Local baker featured on national magazine cover
By Jenn Director Knudsen
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Have you feasted your eyes on the cover of this month's "Bon App?tit" magazine?
It features—are you sitting down?—a two-tier Orange Layer Cake with Buttercream Frosting and Berries. Fresh strawberries, raspberries and blueberries are tucked in between the two layers of white, orange-flavored cake and adorn the top of the thickly frosted dessert.
Distributed internationally, the magazine's cover recipe smacks of flavors and produce found right in our backyards, in the Pacific Northwest. And for good reason: Julie Hasson, who developed what "Bon App?tit" is calling a "Cake to Celebrate," lives—and cooks up a storm—right here in Portland.
"Use fresh berries, not frozen," Hasson cautions during a recent telephone interview. "That's really important because the frozen berries would just mush. Oh, and line the pan with parchment paper. And use the cake flour; it really does make a difference."
She abruptly stops herself from giving a cake-baking tutorial over the phone, laughs and says, "Can you tell I love what I do?"
"This Jewish girl is doing the Christmas cookies!" laughed Hasson. "I had a good laugh with my husband. What is the traditional Christmas cookie? I know it's not shaped like a menorah."
Earning her culinary degree from a University California Los Angeles program, Hasson, 39, is a professionally trained chef who specializes in pastries. With husband, Jay, she's run baking and catering businesses in Los Angeles, where she's from, and in Boise, Idaho, where her family of four lived before making their way last year to Portland.
In the early 1990s, she provided goodies for cafes in Southern California at the onset of the coffeehouse boom. Some of her delectables made their way—via distributors to upscale markets—to cities as far-flung as New York.
And about six years ago, she started trying her hand at food writing, developing a few recipes first for a "Cooking Light" magazine feature on biscotti and then in abundance for TV, magazines and her own cookbooks.
In 2003, Hasson came up with the idea for and wrote her first cookbook, "125 Best Chocolate Chip Recipes" ($18.95, Robert Rose).
"Chocolate chips are just such a fun ingredient and an ingredient most people have in their home and pantries" that can be incorporated into cookies, puddings, pies, tarts and many other desserts, Hasson said.
Leslie Solomon—who became friends with Hasson after meeting the chef at a belly-dancing class in Cedar Hills—owns and swears by the chocolate-chip cookbook. Solomon whets the appetite at the mere mention of Hasson's recipes and others' reactions to the rich concoctions.
"From her book I have made the 'Chocolate Port Torte' for a Shabbat dinner at?a?friend's house," said Solomon, whose two children next fall will attend The Foundation School at Congregation Neveh Shalom.
"People could not stop raving about it!?Deep chocolate with?a?kick of port wine," Solomon, 35, continued. "I am now considered to be the Dessert Queen by my other friends. If ever there is an occasion to bring food, I am solicited to make a dessert from Julie's cookbook."
Hasson since has worked from her home kitchen developing recipes for "125 Best Chocolate Recipes" ($18.95, 2004), "125 Best Cupcake Recipes" ($18.95, 2005) and "300 Best Chocolate Recipes" (available this fall). She now is working on "250 Best Pie Recipes."
Northwest berries, she said, "are my favorite things to eat in the whole world. And to live in Portland and write a pie cookbook is exciting for me."
As it must be, too, for her 12-year-old son and 15-year-old daughter.
On a recent afternoon, Hasson was busy in her usual digs—her "relatively small" kitchen, "the hub of activity in our home," she said—baking a peach pie and making her own vanilla ice cream.
Just for a pre-dinner snack for her children and her daughter's three friends?
Actually, she confessed, she needed to get her fresh-frozen peaches out of her freezer to make way for this season's bounty.
"I thought, 'I'd better make room for the berries,'" Hasson said.
Would that we all could create something so tasty just by cleaning out the icebox.
For more information about Julie Hasson and to sample some of her cookbooks' recipes, visit www.juliehasson.com. (Don't overlook her "Chocolate Chip Cherry Bars"; their hit of cinnamon is a lovely departure from other like bars.)