In Brooklyn fairy tale, Girl makes cookies, girl meets boy (in the kitchen): The story of One Girl Cookies
One Girl Cookies.
1:36 pm Jan. 13, 2012
On Wednesday night at Book Court, the beloved independent bookstore in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, the air was perfumed with butter, which turned out to have a logical cause: A platter of cookies sitting amid the tables of books.
Airy meringues, anise-flavored Italian waffle-cookies called pizzelle, and crunchy, clove-scented batons called “Nana Cookies” had been baked for the occasion, which marked the publication of One Girl Cookies, a new cookbook by Dawn Casale and David Crofton. Published earlier this month by Clarkson Potter, the book contains recipes from Casale and Crofton’s Brooklyn-based bakery of the same name. It also tells their story which, with its flour dusted, girl-meets-boy narrative, reads like a sort of modern Brooklyn fairy-tale.
Nearly 12 years ago—some time before Brooklyn’s artisanal food boom filled the borough with everything from handcrafted chocolate bars and chutneys to home-brewed kombucha—Casale left her accessories manager position at Barney’s to launch a cookie company. The change sounds radical, but Casale wasn’t so worried. While she had no professional baking experience, she said that growing up in a “food-oriented Sicilian family,” she always assumed she would end up in the food business.
Starting from her apartment kitchen, Casale quickly established her signature brand of elegantly-packaged cookies named after friends and family, including a square of golden shortbread covered in caramel and chocolate (the “Lucia”), a hazelnut sandwich cookie filled with chocolate-cinnamon ganache (the “Juliette”), and several others. As word spread and Casale’s business grew, she added new things to the repertoire—like chocolate and pumpkin whoopie pies and cupcakes lavishly frosted with butter cream. She also began to realize that she needed help.
By 2002, Casale was on the lookout for a baker to help her amp up operations and meet the demands of increasing orders, and Crofton—a talented pastry school student in search of a job—fit the bill. The pair began working long days toasting almonds, baking industrial-sized trays of chocolate wafers, and chopping crystallized ginger to roll into One Girl’s spicy oatmeal “Susanna” cookies. After work, reluctant to part, they would often catch dinner together. You know where this is going. Before long a romance blossomed.
A decade on, One Girl Cookies might be more adequately named One Family Cookies. Casale and Crofton are married and have a two-and-a-half-year-old son named Nate. The bakery, also in Cobble Hill, now staffs 17 employees (headed up in the kitchen by Crofton), has added daily breakfast service to the menu, and is about to expand to a second location in Dumbo. Casale said she does not do much professional baking anymore (though she likes to bake cookies at home with Nate, and they do so often), but continues to run the business side of the operation while brainstorming new recipes with Crofton.
“We recently discovered this locally-made honey infused with chilis called Mike’s Hot Honey, and are dreaming up ways to use it,” she said.
Casale also took the helm in writing the new cookbook, deciding which of the many recipes she and Crofton had developed over the years to share with the hungry public.
“Our whoopie pie recipe was particularly hard to part with,” she said. “But ultimately, it is so satisfying to share our brand and our passion with a wider audience who are not able to visit the shop on a regular basis.”
Each recipe—whether for winter spice cookies with orange cream, old-fashioned graham crackers (see that one below), cream cheese walnut shortbread, lemon scones, or New York State maple pecan pie—comes with an extended headline that tells the recipe’s genesis or family story. As a result, One Girl Cookie’s recipe collection reads as much like a scrapbook of Crofton and Casale’s love story, which works out well because it is an affecting one.
Old-Fashioned Graham Crackers
Makes 24 cookies
2 1⁄4 cups all-purpose flour
1⁄4 cup whole wheat flour
1⁄4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1⁄4 teaspoon baking soda
1⁄4 teaspoon table salt
1⁄2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1⁄2 cup granulated sugar
1⁄4 cup packed light brown sugar
1⁄4 cup turbinado sugar
1. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flours, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt.
2. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat together the butter, granulated sugar, and brown sugar on medium speed until the mixture is light yellow and fluffy, about 3 minutes. With the mixer on low speed, add a third of the flour mixture and 1/4 cup of water. Mix for 30 seconds. Repeat this step once, then add the remaining flour mixture and mix just to combine.
3. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead by hand for about 10 seconds. Divide the dough in half. Cover one half with plastic wrap and set it aside.
4. Place a sheet of parchment paper on a work surface, put the dough on the parchment, and top with a second sheet of parchment. Roll the dough out to about 1/8-inch thickness. Repeat with the second half of the dough. Chill the dough for about 30 minutes.
5. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Remove the dough from the refrigerator, peel off both sheets of parchment, and put the dough on a cutting board. Using a square cookie cutter, cut out the dough, rerolling the scraps twice. Put the cookies on a parchment paper–lined baking sheet. Sprinkle each cookie with a pinch of turbinado sugar.
6. Bake, rotating the sheet halfway through, for 20 minutes, or until the cookies are a dark golden color around the edges. Let cool for 10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
This recipe is reprinted, with permission, from One Girl Cookies by Dawn Casale and David Crofton. Copyright © 2012. It has not been re-tested by Capital New York.
Casale and Crofton will be doing their second New York cookbook signing at the Powerhouse Arena bookstore on Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2012 at 7 p.m.
