301 recipes. Page 12 of 13
Bread, cookie, and cake baking recipes
Under a mayonnaise and Parmesan lid, the tomato layer stays soft and juicy rather than setting like a quiche, since no eggs bind it. The usual failure is a soggy base: even a blind-baked shell cannot absorb unlimited tomato juice, so salting and blotting the slices matters as much as the pastry step.
Layers of buttered phyllo bake into sheets that shatter at the touch of a fork, around a filling of spinach with salty feta and dill. Most of the effort goes into the spinach, which is cooked until no water pools in the pan.
Rice flour and almond flour make up the dough, and the bars break apart lightly in the mouth, with bits of chopped walnut throughout. For more crunch, turn the oven off once they are baked and leave them inside with the door ajar for another 5 minutes. Cutting before they have cooled completely breaks the bars.
Mugwort powder and whole red beans are a pairing anyone who has been to a Korean rice cake shop will know; here they go into a muffin batter. The beans are folded in last with just a few strokes, so a split muffin shows them whole in the pale green crumb.
Chopped dates soaked at least 10 minutes in boiling water with baking soda are stirred into the batter liquid and all. The fruit and its soaking water make this British sponge moist and sweet. The brown-sugar toffee sauce is warmed again just before serving and poured over the pudding, and a scoop of vanilla ice cream sets cold cream against it.
In Germany this is the bread you slice a little at a time through the Christmas season, so it isn't eaten the day it's baked: it gets a thick coat of powdered sugar, is sealed, and rests at least a day first. Raisins soaked in rum or juice and almonds are packed into the buttery dough, and every slice shows a slightly different mix.
This is the shortcake you see in Japanese bakeries: three layers of airy sponge, raised only by whipped eggs, filled with cream and sliced strawberries. Pick out the best-looking berries for the top before you slice the rest.
Ham and low-moisture mozzarella are rolled up inside pizza dough, so each slice shows a spiral of bread and filling. No tomato sauce goes inside. Melted cheese does not mean it is done: if the dough in the middle is still damp, it needs more time, and 93°C at the center is the mark to aim for.
Dough temperature and thickness decide whether a cut-out shape survives the oven, so the dough chills for 2 hours and is rolled to 6 mm between parchment sheets instead of on a floured counter. With no icing, vanilla carries the flavor, and the cookies come out when the center loses its wet shine and the edges just begin to color.
Steamed sweet potatoes vary in how much water they hold, so part of the 90 ml of milk is held back and added 10 ml at a time until the batter drops slowly from the spatula. The fat is plain oil, which means no butter to melt or cream.
No tart pan is used: the dough is rolled into a round, topped with the filling, and its bare 4 cm border folded up over the edge. The filling combines steamed sweet potato, cream cheese, honey and cinnamon. A drier, chestnut-type sweet potato keeps the base from going soggy and bakes up crisper.
With no wheat flour, just tapioca starch scalded in hot milk and butter, these bake up stretchy and chewy like Brazilian pão de queijo, and the steamed sweet potato adds a gentle sweetness. Parmesan in the dough leaves a salty finish, so they eat more like bread than a sweet snack.
Skin-on sweet potato, cut into 1 cm cubes and glazed in butter, honey and sugar, goes half into the batter and half on top, and chunks of it show in every slice. Ground almonds and black sesame are mixed into the batter too. One 20 cm loaf pan makes a cake that cuts into eight pieces.
Cold, pea-size butter crumbs scattered over a moist sweet potato batter give this loaf its crunchy top. Keep the streusel chilled and sprinkle it on without pressing, so the clumps survive baking. The loaf bakes for 48-50 minutes and the top color runs ahead of the center, so a skewer that comes out free of wet batter is the better signal.
Frozen croissant dough is spread thinly with a paste of glutinous rice flour, milk and sugar, folded and pressed in a waffle iron. The flattened butter layers go crisp, and the rice paste makes the inside stickier and chewier than a plain croffle. Honey and a dusting of cinnamon finish it.
Pears fanned over almond frangipane, with small gaps left so the cream puffs up between the slices, make up this French tart. Fresh pears need slicing thin enough to cook through in the oven, while canned or poached ones must be drained of their syrup first.
Apples cook first in a butter-and-sugar caramel in an ovenproof pan, then bake under a sheet of pastry before the whole thing is flipped onto a plate, caramelized fruit on top. The apples are peeled, cut into thick pieces and packed upright in the pan with no gaps. After only 3 to 5 minutes out of the oven, a plate wider than the pan goes on top and both are turned over in one motion.
Small balls of butter dough get a shallow press from a thumb, and the dent becomes a cup for strawberry jam. Jam swells in the oven; each well gets only half.
Pork sausages roast first, then Yorkshire pudding batter is poured in around them and puffs up in the oven. It comes out with crisp brown edges rising high and the sausages set into a soft middle. Gravy goes alongside.
There is no butter in this cocoa loaf. Mashed soft tofu and grapeseed oil fill that role, and dark chocolate chips are folded through. Wet tofu can add 3 to 5 minutes in the oven, which is why it sits in a sieve for 5 minutes first.
Swiss chard in a sweet pie sounds unlikely, but the leaves are mixed with apple, rum-soaked raisins, pine nuts, and brown sugar under a double crust. A dusting of powdered sugar once the pie has cooled through makes it read as a dessert from the first look.
Golden syrup, coarse breadcrumbs and lemon make the filling of this British tart, sticky and deeply sweet. A little wobble in the center when it comes out is fine. The filling firms as it cools. Pull the tart once the top is lightly browned, and wait until it is completely cold before slicing.
Soaked in three milks (whole, condensed and evaporated), this Latin American cake is wet enough that a little milk seeps onto the plate when you cut it, yet the whipped-egg sponge keeps its shape. It is usually served cold, after a night in the fridge.
A Greek pastry: phyllo folded into triangular cones, baked hollow, soaked in cooled syrup and filled with cold custard. Fourteen sheets of phyllo make 42 small cones. Each cone bakes with a crumpled piece of parchment inside so the opening stays wide.