301 recipes. Page 4 of 13
Bread, cookie, and cake baking recipes
Unlike a flat pizza, the tomato sauce stays outside here, served on the side for dipping. Inside the folded half-moon, soft ricotta, stretchy mozzarella, ham, and basil melt together into one hot filling. Brushing the top with olive oil before baking gives the crust a glossy, golden finish.
A thin, deep caramel-colored crust crackles when bitten, giving way to a soft custard center scented with vanilla and dark rum. This is a bake to plan ahead: batter for these small Bordeaux cakes needs at least a full day of resting in the fridge.
Made with vegetable oil rather than butter, this cake stays soft even straight out of the fridge. Finely grated carrot gives off moisture as it bakes and keeps the crumb moist, alongside cinnamon, nutmeg and coarsely chopped walnuts. A tangy cream cheese frosting goes on top.
Ricotta sweetened and studded with dark chocolate chips and candied fruit fills a liqueur-soaked sponge shell in this Sicilian celebration cake. Traditional cassata is wrapped in marzipan and a sugar glaze, while this version keeps things simpler with a thin coat of stiffly whipped cream. It is made the day before: an overnight rest in the fridge lets the sponge soak up moisture from the filling so the layers hold together, and thin, cold slices show flecks of fruit through the white cream.
Portuguese missionaries brought this sponge to Nagasaki in the 16th century, and Japan turned it into a cake of its own. There is no baking powder: the rise comes entirely from eggs whipped for a long time, which gives a fine, even crumb that springs back slowly when pressed.
Eggs and oil make this braided Jewish bread yellow inside with a soft, tight crumb, and the egg wash gives it a glossy deep-gold crust. Challah is the bread of the Sabbath and holiday table, and day-old leftovers make excellent French toast because the tight crumb soaks up custard evenly.
Sugar, butter and eggs make up nearly all of the filling in this Southern pie, yet the oven turns them into two textures: a thin, crackly top over a dense, caramel-tasting custard. As it cools the center firms to an almost fudge-like density, and it comes to the table at room temperature with a little unsweetened whipped cream.
Added in a lump, chestnut paste leaves dense streaks through the crumb, so it is loosened with a little milk first and then mixed evenly through the batter. Any bite of the moist center tastes of chestnut and honey. The batter is chilled before baking, and when it meets a hot oven the middle shoots up into the signature hump.
Chestnut paste folded with whipped cream is piped in thin strands over small butter cupcakes until each one looks like a tiny Mont Blanc. In Japan the Mont Blanc is closely tied to autumn, and the cupcake format makes it easy to serve one per person rather than cutting a whole cake.
Two Korean autumn staples go in, each with its own job. The sweet potato is mashed smooth and loosened with milk so it spreads through the whole batter, while the chestnuts are chopped coarsely and folded in last, leaving starchy, nutty pieces to bite into. The sweet potato's moisture keeps the muffins from drying out once cool.
Honey goes in twice, once in the dough and once in the boiling water for the dip, which keeps the sweetness faint and gives the crust its shine. Whole wheat flour, one part to seven of bread flour, adds a slight nutty edge.
Rolled in roasted soybean powder or black sesame powder and poked with a chopstick for eyes, these buns come out looking like potatoes fresh from the dirt. The dough is tapioca starch and glutinous rice flour, so it stays chewy even cold, and it holds a sweet mashed potato filling mixed with mayonnaise.
The layers are stacked in the reverse of a usual pizza: mozzarella on the bottom, sausage in the middle, and crushed tomatoes on top. Dough pressed up the sides of a deep cast-iron pan holds it all like a pie crust. Cooking the sausage and onion until the watery bubbling stops keeps that thick base from going soggy. The style dates to Pizzeria Uno in Chicago in 1943.
Crack the golden crust with a spoon and a thick cream sauce full of chicken, carrot, potato and peas comes up in a puff of steam. It is an everyday American home bake, and the sauce is butter and flour cooked together, then loosened with chicken stock and cream.
The light, springy crumb that bounces back like a sponge when pressed comes from stiffly whipped egg whites. Oil instead of butter means it stays soft straight from the fridge, the main difference from a butter cake. The chiffon pan is left ungreased, and the cake is turned upside down as soon as it leaves the oven; cooled right side up, it sinks under its own weight.
Measured in cups the American home-baking way, this dough uses equal amounts of white and brown sugar, landing between crisp and chewy. Shift the balance toward brown sugar and the cookies turn softer and chewier, since it holds moisture; more white sugar makes them spread wider and bake crisper.
A short bake in a very hot oven sets the sides and top like cake while the center stays as melted chocolate that runs out at the first spoonful. Since the cakes are turned out onto the plate, the ramekins are buttered and coated with cocoa with no gaps. The batter can wait in the ramekins in the fridge; baked straight from cold, it needs 1 or 2 minutes more.
A spoon breaking through the thin, set crust finds hot chocolate cream underneath that is still half liquid. The table and any vanilla ice cream should be ready before the ramekins enter the oven, since it starts to sink almost as soon as it comes out. The butter and sugar lining gives the batter something to climb, and without it the rise tilts or splits.
Hollow choux shells filled with cold vanilla cream start as a paste cooked in the saucepan, and in the oven the water in that dough turns to steam and inflates each mound. The shells must be completely cool before filling, or the cream melts. A fresh one gives a crisp crack and then cold custard, but moisture from the cream gradually softens the pastry. Fill them close to serving, or refrigerate filled puffs and eat them within two to three hours.
Arnaldo Cavallari, a baker in Veneto, created this wide, flat loaf in 1982 and named it after the Italian word for slipper. The dough carries so much water that it is folded in the bowl rather than kneaded, and that water becomes steam in the oven, opening large, irregular holes through a chewy crumb under a thin, crackly crust. It goes stale faster than denser loaves and is best the day it is baked: split for panini, torn and dipped in olive oil, or set beside soup to soak up broth.
Rolled, split and twisted, the loaf shows a dark cinnamon swirl in every slice against a pale, buttery crumb. Rich with butter and eggs, the dough eats closer to brioche than to sandwich bread and pulls apart in soft layers. Babka comes from Eastern European Jewish baking and sits as easily on a breakfast table as on a dessert plate.
Swedish kanelbulle go lighter on sugar and add cardamom; American rolls are coiled thicker and covered in glaze. This one sits on the American side, with a cream cheese glaze spread on while the rolls are still warm. In the oven the sugar melts between the coils and turns sticky, and the soft bread unwinds by hand along the spiral.
From the Limousin region of France, this dessert starts with a batter much thinner than pancake batter, poured over cherries and baked into something closer to soft custard than cake. The edges puff and brown while the fruit leaves pockets of juice around it. Made with plums, apricots, or blueberries instead of cherries, it goes by another name, flaugnarde.
The rise comes entirely from a sourdough starter with no packaged yeast, and 12 to 15 hours of cold fermentation in the refrigerator give the crumb a gentle sourness. The starter should have roughly doubled and be full of bubbles when it is used; having fed it the night before is not proof that it is ready. A preheated Dutch oven with the lid on traps the dough's own steam so the interior stays moist, and once the lid comes off the crust dries to a thick, crackling brown.