BAKING WITH THE Brass Sisters

By Amy Traverso

PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARK FLEMING • STYLING BY CATRINE KELTY

There’s a hidden trove of culinary treasures in the Brass sisters’ modest, ranch-style house near Boston: a glass case filled with antique copper molds, a signed diploma from Fannie Farmer’s cooking school, a mantel lined with original editions of Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management. Downstairs, a maze of shelves and cabinets contains multitudes of old tins, antique yellow ware, pale green Depression glass.

And then there are the less obvious gems: the sisters who reside here. “We are two roundish women in their seventies,” Marilynn and Sheila often say. They are passionate home cooks, collectors of family lore (theirs and yours), and late-in-life TV personalities (Sheila turned 80 this year). Self-described “unclaimed treasures,” neither chose to marry, opting to savor the independence that girls like them weren’t expected to have. And together, they have written three cookbooks (they wrote the first, Heirloom Baking with the Brass Sisters , in their sixties), as well as one compendium, From Grandma’s Kitchen.

This year they launched a new PBS series, Food Flirts , in which they charm secrets from a bevy of chefs— mostly handsome young men (“We’re harmless,” Marilynn insists)—on the way to tackling their culinary bucket list (curing pastrami, cooking Indian food, mastering the art of the perfect burger). Every episode concludes with the sisters back in their own kitchen, where they translate these lessons into a home-cooked meal for their new friends. Usually, someone ends up dancing.

Marilynn, who with her perky nose and bow-shaped mouth suggests Cindy Lou Who in her golden years, is younger, but she is the alpha sister who speaks first, handles the email, and leads the TV segments. Sheila, five years her senior, prefers to step back and pepper their patter with one-liners. They are an ecosystem unto themselves, two perfectly attuned comedic foils. When they sit together on the couch in the living room, Sheila leans in to her sister and twines their fingers, a tender habit that evokes their years growing up on Sea Foam Avenue in Winthrop, where their mother, Dorothy, taught them to make cakes and cookies and challah for Shabbat dinner. Perhaps it was Dorothy’s early death, when the sisters were just in their twenties, that kept them so connected to the kitchen even as they made their way in the working world, through secretarial and editorial jobs, stints as fashion designers and antiques dealers (hence all those copper molds), and long tenures at WGBH—a connection that came in handy when they wrote their first cookbook. “We’ve always wanted to work together,” Marilynn says. “We may snip at each other sometimes, but we’ve been orphans most of our lives, and we really brought each other up.”

Along the way, they began collecting manuscript cookbooks, informal collections pulled together by church and synagogue groups, Junior Leagues, women’s clubs. But they especially loved stumbling across family recipe collections— unbound, pasted into notebooks, or tied together. Every recipe has a story, they say, and they have made it their mission to be the keepers of those stories. When you talk with the sisters, there’s the sense of time as something layered, the past always present, even as they move toward the next adventure. “We keep reminding people,” Marilynn says, “it’s so important to do a gentle interrogation of the elders to get the stories and the recipes.” Even from your grumpy Aunt Linda? “Families are like fudge,” Marilynn says. “Sweet, but with a few nuts.”

The following recipes showcase a few of the Brass sisters’ favorite holiday treats, made sweeter for the memories they evoke. For additional recipes, go to newengland.com/brass-sisters.

Speculatius Cookies

TO TAL T IME : 55 MINU T ES

H ANDS- ON T IME : 55 MINU T ES

We’ve always been partial to a Christmas cookie with a history, such as this one from our friend Alison Kennedy. Alison’s late mother, Joan, passed this family recipe on to all of her daughters. We love that it is related to the German spekulatius and the old Dutch speculoos . The dough was sometimes stamped with images in years past, but this version is cut into shapes. —Marilynn and Sheila

Brass

2¼ cups all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon baking soda

1/8 teaspoon table salt

1½ teaspoons ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon ground nutmeg

¼ teaspoon ground cloves

½ cup almonds, toasted and finely chopped in a food processor

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar

¼ cup sour cream, at room temperature

Put the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, ground cloves, and almonds into a bowl, and whisk to combine. Set aside. Add the butter and brown sugar to the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, and cream until smooth. Add the sour cream. Add the dry ingredients in two additions and mix until the dough comes together.

Remove the dough and place it onto a lightly floured sheet of wax paper. Lightly dust the dough with flour and form it into a large ball. With a sharp knife, cut the dough in half. Form into two balls. Place each ball into a plastic bag and store in the refrigerator until you’re ready to roll out the dough.

When ready to bake, set the oven rack to the middle position. Preheat the oven to 350°. Line two baking sheets with silicone liners or lightly greased aluminum foil, shiny side up.

