How to Cook a Kid-Friendly, Tasty Treat with Chef Bill Corbett | B-Well Together | Salesforce

Hello everyone and welcome to week 17 of Be well Together. I'm Jeffrey Huang, senior manager of Employee engagement and events and I'll be your host today as both Jodi and Kathryn are each prioritizing their well being and taking some much needed pto. And they left me a note to tell you all to do the same. Yes, yes, you. Anyway, I'm super excited for today's guest and topic. Like many of you, I've spent a lot of time cooking and baking at home during the quarantine. But unless you got on the peloton bandwagon, you might also be exercising less. Well, today we're in luck because Bill Corbett, executive chef and head culinary at Salesforce, is joining us once again. This time to show us a delicious blueberry muffin recipe with a healthy, unexpected addition. Spinach. Spinach is one of my favorite greens because it's so versatile. It's great in a salad, but you can put it in just about anything from smoothies to an egg scramble to pasta dishes. It's a staple in my fridge. And I'm told that Chef Bill's spinach and blueberry muffins are called green goblins because they've got greens and they're so good you'll be gobbling them down. For those of you who don't know Chef Bill Corbett, he's a renowned pastry chef and was recognized as the best pastry chef 2011 from San Francisco magazine. And in 2013, he was selected as one of the top 10 pastry chefs in America by Dessert Professional magazine. Prior to Salesforce, Chef Bill spent time at Manhattan's wd50, San Francisco's Michael Minna 2, Michelin star Qua, and the Absinthe Group, among other leading restaurants. So if you weren't hungry before, I hope you are now because we are going to get baking. And in case you missed it, the ingredients were posted in the Can't Be well chatter group, so please feel free to refer to those during this session. Also, we'll be taking a few questions throughout, so if you have those questions, you can feel free to post those in the chatter group as well. And lastly, before I turn it over to Chef Bill, I want to give a quick shout out to all the Salesforce kids tuning in this week as part of Salesforce Adventurers Club, our virtual bring your kids to work experience that's taking place right now this week. So kids, if you're dialed in, put on your aprons and let's get baking. Chef Bill, welcome back to Be well Together. Action.

Lights, camera. Thanks thanks for having me. We're glad to be back. We've got Charlie back with us again from the first time. You ready?

Just before we start, I want to say something. We all gotta keep them separated, but I mean one. So I like my spinach muffins. Play with no blueberries. That's how I. That's how I kind of like. That's how I.

Should we get to making them? Should we get to talking about the muffins? Come on up. So, yeah, so we're gonna make some. I make this for Charlie a lot. We make these spinach muffins. He loves them. They're totally green, but when you eat them, you don't notice. Like it doesn't taste like a bunch of spinach in your muffin. Charlie, come on back up here. Come on. So, yeah, we. They're totally green. And you know, this is actually. The blueberries are a new addition we've wanted to add. So we're adding this and he's. He's saying he doesn't want it, but I think you'll like it. You want to make some muffins? Okay. Should we talk about the ingredients we have?

I think I'm going to let it down with my spinach muffins.

Okay, you're right. Yeah. Okay, well, let's focus on what we're talking about right now. Okay. So what are we going to do here? What do we got? We'll get some flour.

Flour.

Got my set up here too.

Okay. We've got some flour, some blueberries, obviously some cinnamon, baking powder and baking soda in here. We've got obviously a lot of spinach. Calls for 6 ounces of spinach. One of the easiest ways to get that is you can buy a clamshell, often in six ounce packages, or you can buy it in bulk and it's way cheaper probably. So we've got milk and honey. I kind of. I put them in the same container. I put the milk in first and then I measured in the honey and then it's easier to get it out.

Smart trick. Because it's always tough.

