Baking

For this nostalgic dessert, a génoise cake is baked and spread with raspberry jam and a thick layer of whipped cream before being rolled into a log. If you’ve never made a rolled cake before, you are in for a surprise: the génoise sheet cake will readily roll up without the slightest resistance (and any slight rips or tears will be concealed with a generous dusting of confectioners’ sugar). It’s so simple to prepare and so utterly delicious to eat, it’s a wonder it ever went out of style. Make it once or twice and you might be inspired to bring it back into fashion.

Chocolate soufflé, with its chewy exterior and warm, puddinglike center, might be considered the more refined cousin of molten chocolate cake. With or without a sauce of Crème Anglaise (basically the ice-cream base on page 468 before it’s frozen), a soufflé is a showstopper. And although it has earned a reputation for difficulty, following a few key techniques will reward you with a masterpiece every time. Before whipping the egg whites, be sure your bowl and whisk are thoroughly clean and dry; just a drop of grease, yolk, or water will prevent the whites from expanding properly. Avoid overbeating the egg whites; you’ve taken them too far if they lose their glossiness and become clumpy. Above all else, don’t open the oven door until the end of the baking time, since any fluctuation in temperature, as well as an accidentally slammed oven door, can cause a soufflé to fall. This recipe will produce the best results when baked in five 10-ounce ramekins; you can divide the batter among six dishes, but the soufflés won’t reach the same height as those shown here (though they will be just as delicious).

White cakes, as opposed to butter cakes like the one on page 428, are made with egg whites only, and they offer another good lesson in how French meringue can help give loft, or leavening, to a cake. (The heat of the oven causes the beaten whites to expand; in this case, they are helped by a chemical leavener, namely baking powder.) It’s important to beat the whites until they are stiff but not dry, and to make sure that you fold them into the batter very gently, in parts, so that they retain their volume. First, you fold in just a third of the beaten whites to “lighten” the creamed batter (so it is easier to incorporate the rest without overmixing), then you very gently fold in the rest and quickly transfer the batter to the prepared pans, lest it lose any volume. True to its name, the cake remains pure white inside after baking, save for the brown flecks of flavor-enhancing vanilla seeds.

Just like a great drop-cookie recipe, every home cook needs a fuss-free cake that can be mixed in a flash and is adaptable enough for layer cakes and cupcakes. One-Bowl Chocolate Cupcakes are so effortless, they don’t even warrant their own technique lesson; you simply combine dry ingredients and whisk in a few liquid ones. There is no need for an electric mixer, and best of all, you have to use only one bowl in the process.

To make this Australian dessert—named for Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova, who toured Australia in the 1920s—whipped cream and fresh fruit are layered atop a crisp French-meringue shell. Properly baked, the meringue stays completely white and develops a crunchy outer shell and a soft, marshmallow-like interior. Pavlova is traditionally topped with passionfruit, strawberries, or kiwi fruit, but this recipe features poached apricots and fresh black raspberries. Feel free to top a pavlova with other fresh, macerated, poached, or even roasted fruits.

Delightfully airy and light, this spongy dessert is a good example of the adaptability of a French-meringue base. The cake gets its lift from stiffly beaten egg whites rather than chemical leaveners, such as baking soda or baking powder. (Incidentally, there are no butter or egg yolks either, making the cake fat-free.) Whisking up the perfect meringue is crucial: Overbeating can deflate the whites, and underbeating won’t allow enough air to be incorporated. Similarly, don’t skimp on sifting; you will need to sift the flour and a portion of the sugar together no fewer than five times in order to achieve a featherlight texture. Mix on medium-high speed (never high) to strengthen the cake’s structure. When it comes time to fold in the flour, cut the spatula down through the center of the egg whites, make a sweeping motion up the side of the bowl, then turn spatula over (as if you were making the letter “J”). Repeat until just combined, rotating bowl as you go. Before serving, dust the cake lightly with confectioners’ sugar and scatter fresh berries around it; dollop freshly whipped cream alongside each slice.

