Time creates familiarity, curbs the magic of a thing, minimizes how remarkable something was in the long ago. My children, for example, have never known a life without access to the moon, a before when scientists and beautiful weirdos would fixate on the firmament above, a celestial question without answer. But me, I was born just eight years after Neil Armstrong bounced his way onto that dusty orb, and the mystery of it all still lingered by the time I arrived on this planet. The manila folders I made for each astronaut was proof that, to my young mind, space was as exciting as rock ’n’ roll and sliced bread — two things that once exhilarated and surprised us all.
Recipe: Pistachio Halvah Rice Krispies Treats
I get a bit obsessed with the beginnings of things, especially recipes or foods, ones that have lost the magic of their newness and are now met with bored familiarity. Finding origin stories is a thrill of studying the somewhat-brief history of American baking and, always, really, ends up telling a story of “us.”
The humble Rice Krispies treat is a perfect example of a once-delighting, now-overlooked classic. In 1932, Kellogg’s employed Mildred Day, an Iowa State University home-economics graduate who is credited as the inventor of the Rice Krispies treat (though seemingly not by the Kellogg’s corporation). Day, along with her co-worker Malitta Jensen, created the recipe for an event for the Campfire Girls, an organization not unlike the Girl Scouts, originally making them with molasses (intriguing to this baker). It took several years before the recipe was dialed in, and in 1939, Kellogg’s published the version we now know and love on the Rice Krispies box, placing it in the annals of Very Important Americana — and in the palm of your hand.Rice Krispies treats were practically an elementary-school celebrity in the ’80s, a star of every bake sale I can remember and an occasional late-night surprise from moms (like mine) who were just happy that their eccentric kid had friends. But the ’90s left the Rice Krispies Treat cold and lonely. Mass-produced in its foil wrapping, its flirty youth and charisma long gone, it was relegated to little more than an easy lunchbox snack, not even made by a loving hand.
“Rice Krispies treats were practically an elementary-school celebrity in the ’80s.”
By the time I was an adult, and working professionally as a baker, cereal desserts were making a civilized return in professional kitchens — so many of us latchkey Gen Xers who became cooks and pastry chefs couldn’t help ourselves. Suddenly the general public was eating cereal ice creams, and chefs were bringing back 1984 in marshmallowy homage in our very own kitchens, this time with a little more: matcha and black sesame, vanilla-flecked bourbon and miso.
Fast-forward a decade to Queens, when early in the pandemic, stuck at home and unemployed, my friends the pastry chefs Shilpa and Miro Uskokovic riffed on the recipe once more. From their kitchen, they added brown butter, pistachio and a sweetened condensed milk that Shilpa, a senior editor at Bon Appétit, said helped avoid the dreaded third-day dry-out. Eventually, the Uskokovics’ efforts grew into a pop-up bakery, Extra Helpings, and when the world started back up, they opened Hani’s Bakery + Cafe, a jewel box of a pastry shop in the East Village, named after Miro’s nickname for his mother.
They tweaked the recipe once more. A little halvah here, a little tahini there, and before I even made it to the bakery, I celebrated how they breathed new life into something one might feel compelled to call “basic.” At Hani’s, you can go to Serbia and South India, where Miro and Shilpa each emigrated from. You can taste their travels to Turkey in the tahini. But mostly, you can walk into their warm, welcoming bakery and order this Rice Krispies treat with its long history, and you’re likely to feel attached to it in some way, a true classic, but one that tells a new version of the story, continuing the story of “us.” And even if you can’t make it to Hani’s, you, too, hold the recipe in your hands.
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