The Invisible Cake

My baking idol drops in, and she brought zucchini

Friends, hi! I amntechnically still on maternity leave. Baby John has opinions about this so I’m staying put a little longer. But! I couldn’t leave you without something wonderful to bake, which is why I am absolutely thrilled to hand this week’s newsletter over to someone who changed the course of my baking life before she even knew I existed.

My guest contributor today is my baking idol, the one and only Dorie Greenspan.

If you need an introduction: Dorie is the New York Times bestselling, IACP and James Beard Award-winning author of fifteen (fifteen!!) cookbooks, including Dorie’s Anytime Cakes, Around My French Table, Baking with Julia, and the book that helped shaped me as a baker, Baking: From My Home to Yours. She also writes the most delightful weekly Substack, xoxoDorie, and splits her time between Westbrook, Connecticut and Paris.

Here’s what I want to tell you about Baking: From My Home to Yours: nearly two decades ago, I saved up my meager baker’s wages (we’re talking carefully counted, hard-earned dollars) to buy a copy. And then I joined an early baking blog group called Tuesdays with Dorie. We baked our way through nearly every recipe in that book together, week by week. This was 2009(?). Before Instagram, before TikTok, before any of it - I’m basically describing the days before electricity at this point. But it was one of those early internet, formative baking I’ll always cherish.

Years later, I got to interview Dorie in person at Cherry Bombe Jubilee. A full-circle moment, to be sure. (That’s where the photo below is from, in case you’re wondering why I look like I’ve just seen a celebrity. Because I had.) She is as warm and generous and brilliant in person as everything she bakes.

Today, Dorie is sharing a recipe that I immediately bookmarked for my own summer lunch rotation: a savory cake that is its own thing entirely. It’s not quite a quiche or a loaf. It’s something more interesting. I’m planning to bake it and serve it alongside a big green salad on one of these thick, humid June afternoons. I think you should do the same.

Here’s Dorie. 🧡

Joy and Dorie, 2019 (Joy’s fringe era)

Hello! Hello!

I’m delighted that Joy invited me to be here with you this week. It’s fun to go visiting. And because I never show up empty-handed, I’m bringing you a cake!

Zucchini and Chèvre Invisible Cake: A dreamy loaf that’s fun and easy to make

The first time I made this zucchini cake, I was so excited you’d have thought I’d invented bubble gum. It seemed so completely new to me, not like what I usually bake or usually see in shops and restaurants. And then, I served it to friends and they said, “Ohhh, we love an invisible cake.” I didn’t know that my cake had kin. And I didn’t know that two other cakes I’d made for years — Marie-Helene’s Apple Cake, which is in Around My French Table, and Custardy Apple Squares from Baking Chez Moi — were family members too. You know how when you learn a new word and it turns up nonstop? That’s what it was like with me and the “invisibles” — I started to see their name everywhere. That this zucchini cake was savory, set it apart, making it more like a distant cousin than a mama, and for me, all the more interesting.

Illustration: Nancy Pappas

I created my inaugural zucchini loaf for Dorie’s Anytime Cakes because I was tickled by the idea of making something that could be a swap for quiche, the tart that’s on every Paris café menu and a staple in oodles of French homecooks’ repertoires (even if they mostly make it with a store-bought crust). I wanted something that would be as much fun to make as to serve and eat. Something that would be portable and good at room temperature, which quiche is. It was because I had quiche on my brain (also because I’m a part-time Parisian who loves the tart) that I added the chèvre — also, zucchini and goat cheese are such companionable mates.

Fair warning: When I served my apple rendition of an invisible cake in Paris, my friend Hélène said: You better tell people that this isn’t really a cake-cake. And your zucchini loaf isn’t a cake-cake either.” She was right. With these cakes, there’s barely enough batter to coat the star ingredient, which is sliced super-thin. You make the simple custard, add the zucchini, take a beat to fret over the possibility that the whole thing will never work (it does, of course), mix and mix and mix and then scrape the hodgepodge into the pan. What happens in the oven is magic: the messy mix bakes into lovely layers of zucchini held in place – almost invisibly – by the tasty custard.

More invisibility: Apple Custard Cake

If You Like This, You Might Like the Sweet Version, Too

If, like me, you fall in love with the invisibles, then you might want to make the Apple Custard Loaf. Like its salty sister, this is a loaf you can play around with.

Again, many thanks, Joy, for inviting me in. And thank you, bakers, for spending this time with me. Say hello and I hope that you’ll share what you bake with Joy and me (you can find me on Instagram).

Zucchini and Chèvre Invisible Cake

• Adapted from Dorie’s Anytime Cakes

• Get your copy at Bookshop.org, B&N, Amazon, RJ Julia (Signed), Omnivore Books (Signed), Book Larder (Signed), Bold Fork Books (Signed), Elm Street Books, Rizzoli Bookstore, HarperCollins

• Click here for printable recipe