Baking

These cookies are meant to be eaten frozen, so you might be surprised by the amount of salt. Don't be! Chilling dulls flavors and the extra salt gives them the boost they need.

This is one heck of a cake on so many levels. For starters, nobody is ever going to guess there's zucchini in here, because it virtually disappears in the baking—there's not even a hint of vegetable flavor or nubbiness that you might expect from grated zucchini. What you will notice is what a moist cake this is, maybe the moistest chocolate cake you've ever had.

These little cakes remind me of a more sophisticated, stripped-back cupcake. Full of flavor with a dense but chewy crumb, it's like frangipane meets fairy cake. Beautifully simple to make, the biggest pitfall is not greasing your tins properly. If you don't have non-stick muffin tins or friand tins, make sure you butter them to death or you'll have eight fabulous cakes that you can’t get out of the tins.

This British recipe calls for “digestive biscuits,” but graham crackers will work just as well to infuse chocolate-filled vanilla cupcakes and toasted ‘mallow topping with that classic campfire flavor.

Pomegranate seeds look stunning sprinkled simply over the top of this pavlova. Their vibrant color really lifts the dessert, and the way they burst in your mouth complements the chewy meringue beautifully. I use sliced canned peaches when peaches are out of season; they work just as well.

No pie plate or tart pan? Fold fresh peaches into a flaky pastry dough and bake on a sheet pan for an easy, no-fuss summer dessert.

To make these cakes, I use the reverse creaming method, as opposed to the more common creaming method. Instead of beating air into the sugar and butter, adding the eggs then stirring in the dry ingredients, the reverse creaming method requires the butter to be rubbed into the dry ingredients, followed by milk and eggs. As well as being simpler, with fewer stages, I think this method produces a better textured, more even sponge. When you rub the butter into the flour and sugar, the flour particles get coated in fat, which minimizes gluten formation in the cake. Gluten is the essential component in bread, but in cakes too much can produce a tough and chewy sponge.

A luxurious almond cream makes this one-hour summer stone fruit dessert taste like an all-day labor of love.

Freshly cut corn kernels and a quick blender egg custard are all that goes into a store-bought pie shell for this unbelievably easy and delicious summer brunch all-star.

Chocolate cake is a beautiful thing on its own, but adding a thick layer of sharp passionfruit curd undercuts the heavy richness and balances the sweetness—which dangerously means that one slice is no longer enough…

This summery, thyme-scented layer cake is easier to pull off than it looks. The genoise-style sponge is made with melted butter for a tender, flavorful base, and sour cream adds brightness to the whipped-cream filling.

This is a really fun cake which goes down well with children and adults alike.

Cookie dough lovers, eat your hearts out! Toasting the flour in this egg-free version zaps any bacteria, making the raw dough safe to eat as is.

Chocolate cake absolutely has to be two things: dark and moist. To make sure it is sticky and dense I use buttermilk. Adding coffee to chocolate cakes really brings out the flavor in the cocoa.