Baking

This moist sweet corn bread is a nice addition to breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

Pumpkins are grown throughout the middle states, and Missouri is the world's largest supplier of black walnuts. The pumpkin gives the finished biscuits a golden color and moist texture, and its taste is complemented by aromatic spices. To go alongside, mix butter with honey and then lace it with ground cardamom.

This recipe, all the rage at the turn of the previous century, makes the quintessential layer cake—old-fashioned and toothsome.

This recipe works well with other fresh fruits such as nectarines, plums, figs, and bananas.

For this recipe you will need three mini-muffin pans, each containing twelve 1 3/4-by-1 inch cups.

Preparation time: 10 minutes to make the batter, 1 1/2 hours resting time for the batter, and approximately 10 minutes baking time.

This free-form Italian tart has a tender and buttery crust; in the filling, Asian seasonings enhance the apples and pear, classic French dessert ingredients.

In this great dessert, luscious custard tops a thin layer of mocha ganache.

This free-form apple pie is shaped and cooked on a baking sheet—eliminating the need for a pie dish. Using milk instead of water in the crust makes it tender.

This recipe is used to prepare Grilled Tuna and Roasted Peppers Sandwiches on Thyme Focaccia and Presciutto, Mozzarella, and Olive Sandwiches on Parmesan Focaccia . If you need only one focaccia, freeze the other for later use. Focaccia keeps, frozen, 2 weeks.

This soufflé-like tart makes a nice lunch or light dinner with a salad of mixed baby greens.

"On our way to and from the Washington coast, we often stop at a small restaurant in Montesano called Savory Faire," says Thelma Laird of Fox Island, Washington. "They serve outstanding cinnamon rolls and imaginative sandwiches, but the recipe I'd most like to have is the one for pecan squares."