301 recipes. Page 9 of 13
Bread, cookie, and cake baking recipes
Two ropes of brioche, one plain and one tinted with matcha, are twisted and tied into knots, so each piece pulls apart in alternating white and green. Toasted sesame seeds pressed on before the surface dries get toasted a second time in the oven.
White chocolate melted with butter, rather than dark chocolate or cocoa, makes up the base, and matcha turns the whole pan bright green. The cocoa butter in white chocolate is what gives these a dense, fudgy chew instead of a cakey crumb. Chips stirred into the batter only half melt, leaving small pockets of concentrated sweetness.
Bite into one and the sugared cookie shell cracks first, then the milk bread underneath gives way like a cloud. Despite the name, there is no melon in it; the crosshatch scored into the cookie layer is meant to look like a melon's rind. A rather low oven sets that shell without letting it brown much, while the bread keeps rising underneath into a dome. Eat them the day they are baked, within a few hours, while the crust still crackles.
Made from nothing but egg whites and sugar whipped to a stiff gloss, with no flour or butter, these shatter into light, dry crumbs. The oven is kept low because the goal is to dry them out rather than bake them, and a pale, nearly white finish is what you are after. Folding cocoa powder into part of the meringue gives a second flavor from the same batch. Humidity is their weak point: left out in the air, the shells soften and turn sticky.
Puff pastry normally balloons in the oven; here it bakes under parchment and a heavy tray so it comes out as three flat, brittle sheets that can carry a filling. Between them goes a vanilla pastry cream thickened with egg yolks and cornstarch, cooked on the stove until it holds a line. A fork pressed through the stack breaks the flaky layers first and then meets smooth, cool custard.
Doenjang, Korean fermented soybean paste, goes into the filling here, beaten into butter with maple syrup and spread between thin sheets of enriched dough. The slices stand upright in a loaf pan and bake into a loaf you tear apart layer by layer, each sheet carrying salty, savory paste and maple sweetness together. The bread pulls apart most easily while still warm, before the filling firms up as it cools.
White miso, toasted sesame oil, and whole sesame seeds go into these thin crackers with only a pinch of sugar, and salty, nutty flavors come before sweet. Stop handling the dough as soon as it comes together. Kneading builds elasticity, which makes it resist rolling thin and bakes into a harder bite. Fresh from the oven they can feel slightly soft, and they crisp as they cool.
Cocoa and instant coffee darken the crumb of this cake, and small dots of sweet red bean paste sit scattered through the middle. Most bites are bittersweet mocha; every so often you hit a moist pocket of bean paste whose sweetness tones down the bitter coffee. The top is raked with a fork before baking, which leaves a rough, homey surface rather than a smooth glaze.
Cut into with a spoon, the thin cake wall gives way and warm chocolate runs onto the plate. That molten center is not a hidden filling but the same dark chocolate batter, baked hot and fast so only the outside sets. Timing does most of the work. Residual heat keeps cooking the middle after the ramekins leave the oven, and the cakes are turned out right away to stop it.
Small balls of milk dough are dipped in melted butter, rolled in cinnamon sugar, and piled into a Bundt pan, so the finished ring is pulled apart by hand rather than sliced. In the oven the butter and sugar run down between the pieces and cook into a sticky, caramel-like coating, while the inside of each piece stays soft.
A single mugwort butter dough does double duty: part of it is pressed into a firm base, and the rest goes over a layer of mashed chestnut. That topping is just the leftover dough pinched into pea-sized bits and scattered, and it bakes up uneven and craggy.
Mugwort powder is stirred into a dark chocolate brownie batter, and a swirl of cream cheese loosened with cream runs across the top. Both the herb and the chocolate lean bitter, so the tang of the cream cheese is what keeps each square from tasting heavy.
Break one open and it is packed with peppery ground beef, soft cabbage and onion. The filling is cooked until the pan is dry before it goes in, so the bottom of the bun is still dry when you eat it out of hand.
With 680 g of cream cheese, this is a heavy cheesecake, nothing like a soufflé cheesecake, and a fork sinks into it slowly. The graham cracker crust gets a bake of its own before the filling goes in. The cake bakes in a water bath and then cools slowly in the switched-off oven with the door slightly open.
Wide egg noodles bake in a custard of sour cream, cottage cheese and cream cheese, and the strands poking out on top turn crisp. Raisins and cinnamon mark this as the sweet style. Because the noodles keep absorbing custard in the oven, they boil only about 5 minutes at first. A 20-minute rest after baking gives the custard time to set around the noodles before slicing.
Mixed nuts, toasted and tossed in a cream caramel, are packed into a blind-baked butter crust and baked a second time. The filling is mostly nuts held together by caramel that firms as the tart cools, and each slice crunches instead of turning sticky.
Rolled oats outnumber the flour in this dough and drive the texture: chewy, a little rough, clearly an oat cookie. Brown sugar and cinnamon give a warm sweetness, and raisins sit through it as soft, juicy bits. Resting the dough in the fridge lets the oats soak up moisture and firms the butter again, which helps the cookies hold their shape as they bake.
Omija, the Korean five-flavor berry, goes in as a syrup stirred into the frangipane, tinting the almond cream a faint red and giving it a tart edge. The mixed berries on top sink halfway into the almond filling as it puffs in the oven, and a cut slice shows fruit set into the cream.
Small cubes of cream cheese go into a batter made with grapeseed oil, and they stay as distinct pockets after baking. Omija syrup flavors the batter and is brushed thinly over the warm tops straight out of the oven for a reddish sheen.
Slice an opera cake and you see thin, level stripes: almond sponge, espresso buttercream, dark chocolate, repeated. The sponge uses only almond flour, eggs, and powdered sugar, with no wheat flour at all. Coffee leads the flavor, the chocolate adds bitterness underneath, and the overall result is far less sweet than it looks.
Pain au chocolat uses the same laminated, buttery dough as a croissant, rolled around two batons of dark chocolate instead of shaped into a crescent. Pulled open after a short rest, the crisp outer shell flakes away and the inside separates into thin layers with two soft lines of chocolate running through.
Rolled in from both long edges and sliced, sugared puff pastry opens as it bakes into the symmetrical butterfly shape that gives palmiers their look. The sugar melts and caramelizes to amber, soft while hot and shatter-crisp once cool, around light, flaky layers inside.
Corn kernels, blended with cream and eggs, flavor this Mexican cake, which is why it tastes of sweet corn rather than the gritty cornmeal of cornbread. The puree spreads color and corn flavor through every slice, and the butter and cream give a dense, moist crumb closer to pound cake than to an airy sponge.
Tapioca starch and plenty of mozzarella and feta make these small Colombian breads, lightly browned outside with hot melted cheese inside. Some pandebono recipes use corn flour, but this one relies on cornstarch, and swapping in masarepa or polenta changes the result.