Boston Cream Pie
Boston Cream Pie is certainly not a pie but instead is a tender two-layered cake, with a luscious pastry cream filling topped with a dreamy chocolate glaze.
with Greg Patent, Award Winning Cookbook Author
Cakes
Gâteau Breton. A fabulous Butter Cake from France.
I went wild over this cake when I tasted it for the first time at Bell’s, a French bistro in Los Alamos, California. Its butteriness and shortbread-like texture are what made me an instant fan. How can a cake with only four ingredients be so […]
Maida Heatter’s Queen Mother’s Cake
So here’s Maida Heatter’s most popular recipe, according to Saveur magazine: Queen Mother’s Cake. It’s a moist, light-textured, flourless chocolate cake made with finely ground almonds, butter, sugar, eggs, and semi- or bittersweet chocolate and glazed with a bittersweet chocolate ganache. Maida published the recipe […]
Granny’s Passover Sponge Cake
Substituting fine cake matzoh meal, potato and tapioca starch for cake flour will make an airy, light Passover sponge cake. Turning on the oven after the cake is placed in it insures it will rise evenly.
Christmas Apple Loaf
This terrific mildly spiced loaf cake, loaded with dried fruits and toasted nuts, gets its special taste and texture from a very thick homemade apple purée. Because it keeps really well at room temperature, this loaf is something you’ll want to have on hand for […]
The Great Plum Torte Story
This classic plum torte recipe, the most requested New York Times recipe, is superb. It’s everything a European fruit torte should be: Tender, buttery, sweet, and packed with fruit.
Maida Heatter and the Half-Blood Prince
In the sixth Harry Potter book, the boy wizard uses a notebook in his potions class inscribed as being the property of someone called the half-blood prince. The formula instructions have been altered with hand-written notes, and Harry decides to follow them instead of the […]
Olive Oil Citrus Cake
One of my favorite recipes using extra-virgin Italian olive oil is in this citrus olive oil cake that I adapted from a recipe by Anne Quatrano in Food & Wine Magazine. I have always made this cake with a Ligurian olive oil, but I didn’t […]
Topsy Turvy Caramel Apple Cake
This cake makes a fine change of pace dessert for a Thanksgiving dinner. The key to the success of this cake is a preliminary cooking of the apples on top of the stove. Apples in an upside-down cake should be tender and completely cooked. No crunch, please. Firm-sweet apples, such as Cameo or Braeburn, are excellent in this cake because they hold their shape and deliver a sweetness that complements the buttery brown sugar topping. Browning the butter before combining it with brown sugar and cinnamon adds a nutty caramel flavor. This cake is best when very fresh, and it reheats beautifully the next day in a warm oven for 5 to 10 minutes.
Apple Cheesecake Bars
I found this recipe years ago in a publication whose name I do not remember. I had torn the recipe out and zipped it into my briefcase and I said to myself: “I’ve gotta make this.” Finally, this past Thanksgiving, I kept my promise. Normally our Thanksgiving gatherings are fairly small affairs, but Thanksgiving 2015 was special because our entire family got together. This recipe makes a huge yield. The bars are rich, rich rich, and one bar will definitely satisfy, especially after a big meal and a sampling of a few pies. I followed the recipe as written but I omitted the caramel sauce because I felt that was overkill. Here it is. I measured the flour by spooning it into the measuring cups and leveling off.