Yeah, thanks.

- I'll see you later. - [Zoe] Bye. Have a great day.

Biscuits are really part of the Southern culture,

and I grew up on a commune in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont.

So,

I don't even remember really having biscuits as a kid.

And so I've relied on my friends and their recipes.

And today is no exception.

I'm headed across the Mississippi River to St. Paul

to meet a friend of a friend

who happens to be one of the best chefs in the country.

- [Justin] Zoe. - [Zoe] Hello.

- Justin, it's so nice to finally meet you. - It's so nice to meet you.

Thank you for being here. Welcome to Handsome Hog.

[Zoe] Justin Sutherland is renowned for his take on Southern barbeque.

[indistinct chatter]

But everyone tells me

that his biscuits are the best kept secret on the menu.

Mm.

I've got a grandma from Japan

and a grandma with Southern roots in Mississippi.

We had a lot of soul food and sushi.

And so what types of things did you bake with them?

I mean, everything.

- I personally hate baking. [laughs] - Stop!

So I admire the thing that you do,

but biscuits I like doing because you don't necessarily need a recipe.

I mean, every time Grandma makes biscuits,

I'm like, "Grandma where's the recipe?" It's all feeling.

[Zoe] Justin relies on classic ingredients for his own biscuits.

All-purpose flour, baking powder and soda to help them rise.

Frozen butter and lard to bake them tender.

But what catches my attention is how he incorporates them.

I'm mostly going by the butter with this,

so I like to run it between my hands like this

and kind of get these nice little flat sheets.

[Zoe] After mixing in ice-cold buttermilk,

he then folds the dough about a dozen times to create layers.

[Justin] With all those layers of butter and lard in there,

when those start to bake and steam,

that's what's going to kind of grow our biscuit here.

[Zoe] I love this.

We do the big cat-head biscuits they do in the South.

They're big.

Yeah. Cat-head biscuits? Is that what you said? [laughs]

[Justin] Yeah,

because they're the size of a cat's head.

- [Zoe] Love that. - [Justin] Yeah.

[Zoe] Baking with Justin reinforces what is for me

the secret to a great biscuit recipe.

They really are the size of a cat head.

You have to make it your own.

Look at those layers.

[Justin] Steam coming out.

[Zoe] This is insane.

That is phenomenal.

- The texture on that is like velvet on the inside. - Hmm.

It has the perfect combination

- of butter, more butter... - Mm-hmm.

...and then just add a tiny bit more butter.

- Of more butter. - [both laugh]

Yeah, the flour is like just there to hold the butter together.

Exactly. It's a vehicle for the butter.

[Zoe] Mm.

You're a very good baker for a man who hates to bake.

Thank you.

I love that folding bit.

I'm going to take that with me.

[Zoe] I think what I'm going to do

for Heather's barbeque is do a mashup.

I'll add Justin's folding technique

to one of my own favorite recipes for flaky, tender biscuits.

I'm going to go with self-rising flour.

So it already has the leavener in it.

I'm actually going to use yogurt instead of buttermilk.

It's essentially the same principle.

So that's going to combine with the leaveners

and give us a really nice rise.

I'm going to do this whole thing in a food processor.

It's going to be less work for me,

and the results are going to be delicious.

I'm going to pour my self-rising flour,

and then I'm going to take about four tablespoons of my butter.

You want to make sure that your butter is nice and cold.

You can even freeze the butter.

Anything that's going to keep it in nice chunks.

So that when I'm baking them, they become flakes.

So I'm just working that in

so that it coats all the flour.

Now, I'm going to add the other four tablespoons of my butter.

Pulse this a few times.

[food processor pulses]

So, I don't want to overmix this.

I still have these really nice chunks.

Now, in goes my yogurt.

It's an ingredient I use all the time in my baking.

It just adds a really nice tang to it.

It's a little bit thicker than buttermilk.

One, two,

three, four.

Just a little bit,

'cause I don't want to break down that butter too much.

Now the rest of my yogurt.

[food processor pulses]

This is quite powdery so far.

But there's quite a bit of yogurt in these big clumps

that I'm going to get worked in there.

So just like Justin, I'm going to work this.

Just folding about a dozen times until it all comes together,

so that you get flaky layered biscuits.

So that looks about right.

I'm just going to flour this a little bit and just pat it out.

I'm going to divide this into...

You know, it really just depends on how many biscuits you want.

I don't want to develop any more gluten in here than I need to.

So just super gently

into rounds.

The beautiful thing about this recipe

is that you can bake the biscuits right away

or refrigerate them until you're ready to go.

That's it.

Super easy.

Super-fast.

And now I'm just going to pop them in the fridge until I'm ready to bake them.

Along with savory biscuits...

Hey, Heather.

[Heather] Hey, Zoe.

[Zoe] ...a barbeque needs something sweet, too.

I was just thinking, I'm not sure,

like what kinds of desserts Ro would like?

- Oh, what are you thinking? - Well...

She eats anything.

