Cake

Take all the layers of classic cheesecake—crumbly graham-cracker crust, rich, creamy filling, and fresh fruit topping—and combine them in a modern tart. Sour cream ups the tanginess factor of the filling; almonds round out the cookie crust; and sugar sweetens the plums, which are cooked into a jam. Save some of the cooking syrup for tossing with the blueberries before scattering them over the top.

For a twist on the traditional French petit fours known as financiers, we baked these cookie “cakes” in mini-muffin tins instead of small rectangular pans. They have a nutty, buttery flavor with floral hints of honey. Tiny raspberry heart decorations make them an appropriate gift for Valentine’s Day.

The origins of the whoopie pie remain a mystery, but many believe that the cookie, a specialty of Pennsylvania Dutch country and parts of New En gland, was created when leftover cake batter was baked, iced, and sandwiched as a treat for children. We used a peanut butter filling, but substitute Seven-Minute Frosting (recipe follows) if you prefer.

The magic ingredient in this outrageous two-layer dark chocolate cake is Dr Pepper, one of America’s oldest soft drinks. Dr Pepper was first made and sold in 1885 at Morrison’s Old Corner Drug Store in Waco, Texas. Just like the state it comes from, this cake is big and impressive. The soft drink’s carbonation gives the layers exceptional rising power, and its special blend of flavorings makes lickin’ the beaters especially appealing.

It has become a tradition in my house that I make everyone’s favorite dessert on his or her birthday. Garth’s favorite is German Chocolate Cake, Taylor’s is Banana Pudding, and so on. When it came time for my friend Joe’s birthday, his wife, Kim, let me know that his favorite was cheesecake. “No problem,” I said, as I started thinking about that awesome cheesecake in a box I was going to make (I have to admit that it’s my favorite). “He loves the old-style New York cheesecake,” she explained. Umm … no problem? But I was committed, so I did what I always do: call my family for help. Beth hooked me up with several cheesecake recipes, and this is the one I like best. It made me a big hit on Joe’s birthday.

We seem to place a lot of emphasis on birthday cakes in my family. We like for everyone to have his or her favorite cake, but more than that, we like the variety of awesome sweets we get to eat throughout the year! This cake was once Beth’s birthday cake of choice—or so Mom thought until she learned that Beth actually preferred the chocolate caramel cake I always ask for. At first, I thought she was just trying to copy me (it’s a sister thing!), but then I realized that if it’s her favorite cake, too, that’s twice a year for me!

So what’s my birthday cake of choice? Chocolate cake with caramel icing. Yum! Most people have tried white cake with caramel icing, but my grandma Elizabeth Yearwood spread that amazing Caramel Icing on chocolate layers, and it was even more delicious. The cake recipe came from my grandma Paulk. I guess I could call this Two-Grandma Cake! Now my mom makes this cake for me every year. The Caramel Icing has a mind of its own, so you never really know what it’s going to look like, but it doesn’t matter to me. It always tastes amazing!

I’m always looking for fun recipes to make with our girls, hoping they will grow up to love cooking as much as I do. This cake is fun because they can’t believe you put all the pretty decorations on the bottom of the pan and the cake still turns out to be gorgeous!

I like a good plain pound cake, but I also like it when I can find a way to make it a little bit different or special. Chocolate pound cake is so simple and so good. This cake is excellent served at room temperature or heated for 15 seconds in the microwave and topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Every February, when Garth’s birthday rolls around, I make this beautiful and delicious cake for him. Last fall, he made some sad statement like, “Only three more months until you make me that awesome German chocolate cake again!” I made the cake the next day. (I know, I’m a sucker.) I double the frosting recipe to frost the entire cake, because my husband likes extra frosting, but one recipe will frost the tops of the layers and do the trick just fine—unless you’re Garth, of course! If you have some left over, the frosting is also good spread on a graham cracker or on brownies (page 198). Okay, it’s also good right off a spoon!

