Alison Stewart: You are listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. There are two more weeks for you to finish reading our April Get Lit with All Of It book club book. It's The Dream Hotel from acclaimed author Laila Lalami. It follows a woman who is detained after an AI algorithm analyzes her dreams and determines she may try to harm her husband. As weeks stretch into months, she begins to wonder if it's possible to prove she's innocent of a crime she's never committed.

I will be in conversation with Laila and you on Tuesday, May 6th at 6:00 PM, at the New York Public Library Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library branch. Our special musical guest will be New York-based band Imal Gnawa. To reserve your free tickets and to find out how to borrow a copy of the ebook, visit wnyc.org/getlit. Again, that's wnyc.org/getlit. Now, let's get this hour started with the latest cookbook from Magnolia Bakery.

[music]

Alison Stewart: Depending on your age, you may have parents or grandparents who refer to the thing in the kitchen that keeps food cold as an icebox. If you're really lucky, you may have a family tradition of making and eating icebox desserts. They are no-bake or low-bake desserts that come together in your refrigerator. They often have few ingredients and they can be assembled quickly and are very adaptable.

A new cookbook out today features 100 recipes of not just icebox cakes, but icebox pies, cheesecakes, bars, and puddings. There's lemon curd, icebox cakes, s'mores, icebox bar, salted caramel banana pudding with double fudge brownies. I may pass out after that. It's titled The

Magnolia Bakery Handbook of Icebox Desserts. Its author is Bobbie Lloyd. She is also Magnolia Bakery's CEO and CBO. That's chief baking officer. She joins us now in studio to talk about it. Nice to meet you, Bobbie.

Bobbie Lloyd: Nice to meet you too, Alison. Thanks for having me.

Alison Stewart: According to your book, icebox cakes, they're about a century old. Tell us a little about your history with icebox desserts.

Bobbie Lloyd: As you mentioned, that sometimes it's generational, grandmothers, great-grandmothers. I have my great-grandmother's cookbook that came out, a cookbook that she had from 1933 or '34. These were desserts that she loved to make, especially in the summer season because you don't have to turn on your oven. Then they passed it down generation to generation with my grandmother, my mother, I do it. I've taught my kids to make them. I love icebox desserts.

Alison Stewart: Is there any sort of hardcore definition of an icebox dessert?

Bobbie Lloyd: I kind of define them as that they finish in the refrigerator. I always put it into quotes, that let your refrigerator do the baking because you can make the bits and parts and components ahead of time, assemble, and then just let it sit in the fridge and do its thing.

Alison Stewart: What makes them so special?

Bobbie Lloyd: Simplicity is number one. The fact that you don't have to turn your oven on except for maybe a few minutes to cook a crust. Unlike cheesecakes, they do take an hour plus to cook. What makes them special is that it's the simplicity of it and the ability to make it your own. The way I did this book was I designed it so that you do the components. It's a crust, it's a filling, it's a topping. Change it up. Do your thing.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, we want to bring you into this conversation. Do you have a family history with icebox cakes? Did you grow up making them? Give us a call. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. You can call in and join us on air, or you can text that number, or if you have a question for Bobbie Lloyd about technique, call us. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. You said that your mom used to make these cakes. Did any of them make it into the book?

Bobbie Lloyd: Oh, yes, lots of them. In fact, they're very much inspired. Traditional icebox cake, because there's several different categories, is layering of cream, whipped cream, or a flavored whipped cream and cookies. The original one was what was on the back of the box on the chocolate wafers from Nabisco. All it is is cookies and whipped cream. That's it. Super simple. You can expand on that. You want caramel whipped cream with chocolate chip cookies? Go crazy. Get a little dangerous. Do what you like the most. That's what we did in our household.

My dad, we called him the junk food junkie. There's an icebox bar, and icebox bars are a little bit different. They're usually a crust, a whipped cream, cream cheese filling, and then some kind of topping or inclusions. The fully loaded was named after my dad, which my mom and dad made together, sort of. My dad loved sweets. This was his way of using up ingredients in the refrigerator and throwing it all together.

