301 recipes. Page 8 of 13
Bread, cookie, and cake baking recipes
The rice cake is optional. Small pieces of it soften in the oven into chewy pockets, but even without them, the toasted soybean powder in the dough carries the injeolmi flavor all the way through, with a warm, nutty smell plain-flour scones lack.
Folded meringue lifts the batter, and a slow bake at 150°C in a hot water bath lets it cook gently. The cake dissolves almost weightlessly on the tongue. A slight sink after it leaves the oven is normal, and an overnight rest in the fridge spreads the moisture evenly for a silkier slice.
There is no gelatin in the filling; egg yolks react with the lime's acid and set it to a smooth, custard-like slice. The oven only firms the edges in a short bake, and the fridge does the rest over at least 3 hours, ideally a full day. This Southern American pie was originally made with Florida's small, fragrant key limes.
Well-fermented kimchi and bacon baked into an egg and cream custard show up as flecks of red kimchi and bacon across every cut slice. The kimchi is squeezed hard and fried with the bacon and onion before it goes in, which keeps the custard from turning watery.
Barely sweet and distinctly savory, these scones carry the sourness of kimchi and the saltiness of cheddar between buttery layers. Tossing the squeezed kimchi and the cheese in the flour before adding any liquid spreads them evenly instead of leaving clumps.
Fine strands of kataifi tossed in melted butter bake crisp above and below a layer of mozzarella, which stretches when the knafeh is cut. A thin sugar syrup with a little lemon goes on the moment it leaves the oven, and the hot strands drink it in quickly. It is cut right away, because the pastry softens and the cheese firms as it sits.
Two soft cocoa cake rounds, a layer of melted marshmallow, and a thin shell of dark chocolate rebuild Korea's convenience-store snack cake at home. Making it yourself means you pick the chocolate and decide how thick the marshmallow layer gets. The marshmallow, melted over a water bath, cushions the cake and stretches slightly when bitten. Chilled, the chocolate shell firms up with a light snap; at room temperature the whole pie turns softer.
Dusted with roasted soybean powder and black sesame, then poked with shallow chopstick holes, these buns look almost exactly like small potatoes. Made mostly of tapioca starch with only a little bread flour, the dough bakes up chewy and stretchy rather than fluffy, and it wraps a generous filling of mashed potato seasoned with a touch of sugar and salt. That starch is also why the buns stay chewy instead of hardening once cool. An air fryer works as well as an oven.
Baked in a fluted ring mold, this Alsatian yeast cake comes out shaped like a crown, with whole almonds from the bottom of the pan sitting on top once it is turned out. Butter and eggs kneaded into the dough give it a soft, brioche-like crumb, and raisins scattered throughout add bursts of sweetness.
With only five ingredients in this Breton pastry (flour, butter, sugar, yeast, and salt), the folding technique decides almost everything. Butter is wrapped in the dough and sugar is scattered over each fold, three times in all. In a hot oven the sugar melts into a glassy, dark caramel shell while the layers inside stay moist with butter.
Australian lamingtons start with cubes of plain sponge cake, dunked one at a time in a glossy sauce of dark chocolate, butter, and milk, then rolled in coconut while the coating is still wet so the flakes cling all over.
Lemon juice, egg yolks, and sugar are stirred over low heat into a curd, poured into a baked shortcrust shell, and chilled until set. The curd comes off the heat before it boils, once a line drawn through the thin coat on the spatula holds, and cream stirred in afterward, then a pass through a sieve, leaves it silky. Only the yellow outer peel is zested; the white pith underneath tastes bitter.
Holes poked into a hot lemon loaf let a sharp lemon syrup soak right through, and as it cools a thin layer of sugar crystals sets on top with a slight crunch. In Britain it is a plain, undecorated afternoon tea staple.
The lemon filling is thickened with cornstarch and finished with butter for gloss. Meringue goes on while that curd is still hot and is spread right to the crust, which seals the bottom and keeps it from weeping, and a short spell at 200°C browns only the tips of the peaks. Chill it before slicing for clean layers.
Butter, sugar, eggs, and flour go in at nearly equal weights, giving the dense, close crumb of a classic pound cake, and lemon zest and juice turn it bright. Rubbing the zest into the flour first spreads its oils so the aroma is even throughout. A crack running down the top is the sign of a good rise, and a thin powdered sugar glaze, poured once the cake has cooled, sets into a sweet, glossy film.
Strips of dough laid in a lattice, in the traditional Austrian way, let the raspberry jam bubble up and show through in deep ruby squares. Ground almonds in the dough make the crust shorter and more crumbly than a plain flour pastry.
Lotus seed paste is wrapped in a dough of golden syrup, oil, and alkaline water, pressed into a patterned mold, and baked for the Mid-Autumn Festival. Here the crust and filling are close to equal in weight, and the syrupy pastry counts for as much as the smooth lotus paste. Fresh from the oven the crust is still firm; a day in an airtight container softens it until it melds with the filling.
The dough is fine semolina, which crumbles apart in the mouth, and each cookie hides a date paste spiced with cinnamon. After the filling is wrapped, a mold or fork presses the pattern on top, and they leave the oven while the tops are still pale and only the edges have gone light gold. Baked any darker, they lose that crumbly tenderness and turn hard.
Browning the butter until it foams and smells toasty gives these madeleines a hazelnut-like depth that plain melted butter cannot. The hump on the back comes from resting the batter in the fridge for at least 1 hour: cold batter meeting a hot mold sets at the edges first while the center surges up. The crisp edges go soft within a few hours.
Two flat loaves are baked separately, one filled with sweet red bean paste and one with sweet green pea paste, then stacked with whipped cream and strawberry jam between them. Cut through, it shows red bean, pea, cream, and jam in layers. The cream goes on only after both loaves have cooled right through; on warm bread it melts and runs off the edges.
A baguette is cut almost to the base and every slit is filled with garlic butter before baking. Plenty of minced garlic goes into that butter along with condensed milk and honey, which makes this Jeju-style manong baguette sweet as well as garlicky. An air fryer at the same temperature can stand in for the oven.
A little more cornmeal than flour gives these a coarse, crumbly texture. Crisp crumbled bacon and maple syrup both go into the batter, so salty and sweet take turns from one bite to the next.
Brown sugar instead of white gives this pound cake a caramel edge that lines up with the woodsy sweetness of maple syrup. The crumb stays tight and buttery, as a pound cake should, with toasted pecans scattered through every slice. It tastes better the next day: wrapped overnight, the maple flavor moves through the whole loaf and the cake turns rounder and more even in flavor.
The sheet is a chiffon batter with meringue folded in, light and springy, and the bitterness of matcha lingers after the sweetness of the cream has gone. How green it turns out depends on how briefly you fold once the flour and matcha go in.