Place one ball of dough onto lightly floured wax paper. Sprinkle with flour, cover with another sheet of wax paper, and roll out into a rectangle, ¼ -inch thick. Cut the dough into shapes of your choosing, dipping the cookie cutter into flour each time. Arrange cookies about an inch apart on the baking sheets. Put any leftover scraps of dough into the refrigerator. Using a pastry brush, remove any excess flour from the cookies. Bake for 12 minutes, rotating the sheets halfway through. Repeat the process with the remaining dough, then combine the scraps and roll out again.

Slide the foil or silicone liner with the baked cookies onto a wire rack to cool. Decorate as desired, and then store cookies between sheets of waxed paper in a covered tin. Yields about 3½ dozen cookies.

CRANBERRY-RAISIN PIE (MOCK CHERRY PIE)

TO TAL T IME : 2 HOURS , 30 MINU T ES

H ANDS- ON T IME : 1 HOUR , 15 MINU T ES

We received this recipe from Kristina Bracciale, a friend from WGBH. She’s from an old New England family, and this was the variation on cherry pie that they would serve out of season, substituting the more plentiful cranberries found in Massachusetts for the pricier summer cherries. Interestingly, Kristina said the pie was always served with a block of cream cheese on the table. You’d shave off what you wanted and eat a little bit of cream cheese with each bite of pie. —M.B. and S.B.

FOR THE CRUST

2½ cups all-purpose flour

3 tablespoons granulated sugar

¼ teaspoon table salt

1 cup (2 sticks) cold unsalted butter, cut into 16 slices

¼ cup ice water

1 egg, beaten with 1 tablespoon water to make an egg wash

For The Filling

2 cups plus 2 tablespoons water, at room temperature

1½ cups sugar

½ teaspoon table salt

3 cups fresh cranberries, rinsed, drained, and cut in half

2 cups raisins (preferably jumbo)

4 tablespoons lemon juice

2 tablespoons grated lemon zest

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3 tablespoons minus 1 teaspoon cornstarch

To make the crust: Put the flour, sugar, and salt into the bowl of a food processor fitted with a metal blade, and pulse three times. Add the butter and pulse until crumbly. Add the ice water and pulse until mixture comes together. Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured counter, divide in half, and shape each half into a disk.

Roll out each disk of dough between two sheets of floured wax paper or parchment paper until you have a circle that measures 11 inches in diameter. Peel off the paper from one piece of dough, then transfer the latter to a 9-inch pie plate. Trim the edges so that the dough hangs over the rim by ¼ inch, then cover with plastic wrap. Fold up the other piece of dough, still in its paper, and chill both in the refrigerator.

Next, make the filling: In a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium-high heat, stir together 2 cups water with the sugar, salt, cranberries, raisins, lemon juice, lemon zest, and vanilla. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to a simmer and cook, stirring, for 5 minutes. Remove from heat. Combine the cornstarch and remaining 2 tablespoons water in a small bowl until smooth. Stir this into the cranberry mixture. When the filling has thickened slightly, transfer it to a bowl and cool to room temperature.

Set the oven rack to the middle position. Preheat the oven to 450°. Cover a 14-by-16-inch baking sheet with aluminum foil and set aside.

Pour the cooled filling into the chilled bottom crust. Brush the edge of the crust with the egg wash. Remove the top crust from the refrigerator and peel off the paper. Use the cookie cutter of your choice to cut out a design in the center, then transfer the top crust to the filled pie. Press together the edges of the crusts to seal. Using kitchen scissors, trim excess crust from the edges so they fit the pie plate. Make a decorative edge with fork tines (or your fingers). Brush more egg wash over the top and edges of the pie.

Place the pie onto the baking sheet and transfer to the oven; bake 10 minutes. Reduce the oven temperature to 350° and bake until the crust is golden brown and the filling is bubbling in the cutout, 30 to 35 minutes more. Check the pie halfway through baking to be sure the crust is not browning too quickly; place a foil tent over the pie for the rest of the baking time if necessary. Transfer to a wire rack to cool. (The pie will slice more evenly if it’s completely cool.) Store at room temperature. Yields a 9-inch pie; 8 to 10 slices.

GRANDMA GOLDBERG’S HONEY CAKE

Our mother, Dorothy Katziff Brass, taught us how to cook as soon as we could reach the table. She had a wonderful recipe for honey cake, but for some reason we lost it. Honey cake is traditionally served at the Jewish New Year, when you’re supposed to eat something sweet to welcome in a sweet new year. But you can really eat it anytime.

We were talking about our missing recipe with a friend of ours, Hilary Finkel Buxton, and she told us about her Grandma Goldberg’s honey cake. The recipe is so typically like our mother’s. It has just a little bit of coffee, and as it bakes, this wonderful aroma comes from the oven. It makes two loaves—“One to eat and one to give away,” as Grandma Goldberg said. We learned that she lived to be 101, and she spoke to her sister, Yetta, who lived to be 102, every day.

It’s such a wonderful story, how the two sisters kept in touch. —M.B. and S.B.