Alison Stewart: What inspired you, a chief baking officer, to create a cookbook full of non-baked desserts?

Bobbie Lloyd: That's a very good question. My first book, Volume 1, The Magnolia Bakery Handbook, Volume 1, it was supposed to be 150 recipes, 50,000 words. I finished my manuscript, I had 200 recipes and about 80,000 words, and I realized I had to remove an entire chapter. I took cheesecakes out of it and said, "Next book." I took about half of the icebox desserts that I had in the book out of it; next book. I knew that there was a lot in there still waiting to hit the world.

Alison Stewart: It's so funny. In the front of the book, you thank the staff at Magnolia, but then you have a quote from Marcus Aurelius that says, "Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun." Why that quote?

Bobbie Lloyd: Because every day is an opportunity. Every day something presents itself as an opportunity, and so just go for it. I use that with my staff a lot, too, is that we collaborate enormously throughout every department in the company, and creativity is one of them. It's just open your soul, open your mind. What will come out? Sometimes what I start with and create ends up being something completely different after we all sit around the table together, because someone will say, "I love Kit Kat bars. Throw those into it."

Alison Stewart: [laughs]

Bobbie Lloyd: Now we have a Kit Kat bar dessert.

Alison Stewart: We are speaking with Bobbie Lloyd. She's the CEO and chief baking officer at Magnolia Bakery. Her new cookbook, The Magnolia Bakery Handbook of Icebox Desserts, it's out today. We want you to get in on this conversation. Did you grow up with these kind of desserts? Tell your family story. How have you altered your recipe to make it your own, your own icebox dessert? 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC.

Oh, this text says, "My grandma taught us all how to make them. Recently, our favorite Nabisco cookie was discontinued and we all worked together to find the best replacement. Great segment." What do you do if your favorite cookie is discontinued?

Bobbie Lloyd: That happened in the real world. Nabisco stopped making the chocolate wafer. I'm sure the world went crazy. At Magnolia Bakery, we actually created a recipe that you can make your own. It is time-consuming, takes a while, but the cookies are really good. If you're going to make it, make enough cookies to make at least two icebox cakes.

The other alternative is you can make your icebox cakes using any cookie that's dry and crisp. Doesn't have to be. That's why I used the example of you want a chocolate chip cookie, use chocolate chip cookie. Just don't use soft ones. Find a crunchy, crispy cookie because the cookies are going to absorb the cream. This is what's amazing about icebox cake. The cookies absorb the cream and they become one and they become cake. They completely dissolve.

Alison Stewart: Oh, interesting.

Bobbie Lloyd: It looks like cake. You'll see if you make your cake and it starts out 8 inches high, 6 hours, it'll be 7 inches high, 10 hours, it'll be 6 inches high. It starts as the cream is absorbed, it actually shrinks in height.

Alison Stewart: What does that do to the taste?

Bobbie Lloyd: It makes it one all-combined cake. It tastes more like cake. In the beginning, you can't even cut it because the cookies are still really crunchy. You need to let them sit for a while and soften. When you first put it together, it's cream and cookies, two separate components. As it sits for six to eight hours, as I said, they become one. It becomes a chocolatey, creamy cake.

Alison Stewart: Let's take a call. This is Stephen calling in from Manhattan. Hey, Stephen, thanks for taking the time to call us today.

Stephen: Well, I'm really interested because, as I say, I don't have much to say about icebox cakes, but I have an icebox which came from back at the time they were making it. It comes probably from my grandmother who had a house from the time that my mother was born, which was in 1910, and she fed the entire family. The icebox was here pre-refrigerators. We've had that icebox ever since I know. I'm 84 now, and it was outside our house my entire life.

Alison Stewart: Love that story. Thanks for calling, Stephen. Let's talk to Eric who is in Washington Square. Hey, Eric, thanks for calling All Of It.

