301 recipes. Page 3 of 13
Bread, cookie, and cake baking recipes
Black sesame paste is stirred into a dark chocolate batter for these dense, fudgy brownies, and its nutty flavor stays on well after the chocolate. The paste goes in only once the eggs are fully mixed, so it spreads through the batter instead of clumping in one spot.
Each piece stands cut side up in a muffin tin, so a dark spiral of black sesame shows across the top. There is no croissant-style lamination: an enriched yeast dough kneaded with butter is spread with sesame paste and honey, rolled up and sliced.
A generous amount of black sesame paste bakes the loaf a deep grey-brown, and while it is in the oven the kitchen smells of toasting sesame. Only a little baking powder goes in, so it rises modestly and the crumb stays tight. The sesame flavor deepens if you wait until the next day to eat it.
Split one by hand while it is still warm and a strong roasted sesame smell rises from the grey crumb. Black sesame powder is mixed into the flour, and the dough is brought together with cream and egg instead of milk, then pressed into a 2.5cm round without kneading.
Brown sugar and cinnamon are scattered over buttered dough before it is rolled, and in the oven the sugar melts with the butter into a dark, sticky layer along every turn. The top gets softened cream cheese instead of a sugar glaze, spread after the rolls have cooled for about five minutes so it softens and spreads easily over the warm surface.
Take the chocolate out of a brownie and build the flavor on browned butter and brown sugar instead. The butter is cooked until it turns deep gold and smells nutty, then pulled off the heat at once, and brown sugar melted into it gives a toffee-like sweetness.
Slice it and the blueberries are still whole, dotted through a crumb that stays banana-bread colored instead of turning purple. It is really just banana bread with one more fruit, so the ingredient list is short, and baking soda does the rising with no proving time.
The lemon zest goes into the cream and egg rather than the flour, which carries its scent evenly through the whole dough. Leave the butter in pea-sized pieces as you rub it into the flour, and the baked scones crack crisply at the edges and crumble softly inside.
The dough is meant to stay shaggy, with damp patches and visible flecks of butter, and that rough texture is what lets the baked scone split into tender layers. Plain yogurt brings moisture and a gentle tang, with vanilla layered over it.
Mashed roasted sweet potato is worked through the whole dough, which proofs and then cooks slowly in a pan rather than an oven. The amounts are for peeled, fully cooled roasted sweet potato, and weighing raw potato instead throws off the moisture of the dough. A pan that is too hot scorches the base of the thick rounds first, so the heat stays at medium-low, and splitting the first bread open shows how to adjust the heat for the rest. They are served warm, split crosswise.
Steamed in a covered pot for about 2 hours rather than baked, this bread comes out moist and close-textured, studded with raisins. Rye, whole wheat and cornmeal share the batter with molasses and buttermilk, so there are no big yeast holes. Molasses darkens it long before it is cooked, which makes a skewer in the center the reliable test. Once cool, it slices thin and goes with butter or alongside bean dishes.
Despite the name, there is no pastry anywhere. It is a round sponge split in half, filled with a thick layer of custard and covered with dark chocolate glaze. Most of the time it takes goes into chilling the sponge and the custard separately.
Three onions cooked slowly in butter for more than 20 minutes, until deep amber, are nearly the whole tart. There is only enough egg and cream custard to hold them together, and Gruyere on top bakes into a salty brown crust.
Semolina milk cream is wrapped twice in paper-thin, buttered pastry, baked until golden and finished with icing sugar and cinnamon rather than syrup. One stretched sheet folds around the cream like an envelope, then a second sheet wraps that parcel again, so crisp layers surround the filling top and bottom. Pulling hard at one spot opens holes, and stretching from the edges a little at a time avoids them. The butter total looks large, but it is split between the cream, the dough and four rounds of stretching.
Stale bread soaked in an egg, milk and cream custard turns into something close to a soft pudding, while the pieces poking out on top bake into a crisp golden crust. Cinnamon gives the whole dish a warm, spiced smell. It started as a thrifty way to use up old loaves in England and the American South, and it is still best served warm, with vanilla ice cream or a caramel sauce melting over the top.
Most of the work happens the night before: bread cubes soak up egg and milk in the refrigerator for eight hours, and the morning only asks for baking. With no sugar, this sits closer to a savory casserole than a bread pudding, with spinach and cheddar carrying the flavor. A crusty baguette or sourdough keeps recognizable pieces after baking, while soft sandwich bread melts into a smoother mass at the same weight. A metal pan also handles the jump from refrigerator to hot oven better than some glass dishes.
With butter at half the weight of the flour plus three eggs, this loaf bakes up yellow inside, with a soft crumb that pulls apart in strands. The crust turns a deep golden brown, and the bread needs to cool completely before slicing or the tender crumb squashes under the knife.
Brownie batter goes down first, then lumps of brown sugar cookie dough are dotted over it and swirled just enough to marble the two. Cocoa and dark chocolate chips make the bottom layer bitter and intensely chocolatey, while the brown sugar gives the cookie patches a caramel note. Where the two meet they blur together, and one square ends up with both a chewy cookie bite and a fudgy brownie bite.
Browning the butter until the milk solids turn golden gives these cookies a toasty smell of hazelnut and toffee that plain melted butter lacks. The one real risk is the pan of butter itself: the brown specks at the bottom go from golden to burnt quickly, so stay with it once it starts foaming.
Only yolks and only powdered sugar go into the dough, so it is fine-textured and the butter comes through first. They are baked pale, just until the tips of the piped star ridges turn light gold.
Sweet rice flour mixed with milk, coconut milk, eggs and melted butter makes a batter thin enough to pour like liquid. A long bake turns the bottom dense and chewy like mochi, with only a thin golden-brown crust on top. The cake comes from Hawaii, and a short reheat crisps that top again.
Brown sugar and butter cook into a filling that sets at the edges but stays gooey, almost runny, in the middle of each small Canadian tart. This version adds cream and a few raisins, which give the toffee-like sweetness something to chew on. Eaten warm, the filling flows and the caramel smell is strongest, but once cooled it firms into a sticky, chewy layer.
Soft yeasted dough is pressed into a sheet pan, dimpled with fingertips, and each dimple gets a nub of butter before a scattering of sliced almonds. In the oven the butter melts into little pools that caramelize at the edges, and the almonds toast to a crisp gold. The cake underneath stays soft like brioche without feeling heavy, the kind of slice served with afternoon coffee in northern Germany.
Cold butter cubes turn to steam in a very hot oven and push the dough apart, so the sides split into visible flaky layers. In the United States they are split while fresh for butter and jam, or served the Southern way alongside fried chicken and gravy.