1 teaspoon instant coffee or instant espresso

1 cup hot water

2 cups all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon table salt

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground ginger

3 large eggs, separated

1 cup granulated sugar

½ cup vegetable oil

1 cup honey, plus more for drizzling

1 teaspoon baking soda

3 tablespoons warm water

Fresh kumquats, halved, for garnish (sliced almonds also work)

Set the oven rack to the middle position. Preheat the oven to 350° and coat two 9-by-5-by-3-inch loaf pans with vegetable oil spray. Line the bottom and ends of each pan with a strip of wax paper and coat it with spray. Dust pans with flour and tap to remove excess.

Add the instant coffee to the hot water and let cool.

Whisk together the flour, salt, cinnamon, and ginger in a bowl. Set aside.

Put the egg whites into the bowl of a stand mixer with a whisk attachment and beat until the whites form medium-firm peaks. Set aside (if you don’t have a second mixer bowl, transfer the egg whites to another bowl).

In the mixer bowl, beat the sugar and egg yolks together on medium speed. Using a rubber spatula, scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl. Turn the mixer back on and beat until the mixture is pale yellow. Set aside.

Whisk together the oil, honey, and coffee in a bowl. Stir the baking soda into the warm water and add it, too.

Add the dry ingredients to the eggsugar mixture in three batches, alternating with the oil-honey mixture. Using a spatula, gently fold in the beaten egg whites in three additions. Pour the batter into the prepared pans. Bake for 30 minutes. Tent each cake with aluminum foil and bake until a metal tester inserted into the center comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes more. Transfer the cakes to a wire rack and cool for at least 20 minutes.

Go around the edges of each cake with a butter knife. Turn the cakes out of the pans and return to the rack to cool completely.

Before serving, drizzle with additional honey and garnish with halved kumquats. Serve warm or at room temperature. Store at room temperature, wrapped in wax paper. Yields 2 loaves; 9 slices per loaf.

BIG MAMA’S LEMON-LIME TASSIES

TO TAL T IME : 1 HOUR , 30 MINU T ES

H ANDS- ON T IME : 1 HOUR

We received this very old Southern recipe in an email from a reader named Amy Geer. “Big Mama” was Ethel Johnson Geer, who was married to Amy’s grandfather, Judge William I. Geer, and lived in Colquitt, Georgia. Most recipes for lemon tassies use a dough made with cream cheese, but we decided to use Sheila’s piecrust instead. These dear little “tarts” filled with citrus curd are made in tiny muffin pans and are a delicious mouthful. —M.B. and S.B.

FOR THE FILLING

1 large egg

4 large egg yolks

¾ cup granulated sugar

Pinch of table salt

1 teaspoon grated lemon zest

1 teaspoon grated lime zest

¼ cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

¼ cup freshly squeezed lime juice

¼ cup (½ stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes

Citrus peel garnish (see note)

Whipped cream (optional)

FOR THE PASTRY SHELLS

1¼ cups all-purpose flour

1½ tablespoons granulated sugar

1/8 teaspoon table salt

½ cup (1 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes

2 tablespoons ice water

First, make the filling: Whisk the egg and egg yolks in a 2- or 3-quart heavy-bottomed saucepan. Add the sugar, salt, and lemon and lime zests, and whisk to combine. Whisk in the lemon and lime juices. Add the butter and whisk over medium heat until it has melted. Switch to a wooden spoon and continue to cook, stirring, until the curd thickens, about 5 minutes. (If you prefer a smooth curd, strain it to remove the zests.) Press plastic wrap directly onto the surface of the curd to prevent a skin from forming. Let the curd cool completely and keep it refrigerated.

Next, make the pastry shells: Put the flour, sugar, and salt into the bowl of a food processor fitted with a metal blade, and pulse three times to mix. Add the butter and pulse until crumbly. Add the ice water and pulse until mixture comes together. Remove the dough and shape it into a disk.

Set an oven rack to the middle position. Have a 24-cup miniature muffin pan at the ready (you can also use two 12-cup pans).

Roll out the dough between two sheets of lightly floured wax paper to a thickness of 1⁄8 inch (you can also simply roll out the dough on a floured counter). Using a 2½-inch round or scalloped cookie cutter dipped in flour, cut out rounds of dough, gathering the scraps together and rerolling as needed. Place the rounds into the muffin cups and gently press into the wells. Refrigerate for 30 minutes while you preheat the oven to 400°. Bake the tassie shells until golden brown, 10 to 12 minutes, turning the pan midway through cooking. Remove from oven and transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Place the cooled shells on a platter and fill with lemon-lime curd. Refrigerate until ready to serve. Garnish with citrus “dots” and serve with whipped cream, if desired. Refrigerate leftover tassies and use any additional filling to spoon over yogurt, serve on pancakes, or stir into whipped cream. Yields about 2 dozen tassies (plus 1½ cups lemon-lime curd).

Note: To make the festive garnish pictured on page 67, Sheila first used a vegetable peeler to remove strips of zest from lemons and limes, then ran them through a hole punch to turn out perfect citrus “dots.”