Honey can be a great ingredient to bake with because it really adds a lot of moisture to things. It also helps to keep baked goods moist over time, so a cake or bread that has honey in it will often taste fresher than one without after it has been stored for a couple of days. Agave syrup, or agave nectar, has this moisturizing property, as well, and I took advantage of it by including it in this chocolate cake recipe.

The chocolate cake is a fairly basic one, the kind that I would have wanted to have a giant slice of after school when I was little. It is more substantial than some cakes, somewhere halfway between a very fluffy cake and a pound cake, but is very moist and tender. Agave syrup replaces some, but not all, of the sugar in the recipe. I found that the finished cake had a slightly better texture when some sugar was still used. The agave sweetener doesn’t have a strong flavor profile and is even more subtle than honey, so you can’t taste any unusual flavors in the cake to detract from the chocolate

For the frosting, I went with cream cheese. I generally prefer cream cheese frostings because they’re a bit more interesting to my tastes than a regular buttercream. I debated about using honey or agave syrup in the frosting, wondering whether I should opt for the more flavorful ingredient or stick with the same sweetener I used in the cake. Ultimately, I opted for honey. It matches well with the cream cheese and adds another interesting hint of flavor to the finished cake. Fee free to use agave syrup, if you like.

Be careful not to overbake this cake. As moisturizing as agave syrup can be, it also can help dry out a cake quite quickly if it is left in the oven too long. Use a toothpick to check the cake a bit early. It’s ok if a few moist - not wet - crumbs stick to the toothpick. You’ll want to pull it out of the oven before the cake really begins to pull away from the sides of the pan.
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Some foods are very inspiring. Some recipes are, too. The scents of different ingredients and the look and feel of a batter or dough as it comes together can spark different memories, inspire different feelings. I would venture to say that the most commonly invoked thought is a memory from childhood, followed by flashbacks to well-liked foods made by friends or eaten at particular restaurants. As I started to make this cake, I was immediately hit with one thought and it wasn’t in either of the above categories. It was one word: California.

The Orange Kiss-Me Cake, like the Swedish Toscas and Caramel Oatmeal Brownies that I featured this week, is an old Pillsbury Bake-Off recipe. It won the $25,000 grand prize in the 1950 contest - the second ever Bake Off. The cake is simple and easy to make, but has an unusual combination of ingredients added for flavor and texture: a mixture of orange, walnuts and raisins that has been almost pureed in the food processor. Blending these three ingredients triggered my “california” thought because all three are well-known California produced foods (CA produces 99% of the country’s walnuts, 95% of the country’s raisins and is the 2nd highest producer of oranges). I want to rename it the California Kiss Me Cake.

The cake is extremely moist and flavorful. The moistness comes both from the sweet, syrupy topping that soaks the hot-from-the-oven cake when it comes out of the oven and from the raisins in the batter. The raisins are chopped up so finely that you can’t really taste them - in fact, my tasters had no idea that there were raisins in the cake at all - but you can taste a fruity sweetness and that lovely, slightly sticky moistness that raisins have.

I would make this again in a heartbeat. It’s great as a breakfast cake or served with coffee. I opted to omit walnuts from the topping of the cake since I’m not a particular fan of nut toppings, but feel free to sprinkle some on for crunch and to contrast with the cake’s soft texture.

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Pound cake is perhaps the father of most modern cakes - a term which could be applied to the standard butter-sugar-flour-egg based sweet quick breads, cakes and cupcakes that we all love. The original cake was nothing more than a pound of butter, a pound of sugar, a pound of flour and a pound of eggs, mixed and baked. It dates back to the 1700s, and the first printed recipes started appearing at the end of that century.

Once the initial cake was established, bakers naturally began for ways to make it taste better and lighter. Chemical leavenings like baking powder and baking soda were incorporated, as were beaten egg whites. Flavorings were added and the ratios went up and down to create hundreds of different types of cakes. But the classic pound cake stuck around with only a few modern tweaks to make it into the lovely dense, tender cake we know today.

This pound cake is a brown sugar spinoff of the classic pound cake and I was inspired to make it by reading a recent piece on James Beard in the New York Times magazine. The story recounted Beard’s pound cake recipe, which I used as a jumping off point for this recipe.

This pound cake is dense, but not too heavy, and is almost (but not quite) dry in the same way that shortbread is, since almost all of the moisture in the cake comes from butter. There are two types of leavening in this cake: baking powder and beaten egg whites. Both help the cake to rise during baking, but the beaten egg whites (a method apparently favored by Beard) can lead to a slightly uneven crumb because there will undoubtedly be some larger air bubbles in your egg whites and some small ones. Most recipes call for folding in beaten egg whites. Mine does not. The batter is so thick that it would be almost impossible to do so. Simply mix the whites in in batches using a mixer on low speed. Fold in the last small batch, if you can, and don’t worry too much if you need to use the mixer for that, as well.

The cake has a wonderful brown sugar and butter flavor, almost like butterscotch. The top of the cake, which browns wonderfully in the oven, is particularly good. I enjoyed the cake the most on the second day, after it had been wrapped in plastic wrap overnight because the “crust” of the cake was slightly softer. Eat plain or serve with ice cream, whipped cream or fruit.

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 Some cakes are classically bundt cakes. Others are classically layer cakes. Carrot cake is one that I would put firmly in the latter category. The cake is usually made to be very moist and very dense - a combination that doesn’t really make for an appetizing, tall cake. Shorter layers keep the cake from seeming too heavy and the addition of frosting to break up the rich spicy flavors is usually necessary. Fortunately for me, I’m not a fan of wet and heavy carrot cakes (without fail, I find them to be greasy and unappealing) and because I tend to make mine a bit on the lighter side, they work out extremely well in bundt cake form.

