Baking

The best part of this Passover-friendly flourless chocolate cake from Masa Madre bakery in Chicago might be the Mexico-inspired café de olla ganache that gets poured over top.

Creamy butterscotch pudding, chocolate ganache, and a speculoos cookie crust join forces to create our ideal winter dessert.

Ricotta adds a buttery richness and bit of tang to this cake, but you can substitute full-fat cottage cheese.

Scones full of the textures and flavors of a granola bar—a hint of sweetness comes from copious dried fruit and a sprinkle of raw sugar.

This gluten-free cake is decadent and moist, with a surprising soufflé-like texture.

Einkorn is the great-great-great-great-great-grandmother to all other wheats and has a delicious, bran-y flavor. Let it shine in this shortbread.

Naturally sweet sorghum flour becomes caramelly when combined with butter and brown sugar in these cookies that, per their name, cause uncontrollable urges for more cookies.

Barley flour gives these blondies a chewy texture and butterscotch-like flavor.

The classic blueberry muffin gets a makeover with nutty, whole-grain spelt flour in the batter and the crispy streusel topping.

This lightly spiced chocolate cake from Yossy Arefi's book Snacking Cakes is packed with pumpkin purée and features spices often found in Mexican chocolate. If you choose to use it, the pinch of cayenne adds a pleasing bit of warmth. 

A gorgeously textured cookie with crispy-edges, a chewy center, toasty pecans, and tiny crispy pecan brittle bits throughout.

Embrace biscotti as the anti-gooey-chewy cookie that can be packed with coffee, chocolate, and nuts, and dunked in amaro, bourbon, or cold milk.

We’ve swapped out the ground nuts in a classic linzer for tahini, which makes for a rich, buttery crust that gets filled with jam.

Buttery, crumbly, sugar-glazed cookies that you can make with any nut, really.

From the always-sunny brain of Flour Shop’s Amirah Kassem, this colorful, festive cake with a surprise filling is about as celebratory as it gets.

Not to be confused with wafer-thin waffled pizzelles, this rich brownie-like cookie packed with warm spices is exactly the opposite.

These grown-up moon pies are made with shortbread cookies loaded with blitzed-up pretzels and salty potato chips—the perfect contrast to the sticky-sweet marshmallows and bitter dark chocolate.

A light, delicate, and barely sweet Persian rice flour cookie with finely ground pistachios and freeze-dried raspberries for color.

Rick Martinez’s take on the popular Mexican pig-shaped cookie goes all out with a ginger-spiced dough and tons of sprinkles.

Blanching the citrus peel in several changes of boiling water removes bitterness while still leaving plenty of bright flavor behind.

A salty-umami chocolate chip cookie from chefs Marcus Samuelsson and Tiana Gee to add to the Great Chocolate Chip Cookie canon.

This cloudlike version of pumpkin pie uses tahini for extra nutty flavor.

When a recipe calls for sopping up sauce, these breadsticks are your sopper-uppers of choice. Topped with Kalamata olives, garlic, red onion, and Calabrian chiles, they’re also just as good on their own—serve them straight from the oven and let everyone rip them off with their hands. This recipe comes from Bryan Ford and is based on his Master Bread Dough. Feel free to customize them with whatever finely chopped toppings you desire; just be sure to press them into the dough so that they stick.

This cheesecake has a vanilla pound cake base, because why the hell not? You bake the cheesecake first, then the pound cake on top, and flip the whole thing over before decorating and serving. Room temperature eggs, cream cheese, and butter are vital to an evenly mixed cheesecake and fluffy pound cake. If you’re in a hurry, place the eggs in a bowl of hot tap water and zap the butter and cream cheese in the microwave in 10-second increments to quickly warm them up.