The uncanny genius of Hannah Ziskin’s cake

Last week, Food & Wine restaurant editor (and fellow Angeleno) Khushbu Shah inducted Hannah Ziskin into the magazine’s annual class of best new chefs in America. If you have ordered dessert at Quarter Sheets, the nearly 2-year-old pizza restaurant in Echo Park she runs with partner Aaron Lindell, you understand why she deserves the accolade. One of 11 honorees nationwide, Ziskin won the recognition on the strength of her genius ways with cake.

Origins of a cake obsession

The greatness of these layered, ever-changing creations is uncanny, almost aberrant. It’s just cake! But no, it’s more: It’s the sum of Ziskin’s imagination and experience, funneled into America’s edible synonym for celebration. As a pastry chef long focused on meticulously plated finales, she initially turned to baking cakes to support herself during the pandemic’s grimmest months. She’d lost her job at too-short-lived M. Georgina in Row DTLA the week the 2020 shutdowns began, and like so many suddenly out-of-work chefs she turned on her oven and began to make a living from home.

Like Shah, I have become a Ziskin cake zealot. My obsession began in early 2021. Quarter Sheets was then a pop-up that Ziskin and Lindell operated out of their home in Glendale. (The couple met while both working at pasta wonderland Cotogna in San Francisco.) Lindell was perfecting his pizza technique, mining inspiration from the Detroit-style pies native to his home state, Michigan. Ziskin sold thick blocks of layer cakes by the piece she called “slabs,” and she reserved some weekly slots for individual round cakes available via her nascent online micro-bakery House of Gluten.

I set an alarm for the moment that orders went live and reserved a 6-inch carrot cake.

While unfastening the corners of its cardboard box, I gaped at the thing’s beauty. Ziskin — like many of her micro-bakery peers, including local cake virtuosos Sasha Piligian and Rose Wilde — had approached cake decorating almost as floral arrangement. They recalled Michel Bras’ famous “gargouillou” of vegetables arrayed on a huge white plate. Ziskin speckled the canvas of a frosted cake with petals, herb leaves, tiny candied citrus (sometimes including dribbles of, say, neon-orange kumquat syrup) and sometimes whole flowers. This design was relatively restrained: extra piped whirls of Swiss meringue buttercream, tinged a faint pinkish-caramel color from the addition of muscovado, crowned around the edges with pomegranate seeds and fennel fronds and small purple flowers.

There are few happier occasions in the life of the food-focused than when a first bite of something seemingly familiar transcends all expectation. I did not know that a construct called “carrot cake” could be this lush, this intricate, this dense with pleasure.

A slice of carrot cake made by Hannah Ziskin, pastry chef and co-owner of Quarter Sheets in Echo Park.

(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)

Ziskin had folded apple butter into gingery, peppery spice cake batter to boost moisture and acidity. Lacquers of roasted pecan caramel scented with orange blossom water added sneaky complexity. Thick, improbably light tiers of cream cheese mousse — technically a sabayon of cream cheese, labneh and whipped crème fraîche with dashes of salt and malic acid — stretched its buttercream-covered layers to nearly 5 inches tall.

I had thought of myself, dessert-wise, as a pie person. Now I think of myself as a pie and Hannah-Ziskin-cake person.

Since opening the Echo Park restaurant, which landed on the 101 Best Restaurants in L.A. guide last year, she makes her now-signature sweet usually in two forms. The princess cake takes its cues from the traditional domed Swedish torte. Ziskin makes hers with olive oil chiffon cake; extra-bright raspberry preserves; billows of pastry cream and whipped cream; and a pale green marzipan shell. An L.A. native, she grew up with princess cakes on her birthdays purchased from the Viktor Benes bakeries inside Gelson’s Markets. Friends’ kids love Ziskin’s version. Adults too.

If slices of princess cake nod to sentiment, the Quarter Sheets slab cake is arguably anti-nostalgia. It hues to the philosophical structure described in the carrot cake — fluffy layers, maximalist fillings, big flavors — but it doesn’t stay still. It changes weekly with the California seasons and the whims of a California chef. It is more custardy than cakey. It delights, but its acidic-creamy-savory extremes might challenge too.

Following both Quarter Sheets and Ziskin on Instagram gives you a sense of her combinations. One that lives in my mind as quintessential: polenta chiffon with sweet corn custard, fresh and preserved blackberries and wildflower honey. A duo of blood orange and strawberry is perennial during the winter-spring cusp. Shah mentioned another favorite that leads to actual fork clashes in my household: a wink at pudding dirt cups that involves light cocoa chiffon (always a chiffon!), chocolate Bavarian cream, roasted black cherries, crumbled cookie and, as a substitute for gummy worms, wiggly strips of candied citrus peel.

L.A.’s first couple of carbs: Quarters Sheets chef-owners Aaron Lindell and Hannah Ziskin. He’s the pizza whiz, she’s the cake genius.

(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

A caution: The cake can sell out quickly, so go early or reserve a slice on Tock when Quarter Sheets opens preorders at 10 a.m., Wednesday to Sunday. The restaurant might be especially busy this weekend: Tejal Rao singled out Quarter Sheets, along with Perilla L.A. and Yess, on the New York Times’ annual “Restaurant List” this week. I mean, both the cake and the pizza are exceptional.

Also, if you’re eating in the tiny dining room, ask for a slice — or for both slices of the slab and princess cake — at the beginning of the meal. The cake is best at room temperature. I’m usually so full from pizza that I take cake home and then polish it off an hour later in its ideal state.

Mounting accolades mean that Ziskin is away from the restaurant more these days. She is passing along her secrets to Krista Hernandez, who fashioned a superb slab from olive oil chiffon, white nectarine jam and custard flavored with lemon verbena and Meyer lemon last week while Ziskin was in New York celebrating her Food & Wine win. She’s back, and this weekend’s slab is giving peach Melba vibes: olive oil chiffon, peach preserves, fresh raspberries, verbena-yogurt mousse, vanilla Chantilly.

The calendar may tell us autumn has arrived, but Ziskin’s cake is the true almanac. At Quarter Sheets, summer endures.

Last chance for L.A. Food Bowl tickets

The finale weekend of the L.A. Food Bowl is here, and as of writing tickets remain for the backlot brunch happening tomorrow, Sept. 24. The lineup includes food from Bridgetown Roti, Heritage Barbecue, Mozza Restaurant Group, La Sorted’s Pizza (a new favorite!) and dozens more.

Also ...

• Speaking of Perilla L.A.: My review this week breaks down why Jihee Him’s long-awaited shop at the edge of Echo Park is banchan heaven.
  
• Cindy Carcamo reports that a second hostess who worked at Nobu in Malibu has filed a lawsuit against the popular restaurant and a former supervisor, alleging sexual assault, sexual harassment and discrimination. Stephanie Breijo and Cindy reported on the first lawsuit filed last week against the restaurant, alleging that the unnamed plaintiff had been harassed by a manager and customers at the famed celebrity haunt.
  
• Stephanie also writes about the imperiled future of family-run Japanese restaurant Suehiro Café, which is facing eviction from its landlord in gentrifying Little Tokyo.
  
• Betty Hallock and Julie Wolfson share details on a hidden coffee omakase pop-up with a 40-day run, beginning Sept. 27, overseen by Blue Bottle founder James Freeman.

Jihee Kim outside her new restaurant and takeout shop, Perilla L.A.

(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)