Cake

Rightfully this cake belongs in the chapter with the other cakes that contain dried fruit, but to me it is the quintessential coffee cake. It is a quick and easy version of a cake that I remember from my childhood, made by the mother of my school friend, the late Noel Giles. Noel and I consumed about a ton of this cake per year between the ages of twelve and eighteen — a taste of it still makes me feel like a teenager.

Make the cheesecake up to two days before serving (it must chill at least four hours).

Nicola, Steve's wife, likes this dessert more than any of his others, mostly because you have to eat it with yet more Pedro Ximénez sherry. If you don't want to splash out on the real McCoy, use another good, sweet dark sherry.

Honey cake is often served during Rosh Hashanah because honey symbolizes wishes for "sweet" things to come. The cake becomes moister and its flavors deepen a day or two after it's made. Active time: 30 min Start to finish: 3 hr (includes cooling)

Begin making this one day in advance. For best results, use a rich, premium ice cream, as it will freeze firmly.

This dark, moist cake gets its deep flavor from blackstrap molasses, which may not sound appealing on its own but is wonderful in this cake.

Check the supermarket produce section for fresh peeled and sliced mangoes. You'll need about four cups of diced mangoes.

A rich candy-bar-like dessert that can be made in stages, and even completed three days before a party. Fresh strawberries make a nice garnish.

Made with reduced-fat cream cheese and light sour cream, this cheesecake is irresistible — just like its namesake cocktail.

We couldn't wait to get into our test kitchens to try Rosie’s baklava ice-cream cake. As inspired as the dessert was, it was also a big production, resulting in a giant cake with 2 layers of ice cream and 3 layers of baklava. With Rosie's permission, we downscaled the recipe and tweaked it a bit, for a dessert that’s still delicious but more manageable. When working with phyllo, be sure to have plenty of clear counter space and a chunk of uninterrupted time. Phyllo dries out in the blink of an eye, so it is imperative that you keep your stack of phyllo sheets well-covered and work only with 1 sheet at a time. Allow at least 20 minutes to chop the nuts by hand.

This cake, thought to have first appeared in the 1920s, has had such names as pineapple glacé and pineapple skillet cake.

With the addition of a citrus custard as a filling and a sprinkling of coconut over the frosting, this would be known as a Robert E. Lee cake.

The use of leavening in a cake is first recorded in a recipe for gingerbread from Amelia Simmons's American Cookery, published in Hartford in 1796; I guess you could say it is the original great American cake. Early-19th-century cookbooks included as many recipes for this as contemporary cookbooks do for chocolate cake. This recipe, from Claudia Fleming, pastry chef at New York City's Gramercy Tavern, is superlative—wonderfully moist and spicy.

A chocolate-caramel cake is perfect for a child's birthday party. Serve with scoops of vanilla ice cream.