- Banana pudding. - Oh, my God.

- She is going to love it. - All right.

- Awesome. - Anything banana...

- Really? - ...that kid will eat.

Awesome, I can't wait to see you.

- See you soon. - Bye.

[Zoe] Banana pudding is one of my all-time favorites.

Super classic for a Southern barbeque.

And what's not to love?

It's made with pastry cream,

which is just sort of a fancy pastry chef way of saying pudding.

It's going to vanilla wafers and whipped cream

and turns out that Ro loves bananas.

And pretty much any excuse that I can find to make it,

I do.

I'm going to make the pudding first.

I start with milk

and add half of my sugar.

If you add sugar to the milk, it won't scorch

as it's cooking.

When you're using a fresh vanilla bean,

you want to make sure that it's nice and soft.

Sometimes you buy them in the store and they crack in half,

almost like bark.

And that means it doesn't have the fragrance,

it doesn't have the intensity of flavor.

That's the vanilla seeds that we want in our pudding.

You can add a vanilla bean right to the mixture as well,

- and you'll get even more vanilla in there. - [igniter clicking]

I'm just going for a simmer.

This pudding is being thickened by cornstarch,

but also the eggs.

One full egg and then just three yolks.

Reach in

and separate it from the white just like so.

You just have to make sure you don't crack the yolk in there.

If you combine the cornstarch and sugar together first,

they'll blend into your eggs even easier.

A little pinch of salt.

Whisk that in.

Now add the hot milk a little at a time.

And this warms up the egg yolks

very, very gently.

Once the bowl is, like, warm to the touch,

then I can add it back to my milk mixture

and finish cooking it

without worrying that I'm going to cook or scramble those eggs.

I'm going to whisk as I do it, again, so that I don't

scramble the eggs.

You can see it getting nice and thick.

Can you see the bubbles?

That means it's boiling and now we start our count.

So three minutes

continuously whisking.

I have to cook the cornstarch out

until it get super thick and super luscious.

Switch arms. [laughs]

Three minutes never felt so long.

All right, I think we are good.

Now, turn off the heat, whisk in my butter to thicken it.

Okay, so to strain out any potential lumps

and also that vanilla bean.

Oh, it smells so good.

So when I was a kid and my mom would make pudding,

she would put it in the cups and then refrigerate it

but not cover it

because I like that little bit of skin that develops.

You'd break through that little bit of skin to the creamy custard underneath.

But for this, I want it to be perfectly smooth.

And so I'm going to put plastic wrap right onto the surface of my pudding

so that I don't get that skin on it.

Whenever you're working with cooked eggs,

you want to make sure that you chill it really fast.

It'll take about 20 minutes for that to chill down.

So, that really soft, creamy pudding that we made earlier

is now nice and thick.

It's going to make a great pudding when we fold in our whipped cream.

I'm just going to whip the cream all by itself.

So, I want to do this on a medium high speed

so that they create little bubbles that are much, much more stable

and they'll hold up in my pudding.

I think making this into an individual dessert

is a super cute way to go

and that is like the perfect kid size, but this is the size I want.

And you want to be really careful that you don't overwhip this.

You want it to be medium peaks.

Look at that. So it holds its shape

but it's not overly whipped.

You can sweeten this with a bit of confectioner sugar.

But today my pudding should be plenty sweet enough.

Add maybe a quarter of the cream.

And I'm just going to fold that in quite a bit

in order to loosen up the pudding.

I don't want to add all of the whipped cream

or I'll deflate all of the air that I just put into it.

A quarter more.

And now I can just gently fold it.

It's so beautiful.

And then I'm going to reserve the rest of that cream to put on the top of my puddings.

Okay. Throw some cookies right on the bottom.

Spoon the pudding over the top of that cookie

so it absorbs in there and softens it up.

And then just slices of banana down in there,

'cause every single bite has to have lots of banana.

That's what this is all about.

The creaminess of the pudding,

the sweetness of the banana

and the little cakey bit of the cookies.

And then a dollop of our cream right on top.

Those bananas will go a little bit brown

if you don't cover them completely.

Look at how cute they are. Right?

Throw these babies into my refrigerator,

and that is it.

I'm going to let all those flavors marry together.

I'm going to let all those cookies soften up.

And when we bite down into that

banana and cookies and pudding and cream and...

I can't wait until the end of dinner.

Look at this. It's snowing.

It never snows quite this early.

This is, like, the first snow of the year.

This is Minnesota.

This is when you have a barbeque.

I love it.

That's awesome.

So, I've already made biscuit dough.

I've already made banana pudding.

But just to gild the lily because it's just how I roll,

I have to make one more dessert.

I'm going to make my "Happy Accident" berry cobbler.

It's fresh berries,

fresh ginger that I'm going to grate in with the fruit,

a little bit of zest,

and then I'm going to top it with a biscuit recipe that I came up with by accident.

I was actually going for, like, a classic, beautiful, fluffy biscuit.

And I may have gotten a little bit distracted

and added too much buttermilk.