Eric: Hi, thanks for taking my call. I am calling because I read a biography of Hattie McDaniel, the first Black Academy Award winner. It came out about 30 years or so ago, and it mentioned that she was a renowned cook, and it included her recipe for icebox cake.

Alison Stewart: Wow.

Eric: I don't know if the book is still around. You can probably find it at Strand or use book service. Her recipe in there, which apparently, was quite famous.

Alison Stewart: Thank you so much for that tip. What a piece, a good piece of trivial.

Bobbie Lloyd: There's history with icebox cakes. See, that's what I love about them. It goes on for generations.

Alison Stewart: I did want to ask you about the title of the book because it's the Handbook of Icebox Desserts. What's the difference between a handbook and a cookbook?

Bobbie Lloyd: My first book is called The Magnolia Bakery Handbook. What it's meant to be is a guide. It's meant to train and teach the home baker that these are recipes that are accessible, that you don't have to be a skilled baker to make these things. Just follow the directions and you will be able to produce any of these products. I have a lot of people tell me that they're afraid of cheesecakes. "Oh, my God. I've never made one before. They're so scary." It's like, "No, they're not. They're really, really easy. Just follow the directions carefully."

Alison Stewart: Let's talk about how you should layer the cream and the cookies in the classic cake. How does it go? Is it one-on-one? Is it two-on-one? Explain to me how you layer them up. For example, you're on the front of the book.

Bobbie Lloyd: The banana pudding. In a classic icebox cake, we build it at Magnolia Bakery as a round cake. In the old fashioned-- the way it was, the back of the box recipe, it was built like a log. You put your cookies straight up and down and then put the cream between them like a log. In Magnolia, we do it like a cake, a round cake. You layer your first round of cookies, I usually say seven on the outside, one in the center, put the cream on top of it. The next layer of cookies, you fill the empty space, kind of like bricklaying-

Alison Stewart: Oh, interesting.

Bobbie Lloyd: -so in between the other cookies, then another layer. Each time you layer the cookies, like bricklaying, you do it in the void. Sometimes it's 8 to 10 layers. Depends on how much cream you use between your layers. That cake will be pretty high. It'll be about 8 inches high. Then as I said, as it sits, it gets a little bit shorter, ends up about 6 inches high.

Alison Stewart: What kind of cream do you use?

Bobbie Lloyd: Heavy cream. You do not want to use half and half ever. People are mistakenly like, "Oh, my cream's not whipping. I bought half and half. It's like it will never whip. Put it away."

Alison Stewart: [laughs]

Bobbie Lloyd: Heavy cream is better than whipping cream also.

Alison Stewart: Why is that?

Bobbie Lloyd: Whipping cream has usually some kind of an additive in it, and it won't whip to the full volume. Do not use Cool Whip. Don't use the stuff you buy premade. First off, it will be way more expensive, and secondly, you're going to use about four containers.

Alison Stewart: This says, "I just started hosting monthly dinners so I could gather my friends and pursue my passion of cooking. What is a good dessert for a beginner?"

Bobbie Lloyd: Icebox desserts are great desserts for beginners. Again, you can make it all ahead of time. If you're making a full meal, appetizers, and entrées, and side dishes, your dessert is done, it's out of the way, and it doesn't take up your oven space. You can make the components the day before or the week before. Cheesecakes are amazing. You can make them a month before and freeze them. They freeze beautifully.

Alison Stewart: Let's go to your famous, Magnolia's famous banana pudding recipe. It's in here. It looks deceptively simple. First of all, how did this end up going viral?

Bobbie Lloyd: Everybody I knew was like, "Oh, you have to have banana pudding. It's amazing, the banana pudding." The thing I love about banana pudding, I've googled it before to say, where did this start from? Nobody really knows the true answer. It was in some cookbook in 1890 or some magazine. Then it was somebody's grandmother in the South. By the way, I never fight with grandma. If someone says to me, "My grandma makes the best," it's like, "You bet she does."

