Cake

If you don't have the pastry rings we call for in this recipe, you can use 1/2-cup muffin cups. However, the batter will fill 6 muffin cups, making smaller cakes.

Extra-virgin olive oil is the the secret ingredient in this moist, dense, lightly sweet cake. Perfect as an afternoon snack or for breakfast with a cup of fluffy cappuccino.

To create a basket-weave design, follow the instructions at the bottom of the recipe.

You can use Meyer lemons in this cake for a lighter, more floral flavor.

This recipe was developed by Houston pastry chef Carrie Hart with the assistance of Girl Scout Amanda Marlow.

Among favorite desserts of the decade were waffles, served with ice cream and syrup, as well as this easy cake's ancestor. The treat reached its maximum popularity with the increasing availability of canned pineapple and the marketing efforts of the Dole Company. Today's widely available fresh fruit-spiked with ginger, macadamia nuts and orange zest-gives a great result.

Perfect with a cup of tea, especially a nicely spiced Indian chai.

The beauty of this cake is that the frosting is baked in the same pan with the batter. When the cake is inverted onto a cake plate a few minutes after baking, it is bathed, miraculously, with frosting. Although this cake is best served warm, it is also delicious at room temperature.

(Gâteau de Semoule d’Isabelle) A favorite on the Dugord farm in Normandy, this cake (which is really more of a pudding) wins with everyone. According to Isabelle Dugord, who convinced her grandmother to share the recipe, her family ate this all the time when she was growing up, and it's still her preferred sweet. Isabelle works part-time at a day-care center and always has the children make this at least once while they’re with her. "It's easy to make, healthy, and they all, down to the last child, just love it," she said. It can be served hot, lukewarm, or chilled, and is best the day it is made. Raisins are traditional, though dates or figs are luscious, too.

Make these individual desserts a day ahead.

Carrot Torte This cake is from the Veneto region in northern Italy. Use the sweetest, most flavorful organic carrots you can find—otherwise it will be a big "so what."

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

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.

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