Gemma Talks 7 Layer Cookies, Baking with Chocolate Bars vs. Chips, and More! | Knead to Know #11

Hi Bold Bakers, we are shaking things up here a little bit at need to know. Instead of waiting for the Ask Gemma segment during the podcast, I'm going to be joining me at the top of every episode and we're going to be talking baking trends, what's going on in the world and answering your baking questions. This is a brand new format, it's going to be a lot of fun, a lot of conversation, you're not going to want to miss it. Just so you know, we're going to bring back our special guests really soon. But for right now, I hope you enjoy this new format and make sure you subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome back, everybody, and happy 11th episode, Gemma. Hi, it's good to see you. How are you, Mia? I am great. I am all full on deep fried cookie dough balls that I had this week. They were excellent. I got them from Torchy's, but I think I'm going to make some myself. So very excited about that. What about you? I have never had deep fried cookie balls, but I was guessing I would like that. It was delicious. It's one of those things, though. I don't know if you feel this way, because I feel like you do make a lot of desserts and treats, but it was so rich that I had to cut it in half. That usually doesn't happen to me, but I had to cut it in half. It was just a ball, but I only did half because it was just so much like, yeah, it was just so much. Yeah. Sometimes that's how I rate a good dessert. It's like where I have to take a moment where I feel like almost I'm having like pressure on my chest and finding it hard to breathe. And I'm like, this is a good dessert, like chocolate cake or something like really rich like that, like chocolate lava cake or something. Yes. Oh, chocolate lava cake is the dream every time. But how are you? What are you doing? What's going on in your world? What's new with Bigger Bolder Baking? I'm good. I'm busy. We're heading into a new season, so that always like it's an exciting time, especially for spring because you've got so many great ingredients and like rhubarb is coming into season. We've got lots of other. We've got lots of other fruit and I we're starting to see a lot of like summer berries. We're just a little bit ahead of that. So we're going to actually do our bulk shoot this coming weekend for our summer content and so it will involve a lot of fruit. I can't give too much away, but some really nice, light and fresh desserts and also some kind of classic. I'll give you I'll let you in on a little a little hint of one that we did. We did churros filled with dulce de leche and they were absolutely incredible. So that's just one of the ones that we're going to be making. Oh my gosh, I need it in my stomach right now. All of it. That sounds so good. You know, I feel like people think you're just saying all this made me think people think about soul food, right? But to me, I feel like a lot of different things can be soul food. It's just not like Southern like cooking. It can be baking and thinking about summer and what you and you were like, you know, they're fresh recipes, they're fresh berries. To me, that's soul nourishing, like that's filling and it's exciting. And so I'm really excited to see those recipes from you. But one thing that you've been doing is Amazon Live. So how is that going? How was your first one? It was going great. And, you know, I really so I love doing lives. I do because you you just have to go for us and you are in the moment you have to think on your feet and you just have to be on and with and then throwing in the Amazon element of talking about the products that I'm using because I get asked on a daily basis what products I use for what and it's so nice to be able to steer people in the direction of like, this is my air fryer. This is the inductor top that I use. This is a saucepan that I like and I'm only going to use products that I personally have in my kitchen and that I can put my hand on my heart and and endorse I if I had an issue with something, I would definitely say it. But I have some tried and tested pieces of equipment that I use on a regular basis. So you'll see a lot of that pop up. But last week was really fun. We made churros in the air fryer and in the oven, and they were absolutely delicious. And we have more. I'm going to be filming filming another one today and tomorrow. So we're they're going to be airing towards because they are live, so it'll be at the end of the week. And we're going to be making brownies in one of them and making pasta in the other. And it's really fun and it's going to be an alternative way to show you how to make it on the machine and show you how to make it by hand. Oh, my gosh. All right. We're ready. I'm going to be staying tuned for that. Sounds so good. But, Gemma, before we get into everything, I want to do a quick thing really quick. We're going to have a shout out to a podcast listener named Grandma Four Times, which I think personally is the best