English chef Gill Meyer's love of rye flour shows up all over his book Gather, but this recipe, paired with chocolate and fresh bay leaves is deliciously haunting.
We found that we could pile the crumb topping high on this cake—just like they do in Jersey—by paying special attention to the types of flour and sugar we used in each layer.
Thin and crisp with a cinnamon-sugar sprinkle, these are a cross between Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal and supermarket graham crackers. Unlike store-bought ones, these are a hundred percent whole grain.
Baked in butter and then crowned with more of it, this puffy golden pancake is similar to a popover in texture with a moist eggy interior and crispy outside. And good for breakfast or dessert, depending how you top it.
Very popular in South China to serve to the guests as a snack during the Chinese New Year. It is so named because the round dough balls, when deep fried, will crack open like someone laughing. It carries a meaning of being able to laugh throughout the year.
People serve many kinds of cookies and candies to guests on Chinese New Year. Walnut cookies are often included.
Baking with olive oil has been a way of life for Mediterranean cooks, and is gaining steam in America. In California, where olive oil is produced and citrus grown, this cake is as common as a yellow birthday cake with chocolate frosting.
Financiers are a French petit-four cake, traditionally made with brown butter and almond flour. Adding chocolate to the mix makes for a next-level brownie that we can’t get enough of. We wanted intense chocolate flavor so we ditched the bittersweet chocolate and went up on the unsweetened.
Stuffed apricots are an iconic Turkish dessert. We found that by tweaking the sugar concentration of the syrup, we could simultaneously cook, candy, and rehydrate our apricots.
I don’t do well with compliments.When someone praises me or my baked goods, I usually try to brush it off. This never works, of course, and I’ve slowly gotten better at just graciously saying “Thank you.” But you can imagine my embarrassment when a mutual friend introduced me to Ruth Reichl, the famous food writer and former editor-in-chief of Gourmet magazine—and immediately my friend told her that not only was I writing a cookbook, but that I also made the best babka she had ever tasted! Ms. Reichl peered at me through her glasses as if she were sizing me up. Thankfully, she was very gracious and, sensing my discomfort, changed the subject, and we had a lovely conversation about New Zealand instead. But if I ever have a chance to meet her again, I’ll bake her this babka.