Growing up in Los Angeles, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Jake Gyllenhaal would sometimes come home to a flurry of baked goods, baked by their mother, the screenwriter Naomi Foner. (According to Jake, it was a bit of a procrastination tactic.)
The siblings worked together on “The Bride!,” a film written and directed by Ms. Gyllenhaal with Mr. Gyllenhaal appearing alongside the leads Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale. While promoting the film, the Gyllenhaals stopped by the New York Times studio kitchen to share one of their childhood procrastibakes, a banana bread recipe adapted over the years.
Watch the full video below (or on YouTube) to see them make the recipe, and read ahead for excerpts from the interview and the outtakes, which have been edited and condensed.
Maggie Gyllenhaal and Jake Gyllenhaal make a family recipe for banana bread.Credit…Victoria Chen
So this is your mom’s recipe, can you just tell us more about it?
JAKE GYLLENHAAL It was taken from a cookbook, like this Sunbeam cookbook. But the thing that makes it really special is that all of the measurements have gotten fudged and messed up and rewritten by hand by our mother, who got a number of the measurements not right. So you know people talk about how their parents have, like, their special recipe? Ours was just done by accident. Our mother’s a writer — I think that’s how Maggie inherited the brilliance of her writing skills — and I always remember when my mom was starting writing something, we’d come home from school and there’d be, like, all these baked goods.
MAGGIE GYLLENHAAL Oh, really? Like, you think she was procrastinating?
JAKE Big time.
[Maggie laughs]
JAKE She had an assignment, and then it was, like, 14 banana breads.
Growing up, between your parents, who was more of the cook?
JAKE They both did different things. You know, my mom really loved fresh vegetables, and she made these beautiful salads. And my dad was a little bit more baroque in his style.
MAGGIE They did something that I hate. Which is that they would have dinner parties and they’d be still cooking and in the middle of a complicated recipe when there were people over. And that really stresses me out. I like the vibe, and I wish I could do it, but I like to cook something that’s kind of set. And all I have to do is kind of dress the salad.
Do you ever cook together?
MAGGIE Yeah, we cooked osso buco together. We live closer to each other now, so there’s more opportunity to cook together.
JAKE The past three years, Maggie’s been super busy, particularly in holidays because she’s had this movie. She wrote the script and was totally consumed with making it, and the whole process takes so long. So the responsibility has been put on me.
MAGGIE Although I made osso buco!
Maggie Gyllenhaal directed her brother, Jake, in her film “The Bride!”Credit…Taylor Miller for The New York Times
Can you, Maggie, tell us about the moment you asked Jake to be in the film?
MAGGIE I was doing a rewrite. I had taken a couple of days in a hotel by myself. The truth is, I always knew I wanted Jake to play Ronnie Reed, but I really just wanted to make sure it was the right thing for us because that was more important to me. I waited too long, I put it down to the wire before asking him. Finally had some time to really stop and think. And I was like, all right, I think it’s right. I’m going to do it.
And I called him and, I don’t know, were you thinking — was it a total surprise?
JAKE It was a total surprise. It’s one of those things. If you’re lucky enough to get a call from a filmmaker you deeply admire, and they say, “Hey, do you want to be in my movie?” — as a performer, it’s the thing that you dream about. When that person who you admire as a filmmaker happens to be your sister, it’s full of the depth of that love, and it’s also full of the complications of all of it. I immediately wanted to say yes, but I wanted to make sure that she knew and I knew that we were only approaching it with love.
Growing up, what were your biggest fights about?
MAGGIE He bit me!
JAKE You stuck a straw down my throat!
[both laugh]
JAKE Generally, it was just me being a younger sibling and being annoying and her not wanting me to be in the room.
MAGGIE He was wild.
JAKE Yeah, I was hyperactive.
What’s a dish that takes your back to your childhood?
MAGGIE I have one, it’s weird. My mom used to buy frozen kasha varnishkes. It’s basically bow-tie pasta with buckwheat groats. She used to buy it frozen in these little plastic bags, and then we used to put them in boiling water. We went to Russ & Daughters, which we love, and they had kasha varnishkes. I was like, “Oh my God I’m totally getting that, I love that.” And it was probably, technically, a hundred million times better than the frozen version that I grew up with, but I prefer mine. I prefer the memory of the old one. I wonder if people still make that.
JAKE S & P has a really good kasha varnishkes.
MAGGIE I miss it.
JAKE My mom would get two things: alligator [pastry], it has pecans and has brown sugar, and it’s very sweet. That and Entenmann’s dark chocolate doughnuts.
MAGGIE The yellow cake.
JAKE I would come home from school and, if it was there, I would take like four doughnuts and a glass of milk and I would break them in half and I would dunk them into the thing and would eat them.
MAGGIE That’s so Jake.
If you were a food dish, what would you be? Can you answer for each other?
MAGGIE I think you would be that chocolate Entenmann’s yellow cake doughnut.
JAKE Wow, OK.
MAGGIE It’s so …
JAKE Waxy.
MAGGIE No! That chocolate is amazing. Not now. But this is, like, from the mid-80s.
JAKE Oh, cool. I am from there, so there you go.
MAGGIE You are!
JAKE You would be a farro salad.
[Maggie swears and laughs]
JAKE I knew that would get her! In all honesty, my sister fits in no category and makes and creates things that fit in no category. And that is why she is who she is and why I love her and why so many other people love her and why I’ve looked up to her since I was a little kid. So I guess I’m an Entenmann’s doughnut.
Follow New York Times Cooking on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Pinterest. Get regular updates from New York Times Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice.