[laughter]

Bobbie Lloyd: This is the Magnolia Bakery version of the back-of-the-box recipe off of vanilla wafers. We've altered it a little bit and made it our own. What's in the book is what we make in the bakeries. It's absolutely delicious. I think that it was a southern dessert that got discovered by northerners about 30 years ago at Magnolia Bakery. Little by little, we found that the more we made, the more we sold. Then we said, "We have something here that people aren't aware how amazing it is."

Over the years, I've added over 40 different recipes, maybe 50 now, of different combinations and variations, including banana-less puddings. Bananas can be polarizing. Fine, you don't want bananas, you can do apple crisp pudding, you can do peach crisp pudding, you could do roasted strawberry pudding. There's a lot of ways to make it your own again.

Alison Stewart: What did you learn about pudding, from making this banana pudding? Sort of the secret behind it.

Bobbie Lloyd: This is such a good question because I have battled other chefs. A Michelin-starred chef, I won't name his name because he might not want his name mentioned. Our kids went to the same elementary school together. As parents do, we volunteered to provide product to events where people pay tickets and come and eat things. Somehow we got stuck at the table next to each other. He made his homemade banana pudding, and I made Magnolia Bakery banana pudding. His table was empty, no people the entire night, and my table was jam-packed all night long.

There is some combination of sweetness and vanilla-y flavor with the bananas and those vanilla wafers that just works perfectly with this pudding. That's why I say I don't fight with grandma. If you say your grandma's is the best, I'm sure it is.

Alison Stewart: It's a Michelin star you'll fight with. [laughs]

Bobbie Lloyd: A Michelin-starred chef, yes. We had such a good laugh over that one because he's like, "Why isn't anybody eating my pudding?" [laughs]

Alison Stewart: I have to imagine it doesn't travel particularly well, though.

Bobbie Lloyd: Fresh pudding bananas turn brown. It's what they do when you stick them in a refrigerator. Technically, it would travel well without the bananas in it. Without the bananas, you can also freeze it, which is a great thing. Bananas turn yucky when you freeze them and thaw them. At Magnolia Bakery, we do have a frozen version that you can order online that's pretty incredible. That one is actually banana puree in the pudding. That can freeze.

Alison Stewart: By the way, listeners, later on, this afternoon, we will have a recipe for banana pudding on our website. Thank you so much for letting us post that.

Bobbie Lloyd: Absolutely. [chuckles]

Alison Stewart: We really appreciate that. My guest is Bobbie Lloyd. She's the CEO and chief baking officer at Magnolia Bakery. Her new cookbook, The Magnolia Bakery Handbook of Icebox Desserts, is out today. If you grew up around icebox desserts, we want to hear about them. Tell us your family story. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. After the break, we'll get more baking tips from Bobbie.

[MUSIC - Luscious Jackson: Citysong]

Alison Stewart: You are listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. With me in studio is Bobbie Lloyd. She's author, CEO, and chief baking officer at Magnolia Bakery. They have a new cookbook out. It's called The Magnolia Handbook of Icebox Desserts. Let's get to some text. It says, "My mom's icebox cake was very simple. Jell-O chocolate pudding and Nabisco graham crackers. Excellent." This one says, "My mother, who would be over 100 if she were alive, made icebox case with Jell-O and graham crackers. I'm guessing the recipe came from one box or the other." Did either Jell-O or Nabisco crackers have the recipes on the back of the boxes?

Bobbie Lloyd: Those are different kinds of recipes. Jell-O probably did more of the classic banana pudding, unless it was the chocolate recipe. There's so many of the back-of-the-box recipes from the 1930s and '40s. Plus, any piece of equipment that you bought back then would have a little booklet that came with it, just like we get today. You buy a mixer, you get a little booklet from KitchenAid.

A lot of those little booklets had the icebox desserts. I have a small collection of cookbooks from that era that-- It was kind of a new time frame too, where food came in boxes. It was new, and it was really exciting for that time. It was moms at home, what can I make? It's coming out of a box. Jell-O pudding, cookies, all kinds of things. How do I assemble that together?

Alison Stewart: We have a couple of your tips from your book. You say weigh, not measure your ingredients. Why?