Yeah, I'll give you the trick. Yeah, yeah. The other trick to getting honey out is to spray it with a little cooking. Spray your container before you measure your honey in and then it just slides right out. Got a banana and some melted butter. Very important about bananas. A lot of people, when they look for bananas, they look for kind of very yellow bananas. When like spotted bananas like this, they kind of get here. Hold it up to the camera. Yeah. See the spotted Bananas are a little sweeter.

I do like to eat bananas.

You do like to eat bananas. So the spotted bananas are a little. They get sweeter as they get more. As they get darker, basically get more color on them. You could even like. If you literally have, like, black bananas, you could use those for this as well. They're gonna be fine in the recipe, like what you would use for banana bread. But it's really not so much about the banana, so you can really use anything. But I try to avoid ones that have green on them. Try to sneak in blueberries. So what we're gonna start with, we're gonna weigh our. I like to blend all our. It's gonna be really simple. It's a super simple recipe. We blend all the wet ingredients, including the spinach, together. All the wet ingredients. We just went over wet. Not wedding ingredients.

I gotta use a wedding.

Yeah, I didn't say wedding. Okay, so we're gonna sift our flour and our dries together. I threw the salt in the bottom of the bowl. The salt often doesn't sift well through strainers. It always gets left behind. And then you just basically gotta dump it in anyway. So I throw the sift. I threw the salt in the bottom. We've got our whole wheat flour. You want to put the cinnamon. Stop smeeling the blueberries. There won't be any muffins. Okay, you want to dump in your baking powder, baking soda and cinnamon right in there. Good job. Tap it.

All right.

See, I'm helping.

You are helping. You're always a good helper. Now we gotta sift this. I'm using two just because mine are a little like my sieve here, and the strainer is a little wide, the hole. So I'm using two to sort of double sift it at one time. One trick, too, is to measure right into your. Whatever you're sifting through. If you measure right into that, then you can. You know, you cut the step of measuring into something, then putting it in the sifter and sifting it.

And you've got.

You've got one of the pro sifters. Those work great. You can also just use, literally, a mesh strainer as well, if you want. All right, so we've got that. That's our dry ingredients. Let's set this over here for a second. Now we're going to put things in the blender. All right, so start with a banana. You want to peel the banana for them?

Yep. I want to put some television on my. I see this.

Oh, really?

Some Television.

Okay, we're gonna put the egg in the blender.

Let's do that first. Okay.

Doesn't matter what order it goes in. Just put in the spinach last.

Okay. And why are we putting in the spinach last?

You want to work these in.

There you go. Okay.

Oh, he's going to grab something, so. Oh, also, preheat your oven to 350 now.

So we got bananas in there. Okay. So we're putting the egg, the banana. Right. Like the honey, the milk. Yeah.

So the only thing you don't put in is the butter, the melted butter. Okay. That goes mixed in at the end just because if the butter's a little too warm, you could kind of curdle the egg. Oh, you got your blender. Oh, you're getting to work here.

All right.

You're gonna blend your own stuff. Okay. Charlie has other plans. Okay. All right, so we've got all that in there. I'm just gonna switch spots with your blender, Charlie.

Okay.

Bring this one over here.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

And then you probably won't be able to fit all the spinach in at once, so just put a bunch of it in, start the blender just to kind of blend it down a little. Yeah. Okay. And then you want to just get some of the spinach blended down, and then you can add the rest. You'll be able to add it all at the end there. Okay, you ready? You ready, Charlie? Yeah, yeah. You need earplugs? Okay, this is gonna get loud for one quick second.

All right, here we go.

The first set of spinach down and in there. And now I'm going to put in the rest of the spinach, and then I'll blend it more thoroughly. We don't want to blend it too long.

I'm going to put myself on.

The longer you blend this and the more aggressively, blenders actually heat things up quite a bit just from the friction, and you will end up with kind of dark. It'll turn it brown pretty quickly.

So.

So. So if you just. Yeah, there you go. All right. That's it. That's it. That's it for the blender. Okay, so get the spatula. Transfer this into your bowl. Nice. Green looks like almost like a very thin smoothie. As much as you can. Now what do you got?

