Baking

Tender banana cake, Cream Cheese Frosting and Mango Curd (see recipes) stack up to one impressive dessert.

Serve these as an appetizer with a salad of baby greens.

A unique no-knead loaf developed for baking in coffee cans to create that special mushroom shape, this white bread is a savory loaf that fills the kitchen with an incredible aroma while it bakes. Since it takes only one rise in the molds, you can plan on 2 hours from mixing to table. In my travels around the United States, home bakers most often surprise me when they tell me this is their favorite bread recipe. It utilizes creamy evaporated milk, which has 60 percent of its water removed and gives the bread an especially delicate, moist texture. I think you will find it exceptionally easy to prepare, and each variation is as good as the master recipe. I use two glass baking canisters in lieu of coffee cans, which are not so often readily available.

Along with croissants and pains au chocolat, these buns are ubiquitous in the morning bread basket that arrives after you order your express or café crème in Paris. It's the pastry cream that makes them unique. We used our favorite brioche recipe (by Sally Darr, a former gourmet editor) as the base.

It takes a bit of practice to make a pie crust, just as it does to hit a tennis ball. Take a cool Saturday morning and make several batches, testing them by cutting off a strip and baking it, until you come up with the one of your dreams. Note on your recipe what you like, then write your own recipe. The size you cut fat into whether you use shortening or butter can both make a difference. Remember, however, that different flours absorb water differently, and flours absorb water differently according to the weather, so your crust will be different in measure each time—you need to learn the feel.

Having run the cake table at my daughter's school last year, I can say that there are two types of optimum bake sale fare: small, individual pieces that look cute and fetch high unit-prices and sheet cakes that can be made without effort or dexterity and sliced up easily. This recipe fits the latter category and has the added virtue of appealing to parents and grandparents who feel that something from the sale should be gratifyingly old-fashioned. The fresh ginger is a modern touch, admittedly, but I always keep some in the fridge and wanted to try it in a less contemporary, pan-Asian way one day (it worked.) The lemon icing may not be conventional either, but there is another starkly practical reason for it: brown things — if they're not gooily chocolate — don't sell so well; and the lemon spruceness of the topping is perfect with the musky sweetness beneath it.

A few tips: At several points in the recipe, components need to be chilled for a while before you can proceed, so plan accordingly. In our test kitchen, Philadelphia-brand cream cheese gave consistently good results. Note, too, that the cake can be completely assembled, then frozen for up to one week.

A simple and festive way to serve fresh bananas for dessert. Pipe extra meringue onto foil-lined cookie sheet and bake at 250°F. until dry for some low-fat cookies.

The cake is put into a cold oven and then baked slowly at gradually increasing temperatures.

Sandra Sowis of Allenhurst, New Jersey, writes: "My mother loved bananas and used them in anything she could dream up. She made this banana cake for my birthday more than ten years ago, and it has traditionally been my birthday cake ever since." Active time: 40 min Start to finish: 1 1/2 hr

"My grandmother, who emigrated from Sweden to the United States when she was a little girl, passed on to our family a taste for cardamom," writes Lisa Tracy of Marion, Iowa.

"Every Christmas, my grandmother's best friend, Mrs. Mack, would give me and each of my brothers just one of these cookies, large and exquisitely decorated," writes Wendy Phillips Kahn of New York, New York. "I would save mine for days and then nibble carefully to make it last. Today, it seems a little decadent to make a whole batch, yet my daughter and I love the excuse to use our extensive collection of cookie cutters, and then enjoy painting our reindeer, Christmas trees, bells, birds, and snowmen, complete with jaunty ribbons around their hats. They may not be as elegant as Mrs. Mack's, but they're a colorful highlight in gift boxes of treats." Note: One of our readers alerted us to a problem with the cover recipe for cinnamon cookies in our December 2000 issue. We forgot the eggs! In order to make the cookies properly, add 2 lightly beaten eggs after beating together the butter and sugar, mix until blended, then follow the rest of the recipe. We apologize to Mrs. Mack, Wendy Phillips Kahn, and all of our readers for this oversight. These cookies are truly delicious, and we hope that you enjoy them.

Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are excerpted from Diane Kochilas's book Meze: Small Plates to Savor and Share from the Mediterranean Table. Kochilas also shared some helpful cooking tips exclusively with Epicurious, which we've added at the bottom of the page. To read more about Kochilas and Greek cuisine, click here. Onions, cheese, and yogurt pies abound in the north of Greece, especially in shepherds' communities where dairy products are daily staples. This recipe is culled from that tradition, but instead of preparing a whole sheet pan with homemade phyllo, I have reworked it to make it accessible and more in tune with the meze style of eating.

The recipe calls for a pastry bag, but the meringue disks can also be formed with a spatula. If made ahead, the meringue will soften slightly from contact with the buttercream.