Bobbie Lloyd: Accuracy is the number one reason. That's the number one reason, accuracy. The second reason is less dishes to clean. If you put one bowl on a scale, you just keep pouring the things into the bowl instead of a measuring cup and another measuring cup. You can just clean up a lot faster.

Alison Stewart: What if I have something sticky like peanut butter?

Bobbie Lloyd: I always say if you're doing a measuring cup, spray your measuring cup with nonstick spray, and then it will fall right out. If you're using a scale, you don't have to worry about it.

Alison Stewart: That's true. What about having ingredients at room temperature? Why is that important?

Bobbie Lloyd: Temperature matters in what you're making. If you're making a cake, you want to make sure your ingredients are of the same temperature. Typically, it would be room temperature. Butter, about 67 or 68, which means that your eggs and your milk should be the same temperature. When you're making icebox desserts, cream cheese, for example, you can't really whip it and cream it if it's coming straight out of the refrigerator. Room temperature will help it become thinner, lighter, less lumps, and smooth and creamy.

Alison Stewart: All right. Sometimes the recipe says sifting. Is that necessary, or do you consider that overly fussy?

Bobbie Lloyd: Depends on what you're sifting. In baking, I rarely sift flour and ingredients because I use a scale. I'm not packing anything down, and my measurements are accurate. Unless there's lumps in it, I don't really need to sift my flour. Powdered sugar, I do recommend sifting all the time because it does get clumpy. A lot of baking books would say, sift together your flour, your spices, your leavening. I'll just throw them in a bowl and whisk it together.

Alison Stewart: In your book, I learned something new, the term folding. What does this actually refer to?

Bobbie Lloyd: The folding is an incredibly important part of how we build and mix ingredients together. Blending, if you think of it in terms of blending something is you're mixing them together and they become one. Folding is, you can't see my hands going through the process, but it's gently incorporating one ingredient into another, usually without deflating it. Whipped cream is whipped double volume. You don't want to blend it in because now you're just going to lose all of that work that you did to whip your cream to double volume. Same thing with egg whites. Egg whites go from small volume to a much higher volume. If you blend them in, you just killed all your leavening.

Alison Stewart: Is that the biggest mistake people make with icebox cakes?

Bobbie Lloyd: It can be. I think another one is just not properly mixing. If you're making cream cheese or whipping cream cheese is not mixing it enough. With whipped cream, the biggest mistake is under-mixing or over-mixing. What is soft peaks and what is stiff peaks? If you think about it, when you pick up your mixer or spoon, a soft peak means that it just gently folds over like a peak. Imagine a peak folding over. Stiff peaks means it stays straight up in the air. If the recipe says, whip to stiff peaks, you need to whip it to stiff peaks. You can go from stiff peaks to over-whipped in about five seconds.

Alison Stewart: If you've over-whipped, what do I do?

Bobbie Lloyd: Well, there is a way to save it. If you over-whipped, add a little more liquid cream to it and just re-whip it for literally sometimes five seconds. Brings it all together so you can save it. If you've gone to the point of butter, you're not saving it. That's it, you're done.

Alison Stewart: This is an interesting text. Says, "Would like to gift your book to my daughter. Can you suggest frequently used pan or dish I might include with the book?" Well, first of all, you have a signing, yes?

Bobbie Lloyd: Yes.

Alison Stewart: When's your signing?

Bobbie Lloyd: That is tomorrow afternoon at our Columbus Avenue location in New York from 4:00 to 7:00 PM, New York City.

Alison Stewart: If you had to recommend a pan or a dish to go with this book?

Bobbie Lloyd: For this book, I would recommend a springform pan. You can use the springform pan for making pretty much all of it. The cheesecakes for making an icebox cake and an icebox bar, if someone doesn't have one, or a trifle bowl, because a trifle bowl is a really beautiful way to present all of the puddings, all the banana puddings and banana-less puddings.

Alison Stewart: I've been calling you a chief baking officer as well as the company CEO, but you're truly a chief baking officer.

