Baking

Dacquoise sounds very fancy, but it's just a dessert made of giant flat meringues layered with mousse, whipped cream, or buttercream.

Graham crusts typically start with crushed graham crackers. Here, graham flour gives the crust a nutty flavor and hearty texture.

About seven minutes of beating is all it takes to turn water, sugar, egg whites, and cream of tartar into a fluffy, soft marshmallowy frosting.

This crumbly shortbread is studded with dried currants, which are tiny raisins made from Zante grapes. The currants must be soaked overnight, so you'll need to plan your craving a day in advance.

For a few years now I've been a judge at the Whirlpool Accubake Unique Cake Contest, which is similar to the Pillsbury Bake-Off. A chocolate cake with a pecan and butterscotch toffee topping called Chocolate Coffee Toffee Cake by Elizabeth Kirsch from Pennsylvania won first place in 2002 and the $10,000 prize, which she donated to Heifer International. Elizabeth told me she made her cakes in glass canning jars and would tuck one into her husband's business trip luggage so he wouldn't miss his favorite cake while he was out of town. This simplified version of her cake would be perfect to take to a picnic or even a backyard barbecue

These blueberry muffins are the only ones that we've made every day since Foster's opened over a decade ago. That's over four thousand days of blueberry muffins! Our customers demand them; they're delicious plain or with butter. Adding finely chopped blueberries to the batter—in addition to whole berries—is the key to these moist, flavorful muffins. They freeze well, so make an extra batch for hurried mornings.

Better than any store-bought energy bars, these are great for breakfast-on-the-go, brown-bag lunches, and snacks. Make a batch on the weekend to get you through the work week.

This just might be my all-time favorite dessert. It's the simple essence of sweet apples and crisp pastry with no distractions. We've all collected several similar recipes over the years, but this is the best one I've ever made. If I need to make it even faster, I use defrosted frozen puff pastry instead of making the crust (see note), but you'll want to eat it an hour or two after it comes out of the oven.

When we cook with friends at Silvia Baracchi's school, Cooking Under the Tuscan Sun, we often whip up this very simple dessert. I never thought of chocolate as seasonal, but in Tuscany, it's considered more appropriate for fall and winter. Seldom do you find it on a summer menu, perhaps because we have a plethora of plums, melons, and white peaches for hot weather dolce. With this, Silvia suggests a full-bodied sweet red wine with enough alcohol to "clean your mouth." Her choices are a passito from Pantelleria or an aged Recioto. I'm partial to the passito from Arnaldo Capraia.

Before I opened Flour, I was lucky to get some local press about my new bakery and café. Just prior to opening day, the Boston Globe interviewed me for a cookie story and featured a bigger-than-life-size photo of my hand holding one of these lacy sesame cookies. They are gorgeous, but the ironic thing was that I didn't intend them as a selling point for Flour. A baking sheet of them just happened to be near me when the photographer asked for a prop. I'd been using the cookies for years in my restaurant work to garnish ice cream and sorbet desserts, and I wasn't planning to make them at Flour, because they seemed too brittle and delicate for the rough-and-tumble world of chocolate chip cookies and oatmeal scones. But when our doors opened, practically every other customer who walked in asked about the scrumptious-looking cookie in the newspaper and wanted to order one. We tried making them for a while, but, as I had suspected, they didn't hold up well stacked with the other cookies on our counter. Ever so slowly, we phased them out and customers eventually forgot about them. But they are fantastic for making at home! This is a wonderfully easy recipe made with ingredients that you probably already have in the kitchen, except for the black sesame seeds. Seek them out—you can find them in most Asian grocery stores and specialty food shops—because they contrast beautifully with the golden brown cookie and add a distinctive flavor. Serve them as I did during my restaurant days, with a bowl of ice cream or sorbet.

If you’re looking for the answers to your sandwich prayers, I assure you this is it. Okay, so it’s probably not a great combo for your PB&J, but your panini will definitely make a quantum leap up the yum scale from delicious to ridiculous.

Room temperature ingredients make all the difference in this cake. You can get more loft from non-chilled egg whites, and room-temperature butter is easier to cream (beat together) with sugar than the straight- from-the-fridge stuff. The fluffy egg whites and properly creamed butter and sugar mean tender, light cake. And room-temp butter and cream cheese will translate to creamy, smooth frosting instead of a sticky mess filled with lumps.

Gjelina chef Travis Lett and pastry chef Meave Mcauliffe have perfected this sweet-savory treat. "It's essential to work the dough as little as possible," says Lett. "If there are streaks of unincorporated butter or flour, that's fine." And Lett has a serving suggestion, too. "Try them with a high-quality farmstead butter and some flaky sea salt. Lovely."

This simple "syrup cake" is a Cajun classic. The dessert's name comes from the cane syrup that gives the cake its texture and flavor. If at all possible, use Steen's syrup.

This recipe is (very slightly) adapted from the second St. John restaurant cookbook, Beyond Nose to Tail (if you don't already have both the St. John books, buy them now as not only are the recipes brilliant but the turn of phrase is a joy). I would recommend you buy one or two 12-hole madeleine pans for this, if you don't already have one, as once you've made these you'll be sure to make them again. You can serve the first batch while the second batch is in the oven; you'll need both.

These rich treats aren't cookie-jar cookies—they're best the day they're made.