Chef’s Kitchen

Chef of the month: Molly Hanson

Grill 23 and Excelsior — Boston, Massachusetts

The seed of Molly Hanson’s career as one of New England’s foremost pastry chefs was possibly planted as a child, when she accompanied her father as he collected honey from his beehives. To this day, Molly helps her father keep bees. “When you extract honey,” she says, “it is exciting and messy and intensely fragrant. The smell of the honey is incredible.”

A little like bees, Molly has migrated from place to place, gathering her skills and developing her repertoire. She began at the New England Culinary Institute in Vermont. Her internship took her to San Francisco and a little “mom and pop” restaurant where she started out making savory items like quiches and pâtés, but when the pastry chef “didn’t work out,” she was asked to take over that job, too. She fell in love with pastry.

When she returned to Vermont, she found a position working under Chef Tom Bivins at Shelburne Farms, the beautiful late-nineteenth-century Vanderbilt-Webb estate turned inn, restaurant, and working farm. Then it was back to San Francisco and a stint at Mark Franz’s Farallon restaurant and an opportunity to work with the dynamic Emily Luchetti, an extraordinary pastry chef.

Missing her family and New England’s lushness, Molly finally returned to Boston. She took a position as the pastry chef at Harvest in Cambridge, creating seasonal desserts that reflected the freshness of New England. “We had a lot of fun doing classic New England desserts like cobblers,” she recalls. Today Molly is still buzzing around as she flies between two Boston restaurants — Grill 23 and Excelsior — where her desserts are scrape-your-plate delicious.

While working at Farallon, Molly learned more about one of Emily’s favorite ingredients — mascarpone. “Emily uses it in everything!” Molly notes. “And so it was natural that it played a heavy role for me in the beginning of developing my desserts.” In her cheesecakes, Molly says, “It lightens it a little more than cream cheese, and it is truly versatile. I serve it straight or occasionally sweeten it and add a little vanilla. This is lovely with almost any dessert from chocolate cake to a fruit crisp. And it is a great filling for anything from cupcakes to cookies.” And indeed, mascarpone is an ingredient in Molly’s superb “Devil’s Food Chocolate Cupcakes” recipe. The other ingredient that she uses is crème fraîche, which “has a richer flavor than heavy cream. It also adds a sweet tanginess, but doesn’t go as far as sour cream or yogurt.” With a simple ice cream accompaniment that has not only crème fraîche but griottines — a very fine marinated French cherries friends and family will linger around the table for quite a while enjoying this truly decadent dessert.

Molly’s Favorite Recipe:
Devil’s Food Chocolate Cupcakes with Creme Fraiche Cherry Ice Cream!

Ingredients — Directions

The Ice Cream
3 cups crème fraîche
3 cups whole milk
1 cup sugar
1 vanilla bean
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
¼ cup high-quality marinated cherries, such as griottines

Blend all of the ingredients, except for the cherries, and freeze in ice-cream freezer according to directions. Once the ice cream is churned (after about 35 minutes), add the strained cherries and 3 tablespoons of the cherry liquor syrup. Run the churn just long enough to distribute the cherries in the ice cream.

Place in containers and store in the freezer. Ice cream will become hard after several hours. Makes 1½ quarts.

The Cupcakes
1¼ cups all-purpose flour
¾ cup cocoa powder
1¼ cups sugar
2 teaspoons baking soda
½ teaspoon baking powder
2 large eggs
¼ cup crème fraîche
½ cup milk
 ¼ cup canola oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
¾ cup warm coffee

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Sift dry ingredients into a large bowl. Whisk eggs, crème fraîche, milk, oil, vanilla, and coffee in a separate bowl. Add egg mixture to the dry ingredients, whisking well to break up any lumps.

Line muffin pans with paper or foil liners. Fill pans three-quarters full and bake 15 to 20 minutes, until a knife inserted in the center of the cakes comes out clean. Cool the pans for 10 minutes, then turn out onto wire racks.

Cupcake Filling
6 ounces of mascarpone
¼ cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla extract or about one-third of a vanilla bean (seeds only)

Whip all ingredients together until soft peaks form. Keep refrigerated until needed.

Crème Fraîche Ganache
4 ounces semisweet chocolate (60%)
½ cup crème fraîche

Melt chocolate in a double boiler. Whisk in crème fraîche until smooth. Ganache will set up quickly so do not make this until you are ready to use it. If the ganache gets too hard, remove from the double boiler.

Prepare a pastry bag with a ¼-inch tip filled with mascarpone filling. Insert the tip of the bag deep into the cupcake and fill until it bulges out the top. Fill all of the cupcakes.

Fit the pastry bag with a ½-inch star tip with the crème fraîche ganache and garnish the top of each cupcake, or frost the cupcake with a spatula.

Note: If you don’t want to add the ganache, simply use all 8 ounces of the mascarpone and garnish the top of the cupcakes with the filling.