Baking Recipes

Prep 20min Cook 22min 6 servings

Apple Turnover

Folded into triangles, these turnovers carry on a medieval European habit of baking fruit in pastry, and by the 17th century they were sold as hand-held snacks at French and English market stalls. The apples are cooked down in a pan first with butter, sugar and cinnamon, so they enter the oven already soft and jammy rather than raw and wet. Heat turns the moisture between the puff pastry layers into steam that pushes them apart, and the egg wash gives the top a lacquered, deep golden finish. The shattering crust is at its best in the first few minutes out of the oven.

Prep 90min Cook 20min 8 servings

Baba au Rhum (French Rum-Soaked Yeast Cake)

Rum leads the flavor here rather than hiding in the background: the baked cakes sit in a syrup made with 100ml of it until they are soaked through to the center. A dough rich in butter and eggs bakes into an open, porous crumb, and those pockets are what drink up the syrup. Fully soaked, each cake swells to nearly twice its size. Legend credits the Polish king Stanislaw with soaking a dry kugelhopf in rum; the idea traveled through Naples to Paris, where pastry cooks gave it the small cylindrical shape. Each bite squeezes warm syrup out of the crumb.

Prep 30min Cook 25min 2 servings

French Baguette

With only flour, water, yeast and salt in the bowl, nothing but handling decides how a baguette turns out. Two stretch-and-folds during the first rise build strength, and shaping without pressing out all the gas leaves irregular open holes in the crumb. The slashes guide where the loaf bursts in the oven, so they need one quick, confident stroke of the blade. The crust softens as it sits, which makes this a bread for the day it is baked.

Prep 40min Cook 5min 8 servings

Baked Alaska

Whipped full of air, the meringue works as insulation, keeping a hot 230°C oven from reaching the ice cream inside. The whole thing spends only a few minutes in the heat, just long enough to brown the swirled peaks. Vanilla extract beaten into the meringue warms in that short bake and comes through as aroma. Cut it open and the face shows three layers at once: toasted meringue, cold vanilla ice cream and soft sponge.

Prep 30min Cook 40min 4 servings

Baklava

Sheets of buttered phyllo enclose two layers of walnuts and pistachios scented with cinnamon in this Turkish and Middle Eastern pastry, and a hot honey syrup goes over the pan once it leaves the oven. Over the next few hours the pastry absorbs it, staying crisp on top while turning moist and sticky below. Its sweetness is strong enough that baklava is cut into small diamonds and usually served with unsweetened Turkish coffee or bitter tea. Stored airtight at room temperature, it keeps for over a week, and some regions add rose water or orange blossom water to the syrup.

Prep 35min Cook 24min 6 servings

Korean Chestnut Pie

Bite in and a whole cooked chestnut sits firm inside smooth chestnut paste. The paste is boiled chestnuts warmed with milk, light brown sugar and butter and then blended, and it goes between two squares of puff pastry along with the whole nut.

Prep 15min Cook 60min 1 serving

Banana Bread

With baking soda doing the lifting, the batter goes into the pan as soon as it is mixed, with no rise to wait for. Three mashed bananas supply most of the moisture and sweetness, with melted butter and an egg making the crumb dense and tender. Baking it a day ahead costs nothing: the banana flavor gets stronger overnight and the loaf stays moist once cool. Walnuts or chocolate chips can be folded in for texture.

Prep 15min Cook 50min 4 servings

Banana Walnut Bread

The coarsely chopped walnuts are toasted in a pan before they go in, so they come through as distinct nutty pieces in the moist banana crumb. Only half a teaspoon of cinnamon is used, not enough to cover the banana.

Prep 30min Cook 35min 4 servings

Basbousa (Middle Eastern Semolina Syrup-Soaked Cake)

Semolina makes up the batter, so each bite has a slightly coarse, sandy grain. Before baking, the top is scored into diamonds and an almond is pressed into each one. The lemony syrup goes on the moment the cake comes out of the oven.

Prep 20min Cook 35min 8 servings

Basque Burnt Cheesecake

No crust goes into the pan, only a tall collar of parchment, and the batter bakes at 230°C until the top turns deep brown with a bitter caramel smell. After four hours or more in the fridge the cake is firm, and a while at room temperature before serving brings the center back to soft and creamy.

