Nut Free

Granny Smith apples are ideal for this dish: Their sweet-tart juice complements the rich scallops, and they keep their shape when cooked.

Add the prosciutto at the last minute to preserve the pretty pink color.

This dish is a great way to serve eggs for a group. Take the eggs out of the oven when the whites are slightly undercooked; carryover cooking will finish them.

Onion flavor is layered in this dish: The greens have a brightness to balance the bulbs' sweetness, the cooking liquid becomes a buttery sauce, and fresh chives deliver a high note to finish.

Serve spooned over roast chicken, steak, or pan-fried pork chops. And, of course, pancakes.

Marinated white anchovies bear little resemblance to the pungent salted brown ones packed in oil. They're plump, vinegary, tender, and addictive when paired with the crisp frisée and chewy bread in this sandwich.

"This spicy butter has a built-in garnish; it turns into a sauce as it melts over your steak, leaving the herbs on top for looks and extra flavor." —Brad Leone, test kitchen assistant

The slight tang of this dessert is complemented by the sweet and sour flavor of the vibrant topping. Because the panna cotta can be made so far in advance, it's an ideal choice for a party.

Baking is a science. It's about ratios and chemical reactions and, over the years, I have learned where variations can be made and how best to modify a recipe to achieve my ideal. But I've also learned that sometimes a recipe is just too good to modify. There is a lot to be said for exercising restraint and knowing when a recipe wouldn't be improved with your fingerprints all over it. Rose Levy Beranbaum's Downy Butter Yellow Cake and White Velvet Cake are two such recipes. They are the foundations for the two most iconic works of art in this book, and I am happy to admit that I couldn't have invented a better recipe to use in these desserts. Wayne Thiebaud's painted cakes are classic, nostalgic, and all-American. They're not challenging in flavor—they're just simple cakes, like the type your mother might've made for your birthday. Rose's Downy Yellow Butter cake is the perfect recipe with which to create cakes commemorating Wayne Thiebaud.

Almost nothing makes me happier than buttercream at the perfect temperature, a small offset spatula, and a beautiful cake waiting to be frosted. There are different types of buttercreams, but I prefer the Italian-meringue version, perhaps because its consistency is very similar to thick oil paint, Thiebaud's medium in Display Cakes. If you're making one of the variations, ensure that whatever you're adding is at room temperature and incorporate it slowly.

Nick Malgieri, the director of baking and pastry programs at The Institute of Culinary Education in New York City, created this recipe exclusively for Epicurious. The enriched yeast dough is a snap to make and even easier to shape into decadent, delicious cinnamon rolls. Best of all, the rolls can be baked ahead and reheated for a fresh-from-the-oven breakfast treat. For more on cinnamon rolls, including tips from Malgieri, see Classic Recipes: Cinnamon Rolls.

Ellsworth Kelly's enormous sculpture, Stele 1, was the anchor in the Rooftop Garden when we opened our café in 2009. A 1-inch-thick oblong steel plate weighing seven tons and rising eighteen feet into the air perched on one narrow end, the sculpture seemed to defy gravity. The deep rust-colored patina of the Corten steel was an incredible contrast against gray volcanic stone walls of the Rooftop Garden and the stunning art deco Pacific Bell building that towers over the east side of the museum. Of course, I thought the piece looked like an enormous slab of chocolate. Trying to figure out a dessert based on the sculpture, I played with various truffle recipes and cakes baked in oblong pans, but nothing was giving me the rich matte color and texture of the weathered steel. One day I was chatting with the museum's brilliant and witty social media guru, Ian Padgham, about Stele 1, and I asked him what the sculpture reminded him of. "A Fudgsicle, of course!" he said. And, so it was. I found some silicone ice-pop molds in the shape of the sculpture and developed a creamy, rich chocolatey base with a touch of natural cocoa powder to give the frozen fudge pops the reddish matte finish of Corten steel.

When SFMOMA presented the first Francesca Woodman retrospective in the United States in over two decades, I was excited to immerse myself in the work of another influential female photographer whom I studied in college. I love Woodman's juxtaposition of textures, her way of placing soft and vulnerable human forms in withered, deteriorating environments. My plan was to base a dessert on a photograph with this type of contrast. Of all of the images in the show, the one of the artist wearing a Victorian-style floral coat and flowing dress while posing in a crumbling room was my favorite. At the time the Woodman retrospective opened, I had just returned from a vacation in Scandinavia where I would have been happy to live on only Norwegian hardtack, rye bread, soft cheeses, and smoked salmon. The combination of hearty rusticity and soft refinement of these foods were like elements in the Woodman photo: I saw the crumbling room as a cracker made with whole wheat and rye; her flowing skirt as soft cheese; and the pattern on her coat as beautiful, delicate edible flowers. To create a tender cracker with the heartiness of my Norwegian inspiration, I used two types of rustic flour and incorporated the butter using the same technique that's used to make flaky pie dough. A little bit of yogurt added tang and tenderness to the cracker. To slather onto the crackers, I wanted a soft-textured fresh cheese that was simple to make in our tiny kitchen. Ricotta cheese was just the type. A sprinkling of colorful edible flowers from Leah's garden and a touch of black Hawaiian sea salt perfected the rustic-elegant presentation of the Woodman Cheese and Crackers.

The most dainty and cute of the three, this little pink cake was the one that propelled me into a life in cake making and was the original inspiration for the cakes I made at Miette. For the SFMOMA, I make the Thiebaud Pink Cake pink by cooking down strawberry syrup and adding it to the buttercream, and I top the frosted cake with either a red buttercream dot or a big, ripe raspberry if they're in season. I use lemon curd in the filling because, being the giant kid that I am, I love the combination of strawberry and lemon in a dessert—to me, it always tastes like Froot Loops.

I use simple syrup for keeping cake layers extra moist. Plain simple syrup works perfectly well on its own, but when I have used vanilla bean pods on hand, I like to steep them into the syrup (feel free to keep them stored in the syrup indefinitely). It's an unnecessary step, for sure, but I always welcome a little extra pop of vanilla flavor in my cakes.

Cookbook author and food photographer Lara Ferroni created this classic doughnut recipe exclusively for Epicurious. For Ferroni's doughnut-making tips and more recipes, see our complete guide to homemade doughnuts. We've included two glaze options, sugar and chocolate, but these doughnuts are terrific on their own or simply dusted with confectioners' sugar. If your kitchen is on the cold side, an easy way to create a warm place for the dough to rise is to turn the oven on to 250°F, and set the bowl of dough or the baking sheet of doughnuts on top.

This is a loaf cake that my mum liked to make and it remains a firm favorite of mine. The lemon syrup poured over the freshly baked cake seeps down into the sponge and adds a special moisture to the taste. Perfect to have with a cup of tea in the afternoon.

My husband taught me how to make Yorkshire puddings, and now I am hooked. I like to make them as individual puddings, baked in a non-stick muffin tin, but you can also make one large pudding in a high-sided pan and then cut it into portions. As a child, my dad used to eat them as a sweet dessert—you follow the same recipe, but finish off by pouring warm honey over the top. Comfort food at its best.