There are still mornings that I wake up with a Manna Cafe and Bakery delicacy on my mind. The blueberry cheese danish. The chocolate croissant with its perfect M scrolled on top. The sticky bun. Delicious buttery morsels I treated myself to starting in high school, when my now-husband worked there chopping melons and cracking eggs four at a time.
For those of us devastated by the cafe’s closure last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there’s a chance to recreate some of those memories in our own kitchens, thanks to Barb Pratzel and her much-anticipated cookbook.
Manna Cafe and Bakery Cookbook: A Memoir of Two Businesses, A Community, and The Food That Connected Them starts with 65 pages of memoir followed by 280 pages of Manna-famous recipes, with step-by-step instructions.
Pratzel and her husband, Michael, had previously operated the Collins House Bed and Breakfast until 2005, when the couple closed it and opened Manna. For Pratzel, the cookbook provided closure for a less-than-ideal end to the business after 15 years.
“On the one hand, you’re sort of relieved to not have to fight the pandemic battle, and on the other hand, terribly saddened that all these people aren’t going to have that thing that they want to get every day,” Praztel says. A cookbook seemed like an obvious next step, becoming “the perfect period at the end of the sentence.”
But translating hundreds of restaurant recipes into easy-to-understand directions for home cooks was a tall task.
Pratzel enlisted the help of some 18 recipe testers. Every month she sent five recipes to each tester, and each recipe was tested by at least two testers. They documented their culinary adventures with photos, lending insight to how to better describe a recipe so it turned out just right.
“In the back of my mind, I wanted people who have never really done much cooking, but weren’t afraid to try, to succeed with any recipe in the book. Even the difficult ones,” Pratzel says.
If you’re up for the challenge — which Pratzel hopes you are — try the croissant recipe, which she says is one of the most difficult.
“I’m not a great croissant maker myself. So if I follow my instructions really carefully and take my time, I can do a good job and make them beautiful,” she says. “I did a trial batch for picture-taking purposes and they turned out so incredibly fabulous. I thought, ‘Oh gosh, I hope some people try this.’”
Other recipes include the oatcakes, eggs benedict and the beloved Manna quiche.
“I actually don’t think [the quiche is] the hardest recipe — I just think it has the most parts and is the most time-consuming recipe. And you have to be ambitious to do that,” Pratzel says.
Whether in person or through a book, Pratzel gets joy from connecting with people through food. “Seeing the joy that people get in a piece of food…that is my tagline. And it’s stupid, and corny and trite. And yet, it really sums up what I like to think of as my legacy.” Her cookbook is just the next step in that legacy.
A book launch and signing is set for Oct. 21 at the Goodman Community Center. The book can also be ordered online from Little Creek Press. n
