Cake

Tangy, luscious crème fraîche can easily be made by combining 1 cup of cream with 1 tablespoon buttermilk. Stir to mix completely, then leave at room temperature, covered with a clean towel, overnight. Stir to thicken slightly, and refrigerate until ready to serve.

Because it contains more essential oils, whole grain rye flour can spoil quickly. Store the unused portion in the fridge or freezer.

Rich, sweet, moist and yet completely free from flour and refined sugar, this Italian lemon and almond cake is a great way to end a meal. It is technically a cheesecake, but has very little in common with the heavy American versions. In Italy, most delis have their own version of ricotta. The most delicious one is made from sheep's milk–try it in this recipe, if you can find it. We often prepare the cake a day in advance. It makes it even creamier and enhances the flavors.

We like to bake with a combination of apples: some sweet and some tart, some that keep their shape and others that will break down and get saucy. Adding the pear lends a perfumey quality to the cake.

Everyone loves a Bundt, and a sweet-potato version drizzled with coffee-chocolate sauce is hard to beat.

Light, pretty, festive, and special, this can pull off the trick of being either the Christmas Yule log (without the chocolate or the sponge) or the perfect pudding for a midsummer lunch.

As much as I like a pavlova, this dessert takes that classic combination and blows it out of the water. Piña Colada Pastry Cream lightened with softly whipped cream, layered with caramelized fresh pineapple, crunchy-chewy French meringue, and crisp strips of toasted coconut is textural nirvana. Searing fresh pineapple in a skillet adds caramel flavor to balance very sweet fruit. This is a showstopper.

There are many stories about the origins of this cake, known as both Clichy cake and Opéra cake. Many believe that Louis Clichy was its creator because he premiered the gâteau, with his name written across the top, at the 1903 Exposition Culinaire in Paris. It became the signature cake of Clichy's shop on the Boulevard Beaumarchais. However, another pastry shop, Dalloyau, sold a very similar dessert, known as L'Opéra (in honor of the Paris Opera), and some claim that theirs was the original.

My criteria when it comes to recipes are these: Is it tasty enough that I will crave it over and over? Is it easy? And does it look pretty? This recipe hits those marks. It is moistest, richest, most flavorful pound cake I have ever made.

No need to fear this layer cake: It's made with a simple stir-together method using just two pans. The frosting is dead easy, and the whole thing keeps well. A go-to cake for birthdays, Easter (with chocolate eggs on top), or any time you need a nice piece of good old gooey chocolate cake.

Although this sweet-tart cheesecake is great with a homemade graham cracker crust, which you can whip up pretty quickly, to make this easy cheesecake even easier, use a 9-inch ready-to-use all-natural graham cracker piecrust. If you like a limier flavor, add a teaspoon of lime zest to the batter (which you can sample before cooking because, thanks to chia, there are no raw eggs to worry about).

Cakey on top, pudding-y on the bottom, tart all the way through.

If you can find candied chestnuts, simply toss them in the cocoa with one tablespoon of brown sugar (no need to glaze them first).

Zucchini bread is one of those things that is almost always good but rarely spectacular and a slice can serve as a breakfast, snack or dessert. Sprinkling it with sugar and grilling it so it becomes nicely caramelized moves it firmly in the dessert category (and, along with adding a spoonful of mascarpone, makes it much closer to spectacular). This recipe works with your favorite zucchini bread recipe or try it with this Spiced Zucchini-Walnut Bread .

Semolina flour is ground from durum wheat and is usually used to make pasta; toasting it deepens its flavor, and its fine grain yields a tender, custardy cake.

Choose a mild, not-too-peppery olive oil for this tender cake; something fruity will complement the lemony sweetness, but an assertively bitter oil will overwhelm.

A quick raspberry sauce adds pastry-shop polish to this cheesecake. Want extra to serve alongside the dessert? Double the ingredient amounts and reserve half the sauce.