Is this decently blended? There's still, like, little green chunks.

If there's bits of spinach in there, in the end, you want to them. And in the end, it's. You know, it doesn't really. Doesn't make too much of a difference. I'll let you through in one second.

Okay.

Hey, Charlie, we got a mix here. Come here. Come help me mix this.

Okay. Then I can eat my sprinkle.

You'll be able to try one from the demo. Yeah.

Okay, here's the whisk here.

You want to start whisking, so do this in about three stages. You don't want to over mix too much here. You want to see that. Here you do it.

Yeah.

Good job. All right, if you over mix it, it'll make the muffins tough, but let's get a little more in. And then when it's almost in, then we'll add the butter.

Okay. Ready? Mixer. Mixing it.

Yeah. You're doing great. All right.

Mix it away, the flour.

Okay, we have a little bit here.

And that's what's fun. You get to put flour on the table making Christmas cookies.

You're right.

And that's when it's fun to put flour on table.

It is. Okay, so now we're gonna scrape in this butter. This is melted, but it's not hot. You don't want it too hot. Or I'll start to kind of set off all the baking powder and baking soda as well as it could. Could kind of curdle some egg. So if you can melt it and just have it, liquid is best.

Yep.

Okay.

If you're melting the butter in the microwave like I usually do, you could probably just do it a little in advance and then let it cool a little bit.

Yeah, totally. Yeah. You could do it like, 10 second bursts, and then you'll be. It'll be yes.

What's his name again?

His name is Jeffrey.

Jeffrey. You might know how to put butter in microwave. Anything. You might not want to put anything in microwave, but microwaves aren't really good for cooking stuff.

What are you talking about? Charlie doesn't have a microwave, so he doesn't understand what you can do. You do have a toy one. You're right in your kitchen.

Like me, you're too lazy to melt butter over a stovetop. And you want to do it in 30 seconds in a microwave.

Exactly. Okay. You want to put the blueberries in Charlie. So now we mix it. It's almost mixed. I can see a little bit of butter. You might not be able to see that on the camera. Okay, throw it all in. You can put them all in at once if you want to. Just dump it. You just want to add a few at a time. Don't want to lose them. Let Me pull your sleeves up too, so you don't get muffins.

Blueberries.

Yeah, you can go ahead here. You're okay. All right. So while Charlie puts all the blueberries very slowly into the batter. We gotta get them in a little bit because we gotta mix it. You want to do it? Okay, go for it. Dump them. Charlie has his own methods here, so this will kill time. We'll have a.

Now I'll leave one for myself.

All right, you'll leave one for yourself. Trying to be sneaky. You better get one before I mix it in. All right, so now I'm just trying to gently fold, not kind of beat the batter up too much. Again. The more you beat it up, the more you know it's going to be tough and less tender.

Okay, what's his name again?

Jeffrey.

Jeffrey. You might see tiny bit. You might see round spinach. You might see the rounds end. You might see, like just green mountains. You might see just green mountain stuff or draw the blueberries, but you might see a tiny bit of the blueberries peeking out too.

That looks great.

How's that look? That looks great.

All right, muffin tin. And then I pre sprayed mine with a little cooking spray. Charlie already knows what the next step is, so. Can do it. Turn it over.

Phil, what's your take on cooking spray versus, like the little paper muffin things?

You know, I just feel like it's like if you get decent cooking tins that it's not going to stick so much, then you can. Then you can avoid just having that extra paper in the waste. I think, you know, for me, I found really a need for it with.

If you have.

If you have tins that'll. Muffin tins that'll kind of release easily. There you go. Good job. All right, so then. And then we like to use an ice cream scoop, like one of these disher scoops. You don't have to have it. You can do. You know, you can have a little taste.

Maybe a measuring cup.