It was just a little bit sloppy looking.

But I didn't want to waste it,

and it had cheddar cheese grated into it.

I'd gone through all this trouble to make it, and then I totally blew it.

So I decided I was going to prepare all my fruit

and just scoop that sort of wet, sloppy biscuit dough right on top

and see what I got.

What I thought was an accident

turned into the best berry cobbler I'd ever had.

I'm going to start with the fruit for my cobbler.

The amount of sugar that you use

will depend on the kind of fruit that you're using.

So, if your strawberries are super sweet,

you don't have to use as much sugar.

If you are using a tart fruit, you can add more sugar.

That looks about right.

And then you want those juices to tighten up just a little bit

by throwing in some cornstarch.

Some lemon zest.

This will perk up all those flavors.

One thing that you have to do with fresh ginger is peel it.

The ginger gives it a little bit of spiciness, a hotness almost to it.

I'm not going with a ton of it because it's pretty strong.

Toss that all together.

Your fruit is going to cook down.

So, we want to have a nice big layer of fruit.

Set this aside and now we can make the biscuits.

This time I'm not using self-rising flour.

So, baking soda and baking powder,

that's how your biscuits will rise.

A little bit of sugar.

Make sure that they're really well combined.

Then I incorporate my cold butter.

Now I can even do that technique I did with Justin

and smash the butter and the flour together.

That creates those sheets of the cold butter.

Okay, so, when I squeeze it together,

it should hold but then it's still powdery.

That's what I'm looking for.

Let's get some cheddar grated up.

I just love the mixture of fresh berries and that sharp cheddar.

It's so good.

Toss that about and now we need to add our liquid ingredients.

The buttermilk has acid in it so it's going to make these biscuits rise even more,

and my heavy whipping cream

because richness, richness, richness.

I'm just gently going to stir this together.

And this should be kind of sloppy and gloppy and wet.

Like this.

Now I have my fruit that is slightly sweetened

and has that fresh zip of lemon zest and ginger in it.

And I'm going to top it with these rich, cheddary biscuits.

Little bit of sugar.

If you're not into barbeques in the snow,

you can serve this anytime.

I am going to put this on a baking sheet,

just because those fruit juices might bubble out of the pan.

Into a 350-degree oven,

about 40-minutes.

We're done.

My banana pudding has been setting.

I'm a firm believer that you should test the food before you serve it to somebody.

[softly] That is amazing.

Mm.

Get down there and get some cookie.

It turns to, like, the consistency of a cake

when it's sitting with all that cream and pudding and banana.

Mm.

That is so good.

Ro is just going to love this.

- [oven beeps] - [gasps]

Look at those jewels popping out of there.

So beautiful.

So, this is cooling,

and now the last thing I have to do

is just bake the biscuits and I am ready.

And because I had already made them,

there's almost nothing left to do

except put them in some more butter.

[whispers] A lot of butter.

Dip the biscuits in the butter

and then turn them upside down

and then they're just going to go brown in there.

I'm going to put just a tiny bit more salt on my biscuits.

So, into the oven we go.

After 30 minutes in a 425-degree preheated oven,

hot, fresh biscuits.

Look at these. They're absolutely gorgeous.

You can see that butter just bubbling up in there.

And that is all you need at a barbeque.

Well, that and cobbler, and banana pudding.

- [Heather] Hey, Zoe. - [men] Hey, Zoe.

[woman] What is up with this cart? What is in there?

[Zoe] Well I may have gone a little overboard.

[all exclaiming]

- Look at those. - [man] That looks amazing.

Oh, my God. What is that?

[man] Look at that.

- Me, me, me. - Oh, okay.

- Who likes cookies and bananas? - Me.

Oh, then let's eat.

[indistinct chatter]

-[woman] Oh, thank you so much. -[Zoe] You're welcome.

[all laugh]

-[Zoe] That's good? -[Heather] Do you like it? Yeah?

Mm, I love. It's so buttery. So good. So soft.

Oh, my God, these are amazing.

I love the, like, crunchy and soft berry. It's awesome.

And then with the little bit of richness that the cheddar adds.

- Mm. - [man] It's not too sweet.

It's like the old-school pudding I remember, but better.

- [Zoe laughing] - This is really good.

[Zoe] Sharing good food and good times makes for good neighbors

and great stories.

Do you want to switch that out for some pudding?

[Heather] Mm...

[Zoe] She might need to get in there 'cause the cream is not sweetened.

- Yuck. - [laughing]

[man laughing]

[man] Yeah, yeah. I thought it was a yum.

[Zoe] It's unsweetened whipped cream. That's why.

You got to get into the pudding.

This is the kind of story we'll be sharing at neighborhood get-togethers

for years to come.

[Zoe] I have to say, this is, like,

- such a Minnesota moment. - [man] It is.

- To be... - Barbeque with snow.

Barbeque with snow. Like, I can see your breath.

-I know, right? Exactly. Exactly. -[Zoe] And it's like...