Chocolate Cupcakes

06/22/2022

The bakery in the small Queens, New York community where I grew up was an important part of my family’s shopping and food life. The Cake Box was the source of rye bread, corn rye, our weekly Challah, black and white cookies, birthday cakes, Danish pastries, and cupcakes. As with…

Coconut Cupcakes

06/21/2022

This wonderful cupcake and frosting combination is adapted from an Emeril Lagasse recipe for coconut cake. The moist yellow cake uses unsweetened coconut milk as the liquid, which makes for a beautifully smooth cake batter. See the recipe note on coconut milk as all brands are not the same. I…

Cheesecake

06/16/2022

When I opened my Martha’s Vineyard baking business in 1982, the first restaurant client requested, among other desserts, a cheesecake. I tested a few recipes to no great enthusiasm, until I came upon one in Maida Heatter’s Book of Great Desserts, which itself was adapted from a Craig Claiborne recipe…

Pavlova

06/09/2022

We have used several types of meringue in Friday Baking Project desserts including a nut meringue in Dacquoise, Italian Meringue in Baked Alaska and Swiss Meringue in buttercream. This week we delve into Pavlova, the queen of baked meringue desserts and a perfect ending to a spring or summer meal.…

Chocolate Truffle Cake

06/03/2022

This intensely chocolate cake originated from an all-day baking session in my home kitchen with an old friend. We were working to recreate the rectangular Chocolate Tile Cake from a long-gone Greenwich Village restaurant, La Tulipe. The process presented many challenges, including maintaining even, straight lines during the assembly of…

Reine de Saba

05/26/2022

It’s appropriate that we end this tour through the world of French-style chocolate cakes with a version of Julia Child’s Reine de Saba from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1. Published in 1961, this may be the earliest American cookbook recipe for this type of rich, slightly underdone,…

Diablo served with an adornment of whipped cream

Diabolo

05/20/2022

The first two entries in the great French-style chocolate cake search, G¢teau au Chocolat and BÃªte Noire, are room temperature cakes, best eaten within several hours of baking. For this week, we test a cake that is served cold, with either an adornment of whipped cream on top, or plain…

Bête Noire

05/13/2022

For the second installment of the French-style chocolate cake search I returned to my baking book library and came upon one with an eye-catching title – Growing up on the Chocolate Diet by Lora Brody. It’s been on the shelf for years with one page bookmarked, the recipe for BÃªte…