Baking

Donna Knowlton of Atlanta, Georgia, writes: "As the oldest of five children growing up in rural West Virginia, I was always helping in the kitchen. Like many girls in the South, my interest in cooking came from being a member of the 4-H club." Adding fresh lemon juice and grated lemon peel to the filling enhances the flavor of the apples.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

Limpa—a moist rye bread from Sweden—is often flavored with aniseed (or fennel), caraway seeds, and orange zest. These same ingredients also come together to produce the following fragrant muffins. Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

We slightly dried the small strawberries in this recipe so that their excess juice would not affect the crème caramel. We recommend using wild strawberries, as they do not need to be dried before using here. Both the crème caramel and the crust may be made ahead, but, to ensure a crisp crust and shiny caramel, do not invert the crème caramel onto the crust until shortly before serving.

Caramelizing the top of this pudding adds an extra depth of flavor, but it's equally delicious without doing it. A blowtorch works best here; the broiler didn't give us the uniform browning we wanted.

The classic twosome presented in the perfect after-dinner mint.

A rich chocolate-raspberry truffle filling highlights this updated Linzertorte.

If time is short, omit the streusel topping.

The crust of this tart is tender and quite crumbly.

This recipe can be prepared in 45 minutes or less. These tender biscuits are especially light when made with cake flour.

Ciro Verde of Da Ciro restaurant in New York makes great thin, crispy-crust pizzas. One Saturday at i Trulli restaurant Ciro gave us a pizzamaking lesson. He told us how he had learned to make pizza in Naples and gave us pointers on how best to use a wood-burning oven and how to improve our technique. A highlight of this session was Ciro's recipe for this tasty pie stuffed with robiola cheese and drizzled with truffle oil, which he claims to have invented. First, the dough is flattened with a rolling pin to elminate air pockets. Then the dough is pierced with a docker, an instrument that punctures the dough and helps to prevent it from puffing up too much in the oven. The flattened disk of dough is baked without any topping. When it is partially done, it is removed from the oven, split in half, and spread with cheese, then baked a second time until brown. Just before serving, the pie is drizzled with truffle oil. Since it is so rich, we like it best cut into wedges as an appetizer. Robiola is creamy cow's milk cheese. Soft fresh goat cheese is a good substitute. If you don't have truffle oil, which is available at many gourmet shops, the pizza will taste great anyway.