username ever. I'm obsessed. She left a super nice review, one of our very first. And she said, I'm going to love this podcast. Gemma was the perfect first choice because you were the first interviewee. She said, I'm a huge fan of hers and I enjoyed getting to know her better and some of her personal insights. Looking forward to new guests and lots of new cooking info, which is so sweet. That's lovely. Thank you. That's really nice. We love you, Grandma Four Times. That's really nice. And hopefully that'll encourage more reviews. Yes. If you leave a five star review, we may read yours on the show too. So be sure to give us five stars. And also really quick, Gemma, I didn't tell you this before the show, but my sixth grade teen living teacher, so in a lot of different states, it's called Home Ec. But she watches the show and she messaged me and she was like, I'm a huge fan of Bigger Bolder Baking and I saw you on the show. And so she just wanted to say hi. So shout out to Ms. Forbes, gotta throw that in there. But let's hop in, shall we? It's time to deliver the goods. Go for it. Lay it on me. What's going on out there? All right, Gemma. Here's what we have hot from the oven this week. So first up, there's a new TikTok video by a user named First Name Wild, if that's revealing at all. And he makes seven layers of cookies, which entails graham crackers with melted butter, chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, nuts, condensed milk and coconut. I sent you the video. I don't know if you can see it, but that's basically what he does. And it's it's crazy. He's shirtless and he has an apron on. I looked it up. Apparently, like, that's just his thing. He's like the shirtless chef and it's super funny. But this is the whole thing is it's called a seven layer cookie, but I'm not really sure if it's a cookie. And it kind of reminded me of this is my favorite food debate. I love starting food debates at dinner because it kind of starts a fun little fight. It's good conversation. But I always tell people or ask people, is a hot dog a sandwich or is it just a hot dog? So kind of in that same vein, but a little different, more baking related. My question for you is, is this seven layer cookie actually a cookie? It's a it's not a lot of things. Number one, it's not a cookie at the bar. Number two, it's not layers, it's ingredients. It's it's so it's those aren't layers because it all melts together. A layer is like a definite, like separate layer upon layer. So it's not a layer. Also, dude, where's your shirt? So uncomfortable. Why does he have no shirt on? Is that his thing? He just does. It's it's his thing. It's weird. Yeah. Apparently, seven years ago, he was like, I was embarrassed to take off my shirt and I've been working out. I decided to do something about it. So now this is saying some more power to him. But more importantly, what we have to criticize him on is it's like, OK, don't wear your shirt, but this is not really a cookie. And I don't know that much. But honestly, I was thinking to myself, too. This is not a cookie. But Gemma, this is a thing. I looked it up and this is not an uncommon thing. Apparently, there's recipes for it and it's called a seven layer cookie. But I don't know why, because it's not really a cookie. You've never had one, right? No, I've never heard of us. OK, me either. So I guess in the grand scope of things, I want to ask you, too, when does something turn from like a cake to a bar? Because clearly it's not a cookie, but it's is it just like it was the difference between a cake and a bar, you would say even, you know, it's funny, it could even be the shape. So usually it is an eight by eight or a nine by 13 pan and then cut into squares. So you could do a cookie dough in one of those pans, then cut it into squares. And then that would technically be a bar. So lots of times it does come down. And that's what he did. He put it in an eight by eight and he cut it into squares. So that's when it generally that's kind of classifies it as a bar. So that's some very interesting technical knowledge for you about bars and cookies. There you have it. Need to knowers. Very cool. Good to know. And then one last question for this. He lines his pan with aluminum foil. Is that a total no, no, I don't think it's a total no, no. And I don't I, I lost, you know, the only time I've done that is when I was a parchment paper. So I have a habit of doing it. I don't know if it's the best for you. So parchment paper is best. And if we haven't spoken about this before, I think we have never, ever wax paper, never wax paper. Never. We got it. Everybody hear that? Never wax paper. Parchment paper. Aluminum foil. Eh. But parchment paper is the way to go. Okay. So moving on. More baking. We talked about chocolate chips is what you put in these bars, not cookies, but very exciting news. PureWow put out an article about the best chocolate chips for baking just about anything. And it was really cool. They tested non name brand, name brand. They said, what's best for, you