Prep 30min Cook 25min 4 servings

Beef Empanadas

The batch makes 12 small half-moon pastries, each one sized for a single hand. The filling is ground beef cooked with onion and sweet pepper and seasoned with tomato paste and cumin. Spooning off the leftover fat and letting the filling cool completely keeps the inside of the baked pastry from turning greasy or weak.

Prep 130min Cook 60min 4 servings

Beef Wellington

The tenderloin is brushed with Dijon mustard, wrapped in finely chopped sauteed mushrooms and prosciutto, then wrapped again in puff pastry. The mushrooms cook until nothing pools in the pan, and they and the beef must be cold through before wrapping, or the pastry base turns soggy. It comes out when a thermometer pushed in from the side reads 63 degrees at the center of the meat, whatever the color of the crust.

Prep 20min Cook 45min 8 servings

Beet Chocolate Cake

The moisture in beet puree is what makes this dark chocolate cake heavy and damp. That is also why it should never bake until it looks dry; it comes out as soon as a skewer in the center shows no wet batter.

Prep 30min Cook 15min 4 servings

Beignet (New Orleans Square Fried Dough with Powdered Sugar)

In New Orleans the beignet is a doughnut with no hole: yeast dough cut into squares and fried. Milk, egg and butter let it puff up soft and bready in the oil, and the heap of powdered sugar shaken on straight away melts a little into the warm surface and clings.

Prep 45min Cook 27min 12 servings

Benne Wafers

Spooned mounds of batter spread wide in the oven into thin wafers, with enough toasted sesame that nuttiness and brown-sugar sweetness come first. Right out of the oven they are fragile; a minute or two on the pan firms them enough for a wide spatula, and the thin edges crisp only once fully cool. Shallow layers in an airtight container keep them whole.

Prep 830min Cook 30min 6 servings

Bialys

The center is pressed into a thin well rather than punched through like a bagel, and a spoonful of cooked onion goes into it. Bialys are never boiled, which leaves a thick, chewy rim around a thin middle. A very small amount of yeast and a 12-hour cold rise mean starting the day before. Raw onion would leak water, and a center that is not stretched thin puffs up in the oven and erases the well. Day-old bialys revive when split and toasted.

Prep 185min Cook 28min 4 servings

Bienenstich (German Bee Sting Cake) with Vanilla Cream

A topping of butter, honey and sugar boiled together with sliced almonds bakes right on the yeast dough of this German cake, and once cool the round is split crosswise and filled with vanilla cream. The cream is not just whipped cream: it is built on a no-cook instant vanilla pudding mix with milk and gelatin. Pudding powder meant for cooking cannot go into it as is.

Prep 90min Cook 25min 12 servings

Black and White Cookies

Soft, cakey rounds get vanilla icing on one half and chocolate on the other, spread on the flat underside that touched the pan so the dividing line stays straight. Any warmth left in the cookies makes the two colors run together.

Prep 35min Cook 30min 4 servings

Black Forest Cake

Cocoa sponge is layered with cherry compote and whipped cream, then coated thinly in cream and topped with grated dark chocolate. There is no butter in the sponge; it rises only on eggs and sugar whipped to about three times their volume.

Prep 15min Cook 22min 4 servings

Black Rice Coconut Muffins

Black rice flour turns these muffins a deep purple and adds a toasty, nutty grain flavor that coconut then sweetens. Coconut milk and neutral oil stand in for dairy and butter, which keeps the crumb soft even after the muffins have cooled completely.

Prep 30min Cook 32min 4 servings

Black Rice Cream Cheese Tart

Sifted black rice flour turns the cream cheese filling pale lilac and leaves a toasty grain flavor behind the tang of the cheese. Chilled and sliced, the lilac filling sits in a clean line against the shell.

Prep 20min Cook 22min 4 servings

Black Rice Black Sesame Muffins

Black rice flour tints these muffins grey-purple inside, and toasted black sesame seeds, left whole, are scattered all through the crumb, popping as you chew.