American

When you toss hot clams right off the grill with some flavored butter, the butter melts and mingles with the clam liquor, creating an irresistible combination.

Big fat strips of dough make for a rustic and modern-looking pie (and they’re easy to weave into a lattice). 

Make sure to isolate your cut-outs toward the center of the top crust. If they’re too close to the edge, the pie juices will bubble up and prevent the edges from browning.

Pour in the root beer slowly, allowing it to cascade over the ice cream, then top off until the glass is full.

The best pie crust doesn't require special equipment. Using your hands is the best way to ensure that the butter ends up in irregular pieces and the dough doesn’t get overworked. Use the force!

This chocolate birthday cake recipe calls for dark chocolate in the ganache to balance out the sweetness of the Nutella. For a more kid-friendly cake, use milk chocolate. This is part of BA's Best, a collection of our essential recipes.

Icing on top and in the middle, sides left bare: This modern-looking style shows off the cake’s decadent (and perfectly even) chocolate layers.

The genius part of this rich and moist sheet cake recipe is the “reverse creaming” method. Instead of creaming butter and sugar before adding the liquid ingredients and flour, you’ll gradually add the liquid ingredients into the flour. As a result, the cake bakes almost perfectly flat—no domed tops, no layers to trim.

It’s amazing how malleable eggs are, and this method yields an especially fluffy result. This is part of BA's Best, a collection of our essential recipes.

These breakfast sausage patties are perfect for freezing, extra insurance toward future hangovers.

Yes, you can use regular oranges, but don’t you just love the color you get from blood oranges?!

A decent amount of béchamel keeps this tomato-less lasagna moist as it cools.

For extra texture, trick out your cake with rainbow or chocolate sprinkles, chopped candies, or your favorite cereal.

It may not seem like very much filling, but these handheld pastries deliver the perfect filling-to-crust ratio (and if you overstuff the dough, they’ll be impossible to seal).

Using frozen strawberries ensures a consistent sweetness and vibrant red color.

You can use any flavor jam or jelly you like; substitute roasted salted peanuts to play up the salty-sweet angle.

For the neatest, cleanest edges, freeze the brownies for 15 minutes so they’re nice and firm before cutting, and dip your knife in hot water between each slice.

Room temperature cream cheese and butter are key to a smooth frosting (cold ingredients will form hard beads). Take them both out of the refrigerator three hours ahead of time.

Make sure to get your whisk into the bottom edge of the pan as you prepare the custard so that the mixture cooks evenly.

Despite the egg along the seal, and the crimps for extra insurance, the fruit juices will run; that’s what the parchment paper is there for.