This carrot cake is very moist and tender, without being wet or heavy. One of the big differences between this and what we’ll call the “average” carrot cake recipe is that it doesn’t use oil. I far prefer butter because it adds flavor and always seems lighter in the finished cake. That said, I do want a carrot cake to have some more substance to it than some other types of cake, so I use melted butter in the recipe. The spices are the same that you’d find elsewhere - cinnamon, allspice and nutmeg - and while I’ve given amounts below, feel free to play around with the proportions a bit if you prefer more allspice or less cinnamon. I also used raisins in the cake and omitted nuts entirely. If you prefer, use half raisins and half chopped pecans, or simply use all chopped pecans if you’re a big nut fan.

The only warning I want to give with this recipe is that greasing and flouring the pan is crucial. The cake has a lot of sugar in it and the sugar caramelizes against the side of the pan during baking, making the outside of the cake not only dark, but sticky. It can be tricky to get the cake out in one piece (although do-able with a butter knife and some patience) if you forget this step.

Cream cheese frosting is pretty much the standard for topping off carrot cakes and I almost always use it when I’m doing a layer cake, sheet cake, cupcakes or other format of carrot cake. But I never use it with bundt cakes. At the risk of sounding like a bundt cake snob, I just don’t like the way that bundt cakes look when they’re covered in a thick frosting. It covers up the pretty ridges and lines of the pan and almost always looks a bit sloppy. This cake can be left plain and it will be delicious. I opted to make up a simple orange glaze to top it off, however. It brings out the orange flavor in the cake and gives the cake a nice finishing touch, visually, too.

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 When St. Patrick’s Day comes around every year, I usually follow a little tradition that involves making up a batch of soda bread, a dish involving cabbage or corned beef, and maybe drinking a bottle of Guinness, too. Nothing fancy and pretty standard, as far as celebration goes. This year, I didn’t want to get stuck in that rut, but I did want to do a little something to acknowledge the holiday in my own way - with baked goods, of course. A quick look through my cabinets uncovered my bottle of Bailey’s Mint Chocolate Irish Cream and I knew what I wanted do make.

These cupcakes are a riff on mint chocolate chip ice cream, which is typically colored green, with a generous amount of Bailey’s for character. I neglected to add food coloring to my cupcakes, but feel free to do so if you really want them looking green for the holiday; if you want to avoid food coloring, rest assured that the Irish Cream is more than enough “irish” to make these an acceptable St. Patrick’s day dessert.

The cupcakes are a tiny bit more substantial than the ultra-fluffy cupcakes that I usually aim to bake because I needed them to be able to support the weight of the chocolate chips for good distribution. Mini chocolate chips worked out perfectly and were found in every bite of the cake. The flavor of the Bailey’s was relatively subtle, but definitely carried through into the cake. Regular Bailey’s will work fine in this recipe, although the Bailey’s Mint Chocolate Irish Cream I used will work out even better because it adds another layer of chocolate mint to the cupcake.

Aside from the Bailey’s, the cakes themselves don’t have any mint in them. The majority of the mint flavor comes from some sweet and potent frosting that is spread on top of the cakes. I think that the cakes taste best without mint in them and the clarity of the mint flavor really comes through exceptionally well in the frosting. The chocolate drizzle on top ofthe cupcakes is made with unsweetened chocolate. Don’t worry about it being too bitter, though. It balances well with the sweet mint frosting and prevents the whole dessert from being too sweet. And besides, there is only a very small amount on top of each cupcake.

I made both mini cupcakes and regular ones with this recipe. If you bake all minis, you’ll get 48 bite-sized cupcakes. If you bake all full-sized cakes, you’ll get 16. Baking time for the minis is 10-12 minutes. Baking time for regular size is 18-21 minutes. For me, the full sized cakes were gorgeous, but the minis got eaten up much faster. You can’t go wrong with either size.

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 A babycake, to me, is a small and special cake that doesn’t quite fit into any other mold. It’s not a muffin or a cupcake, nor is is simply a miniature version of a large cake. It’s a babycake - and it’s also precisely how I’d describe these Mixed Berry Ricotta Babycakes.

The cakes have a taste and texture that is somewhere between cheesecake and cupcake. The ricotta cheese in the batter gives it a flavor that is reminiscent of cheesecake, as well as a moist and soft texture that is also cheesecakey. But the batter, like a cupcake batter, primarily uses flour and sugar as its base. This gives the cupcake a firmness that you wouldn’t find in a straight cheesecake, but also gives it a very light mouthfeel; there is no hint of the dense or heavy texture of a traditional cheesecake. Overall, the texture is just lovely.

Berries and vanilla are the two main flavoring agents for these babycakes. The vanilla works very well with the ricotta cheese and brings a brightness to the cake, while the berries are there just to make the cakes more interesting. I used frozen mixed berries here. Fresh will work, if you can find some good ones in season, but frozen are absolutly fine. Feel free to use a mix - mine included strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and blueberries - or just opt for a single type of fruit. I think this cake would also be great with chopped up peaches.

These might be best suited to breakfast or brunch, when you want something sweet that is going to make an impact. I served them at a casual breakfast and they were a smash hit. They can easily be served as dessert, but they’re not as sweet as you might want a dessert to be, nor are they terribly fancy.

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