When you think of fruit pie, a double-crust beauty with juices bubbling up and out of the top probably comes to mind. And though you will often hear that baking requires precision to turn out right, once you get in the habit of baking fruit pies, you will begin to see an opportunity for some flexibility with the fillings. With a little practice, you can learn to adapt the basic formula depending on what fruit is in season, and to adjust the amount of sugar or thickener (such as flour or cornstarch) based on the juiciness of the fruit. You might even begin to experiment with combinations of fruits, or flavorings such as zests and spices, to suit your own tastes. Apricots and cherries taste great together, as do peaches and blueberries. If you want to combine fresh and dried fruits, try pears with dried sour cherries; up the ante with a pinch of Chinese five-spice powder. In order to get to that improvisational stage, however, you have to start with something very basic, and what’s better than starting with the American standard—apple?

Making this rustic, free-form pie couldn’t be more elementary. You still have to know how to prepare the dough and roll it out, but after that it’s quite forgiving. The foldover crust requires less fuss than does a pastry shell baked in a pan. Just arrange the sweetened fruit in the center of the dough, then fold the border up and over the filling and bake. Make sure to taste the fruit before you begin, adding more sugar if it tastes very tart.

A simple buttermilk biscuit serves as the basis for fruit shortcake. As with many easy recipes, your success rate at making biscuits will most likely grow exponentially with each attempt. There’s nothing tricky about it; just be sure to work quickly and not to overwork the dough at all, which will cause the biscuits to become heavy and flat. In this recipe, a traditional strawberry shortcake is enhanced by a rhubarb compote to serve along with the macerated berries. You can use one fruit and not the other (by doubling the amount of either topping). Or substitute an equal amount of another fruit for the rhubarb, or macerate any other type of berry. An apricot compote would be lovely with macerated blackberries, for example, or nectarines with raspberries. The whipped cream, however, is not optional; it’s a fundamental part of the appeal of fruit shortcake. The biscuits, meanwhile, can be served on their own for breakfast, topped with a pat of butter and your favorite jam. (If you are planning to serve them with savory dishes like eggs and bacon, however, omit the sugar and vanilla bean.)

A simple butter cake is often referred to as yellow cake, but it’s not the butter that produces its distinctive color; most butter cakes also contain whole eggs, so the yolks contribute to the color (as well as the rich flavor). The creaming method is essential to many classic American layer cakes like this one, but here an electric mixer (fitted with the paddle attachment) is used, rather than a wooden spoon. Be sure to cream for the suggested amount of time to create the finest texture and a velvety crumb. Using a combination of flours is equally important; cake flour imparts tenderness and a delicate crumb, all-purpose flour lends structure.

Everyone needs one reliable recipe for an old-fashioned drop cookie. This master recipe fills the bill. It’s simple (no machines necessary—the butter can be creamed by hand, though you can use a mixer for ease) and infinitely variable (modify the dough with any of the add-ins listed below, or split it into two or three batches so that you can make more than one type of cookie at the same time). And if you want, you can bake a portion of it, then form the remainder into balls (on baking sheets) and place in freezer until frozen. Store the frozen balls of dough in a resealable bag in the freezer until until you’re ready to bake; let sit at room temperature for 30 minutes before baking, and bake a few minutes longer than the recommended time. These cookies are somewhat cakey; for a chewier texture, reduce the flour by 1/2 cup and the baking time by 2 minutes.

When you’ve worked with food as long as I have, and have come up with as many desserts as I have, you get to a certain point where many of the dishes you construct are compilations of things you’ve done previously. When we opened Mozza, I had done a cream-filled date tart that I really loved, so I urged Dahlia to rearrange some of its components, and to her credit she came up with this sophisticated rendition of pumpkin pie. We serve it with walnut cookies that are a twist on a Greek walnut cookie that I included in a previous book. Pumpkin purée is one of the few canned items that I endorse, the reason being that it is totally pure—there are no weird ingredients in it, just pumpkin. Also, from my experience, roasting a pumpkin and puréeing it myself doesn’t yield more delicious results than canned. You will need an 11-inch flan ring (a straight-sided bottomless tart ring) to make this.