Yeah, that'll work. Anything you can pour out of. Some people like to use. Even like in our kitchen, sometimes you'll see people with pitchers pouring it or pastry bags. The thing I like about the disher scoop is that you can get a kind of consistent amount in each one. And then don't lick that. Don't lick the scoop here. No, no, don't lick the scoop. Come on. You want to keep scooping?

Yep. Can you see the little blueberry peeking out?

I can see the blueberry peeking out, but yeah, the disher Scoops just give more consistency. And those are also your best friend when you're making cookies and you want to scoop the batter, maybe freeze it, you'll get consistent.

Yeah. Cause I like my dad's poodle cake.

Yeah, you made me a poodle cake? They made me a poodle cake for my birthday. We have an inside joke in the family about no poodles in the kitchen. So they made me a poodle cake and the poodle was in the kitchen. Charlie thought it was the most hilarious thing he's ever seen.

Would dad move the poodle? And she goes and teaches them, which. That is okay because C is a normal. Yeah, because he's normal. Because he's normal. Extraordinary. White poodle.

Okay.

And that is okay for white.

Uh huh.

Hey, why do you turn it that way?

I turned it for you so it's easier to reach. Good job, Charlie.

I'm working all by myself.

You are, you're doing great. That's okay.

So, Bill, where did the inspiration to add spinach into blueberry muffins?

So when we. Charlie's our first son, we have another baby who's about seven months old now. Carrie, my wife, was just looking for sort of healthy recipes on the Internet and came across one that used spinach. So I just kind of played with it and it came out great. Carrie likes them, Charlie likes them. They're good muffins. And then we usually make. We'll make this tray and then any leftover batter we make in a mini muffin tray. And then we just freeze all the excess and we kind of pull them out a few at a time. So great. You know, you don't have to eat 12 muffins within two days kind of thing. You know, if you figure out how many you want to keep it. You want me to do it? If you figure out how many you want to kind of have on hand, you know, keep those up, you know, Finish that one.

Okay.

Finish that one. So yeah, and then, you know, we just leave out, you know, three or four. And you finish that one too. Okay. You just tell me what I need to do, pal. Finish this one now. Okay. Now where you want me to go?

Over up here?

Up there.

Okay.

Right by that dock.

Right by the dock. Okay. So yeah, so we usually keep out like four or five. And then we'll freeze the rest and pull them out over the next week or two. They'll last a couple weeks in the freezer. Really? Well, if you let them go too long, they kind of get like dried out a little bit.

Yeah. What's the best way to like reheat the frozen. Just let them thaw on the countertop.

I would just, you know, pull them out and throw them in kind of another container. And then so let them thaw in the container. And then when you go to reheat them, I usually just throw them in like the toaster oven for a few minutes and then get them warm again. And then, you know, then they're pretty nice and soft. Hey, Charlie, what are you doing over there?

You can.

Yeah, we're gonna bring those up in one minute.

Yeah, I wanna eat these spinach muffins that we made in this demo.

We'll eat these, don't worry. These are all for you, pal. We got like, we have a lot of spinach muffins now. We'll make two batches. Okay, so there's our first batch. Right. So we'll set our batter aside. So. And then I just gently shake it down, usually give it a little tap to kind of knock out any air bubbles that might be in there. And then we're gonna bake these at 350. Calm down then. Wait, wait, we're trying to talk. We gotta talk. Gonna bake these at 350, probably for about 15 or so minutes. I usually start checking them after 8 or 9 just to be safe. They almost are never, they'll never be done, but just to be safe. And then I'll check them again. I check them around eight or nine minutes and I'll check them every four minutes after that until they're done. If you've got a cake tester or a paring knife, you can just slide it in and if it comes out clean, obviously there might be blueberry on it, but if none of the raw batter is coming back out on it, then they should be done. And then we'll pop them out. We pre baked some mini ones this morning. Once they come out, they look like, you know, they look like that.

Wow. Yum.

