Baking

Editor's note: This recipe is from Michele Adams's and Gia Russo's book Wedding Showers: Ideas & Recipes for the Perfect Party. Little squares of cake make perfect individual portions. We used our favorite combination of berries picked at their peak, but feel free to use any fruit in season. Bake two days in advance and assemble a few hours before the party.

Editor's note: The recipe below by chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten is excerpted from Off Duty, a collection of chefs' recipes compiled by chef David Nicholls. To read more about the book, click here.

This recipe is an accompaniment for Vanilla Mousse Meringues and Fresh Berries.

Somehow, the addition of oatmeal to these chewy, gooey cookies makes me feel like they must be good for me! They certainly taste good, and that's usually my yardstick for making cookies — or anything else, for that matter.

My mother-in-law, Zeke Amendolara, showed me how to make these addictive little cheese turnovers. They are Greek in origin, but with the addition of a dry martini, very WASPy indeed! They freeze beautifully and will emerge golden and crispy from the oven in twenty minutes flat.

Editor's note: The recipe below is excerpted from Canyon Ranch Cooks and is part of a healthy and delicious spa menu developed exclusively for Epicurious by Canyon Ranch.

I tinkered endlessly with the proportions of basic brownie ingredients to come up with a recipe that I think is perfect. They have a deep chocolate flavor, moist, fudgy interior, and chewy edges. Best of all, they are entirely mixed in one saucepan. No bowls to wash!

Editor's note: The recipe below is excerpted from Katie Brown's Weekends. To read more about Katie Brown and to get her tips on throwing a headache-free cocktail party, click here. You won't want to bite into these because they are so beautiful. But you will soooo be missing out because they are sooooo tasty!

Don't let the hairy arms and legs alarm, you. Tarantula cookies might look frisky, but they don't bite.

Editor's note: The recipe below is excerpted from Katie Brown Entertains. To read more about Katie Brown and to get her tips on throwing a headache-free cocktail party, click here. Focaccia is a porous, nonflaky but crusty bread from Italy. It is very "in" now due to the relative ease of preparation—and you can really put anything you want on it...it can be a whole meal!

Editor's note: The recipe below is excerpted from Katie Brown's Weekends. To read more about Katie Brown and to get her tips on throwing a headache-free cocktail party, click here. I love an all-in-one dish!

(Pão) Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are excerpted from Jean Anderson's book Process This!. Anderson also shared some helpful cooking tips exclusively with Epicurious, which we've added at the bottom of the page. To read more about Anderson and Portuguese cuisine, click here. What I wanted to do here was turn the food processor into a bread machine, that is, to see if I could proof the yeast, mix and knead the dough, even let it rise in the processor. I'm pleased to say that it worked perfectly. I don't recommend this technique for bigger batches of yeast dough, for more complex recipes, and certainly not for wimpy food processors with small work bowls (you need at least an 11-cup capacity). For this simple five-ingredient loaf, however, a big, powerful machine does it all. This "daily bread" of Portugal is both crusty and chewy thanks to the steam ovens in which it's baked (I bake my bread at very high temperature over a shallow pan of water). Because Portuguese flours are milled of hard wheat, I've fortified our softer-wheat all-purpose flour with semolina and find the texture exactly right. This dough is unusually stiff and for that reason I use the metal chopping blade throughout — the stubby dough blade merely spins the dough against the sides of the work bowl. I also use high-speed churning throughout (the ON button) instead of a "dough mode" because it does a better job of developing the gluten (wheat protein) that forms the framework of this bread.

Finger cookies are usually found in sets of five. If you think they look weird, you should see the cookie person to whom these fingers belonged.

Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are excerpted from Joan Nathan's book The Foods of Israel Today. Nathan also shared some helpful cooking tips exclusively with Epicurious, which we've added at the bottom of the page. To read more about Nathan and Israeli cuisine, click here. I remember with pleasure the Turkish Spinach burekas we ate every Friday morning when I worked in the Jerusalem municipality. The ritual was as follows: Simontov, the guard at the front door downstairs, would appear carrying a bronze tray with Turkish coffee and the heavenly, flaky pastries filled with spinach or cheese, called filikas in Ladino. It is rare today to have such delicious burekas, in Jerusalem or anywhere else in Israel. Most of the dough is commercially produced puff pastry, much thicker and less flaky than the homemade phyllo used to be. A few places, like Burekas Penzo in Tel Aviv (near Levinsky Street), which has been making the pastries by hand in the Turkish style for more than thirty years, produce a close second to those I remember from my days in Jerusalem. Various Ladino names like bulemas and boyos differentiate fillings and distinguish a Jewish bureka from a Turkish one. If you can find the thick phyllo dough, that works well. Otherwise, try this. My fifteen-year-old makes and sells them for fifty cents a piece. They are great!

MELOPITA SANTORINIS Editor's note: This recipe is excerpted from Aglaia Kremezi's book The Foods of the Greek Islands. To read more about Kremezi and Greek Easter, click here. Individual cheese tarts similar to this one are prepared in Crete and on most of the Greek islands during Easter time. The olive-oil-and-beer pastry, based on a recipe from Paros, has a very nice flavor and texture.