Bobbie Lloyd: I made up that title. It was very difficult for me to explain to people with the CEO title what I actually do. I do run the company as the CEO, but I am a baker as well. I do the creative side of developing new product, and people just didn't get that part, so I just use both of them interchangeably.

Alison Stewart: How do you develop recipes?

Bobbie Lloyd: I love that question. A lot of it has to do with either what I'm thinking or tasting in the moment. I'm going to use the strawberry desserts as a perfect example. I was trying to create a strawberry banana pudding, and every product I used, it was either liquid puree strawberries or strawberry jam was too sweet, the puree was too wet. Then I said, "You know what? I'm just going to take strawberries and roast them in the oven to concentrate that flavor without any additional sugar."

When I did it, it came out with this beautiful jam-like consistency with no added sugar. I was like, "Ooh, eureka. We hit on it. It's perfect." Folding that into the banana pudding meant that I didn't add any liquid to it, but I added all that intense flavor. Sitting around, just kind of mentally going through it. Sometimes I also know what a dessert is going to taste like before I make it.

Alison Stewart: It's in your head.

Bobbie Lloyd: It's in my head. I've just done it for so many years. I already understand in my head what it's going to taste like. I have to then create it on paper and then make it.

Alison Stewart: What is a recipe or a taste that you have that you really wanted to make, but you just haven't gotten it yet?

Bobbie Lloyd: I don't know if there's one I haven't gotten yet. Oh, that's a good question. I think the strawberry was a good answer for that, because it took me a while. It took me about six or seven different variations of getting it just right. I have a rule of five. My rule of five is that I will do it five times until I get to where I want it to be. Then I send the recipe out to five of my key bakers, one of them internationally, because we have a lot of locations internationally, one in Chicago, one in LA, because we have stores there, and to one of my chefs in New York. If they all get it and it comes out the exact same way, then I know this will be a hit.

Alison Stewart: This is a serious question. You've expanded so much since you started Magnolia Bakery. I remember it was a little tiny store, and now it's in the Philippines, it's in Turkey, it's in India. What processes do you have to ensure that it's still Magnolia Bakery, that it doesn't turn into a carbon copy of something?

Bobbie Lloyd: The number one most important thing is that we still bake from scratch. We bake from scratch using quality ingredients, no matter where we are. I've created a process of training where it's done by technique. We may have bakers in India, bakers in Turkey, all over the world. They still follow the process of, for cakes, it's cream the butter, add the sugar, add the eggs, alternate with wet and dry ingredients. They still follow the same process. We're very, very particular about how we formulate the recipes, too. I'm kind of OCD about it, that every recipe follows the same structure so someone isn't learning over every time they have to try a new product or create a new item.

Alison Stewart: Our final question from our text is, "What advice would you give to an aspiring teen baker?"

Bobbie Lloyd: One of the lessons I was told a long time ago is that painters paint, writers write, bakers bake. I started baking at a very young age. I started with my mother and grandmother. It's just keep doing it. Just keep baking. If you make a mistake, it's still going to be edible. Might not look exactly the way you wanted it to look, but you're going to learn every single time you bake. Take notes.

I kept a notebook always, and I would write down everything I ever made when I made it, and I would write notes in the margin about what would I change, what would I add to it. I work with a lot of mentor, a lot of young women in the industry, who are interested in exactly that. Like, "How do I start, how do I learn?" You'll learn skills and basics in culinary school, but you have to just do it. That's why painters paint. Keep painting, keep baking.

Alison Stewart: I've been speaking with Bobbie Lloyd, the CEO and chief baking officer of Magnolia Bakery. The Magnolia Bakery Handbook of Icebox Desserts is out today. Bobbie will be signing copies of it from 4:00 to 7:00?

Bobbie Lloyd: 4:00 to 7:00 PM.

Alison Stewart: That is coming up this Thursday at Magnolia Bakery on Columbus Avenue at 69th Street. Thanks for coming in.

Bobbie Lloyd: Oh, my pleasure. So much fun.