Chocolate Olive Oil Cake
This rustic chocolate cake is made with two surprising ingredients: olive oil and lemon juice. Extra-virgin olive oil lends fruity, peppery flavor notes. For a less prominent flavor, use light olive oil (“light” indicates the oil is refined, not lower in fat). You could even use a combination of oils—for example, a robust extra-virgin olive […]
French Apple Cake
This simple dessert is less cake than sautéed apples set in a thick, buttery custard encased in a golden crust. We liked using two varieties of apples here, one tart and one sweet—the variation in the apples’ sweetness gave the cake a full, complex flavor. The cake is delicious served unadorned, but it’s equally […]
Chocolate Cream Cupcakes (Hostess Cupcakes)
You can keep your Ho Hos, Ding Dongs, and Ring Dings-our heart belongs to Chocolate Cream Cupcakes!Cream-filled Hostess cupcakes conjure memories of lunch box envy and beloved after-school snacks. But fond reminiscing aside, we knew America's most iconic cupcake could stand some improvement-starting with the weak chocolate flavor. We prefer stiffer marshmallow crème in this […]
Chocolate Birthday Cake
This tender, dark chocolate cake, layered with a fluffy, not-too-sweet, white Ermine icing, also known as boiled-milk frosting, is inspired by the memory of a Chuck E. Cheese chocolate birthday cake from the early 1990s. This style of devil’s food cake is also a staple of the refrigerated cases in supermarket bakeries, and starts […]
Chocolate Cherry Layer Cake
If you love chocolate-covered cherries, this festive layer cake is just for you. With tart cherry juice in the batter and freeze-dried cherries in the whipped cream frosting, it's a bright and fruity twist on an otherwise classic chocolate cake. The flavor of the cake itself depends on rich, full-fat cocoa powder, whether natural or […]
Chocolate Bundt Cake with Dark Chocolate Glaze
This Bundt cake, adapted from a recipe in “Cheryl Day’s Treasury of Southern Baking," the latest book from Cheryl Day, co-owner of Back in the Day Bakery, in Savannah, Georgia, comes together with just one-bowl and no mixer, but is deliciously rich, moist, tender and deeply flavored. It’s terrific unadorned and without any embellishment, but […]
Swedish Apple and Almond Cake
Where we stay in Sweden the gardens are filled with apple trees heavy with fruit every Autumn. Although I love the summer in Sweden, the Autumn is quite unique and equally special. This apple and almond cake is a wonderful way to celebrate the seasons fruit and is heavily spiced with comforting cinnamon and cardamom.
Jack Daniel’s Carrot Cake w Heavenly Frosting
This carrot cake is my most treasured recipe from the Jack Daniels: The Spirit of Tennessee cookbook. We have made it countless times in my family; it’s often served for birthdays, out-of-town guests, and other special occasions. It’s one of those family favorite recipes now, our go-to carrot cake recipe. My dad makes it with […]
Plum Cake Spiced Almond Crumble
In this adaptation of a recipe from the award-winning book “Suqar” by Greg and Lucy Malouf, wedges of sweet-tart fresh plums melt into a rich, buttery cake, the whole thing finished with a nutty brown sugar and spice crumble that complements the plush, tender crumb hiding just beneath. This fruit-forward cake is ideal for […]
Stella Parks’ Classic Banana Bread
This is my favorite recipe for banana bread, loaded with coconut oil, oat flour, and thick Greek yogurt so it's always tender and moist. I use a blend of cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves to boost the natural flavor of banana, making this loaf less spicy than banana-y. If you really want to step up your […]
Easy Blueberry Cobbler
To make this an easy recipe, we replaced four standard ingredients—flour, salt, baking soda, and some of the sugar—with self-rising flour and sweetened condensed milk, allowing for minimal prep time. A final sprinkling of sugar gave the finished cobbler a gorgeous browned crust.
The Ultimate Chocolate Cobbler
If you’re looking for a decadent chocolate dessert, my Chocolate Cobbler recipe is the one you’ve been dreaming of all this time. This chocolate cobbler is a self-saucing pudding; the chocolate topping melts down and creates a sauce that bakes down into the cake, which makes an incredible moist dessert. It’s mind-blowing, honestly. If I […]
Strawberry Dream Cake
Strange as it may seem, the vast majority of existing strawberry cake recipes turn to strawberry Jell-O for flavor. Hoping to avoid this artificial solution, we performed test after test to figure out the best way to season our cake with actual strawberries. Any strawberry solids wreaked havoc on the tender cake, but strained […]
Italian Cream Cake
Chockablock full of nuts and coconut, this gorgeous Southern layer cake isn’t as well known as it deserves to be. It’s time to spill its secrets.We loved the idea of loading this layer cake with coconut and pecans, but the added bulk spelled destruction for the tender crumb and didn’t enhance the flavor. Toasting the […]
Caramel-Espresso Yule Log with Meringue Bracket-Style Mushrooms and Chocolate Crumbles
The first step in making a successfully rolled cake is choosing the right cake. We picked chiffon for its whipped egg whites, which provided resilience; its oil, which provided moist tenderness; and its baking powder, which provided an extra lift. While many recipes involve rolling the warm cake into a sugar-coated towel to “train” it […]
Pumpkin Cheesecake Bars
For these bars, we wanted to get the flavor of a gingersnap crust (which can bake up unappealingly hard) using graham crackers. The simple solution was to add ground ginger to the crackers to spice them up.