Baking

Don't let your cakes fall flat, dry out, toughen or crumble; with these tips, each slice will be total perfection.

Because fresh, local berries have to be put into at least one pie this summer.

We use a double dose of strawberries in this impressive dessert. Freeze-dried berries give the meringue its blush-pink hue, while fresh berries add aromatic sweetness. Every batch of fresh strawberries is different so adjust the amounts of sugar and lemon juice as needed in Step 5.

This casual cake makes a perfectly acceptable breakfast, too.

I’ve always found chocolate chip cookies to be deeply flawed (to know this about me explains a lot). Too sweet, too soft, or with too much chocolate, there’s a lot of room for improvement, if you ask me. But no one asked me, and rather than do a complete overhaul on the most iconic cookie known to man, I took all my favourite parts and invented something else entirely. Made with lots of salted butter (it has a slightly different flavour and a deeper saltiness than using just salt—I prefer unsalted butter everywhere else but here), the dough has just enough flour to hold it together and the right amount of light brown sugar to suggest a chocolate chip cookie. The chocolate is cut into chunks to prevent chip congregation, and once the dough is formed into a cylindrical log, the whole thing gets rolled in Demerara sugar for the crispiest-ever edges. Less chocolate chip cookie, more brown sugar shortbread with chocolate chunks — they just might be the cookie you’ve been looking for. —Alison Roman