Baking

Brown butter gives depth of flavor to the berry filling.

Eggs are always a go-to ingredient for the quick cook. Here, they're used in a quiche-like southwestern tart.Round out the meal with a romaine salad or a cup of gazpacho.

Cheesy with a shortbread-like texture, these biscuits are addictive and would pair nicely with beer.

Raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries are baked between a crisp pastry crust and a crumbly streusel topping.

The secret to great shortcakes is a very moist dough, so don’t be tempted to add more flour.

Blueberry meets its ideal match: lemon. There will be some jam leftover, but we doubt you'll mind.

Baking the cake in one 12-inch round pan creates a dessert with presence. Assorted edible flowers make an easy, great-looking garnish.

These tart pastries are best straight out of the oven, but if you have any left over (or if you make extra), they're nice for breakfast, too.

Pat: When it comes to summertime in the South, fresh peaches rule. We put them in ice cream, pie, and cobbler. We pack them in mason jars and cover them with syrup. No getting around it: we have never met a peach-and-sugar dish that we didn’t like. When we were kids, Momma Daisy had several peach trees in her backyard. She’d give my brothers and me a big basket, and we would go out and pick them right off the tree. Next thing you knew, she was making cobbler—man, was that a treat. Needless to say, that was always a fun trip, and now we get to relive it by sharing her recipe with you.

This rich, delicate cake forms the basis for many filled, frosted, and glazed cakes. A good plain gênoise is hard to beat—it has an elegance that derives from its simplicity, and I even like them unadorned. Many recipes for gênoise add butter as an enrichment. Unfortunately, sometimes the extra manipulation the incorporation of the butter necessitates causes these light batters to fall. So I prefer to add a few extra egg yolks instead—they not only help enrich the cake, they also provide greater stability to the foam, ultimately making the batter easier to prepare. This recipe originally accompanied the Strawberry Roulade .

The fine, moist crumb of this cake makes it perfect for any type of filling or frosting.

This almost doesn't need a recipe because it is based on the classic proportions of a pound of each of the four main ingredients: butter, sugar, eggs, and flour. I have played with the quantities a little bit so that the recipe doesn't make such a large cake. I like to flavor this type of pound cake with just a little vanilla—it keeps the flavor delicate and doesn't mask the lovely flavor of the butter. If you want more vividly flavored pound cake, try any of the variations.

This strawberry roll is elegant in appearance but less rich than a roll covered with whipped cream rather than the light meringue.

Spicy, cheesy, and moist! I love this cornbread for dinner on a warm summer night, whether with barbecued meats or just a big old salad. If you don’t have Manchego, you can substitute cheddar, Monterey Jack, or Gouda.

These wee sandwich cakes, also known as Moon Pies, got their start in Pennsylvania Dutch country. They are known as whoopee pies because children exclaim, "Whoopee!" when the cakes are ready. Whole Foods sells Tiny Trapeze brand marshmallow cream, made with "no junkie stuff," as the container states.

These flat, chewy, half whole-wheat cookies are for the chocolate chip purist: no nuts, no frills—pure bliss. They will fly out of the kitchen mysteriously. Use a 1-ounce (2-tablespoon-capacity) ice-cream scoop for easy measuring.

This buttery shortbread is a treat for all ages. Kids can help stir the dough with a wooden spoon.

Editor's note: The recipe below is from Kimberly Kennedy's The Art and Craft of Entertaining. For Kennedy's baby shower tips click here.

This rich Belizean pudding, or pone, is delicious warm or chilled.

Here's our slightly simpler version of Bud's fantastic pie (which you should mail-order if you love gooey chocolate chip cookies). Chocolate chip whipped cream is a pretty good substitute for the ice cream Bud insists you eat with it.