Inside Pastry Chef Caroline Schiff’s Brooklyn Museum Takeover

I associate the pastry chef Caroline Schiff with two things I find exceptionally glamorous: baked Alaska and long, gravity-defying hair. A stylish woman who whips up even more stylish desserts, Schiff’s talent in both food and life lies in her ability to make the nostalgic appear fresh.

I first came across her work when she was the Executive Pastry Chef at Brooklyn’s Gage & Tollner. She has since pivoted to her next concept, a chic and Schiffian twist on old-timey diner classics. I recently drove to Palm Springs just to try her latest creations, approachable but elevated, just like Schiff. This month, she’s hosting a pop-up dinner series at the Brooklyn Museum, where the menu includes doughnuts, deviled eggs, and Schiff’s trademark coconut sheet cake, another of her characteristically tall and scrumptious creations). Since I am stuck in Los Angeles, we hopped on a Zoom last month so Schiff could walk me through her process.

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ELIZABETH TEETS: Walk me through this cake. I’m so excited.

CAROLINE SCHIFF: Well, welcome to my kitchen. I live in Brooklyn in a giant pantry.

TEETS: Your house is beautiful. What are you getting ready for?

SCHIFF: So I’m doing this really cool pop-up takeover at the Brooklyn Museum. They have amazing programming and they have a restaurant space that rotates through different chefs and restaurants, so I’m doing a takeover with them in November. One of the things that we’re going to serve is big fat slices of coconut sheet cake, which is one of my signature desserts.

TEETS: I love big fat sheet cake slices.

SCHIFF: Yeah, sheet cakes cut so nicely. You get these perfect squares. They’re really easy to serve, and it’s reminiscent of childhood-like cakes and snacking cakes. I love the casualness of it. On a practical level, you get a really nice yield out of it so I can get 24 portions out of a big sheet cake. So that’s going to be one of the sweet things that I have. So I’m going to make it.

TEETS: I’m excited. Let’s get started.

SCHIFF: We’ll do the batter, but then I’ll talk you through what would happen after all that, because it’s got to bake and cool and all of those things. So this is going to be a two-layer sheet cake and then I’m going to do a meringue filling and frosting on the outside. Then it’ll get covered in coconut. So the cake itself is pretty straightforward. It’s an oil-based cake. The reason why I like oil-based cakes is because they stay really, really moist. So I’ll either do an oil-based cake or if I’m using butter, I’ll basically work in a portion of oil and they become really light and fluffy and it’s a really nice texture that it yields. I’m using a neutral oil for this, let me not spill this on my floor.

TEETS: I love that you’re leaning forward like I’m there.

SCHIFF: Please don’t pour this on the floor, Caroline. [Laughs] So then I’m going to add a little vanilla. This is my favorite. It’s called Nielsen-Massey. I’m at the point in baking where I’m just going to eyeball it. It’s about a teaspoon. Whatever.

TEETS: You know what you’re doing. I’m not worried.

SCHIFF: I hope so. If I’m making a huge batch, I’ll use a mixer in a professional kitchen. But since I’m making this one at home, it’s not going to be huge and I can scale recipes up and down. So this is the home baking measurements. You don’t need a mixer, you’re just dumping it in the bowl, whisking it up, and that’s it. So I’ve got the oil and the eggs, getting them all together, broken up, and then I’m adding a decent amount of granulated sugar.

TEETS: Gorgeous.

SCHIFF: And it’s a lot of sugar.

TEETS: How much?

SCHIFF: I do everything in grams, so this is about 450 grams, which is a bit over two cups. I really like whisking. You have to really whisk the thick inside of this because it’s going to incorporate a lot of air and it’s going to ensure that the oil doesn’t separate out of the cake and make it greasy. You know what I mean? So I’m really going to whisk this quite thick this way, and it’s getting this nice, pale yellow color and this ribbony texture. What I don’t want is oil separating out and pooling out. That’ll make for a really nasty, greasy taste.

