253 American recipes. Page 11 of 11. Compare ingredients and cooking times. Sugar Cookies, Pan-Seared Steak, Sweet Potato Cinnamon Muffins.
Dough temperature and thickness decide whether a cut-out shape survives the oven, so the dough chills for 2 hours and is rolled to 6 mm between parchment sheets instead of on a floured counter. With no icing, vanilla carries the flavor, and the cookies come out when the center loses its wet shine and the edges just begin to color.
A dark, crisp crust and a pink, juicy center come from heat and a dry surface rather than from seasoning, which stops at salt and pepper. A damp steak in a pan that is not hot enough turns gray instead of brown. Butter melted with garlic and rosemary near the end gets spooned over the meat, adding a nutty, herbal layer to the crust. Potatoes on the side turn it into a full plate.
Steamed sweet potatoes vary in how much water they hold, so part of the 90 ml of milk is held back and added 10 ml at a time until the batter drops slowly from the spatula. The fat is plain oil, which means no butter to melt or cream.
Mashed canned sweet potatoes, sweetened with brown sugar and cinnamon, sit under a layer of mini marshmallows toasted pale brown. The can holds the orange-fleshed kind packed in syrup, often labeled yams in American stores, and its 40 oz figure includes the syrup. Draining that syrup lets the butter and sugar mix into the potatoes instead of floating in liquid. The marshmallows go on only for the last few minutes, because they color far faster than the base heats through.
Small balls of butter dough get a shallow press from a thumb, and the dent becomes a cup for strawberry jam. Jam swells in the oven; each well gets only half.
Small whole potatoes come out of a heavily salted bath with a pale, dry salt film on their skins and a fluffy center. That salt sets the strength of the cooking water; scattering the same amount over boiled potatoes would not give this result.
A plain vanilla cupcake meant to sit under whatever goes on top: buttercream, cream cheese frosting, ganache. Batter fills each liner to 70 percent, and the oven door stays shut for the first 15 minutes so the centers do not sink.
Frozen potato nuggets sit in a single layer over a thick beef, pea and mushroom-soup filling, browning on top while their undersides soak up sauce. Stirring them into the filling, or stacking two layers, leaves the whole thing soft. The beef is fully cooked before assembly so the oven is not trying to evaporate raw meat juices beneath the potatoes. The cheese stays light and goes on near the end, leaving most of the potato crust exposed.
Cocoa batter is piped low and well apart on the tray and bakes into flat rounds. Once cool, they are paired by size, marshmallow cream goes onto the flat side of one, and the other closes it: an American sandwich treat.
Buttered bread crisps in the pan while cheddar melts over a cool, creamy tuna salad inside. Most failures start with wet tuna: any moisture left in it soaks the bread from the inside and keeps it from crisping. Finely diced celery adds crunch against the soft filling. Medium-low heat and a little patience work better than high heat, which browns the outside before the cheese has melted.
Zucchini is grated skin-on and goes in unsqueezed, with cinnamon and nutmeg for spice. With baking powder and soda doing the rising instead of yeast, the crumb is closer to cake than bread. After roughly 65 minutes in the oven, the loaf still needs an hour in the pan and another hour out of it before it can be sliced.
Out of the oven, the cheddar on top bubbles and browns over egg noodles, tuna, and mushrooms bound in a creamy sauce. The noodles are boiled 1 minute short of the package time, because they keep softening as they absorb sauce in the oven; fully cooked noodles turn mushy.
Escarole's broad leaves and mildly bitter edge hold up to a brief blanch, so this dish keeps a leafy bite rather than the long-cooked softness of collards. Squeezing the blanched greens hard matters, because any water left behind turns the breadcrumbs into paste. Part of the crumb mixture goes among the leaves to soak up stray juices, and the rest stays on top to brown with the Pecorino. Prosciutto, cheese and vinegar-packed cherry peppers all bring salt and acidity, so extra salt waits until the greens have been tasted.