know, pancakes, which I thought was cool. What's best for brownies, cookies. And so my question for you is, do you have a go to chocolate chip for your recipes that you recommend? I do. Number one. What's PureWow? It's, um, it's kind of like, I would say like kind of almost like PopSugar or BuzzFeed for a lot of different things. Yeah. Um, so it was on Yahoo, but you know, Yahoo, like sources, different things. So PureWow. Thanks for the news. Let's see their expertise though. They're not Gemma Stafford. Um, so I, so what do I use for a chip? I, I am kind of, I, I'm pretty loyal to a few brands. You know what? I'll tell you my insider secret when it comes to chocolate, uh, for baking, it's, it's such as so expensive. Chocolate is so expensive. And if you buy it online, you're paying for the weight to be shipped. So I learned that lesson the hard way. Don't buy chocolate online because you might think like, Oh wow, that's a pound for $10. And then you go to ship it and it's $18. I go to Trader Joe's. I get these large red bars of one pound at bittersweet chocolate. It is amazing for melting and it has really good flavor. It's bittersweet and it is $5 and I go to Trader Joe's and I clean up. I at least I probably get five or six bars every time I go. And I use that for my day in day out baking. When it comes to outside of that, like it's, it's the most, it's the best value for money chocolate that I've seen in the U S. Um, I like Calibo a lot, Ghirardelli, uh, lint. So I, I, uh, I'm not a chocolate snob, but I definitely like what I like. Yeah. That is, that's honestly great information. I didn't know what you were going to say. Um, and the article said Ghirardelli semi-sweet was their top choice for all purpose. Yes. Um, but I wasn't expecting Trader Joe's. I don't know if you know this, but I'm a huge fan of Trader Joe's. Like I do know that about you because I follow you on Instagram. I'm obsessed with them. Like it's, I constantly, every day it's like a new story about Trader Joe's for me. Um, I think they're just so creative and I like that they support local farmers and local, um, just vendors and all of the Trader Joe's are locally sourced from, you know, people around them. So I think that's really cool that they do that. Anyways, back to chocolate chips. Um, do you think different types of chocolate chips work better for different types of recipes or do you think it really doesn't matter? You're going to use that Trader Joe's brand for everything? No, it does. Um, so if you don't want your chocolate chip, if you want a chocolate chip, don't use chocolate chips for melting. Chocolate chips are, they have stabilizers in them and different things, and if they will melt and you can bake with them, but what you should be doing is baking with a block of chocolate if you are melting it. So that's why the Trader Joe's bars are really fantastic. Chips are not supposed to be melted. They're supposed to be put into cookies, go into the oven, melt, but still hold our shape. That's the purpose of chocolate chips. So you know, use where it says, like if it's a cookie and it's chips to be swirled in, then use chips. If it's a cookie and you need chocolate melted into your cookie dough, then use a block of chocolate. And then there are different types, like there's chips, there's a discs, and then don't even get me started on chocolate wafers because that's a whole other conversation and no chocolate wafers are not chocolate. So that's a big, big no, no. Oh my gosh. This is so the more, you know, I didn't know this honestly, this is great information, but okay. I have to ask you this. Should we be scared if there's stabilizers in chocolate chips? When you said that, I was like, what? That sounds scary to me. Not scared. You know, like how much chocolate chips are you eating? And then I think of all the other stuff that I eat and all the stuff that's in that, like the pints of vanilla ice cream that I have in my freezer and like all the desserts I eat here on a weekly basis. So I think the big, my least of my fears are chocolate chips. Do you ever snack on them? I guess this is the thing people do. But this article also included one, which a category, which I thought was random. It was like the best ones for snacking. So do you have a favorite that you snack on or do you even do that? I do. And I didn't actually mention them. And that's a good point. Um, I have a bag of guitars, chocolate, uh, chocolate discs. Discs are different than wafers. Just an FYI. Uh, just are usually what you would buy in profession. You'd get in professional kitchens and they're perfect for melting. You can chop them up and you can use them as chips if you want. Um, guitars, discs, I bought them online and I really, really liked them. And then when I want something sweet, I pop a few in my mouth and I walk around the house like doing stuff, but it just, it just, um, satisfy satisfies that sweet tooth. But yeah, but here's the thing though, Mia, when you eat a, when, especially when you're going dark, so it's like