TEETS: Yeah. Nobody wants that.

SCHIFF: There we go. Okay, so now I’m going to add the flour, the salt, and the leavening. So we have baking powder, a tiny bit of baking soda, and this is cake flour. Without getting too crazy scientific, there’s different kinds of flour, and they have different percentages of gluten. Gluten is a protein, and gluten is what makes, among other things, baked goods have a specific texture, so say a very chewy baguette or in this case, a very light, soft, supple cake. Cake flour has the lowest percentage of gluten of all the flours, all purposes in the middle. Bread flour is up here, it’s like 14%. But usually, in terms of classic home baking, I’m working with either bread flour when I make focaccia, all-purpose flour if I’m doing brownies, then a really light, beautiful cake–cake flour. That’s the very quick overview.

TEETS: Oh, you just made so much of my childhood make sense. I grew up in a celiac house.

SCHIFF: Do you eat gluten now?

TEETS: Yeah, I’m not allergic. My mom is.

SCHIFF: Okay. I mean, there’s tons of great gluten-free flours, but it’s really a textural thing. So I’ve got that incorporated. Then I’m going to add coconut milk. Sorry, I have a tiny little bit of lint in there. [Laughs] Don’t prep that. So this is one-and-a-half cups basically, and I’m going to add it little by little and incorporate it. This makes the cake really delicate between the cake flour and the moisture content. This is a very light cake, which is what you want with a coconut cake. In the meringue, it’s like a whole cloud situation. It’s very light, it’s very fluffy. So it’s a very loose batter.

TEETS: Oh, the coconut milk now seems obvious to me, but if you would’ve asked me “What kind of milk is she going to use,” I definitely would’ve been like, “Cow’s milk.”

SCHIFF: I mean you could, but for this cake, we want some coconut flavor that’s going to go beyond just the shredded coconut. I add a little bit of shredded coconut to the batter as well as covering the cake with it. I’m going to add a cup, give or take. And I’m going to stir that in and that’ll get some texture and some more of that coconutty flavor that we’re striving for. So I have two sheet pans. They are lined with parchment paper, and I’m going to divide the batter evenly between the two. Again, I eyeball it. I’ve done this many times.

TEETS: Well, it is your signature cake.

SCHIFF: I get a ton of family gatherings and stuff. Everybody’s like, “Oh, are you bringing the coconut cake?”

TEETS: How did this become your signature cake?

SCHIFF: I love coconut, all the forms. I always have. I don’t know, maybe a decade ago I just started fussing with it and making my own recipe, and then it just became one of my things. So I’m going to come around here and put it in the oven. I don’t have a fancy oven at home at all. It is a very basic, not new oven, but it works great. I’m going to set a timer for 15 minutes. It’s at 325 degrees. I’m going to do 15 minutes, and then I’ll go back and I’ll rotate it so it gets an even bake. So it’ll be in there for a total of 25 to 30 minutes, and it won’t have too much color on it. It’s going to be pretty pale.And that’s it for the cakes and once they fully cool, I make a meringue. 

TEETS: Amazing.

SCHIFF: Super simple. It’s a Swiss meringue which you make by whipping the egg whites and sugar over a double boiler first. Not only are you incorporating the sugar and dissolving it, but you’re also cooking the egg whites. So that makes some people feel more comfortable about eating meringue, but also it’s really good for buttercream. So once you have that Swiss meringue whipped and fluffy, you can start basically feeding it butter as it’s mixing and you get the most silky, smooth, very stable. It won’t melt as easily as an American buttercream. Tomorrow I’m going to the Brooklyn Museum to check stuff out and I’m going to bring this cake over. I’m going to assemble it there and be in the kitchen and I will make an Italian meringue. I’m going to use that basically as the frosting for the cake in the middle layer all around, very generous and then cover it with all the coconut.

TEETS: Oh, gorgeous. Is this cake going to be on the menu at your restaurant when it opens?

