The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Ben Mims draws on Southern roots, childhood memories for new cookbook.
Ben Mims grew up in the small town of Kosciusko, Miss., surrounded by women who loved to bake.
“My mother and I have like the biggest sweet tooths ever,” Mims says. “Whenever we would take a road trip or go shopping, we’d always stop somewhere for something sweet to eat.”
On special occasions, his grandmother would make “pink cake” — a sheet cake made from a boxed cake mix with vanilla icing tinged with red food coloring then poured all over it. As a kid, he’d bake his own teacakes, devouring them warm from the oven, and watch his mother make pecan pies and pound cakes from scratch.
All along, he was soaking up these Southern traditions — like cookies in a glass of milk.
So for his first cookbook, “Sweet & Southern: Classic Desserts with a Twist” (Rizzoli, $39.95), Mims meditates on his Mississippi childhood while creating his own smartly playful repertoire of recipes, many of which occurred to him while testing food from around the world at Saveur magazine, where he was associate food editor for nearly five years.
In developing this highly personal cookbook, Mims, who is now associate food editor at Food & Wine, also wanted to take care not to repeat all the boring basics that clog up so many dessert books. Butter, after all, is butter, and flour is flour. His approach is to focus directly on the recipes.
“Sweet & Southern” — which includes instructions for his aunt’s Pretzel-Peanut-Chocolate Candy and her Mexican wed- ding cookies alongside his Swedish-inflected Satsuma Whipped Rice Pudding and “Red Velvet” Cake colored with pomegranate juice and cocoa powder — is lovely example of what happens when the legacy of Southern sweets is examined through a quirky modern lens.
Bread pudding is constructed from rich, cakey cornbread and slathered in whiskey-laced caramel sauce. Cantaloupe upends pineapple in the classic upside-down cake, while pineapple is fashioned into tarte tatin. A deconstructed Southern ambrosia is scattered atop the New Zealand meringue called pavlova, and banana pudding is made in- to pie.
I’ve tried two of Mims’ magnificent layer cakes; a batch of his Crisp Oatmeal Raisin Cookies; a pan of Grapefruit-Blackberry Bars and the aforementioned cornbread pudding — and I’m awestruck. The sweets are fresh, bright, often genius; the recipes clear, crisp, never fussy. Heed Mims’ masterful advice, and even if you weren’t born to bake, you’ll soon have folks thinking you were.