My favorite recipe for making sugar cookies with royal icing comes from the venerable Martha Stewart. It's a classic recipe for perfect sugar cookies, the kind that are light and crisp and perfect for decorating. I recommend using brandy or cognac, which adds a butterscotch note to the cookies. More
What looks like an innocent enough poppyseed bagel with cream cheese is in fact a clever cover for a doughnut sandwich with buttercream frosting. We won't tell if you don't. More
Decorating cakes the way the pros do takes years of dedication and practice, but knowing a few cool tricks can definitely make the difference between a boring cake and a cake that looks elegant and special. With just a basic set of metal piping tips, there are many impressive designs that you can create to jazz up a cake. More
Now that it's become de rigueur to cover and decorate celebration cakes with fondant, the flexible sugar dough that's become exceedingly popular thanks to cake TV shows, Swiss buttercream has become an afterthought. For me, a cook who believes that it's never worth it to sacrifice flavor for appearance, the demise of buttercream cakes is a travesty. More
This recipe is extremely versatile and can be used with any flavored extracts. Or, if you prefer to make a natural vanilla bean buttercream, use the seeds scraped from the inside of a vanilla bean. If your flavoring does not impart color, this recipe is great for adding color too. I recommend gel color instead of liquid food coloring, because it contains less liquid and you don't need much to get the results you want. More
Tender yellow cake with smooth chocolate frosting, this is birthday cake done right. More
This is pastry chef Elizabeth Falkner's recipe. It's bar-none the quickest, easiest, fudgiest frosting I've ever come across. Just make sure you get sweetened condensed milk, NOT evaporated (I've made that mistake plenty of times myself). This recipe makes enough... More
It's not easy being green. It is, however, exceedingly easy to eat green, especially when we're talking about zucchini cake. More
Ahh, icing and cake. Few foods bring about more childlike joy. And yet, trying to bring these two together without a little know-how can make you feel like a five-year-old with two left hands. Here are a few pointers to make the next go-round less messy. More