semi-sweet milk, chocolate, you know, those can kind of be eaten straight away. When you're talking about something that goes over 70%, uh, or even 65% and it is, it has that bitterness. It's a little bit more richer. Don't just put it in your mouth and eat it because it can be quite chalky. If you do that, put it in your mouth and mouth, excuse me, my Irish coming out, put it in your mouth and let it melt. And the flavor is so much better. The texture obviously is really nice because it's all melty, but, uh, flavor and, uh, everything that you use, like the experience is so much better. So just let it melt there in your mouth and go about your business. Oh, that's so fascinating about, you were talking about cocoa percentages. Is that what you were saying over a certain amount? Um, so for people who don't know what exactly does that mean and how important is cocoa? Like does the amount of cocoa define how good a type of chocolate is, or is that completely not true? No, it absolutely is true. And the office, so I'm not an expert. I do have an article on bigger, bolder baking.com, but I'll tell you what happens is the less percentage of cocoa, the more sugar that's in your chocolate. So the higher you go. So you know why people always say a little bit of white, a dark chocolate is really good for you. Like just a square of dark chocolate every day. So they're talking about something that's very high. So you're talking about 85% like if 70% is totally fine, that's perfect too. Something that's hype in, in, um, cocoa solids because the higher the cocoa solids, less the sugar. So you're getting more chocolate in there and less artificial, uh, added, added sugar, I should say. So when you're talking about milk chocolate, like as kids, I don't know about you, but I loved milk chocolate and milk chocolate, especially for kids, it's higher in sugar and there's much less chocolate. So you have a flavor of chocolate, but you don't have that rich bitterness that you get in a darker chocolate. So what I bake with a lot is 72% chocolate, which is bittersweet. And I just find that that balance of a little bit of sweetness, that sharpness, uh, just works really well. And that's like predominantly what I use in my baking. Oh my gosh, that is so good to know. Let me go get me some 72% chocolate. Need that in my kitchen. Um, I change up my chocolate all the time. I definitely don't have a go-to, so I think I'm going to start, uh, doing this for sure and taking notes. All right. So next up, a little bit of fun here, Tasty has struck again, you know, they're always making the greatest content. Uh, so they have a video they just put out of female pop singers as desserts. So it was really interesting. Like Taylor Swift is a funfetti cake, Rihanna is a mango lime cheesecake. Uh, Beyonce is an edible pot of gold, which was really random. I thought that was a random one. Um, Britney Spears is pink velvet donut. So the list goes on and on and on and on. But the reason I bring this up is because Gemma, I want to know, what do you think you would be as a dessert? There's a lot of options. That's a good question. Um, gosh, you put me on the spot, Mia. I know it's hard. I like so many things and I think about like, what do I eat the most? You know what? I might be, and this might sound kind of boring, but an ice cream sundae. That sounds so it's classic. It's classic. It's sweet. It's fun. Yeah. It's always going to hit the spot. You can always have ice cream in your freezer, like ready to go. I always have caramel sauce in the top of my fridge or fudge sauce. Um, I knew you always have like nuts. You could put a little cherry on top. You could do a banana split. Oh my gosh. But I more often than not like, well, we would have baked here in the house all day long and I will have tested some desserts. And then later on after dinner, I'll have rather than having more of the desserts we just made. I'll have some vanilla ice cream. So it sounds really boring, but I don't know. I just adore ice cream. And also before when I was pregnant, I started to eat, uh, more desserts, more consistently. And ice cream was just one of those desserts that like almost every night I was eating it. And then after that, I'm, I'm a little bit hooked now. I feel that ice cream is my favorite. I always say that. Um, and I like that you said to your first like train of thought was what's your favorite food? You know, that's kind of who we are. And that was the same thing I thought is, aren't we all just our favorite foods? Like, I'm not going to probably choose something I don't like, but when I thought about it, I kind of thought the same thing. I was like, mine is boring. Like maybe rainbow cookies because I'm bubbly and bright. Maybe honestly just brownies with cookie in it because like a brookie, because I also just like to eat that. I don't know if it, those are good choices. Yeah. I'm like, they might be boring, but I mean, aren't we just what we love to eat? And in the video too, they intro the celebrity. What I really like is