Makes 16 brownies

These brownies are moist and packed with chocolate flavor, but they won’t crumble when you cut them. In fact, they hold up well enough to pack in a child’s lunchbox or bring to a picnic or bake sale. They’re pretty good at home, too, with a tall glass of milk. Use either creamy or chunky peanut butter, but avoid old-fashioned brands with oil on top. To gild the lily, cover these brownies with chocolate frosting (see optional recipe below).

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
This peanut butter swirl brownie recipe is a novel—and delicious—new variation on the plain chocolate brownie. Adding baking powder to this peanut butter swirl brownie recipe lent them slightly cakey, very sturdy texture that didn’t crumble when sliced; unsweetened chocolate added the richest chocolate flavor. Swirl peanut butter into the batter just before sliding the pan into the oven. Finally, ensuring that a toothpick inserted in the middle of the pan of brownies came out with some moist batter or crumbs attached indicated the brownies were baked perfectly; around the edges the toothpick should come out clean. We found that topping the peanut butter swirl brownies with chocolate frosting added an extra layer of decadence for special occasions.

SERVES 12 TO 16

While this recipe takes several hours from start to finish, the actual preparation is simple, and baking and cooling proceed practically unattended. The cheesecake can be made up to a day in advance; leftovers can be refrigerated for up to 4 days, although the crust will become soggy.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
Pairing citrus with cream cheese for our best lemon cheesecake recipe required finding the perfect balance of juice, zest, and sugar so that the citrus flavor would be neither too fleeting nor too harsh. Lemon curd on top of the cake gave our lemon cheesecake recipe special pizzazz.

http://www.americastestkitchenfeed.com/cooking-science/2013/02/we-prove-it-the-best-way-to-store-lemons/

Serves 10 to 12

Baking the pastry on two stacked baking sheets prevents it from burning on the bottom. Be sure to cool the pastries completely before glazing. If the glaze is too thick to spread smoothly, whisk in an additional tablespoon of milk.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
We found that we could streamline this two-dough pastry by making more pie dough than we needed and then turning half of it into the crust and cooking the other half and adding eggs to turn it into choux paste for the “puff” top. The pâte à choux needed lengthy baking to prevent collapse, but by the time it was finished cooking, the pie crust bottom was overbrowned. Stacking two sheet pans slowed browning on the bottom, buying time for the top to finish cooking without burning the bottom. To make this pastry live up to its name, we added an extra egg and some water to help it puff higher. Slitting the sides of the pastry to let the steam out after baking dried out the inside and prevented it from imploding.

http://www.americastestkitchenfeed.com/bake-it-better/2013/02/secrets-to-danish-puff-pastry/