It’s impossible to walk into any bakery in Italy without seeing a lattice-covered jam-filled tart called a crostata, so when I penciled out a short list of the desserts I would want to make at Mozza, it was only natural that crostata was on that list. For the longest time, I just couldn’t decide how I wanted to serve it. An unadorned crostata seemed fine for a bakery, but it looked too naked on the plate to serve alone at the Pizzeria. At the same time, I was struggling with how to incorporate another Italian favorite, panna cotta, into our repertoire. Somehow, in the course of all of my experimenting, I got the idea to substitute the creaminess of gelato, the most obvious accompaniment to a fruit tart, with the creaminess of panna cotta, and I put the crostata and panna cotta together. It worked, solving both problems at the same time. We drizzle the panna cotta with saba, Sardinian grape must. What we created was a dessert built of all Italian elements that, though you would never see them together in Italy, somehow work. I’m proud of that. The recipe makes twelve crostate, four more than you will serve with the panna cotta. I based the yield on the number of crostate the dough would make—and I figured you could find someone to eat the extras. You will need twelve 1/2-cup miniature brioche molds to make the panna cotta, though you could use 2-ounce ramekins—your panna cotta will taste just as good, it just won’t look as pretty. The crostata dough is the same as the Pasta Frolla (page 276) with toasted sesame seeds added. Dahlia and I got the idea when she was working on a sesame-seed biscotti. We didn’t like the biscotti enough to include them in our repertoire, but we really liked the subtle flavor and crunch that the seeds added to the dough.

The difference between crostoni and crostini is that crostoni are big and crostini are small. Here, both are bathed in olive oil. We use them when we want the bread to be part of the flavor of the dish, not just a vehicle for other flavors. If you have a sandwich press, you can use it to toast these instead of toasting them in the oven.

These crispy toasts are a staple of our kitchen. If you have a sandwich press, you can use it instead of the oven to toast the bread slices.

This is a cross between a cookie and a crostata. Orange marmalade is one of the only fruit tart fillings that we don’t make from scratch because there are so many good versions of orange marmalade available in stores. Almond meal is available in the baking section of specialty food stores. If you can’t find it, grind fresh almonds in a food processor with a small amount of confectioners’ sugar until the almonds are the texture of fine meal. You will need a 3 1/4-inch round cookie cutter to make these.

The recipe for this was a gift to me from Fred Chino, one of the members of the Chino Farm family. Fred loves to bake—and he’s really good at it. The first time I tried his coconut cookies, they were so good I couldn’t stop eating them. Now we make a slight variation at Mozza2Go to make them feel more Italian. Even though I see the cookies every day, I still have a hard time resisting them. You will need a 2-inch round cookie cutter to make these.

It seems like just about every culture has a version of a crumbly, melt-in-your-mouth cookie made with ground nuts. In Mexico, they make Mexican wedding cookies. In the American South, they have pecan sandies. These cookies are based on a Greek version made with ground walnuts. We press a walnut half into each cookie, which looks very pretty. You will need a 1-inch round cookie cutter to make these.

Dahlia developed these cookies—shortbread topped with rosemary, pine nuts, and nougatine—to serve alongside the Butterscotch Budino (page 272) at the Pizzeria, to contrast with the smooth texture of the pudding. We now make two versions: the small cookies to serve alongside the budino in the Pizzeria and a larger version to sell individually for Mozza2Go. You will need a 1 1/4-inch or a 2 1/2-inch cookie cutter to make these.

Since we offer only one chocolate cookie on our assorted cookie plate, we made sure that cookie is as chocolatey as possible. We call them maltagliati, which means “badly cut.” In truth, the dough is not cut at all; the pieces are torn from a slab of chilled dough. In any case, the cookies are sure to please any dark-chocolate lover.