And when you cut them open. Well, Charlie's just gonna eat one right away. You go ahead. Well, we're gonna. We gotta bake this though. It's gonna be about 20 minutes before you can eat those. So you can have one. Yeah, you can have that one.

So.

Yeah. And that's it.

It's pretty sweet. The other one, Another one for the. After I eat it.

Oh, really?

You're just gonna eat a lot of muffins today? Is that your big plan? I see, how is it?

That's what it looks like inside.

You want to hold it up to the camera so you can see what it looks like on the inside.

It looks like. It doesn't really look like all blueberries. It just looks like all spinach muffins. It just looks like all spinach muffins inside.

Yeah. So what do you think now that we put blueberries in it? Do you say yes or no? Keep the blueberries or get rid of the blueberries?

Yes, keep them. Yeah.

All right, so he's. Charlie's a convert now. Yeah. So that's really.

It.

Super simple. They're really moist because of all the banana. The honey and the spinach actually provides a ton of moisture because there's so much water content in spinach. So. Yeah, so those are it. Blueberry spinach muffins. We'll call them Green Goblin muffins. Charlie disagreed with the name as well. He had a lot of editing to do with. He didn't. He didn't. He thought it was too spooky. You like the name now? Green Goblin Muffins.

Yeah.

You do? So that's all right.

Okay, so we'll keep them. We'll keep today.

Oh, yes.

Charlie wanted to make Halloween decorations this week, so. So we make some. So yours will come out probably about 15, 20 minutes. Jeffrey.

Yeah. Okay. I'm just setting my timer on my watch right now.

Does he speak French? I don't know if he speaks French or not.

Do you think he speaks French?

Ouija par le peu de francais etois.

He just said he speaks a little French. Charlie likes. He's fascinated with French lately, so. All right, all right, enough of that.

So chef Bill adding spinach into muffins is obviously a great way to get more greens into, you know, these little recipes and sneak them into kids diets. Do you have any other tips for those parents watching this week? Any other veggies that you can sneak in somewhere? I think it's you.

Okay, you can have that one and then that's it. Yeah, yeah. There's other things you could do. Like a great one is actually sweet potato into kind of Mac and cheese. Like, you know, you make your Mac and cheese sauce and fold into sweet potato and it's, you know, it's already. Well, yam, really. It's the orange one. You could even do white sweet potato. You make like a puree and then fold that in. It's a way to sneak in some vegetables there. Yeah, we go through a ton of spinach in our house with. With Charlie especially. We kind of. I mix it in everywhere and pastas and also the other go to is frozen peas. Like, literally have, like, frozen peas on hands at all times and throw them into anything with noodles. I'll throw them into, you know, into little burritos and things like that just to get him, you know, more vegetables. But he's honestly, Charlie's. We're pretty lucky. He eats a lot of vegetables. He's pretty open to eating almost anything. What would you like me to do with this? You trying to get me to pop out more muffins?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I'm gonna leave those ones in until we're done here, because I think you've had enough.

No, I haven't.

She's like, nope, not. Not done yet. There's still more here to eat.

All right. Okay. We're really not having another muffin right now. You can have another one later today for your snack.

Okay. Sound good?

Oh, it's hard, though.

Hey, Charlie, what's your favorite vegetable?

What's your favorite vegetable?

Carrots or lettuce? Tomatoes. What do you like?

Don't say that. What's your favorite vegetable do you like? Carrots. What kind of carrots do you like?

Maybe I should try.

What kind of carrots?

Yes.

Honey carrots. He likes honey carrots a lot. I'll just, like, kind of pan roast carrots until they get almost. Until they get tender, throw them in the oven, finish them off in the oven, and then when I take them out, I'll just glaze them with a drizzle of honey.

Yum.

Then he's sold on.

Yes.

Yes.

Definitely not right now. I'm gonna have one in a minute. You can pop one out, but I'm gonna have it in a minute.

