A Cake Bakes in Brooklyn

California Coffee Roll, a strange recipe indeed, yields a sort-of cheese danish, with a pleasing lemon flavor. It's very easy and delicious. But did I say strange? Like many vintage hand-wri...

http://www.acakebakesinbrooklyn.com/2018/12/california-coffee-roll.html

Luella Walters is right -- these cookies could be eaten every day, as they are truly delicious and worth every calorie.  Other than that, I have no idea why Ms. Walters bequeathed them such ...

http://www.acakebakesinbrooklyn.com/2018/11/luella-walters-everyday-cookies.html

Do you have fear of frying? I overcame mine a few years ago with some -- as it turned out, unnecessary -- reassurance from a nearby fire extinguisher. And a whole new world opened. Frying is...

http://www.acakebakesinbrooklyn.com/2018/11/fresh-corn-fritters.html

About a decade ago, I was asked to bring a birthday cake to my dear (and now sadly departed) friend Suzanne Wasserman's 50th birthday party at the Bridge Cafe. So I baked a nine-inch red vel...

http://www.acakebakesinbrooklyn.com/2018/10/amish-chocolate-flat-cake.html

Are you watching season two of Netflix's Ozark?  I am, sort of. It's so contrived and crazy, but hard to get off the rollercoaster. The lives of Marty (Jason Bateman) and Wendy (Laura Linney...

http://www.acakebakesinbrooklyn.com/2018/09/ozark-pie.html

Until a few days ago, I was an apple fritter virgin. Seriously, I'd never tasted one, always pointing to Boston creme or glazed donuts at the donut shop.  But looking to turn my surplus of n...

http://www.acakebakesinbrooklyn.com/2018/09/apple-fritters.html

I'm back! After a really long hiatus (insert life-got-in-the-way excuses here), I'm thrilled to present the easiest, most delicious honey cake ever. And just in time for Rosh Hashanah. Hone...

http://www.acakebakesinbrooklyn.com/2018/09/a-honey-of-honey-cake.html

As a child, I adored Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" books, her romanticized memoir of life on the western frontier in the late 19th century.  Just how romanticized these are I discove...

http://www.acakebakesinbrooklyn.com/2018/02/heart-shaped-cakes.html

Wednesday was a snow day in NYC and, while "working from home," I used my "lunch hour" to whip up this delicious gingerbread. It's not from a vintage recipe; you can find wonderful vintage g...

http://www.acakebakesinbrooklyn.com/2018/01/gingerbread-bundt-cake.html

This Family Chocolate Cake recipe is not my family's -- it belongs to the Wenzel family whose son Ryan worked for me a few years ago. It was passed down from Ryan's paternal grandmother and t...

http://www.acakebakesinbrooklyn.com/2017/12/family-chocolate-cake-recipe.html

This fall, I did something new -- I taught a graduate class in nonprofit communications at a university in Manhattan. Much of the curriculum was devoted to developing effective writing skills...

http://www.acakebakesinbrooklyn.com/2017/12/snickerdoodles.html

Delicious pumpkin pie in just minutes?  Impossible you say? It's not quite a Thanksgiving miracle, but if you have a blender and oven, it's possible!  This is a cheat pie made by placing ...

http://www.acakebakesinbrooklyn.com/2017/11/impossible-pumpkin-pie.html

A hot-from-the-oven pan of cornbread is an excellent way to elevate a weeknight dinner of chili or soup or really anything. It's a rather lowly baked good that, homemade and warm, adds someth...

http://www.acakebakesinbrooklyn.com/2017/11/corn-bread.html

'Tis the season for fresh cranberries and after making sauce, bread, cake and cobbler with these tart ruby berries, I was delighted to discover this vintage recipe for Fresh Cranberry Cookies...

http://www.acakebakesinbrooklyn.com/2017/11/fresh-cranberry-cookies.html

During college, in addition to protesting (it was the 1970s), studying, experimenting with all manner of things (again, the 1970s), I worked as a waitress in a couple of restaurants.  One, ...

http://www.acakebakesinbrooklyn.com/2017/10/grasshopper-pie.html

These days, what's happening in Washington, D.C., makes Watergate seem like child's play, but at the time, it was THE BIGGEST SCANDAL EVER, commanding the attention of everyone -- even, appar...

http://www.acakebakesinbrooklyn.com/2017/08/pistachio-watergate-cake-with-cover-up.html

If you yearn for a crisp coconut brown sugar cookie, then these are your ticket to happiness. I didn't love them (I like chewier cookies) yet found them very, very addicting. You can feed t...

http://www.acakebakesinbrooklyn.com/2017/05/ruth-hamilton-cookies.html

This recipe is a pure fun -- and delicious -- trompe l'oiel of a dessert. Wish I'd made it for April Fool's Day, but didn't want to wait 11 months to post this. It's that good.  It is also v...

http://www.acakebakesinbrooklyn.com/2017/05/pizza-for-dessert.html

My obsession with simple everyday cakes is more than a recipe quest. Instead it's a search for an idealized 20th century America, one I know is more rooted in fantasy than reality. I'm not th...

http://www.acakebakesinbrooklyn.com/2017/04/one-egg-cake-and-creamy-fudge-frosting.html

With just five simple ingredients, you can easily create this moist and delicious old-fashioned pound cake from a vintage recipe. Pound cake, so named because it originally called for one pou...

http://www.acakebakesinbrooklyn.com/2017/04/classic-pound-cake.html

I didn't have to look far for this vintage recipe card -- it's from my mother Bee's collection. She wasn't a particularly good cook or baker, but she made dinner six nights a week without fai...

http://www.acakebakesinbrooklyn.com/2017/04/bees-matzo-meal-bagels.html

This isn't a pretty dessert, and I was about to classify it among my many recent vintage recipe fails, until my son-in-law was crestfallen that, after eating one slice, there was no more lef...

http://www.acakebakesinbrooklyn.com/2017/04/carols-raw-apple-cake.html

I'm thrilled to present -- on Pi Day, yet -- the most unusual pie I've ever encountered.  Unlike every other chocolate meringue pie, where the custard is chocolate, this one turns conven...

http://www.acakebakesinbrooklyn.com/2017/03/upside-down-chocolate-meringue-pie.html

It's Purim and time to make the hamantashen, filled cookies designed to symbolize the defeat of Haman, an enemy of the Jewish people. They appear in bakery cases all over NYC this time of ye...

http://www.acakebakesinbrooklyn.com/2017/03/hamantashen.html

Sometimes I bake recipes with intriguing names, other times -- like this -- I select a recipe because of the paper it's written on.  Grandmother's Oatmeal Cookies is handwritten on a sheet o...

http://www.acakebakesinbrooklyn.com/2017/03/grandmothers-oatmeal-cookies.html