SCHIFF: Yes. It’s all about how I love classic desserts. Not necessarily something that’s going to be a kitschy throwback, but just things that are either nostalgic for people. The kind of desserts that I want people to feel like, “Oh, I could eat that three times a week. I love it that much.” And going back to, “How did this become a signature cake,” I just love coconut and I’ve always loved coconut desserts and coconut popsicles growing up. That’s still, to this day, my favorite popsicle. So that’s where I grab inspiration from and build menus. Things should have just a very cozy familiarity to them.

TEETS: That sounds ideal because I think there’s so many desserts I only want to eat twice a year.

SCHIFF: That’s amazing, also. Obviously as a chef and as a diner, it’s so exciting to try these new things, but then I come home at the end of the day and what I really want is a chocolate chip cookie. So my freezer is full of cookie dough.

TEETS: What’s the status on the restaurant?

SCHIFF: Still working on financing. I’m writing a book right now, so I’m in the editing process of that and on some deadlines, but it’s really super important to me. I’ve been in this industry since 2008, and I’ve learned the things that really make a restaurant run smoothly and make it sustainable financially for the staff and for the diners. It’s really important for me to take my time. I don’t want to open in a way where I feel like I don’t have all of these elements in place yet, but we’ll get there down the line. In the meantime, I’m getting this book done, which I’m very excited about.

TEETS: Exciting. I want to ask about the book, but for people that love you who don’t live in New York, it is nice because you’ve been doing pop-ups everywhere. You did a pop-up in Palm Springs, and then I missed the one in L.A.

SCHIFF: Well, hopefully more to come. I’m going to Texas this weekend for an event, which will be great. Then I’m doing Hawaii Food & Wine in October, and I love being able to travel and do events. It’s always exciting to cook and bake in a new place, and you meet people and you get to engage with a different community of chefs and people who follow you. Hopefully more West Coast stuff. I love going out there. The produce in LA is just like to die for, so it’s like a pastry chef’s dream out there. Also, I hope with the book, that’s a way to share what I do and let people buy desserts if they don’t live nearby or can’t make a pop-up. I love sharing a recipe.

TEETS: What is this book about?

SCHIFF: So it’s called Daily Dessert, and it’s really about the ritual of enjoying something sweet in any circumstance. The idea that sweets don’t have to be for special occasions and you don’t need some reason to treat yourself. It’s really about normalizing dessert all the time.

TEETS: Something normalized.

SCHIFF: The book ranges, but making it so that anybody can make this after dinner treat on a whim, pantry items, no fancy equipment. No special skills or advanced pastry knowledge needed. And that’s really important to me in terms of how I think about how dessert is so special to me and I love restaurants and I love the act of dining out. But sometimes the most special sweets are the ones that you just make for yourself and have on a Tuesday night because you want one.

TEETS: Yeah, totally. I think especially living in L.A., it’s like an anti-dessert culture.

SCHIFF: I’m so over it.

TEETS: In Portland, I worked at an office that had three o’clock chocolate time every day.

SCHIFF: See, that’s what I mean. It’s like it’s just a moment to either disconnect from what your day is that you need or a moment to connect with somebody else that’s not about work that’s like, “Oh, we’re taking 15 minutes to just eat some chocolate and chit-chat, and then we’ll go back to what we have to be doing.”

TEETS: That’s exactly what it was. Except it was usually 45 [Laughs].

SCHIFF: Even better.

TEETS: What would you say is more signature about you? Your coconut cake or your hair?

SCHIFF: Oh my god. It’s my hair.

TEETS: Yeah.

SCHIFF: People recognize me for it, it’s definitely my true signature.

TEETS: Well, they say someone who’s an icon can be recognized just by their silhouette, and you could be recognized with your hair by your silhouette. So, that’s great. Did we do everything about the cake?

SCHIFF: Yes. The timer’s going to go off. I’m going to rotate them, but that’s the cake. 

TEETS: That’s great.