they say who the celebrity is and then they give them three adjectives and then we watch them make the recipe and then they reveal what the dessert is. And so for example, like Taylor Swift was classic, romantic, sweet. And so I was wondering, do you ever approach your baking in this way? I know it's kind of weird, but are you ever, do you ever go into the kitchen and think, okay, I want something sweet, but subtle, but you know, something romantic for like a fun night. Like, do you ever do that? Are you like, no, I just bake what I want. No. It's not that deep. I can't even make up an answer. It's like, no, I go into the kitchen. I make something sweet. I eat it. And then I go to bed. That's about right. Okay. I totally, absolutely agree. Is there any other celebrities you think that you'd like to see, you know, their dessert made maybe besides Jen Garner. We always talk about her, but is there anybody else? I don't know. Like I, I have a huge respect when I follow people like on Instagram, when I see girls like Chrissy Teigen posting like dinner that she made for her family, like desserts that they're eating, like a table full of food. Like when I see those kinds of pictures, I'm like, yeah, like I could hang with her. Like that, that would be awesome. I would love that. There's nothing worse than going, uh, there's nothing worse than seeing like these little pictures of like what I eat in a day and there's tiny little meals and it just looks so sad. I like, I love people who eat so, and who enjoy food, you know, so, um, I think Chrissy Teigen. She's a good one. Fun. That'd be fun. I'd like that too. They should add that to the, the roundup, expand it. We want more than just the pop stars. We want the celebrities. We want the, maybe you, they should make one of you now that you basically gave them the answer. They just, all you have to do is make an ice cream sundae. It's fine. Um, but it's so simple. I'm going to have to go up with a better one. Yeah. We'll have to think on this. We can get back to each other next week. Some things you just have to sit on. Um, but I, I've asked a lot of our guests this and I can't believe we've never talked about it, but who do you listen to when you bake or do you not really like listen to anything or do you do podcasts? That's a good question. I'll tell you what I do. I listen to podcasts and I listen, did I mention this before? I listened to true crime. I think you've told me you like true crime, but I did not know you listened to it while you bake. Oh yeah, for sure. I listen, I'm addicted to this podcast right now called a crime junkies. I've been listening to them for a year or two. And when I just want to kind of be in the, when I'm in the kitchen and I'm prepping and I'm trying to get ready for stuff, I'll just put on my podcast, but I love like true crime is my genre. I love it. I'm obsessed. I get obsessed with the stories I get, like I'm, I'm, I'm all sold on like, you know who I think did it and this would have to be a whole other episode to talk about this. I'm not really a true crime fan, but I love horror and I love thrillers. So we'd have to definitely talk about that sometime. See that's different. I don't like those. See, I'll tell you why. Yeah. See, this is, this is why, because when it comes to shows, like I love Dateline, which I shouldn't be admitting this, but I love Dateline. I love 2020 and I love those kinds of shows. But then when it's a podcast, when it's a fiction, a story that's fiction, I'm not interested. I need to know that it happened in real life to real people. And that's what like fascinates me. See, my brain is the opposite. I'm like, why would I want to know if it happened in real life? That's awful. Isn't that psycho? A little bit. Seriously. Like I have, I'm very much aware of this, that, that I, I love true crime and I'm only happy if I know what happens to something that happened to somebody in real life. I'm not happy, but I'm interested. It sounds psycho, but honestly, I feel like you're in the group of, there's probably, I would say over 70% of people like true crime. Like I'm going to bring you a stat next week. I'm holding myself to it, but there's a lot of people. We need to find the stat because a lot of people are true crime. Yeah. I can't get behind it. I, I, so I often talk about like loving true crime. I think it's also more women than men, but I get so many people saying to me they love true crime and they binge watch it on Netflix. They listen to the same podcast that I listened to and they're obsessed. Oh my gosh. Well, that's, that's good to know. I love to hear what people do when they bake. I think it's very, it's a very intimate experience when you share what you do. I think it's really cool. So now we know listen to true crime. I do music and honestly, sometimes I really like quiet. Maybe that's the most psycho thing of all, but I, I, my life is so busy and so when I finally have a chance to just focus on what I'm doing, I don't want extra stimulation. I just kind of want to bake