My wedding to Garth was such a wonderful day! We wanted it to be a small, private event, and it was, made possible by the help of our friends and families. Everybody was happy to pitch in and help—everybody except my mom, that is, when I asked her to make the wedding cake! I know, it sounds crazy, but I knew she could do it. My mom taught school for twenty-five years, but there was a period in her life (when she had me, to be exact) when she needed to be home. To earn extra money for the family, she began baking and selling cakes for birthday parties and weddings. She resumed her teaching career when I started first grade and retired in 1991 to run my fan club. (She has since retired from that too, and has gone back to being just Mom.) She came out to Oklahoma the week before the wedding to make a wedding cake that I think turned out to be much bigger than she had been picturing, but it was simply stunning. She gave me the bride and groom decoration from her own wedding day, June 19, 1960, and it literally made the cake. My parents were very happily married for forty-five years, and the only thing that could have made my wedding day better would have been to have Daddy there. I think he was, though. He probably wouldn’t have had any wedding cake, but he would have enjoyed the fried chicken and the barbecue! My finished wedding cake took four electric mixers to make, but we’ve included the regular pound cake recipe here.

My nephew Kyle requests this cake every year on his birthday. You know that if this is a twelve-year-old boy’s favorite cake, it’s gotta be good!

Beth makes this cake every time it’s her turn to take refreshments for her Sunday School class. It’s made in a bundt pan, so it looks beautiful, and the sour cream gives it great flavor and a moist texture. Those little tunnels of brown sugar and nuts are a nice surprise. People always ask her for the recipe.

Every summer, my sister Beth fills her freezer with blueberries her family has picked. They eat as many as they can while the berries are in season, share some with friends and family, and then freeze the rest. This quick bread is good made with fresh or frozen blueberries, and Beth uses lemons from her own lemon tree, right in her backyard! (I’m jealous!)

Consider the Spitzenberg. The heirloom variety ripens in mid-October, when Chick Evans buys every one of these local beauties he can get his hands on. Black Diamond Farm supplies the Spitzenbergs, and Chick turns them into a delicious apple cake, spiked with apple brandy. If you can’t find Spitzenbergs, substitute Ida Red, Cortland, or Granny Smith apples.

The financier gives you a failproof moist cake that will stand through the rigors of pâtisserie de cuisine. It is simple to make, which is a good thing for us at Joe Beef, with our limited space and no real pastry chef, and for the home cook. Keep in mind that baking is a science, and although we include volume measures here, weighing the ingredients is recommended. We use ornate wax paper tartlet molds. If you don’t have them or can’t find them, you can just fill muffin cups half full and you’ll get the same result. Serve the cakes with ice cream and sweet wine.

Our good friends Dyan Solomon and Éric Girard own Olive + Gourmando, a perfect luncheonette on Saint Paul West in Montreal’s Old Port. Their little shop is what we expect the coffee shop in the afterlife to be like: they’re detail fanatics and it’s no contest the best place for lunch in the city. When they first opened, they were bakers, and the place was a bakery with a few seats. They still make bread, but mostly to use in delicious sandwiches. The front counter is displayed with brioches, croissants, brownies, and fruit pastries, and they’re all killer. We thought they were insane when they decided to open in Old Port a decade ago. It was a barren ghost town of bombed-out buildings, seedy bars, and grow-ops. There were no people, much less hotels and tourist shops selling maple-sugar products and “raccoon” Daniel Boone hats actually made from Chinese skunks. Like us, Éric and Dyan don’t take anything too seriously (Dyan can tell you many stories of Fred’s practical jokes when they used to work together: her showing up at 6:00 A.M. to a fake “dead man” at the bottom of the stairs; Fred putting a scraped lamb shank in his shirt, saying he may have hurt his hand. . . .) They’re Montreal classics and were kind enough to hand over one of their most beloved recipes.

I can imagine Argentinians chuckling when they hear about the recent dulce de leche craze in the States. After all, they have been enjoying this sweet, milky caramel for nearly two hundred years. Relatively new here, and often available in the specialty foods section of the supermarket, dulce de leche can be used in all sorts of ways, but we like to drizzle it on top of what could be considered the moistest, most delicious cake on the planet (I double-dare you to find a better one). The combination has a perfect salty-sweet thing happening that is like a highly addictive sensory overload. I promise, it will have you coming back for more. If it doesn't, perhaps the crumbled brittle that decorates the top will.

Don't let the good looks of this eight-layer beauty fool you; it's easy to make. Bake 4 cakes (we used 9" round metal cake pans, but disposable ones work fine), then slice each in half. Finish with toasted coconut, a knockout garnish that's also forgiving— it'll mask a less-than-perfect frosting job.

This easy cake swaps out molasses for lighter-flavored sorghum syrup, a Southern staple.