Gluten-free is the Kevin Bacon of the food world: We’re all within six degrees of separation from someone who avoids gluten. That’s why, as we approach graduation party, bridal shower, picnic and barbecue season, it’s good to have a really good gluten-free cake up your sleeve. Brian Levy’s gluten-free yellow sheet cake is built on…
Some places across the country are still getting frost in the morning; other climes are sunny and warm already. No matter. Let’s move on to springtime in the kitchen. We need renewal and the green promises. And if it means cheating a little — asparagus from elsewhere, peas from the freezer — so be it….
It’s something of a family joke that if there’s ever a flourless chocolate cake (or torte) on the menu, my brother will order it, regardless of whatever seasonal treats or house specialties may be on offer. And I get it: Flourless chocolate cake always feels extra special, elegant but not precious, the appropriate ending for…
In the past, I’ve been known to rail against restaurants that don’t commit to dessert. I’m sorry, but if I could make it at home — looking at you olive oil cake — then it’s not worth my time. (Though how expensive is olive oil cake about to become with these tariffs?) But I do…
In 2013, I baked 400 dried-apple hand pies, with a touch of cream and black pepper, per my nearly 200-year-old Appalachian family recipe, and boxed them individually with a hearty slice of coconut cake. This was for the now-infamous cake-vs.-pie debate at the Southern Foodways Alliance Symposium in Oxford, Miss. I was not part of…
Eating malva pudding for the first time feels like meeting a soul mate, its swirl of butter and sugar instantly familiar to the deep heart’s core, its softness, somehow simultaneously fluffy and dense, thrilling and intimate. With each bite of the cream-soaked cake, there’s a sense of wonder: I already know you so well, have…
I consider myself a pretty good cook. I can neatly break down a chicken, and make mayonnaise from scratch. I can pleat dumplings, roll futomaki, fry doughnuts and, on one occasion, have turned carrots into roses. But I cannot, for the life of me, take butter out of the fridge to soften. This is why,…
“Lazy people, this cake is for you.” So goes Melissa Clark’s clarion call to her lazy daisy cake, also known as Danish dream cake (drømmekage). The “dream” part, I’d guess, is the tender cake flavored with a generous dose of vanilla or cardamom. The “lazy” bit is its so-easy frosting of melted butter, brown sugar…
With some recipes, you just look at their name and know how the dish is going to taste. Take, for example, Nigella Lawson’s chocolate Guinness cake. It will be chocolaty, of course, and it will be Guinness-y. You might guess that the mellow, smooth bitterness of the beer will file down the sweetness of the…