instead of that silence. Like I'm, I think maybe I'm a psycho. Like I also do the same thing in car rides sometimes. I'm like, I don't want music. I don't want podcasts. I want to listen to nothing for once. But anyways, that's that on that. Before we move on to fan questions, I just want to tell everybody we didn't really talk about it, but happy national grilled cheese month. So cool. Very excited. Celebrate while you can, because it's going to be over soon. And now for fan questions, Gemma. So oh my gosh, I'm going to say this wrong. Neha Veeradia, I'm pretty sure that's how you say it. She asked, or he asked, or they asked, if I use flaxseed for my brownie as an egg substitute, it always gets crumbly. Why is that? And what can I do to improve the texture? That's a tough one. It's true. It's really hard. I guess I get that. Maybe they should hold back a little bit on the flaxseed and maybe just do like less eggs, like in air quotes, like flax eggs. That can happen. You know, it's that's why flax eggs work really well in cakes and things like that, because you do have that crumb already where brownies are supposed to be fudgy. If I were you, to be honest with you, if you're finding the flaxseed, sorry, flax eggs aren't working, I would do egg substitutes that you can buy in and like health food stores and stuff like that. And you should get a better result from those. All right. Next up, Red Dirt Cowgirl, I think I can pronounce that one, said, a fun one you may or may not have an answer to. What is one thing that no matter how many times you make it, it just never turns out right? You know what? No, I don't know what I don't know if I have an answer to that because I've been doing this for so long that everything like a lot of it's just second nature to me. There's things that I do mess up like macarons, like I made macarons two years ago and I made them and they came out. I have made them tomorrow. They might not come out. It's really touch and go with me when it comes to things like meringues. I'm not very I'm a little bit like I lack kind of deep, the detail of like doing something so delicate and as precise as macaroons or macarons. So I I'm better off making like cookies, a cake and something like meringue that never fails. But there's these like little things. This is also why I can't cookie decoration cookies because I just find it takes such finesse and patience such as an attention to detail that I think I just lack. Yeah, that's honestly a great answer. And I had Joanne Chang on the podcast and I love scrolling through the bakery page and seeing everything she makes because I feel like they're very good at the detail, which is amazing. But is there something that kind of took you a while to get a hang of maybe or like you had to test for like a really long time before you nailed it? The that's a I would say meringue. I'm sorry. Sorry. Macarons. Macarons, which is funny because I'm really good at making meringue because I've been making it for years and macarons. I do. I just don't have the patience for stuff like that. There's some desserts. I'll put it to you like this. There's some desserts that I think life is a little bit too short to spend my time and night after night trying to get these exactly right in the kitchen. And something like a macaron or drawing on a cookie is those things for me. I feel similarly. And to be honest with you, I had my first macaroon and I didn't really like them. It's been a while since I've had it, but I'm like our palates changed and maybe I should try it again. But I'm really not a fan. Like there's just some things where you're like, I am going to pass and just eat the things I really like. I'll tell you when you get a really good macaron, like a really good one from it, like a lovely bakery and it has a really good filling is probably was made the day before. So it's kind of has set overnight. They're amazing. They are absolutely amazing, but I can't make them amazing. So I buy them for $4 a macaron rather than spend my time and energy at trying to make not nearly half as good. As they say, know your strengths and there's nothing wrong with that. That's absolutely amazing. All right. Well, Gemma, I think that does it for this week. Loving this new format with you. Bold Baking listeners. If you're out there, if you love this new format, let us know how you feel. Reach out to us at Bigger Bolder Baking everywhere. And don't forget, we're new. So be sure to subscribe, rate the podcast five stars when you listen, read it on the show and leave a comment with what you want to see next week. If you're watching on YouTube, as always, I'm Mia Brabham. You can find me on Instagram at yours truly, Mia, and on Twitter at Hot Mess Mia. And Gemma, where can we find you? Gemma Stafford, I am on Facebook, Gemma underscore Stafford on Instagram. And then, of course, follow Bigger Bolder Baking. Of course. Love it. So excited to have you here. Excited that you're all tuning in to listen and we'll see you next week. Bye, everybody. Bye. Bye, Mia.