Good morning! Today we have for you:
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Tips for making the best cake of your life (and recipes, too)
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Braised pork and white beans, inspired by an Italian classic
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And, baked sweet potatoes with a party-worthy topping
Hello, this is Emily, filling in for Mia Leimkuhler. Usually I’m chatting with you about weeknight cooking, but today I get to talk about dessert — my one true culinary love. (Sorry, boneless chicken thighs.)
I used to be a pie person, but about five years ago I switched to Team Cake, which is the ultimate herald of happiness and far breezier to make. No matter how hard your heart is, how unsweet your tooth, I dare you to remain stone-faced when a cake emerges from the kitchen, especially one with lit birthday candles — a kind of joy that actually glows. (I do still love pie, by the way. It’s just so fickle, with too high a chance that your beautiful, fussed-over crust will melt into a Gaudí-esque mess when it enters the oven.)
If you, too, are a cake person, or are an aspiring cake person, then I have news: We’ve got a fresh episode of Cooking 101 for you, devoted to cake and starring the amazing baker Samantha Seneviratne. (She’s also the creator of New York Times Cooking’s best-ever cookie. I said it!)
In this episode, Sam teaches you how to make three recipes: an exquisitely tender yellow sheet cake with chocolate frosting; a festive, rainbow-sprinkle-coated confetti cake; and cute chocolate peanut butter cupcakes. All of this comes with an article full of baking tips, too.
Featured Recipe
Yellow Sheet Cake With Chocolate Sour Cream Frosting
Today’s specials
Porchetta beans: If you’ve had the good fortune to try porchetta, the Italian spit-roasted pork intensely flavored with garlic and herbs, then you’ll have a sense of what Ali Slagle is up to here. Her version uses soft shreds of pork shoulder and white beans to capture the magic of the original, but in a pot on your stove. There’s a slow-cooker version, too!
Hot honey baked sweet potatoes: Eric Kim sings the glories of the sweet potato in this recipe, which uses whipped goat cheese (or blue cheese), spicy honey and roasted nuts as toppings. He baked countless pounds of potatoes to arrive at his ideal baking method: “No salt, no oil, no foil.”
Coconut curry with potatoes and greens: I can’t resist sneaking in a weeknight wonder, so here is Hetty Lui McKinnon’s vegetarian coconut curry recipe, to which I’d add chickpeas for a complete meal. (Tofu would be another excellent choice.)
Migas: For Mexican-style migas, a Hall of Fame-worthy scramble, you tuck leftover pieces of fried tortilla into cheesy eggs flecked with jalapeño. Kia Damon’s excellent recipe hits all the right notes.
And before you go
You deserve a dirty martini! We both deserve dirty martinis! Make this recipe from Rebekah Peppler and read this new article on the depths to which bartenders will go to make their martinis even dirtier. I’m clinking glasses with you!
Emily Weinstein is the editor in chief of New York Times Cooking and Food. She also writes the popular NYT Cooking newsletter Five Weeknight Dishes.
The post I’m a Cake Person Now. Join Me! appeared first on New York Times.