Okay. Yeah.

But he's really, you know, what's your favorite food that you miss right now that we're at home all the time? What do you like to get at the farmer's market? What do you like to get?

Steam bun.

Yeah. There's a dim sum vendor at the farmer's market near us that he loves the steam bun, so.

Oh, gosh, I miss Sunday dim sum.

Thank you, Charlie.

Yes, indeed. Chef Bell, is there, like, a recipe that you've been cooking a lot during COVID or what's your favorite? Like, go to recipe right now.

Trying to think what we've been doing. Honestly, Too many burgers, probably. Veggie burgers.

Yep. Too many burgers.

Okay, stop doing that, because you're gonna ruin the muffins. You can't just jam in there. I'm gonna have it in a minute. We're talking right now. I want to talk with a mouthful. We've been doing kind of either spaghetti or bucatini with, like, just a ton of spring vegetables right now because everything's in season. You know, like zucchini. We'll throw in peas, zucchini, asparagus, and maybe some broccoli. And I'll just sweat all that down in just some nice olive oil. And then. And then we'll just kind of add some garlic and onion, and then just toss that into some noodles. And that is like, right now, that seems to be like a go to dinner quickly a lot, but it's a lot of vegetables, so it's great. And then we'll make, like, a sauce. My wife is trying to avoid dairy right now just because we think our baby might be sort of slightly averse to dairy because he's just spitting up a bunch. So we're making, like, a sauce with white beans, nutritional yeast and stock, and some lemon juice. So it's a really lemony, almost cheese. I love you too. You can't have that right now. It's almost like a. It's another healthy way to make sort of a cheesy sauce, but it's like pureed beans with nutritional yeast and lemon juice and stock. And some garlic.

Yeah. Great way to add some additional fiber into the diet.

Yeah. So we'll, like, fold that over, and it just gives it a slight creaminess. We don't, like, drench it in that, but it just makes, like, a nice little coating sauce. So that's been a go to. And honestly, lately I've been loving eating the leftover spaghetti cold. Like the noodles, basically, with the vegetables and olive oil. It's cold. It's really. We live in Oakland, and it gets pretty hot here.

Yeah. During the hot summer months.

We used to live in an old house with poor insulation, so it's really hot in our house a lot. So, yeah, like, cold noodles are great for me.

That sounds so good. And it looks like we're starting to run short on time here. But I just wanted to ask you one last question, because during COVID and during quarantine, a lot of these restaurants, hospitality industries, have really been hit hard, you know. What's your, like, top tip on how to support those local restaurants right now?

If you can order to go from them, buy gift certificates. A lot of them are doing really great takeout programs. Some of them are doing meal kits. If you can do those types of things, it's really, really helpful. No, we can't have another one right now. Put it down, please. Yeah, they've. It's.

It's.

You know, everyone's been hit really, really hard in the restaurant industry.

Yeah.

So, yeah, just doing, you know, as much of that. Some. Some restaurants are doing even sort of like, CSA programs. I know La Cochina in San Francisco is doing a really great kind of meal kit you can purchase every month, and you can freeze a bunch of the items. So it's for $100, you get, I think, nine different items that feed two to three people each.

So, like, such a great program, too.

Yeah.

In the Bay Area.

So you're supporting a bunch of their vendors in one shot by doing that, which is great. Yeah, there's just. There's. There's a lot, and I think just kind of any little ways you can funnel your spending dollars to the restaurants. I think it, you know, gives them hope of being able to reopen when this is done in full capacity, but. Okay, that's enough of that.

Thank you, Chef Bill.

Thank you, Charlie.

It looks like we're out of time. I've got another.

Five minutes or so.

On my blueberry muffins.

I can't wait for them to come out. Blueberry, not berry. Thank you so much, Jeffrey. Thanks, everybody.

And for those of you dialed online, remember to be happy, be healthy, and be well. Bye, everyone.

Bye.