Serves 8

For the smoothest, most uniform texture, use a food mill or ricer to mash the potatoes.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
Boiling our Duchess Potatoes made them waterlogged. Next we tried baking them, but they quickly dried out. We solved this problem by parcooking the potatoes in the microwave and finishing them in the oven on high heat. Piling butter into the hot potato mixture made it too soft to pipe into delicate mounds. We added some while it was still hot, but waited to add the rest until the potatoes had cooled a bit. The result was rich, buttery flavor throughout with small butter pockets scattered in the mounds.

SERVES 6 TO 8

Do not use prepeeled squash in this recipe. Our favorite vegetable broth is Swanson Vegetable broth. Low-sodium chicken broth can be substituted for the vegetable broth. If you use a blender to puree the soup, fill the jar two-thirds full-not more-and process in batches. Alternatively, use an immersion blender to puree the soup right in the pot. In addition to sour cream, serve the soup with Fried Leeks (related), which provide nice textural contrast.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
For soup with intense squash flavor, many recipes will roast the squash to rid it of excess moisture and concentrate its flavor. But what if you don’t want to turn the oven on? For our soup, we start by microwaving large chunks of squash to hasten the cooking process. We then slowly caramelized the parcooked squash in a Dutch oven, much as we do with onion for French Onion Soup, until a thick brown fond developed. Deglazing the pot and scraping up the fond gave the soup the deep flavor of roasted squash soup in a fraction of the time. To further enhance the soup’s vegetable flavor, we chose vegetable broth over chicken broth and used an aromatic base of leeks, fresh thyme, and bay leaf.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/atk-public/pdf/ATKRadio_Recipes_butternutsoup.pdf

MAKES 30 COOKIES

The almonds will continue to toast while the biscotti bake, so toast the nuts only until they are just fragrant.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
We wanted biscotti that were hard and crunchy, but not hard to eat, and bold in flavor. To keep the crumb hard, we used just a small amount of butter (4 tablespoons), and to keep the biscotti from being too hard, we ground some of the nuts to a fine meal, which helped minimize gluten development in the crumb. To ensure bold flavor in a biscuit that gets baked twice, we increased the quantities of aromatic ingredients.

MAKES 32 COOKIES

If the dough gathers into a cohesive mass around the blade in the food processor workbowl, you have overprocessed it. Make sure to stop processing at the point where the mixture is separate and pebbly. If at any point during the cutting and rolling of the crescents the sheet of dough softens and becomes impossible to roll, slide it onto a baking pan and freeze it until it is firm enough to handle. Once the crescents are baking in the oven, start checking them for doneness at eighteen or nineteen minutes, especially those on the top-level rack. Feel free to substitute an equal quantity of chopped pitted prunes, chopped dried apricots, dried currants, dried cherries, or dried cranberries for the raisins in the filling.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
On the way to a rugelach recipe that gave us tender cookies with a bounteous filling, we discovered that freezing the circles of rolled-out dough before applying the filling gave our baked cookies the flakiest, most delicate texture. For the best filling for our rugelach recipe, we processed the preserves briefly in the food processor to break up larger pieces of fruit, which tend to spill out during baking. We chopped the nuts very fine and added them to the filling last, so they would block seepage.

Serves 16

It’s worth using good-quality caramel sauce, such as Fat Toad Farm Goat’s Milk Caramel. If your blender doesn’t hold 2 quarts, process the flan in two batches. The cake needs to chill for at least 8 hours before you can unmold it.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
This hybrid dessert has a layer of chocolate cake and a layer of caramel-coated flan that “magically” switch places as they bake. For ease, we started with a simple dump-and-stir chocolate cake recipe. At first, the flan added too much moisture to the cake, making it soggy. A drier cake was key, and removing some of the buttermilk and sugar did the trick. To help our flan stand tall rather than slump when sliced, we use whole eggs (instead of just yolks) and add cream cheese as a stabilizer. We opted for store-bought caramel sauce to top it all off—much easier than homemade.

Makes about 4 dozen cookies

Any flavor of jam can be used for this recipe; we found seedless jams work best. For best results, bake only one sheet of cookies at a time.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS: Including cream cheese in the cookie dough gave it a welcome richness. When making the impression for the jam, we made sure to wet our fingers before touching the dough. Re-indenting the dough balls after baking them for a few minutes prevented the indentation from disappearing during baking.

http://www.americastestkitchenfeed.com/bake-it-better/2012/11/secrets-to-jam-thumbprint-cookies/

Serves 8

To crush the corn flakes, place them inside a plastic bag and use a rolling pin to break them into pieces no smaller than 1/2 inch.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
We marinated our Oven-Fried Chicken in highly seasoned buttermilk flavored with mustard, garlic powder, black pepper, and hot pepper sauce. Soaking the chicken for at least one hour, or even better, overnight, allowed the flavors to penetrate deep into the meat. For the coating, we used a blend of corn flakes and bread crumbs. Seasoned heavily with spices and lightly coated with oil, the coating baked up as crisp as a deep-fried crust.

We baked the chicken in a hot oven on a wire rack set on a baking sheet. The rack allowed hot air to circulate beneath the chicken, ensuring that all sides of the pieces became crisp. Traditional homemade fried chicken has 552 calories, 34 grams of fat, and 10 grams of saturated fat per serving. Cook’s Country Oven-Fried Chicken has 216 calories, 9 grams of fat, and 4 grams of saturated fat per serving.

MAKES 2 LOAVES

The test kitchen’s preferred loaf pan measures 8 1/2 by 4 1/2 inches; if using a 9 by 5-inch loaf pan, start checking for doneness five minutes early.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
Canned pumpkin puree often lends a raw, metallic flavor to pumpkin bread. We cook down the puree to eliminate those off-putting flavors. Instead of dirtying more dishes, we mix the quick bread right in the pot, adding cream cheese and buttermilk for their tangy flavor. A quick-to-assemble topping adds texture and keeps the loaf from getting soggy the next day.

Makes 2 loaves
The test kitchen’s preferred loaf pan measures 8 1/2 by 4 1/2 inches; if using a 9 by 5-inch loaf pan, start checking for doneness five minutes early.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
Canned pumpkin puree often lends a raw, metallic flavor to pumpkin bread. We cook down the puree to eliminate those off-putting flavors. Instead of dirtying more dishes, we mix the quick bread right in the pot, adding cream cheese and buttermilk for their tangy flavor. A quick-to-assemble topping adds texture and keeps the loaf from getting soggy the next day.

MAKES 32 TO 40 PIECES

A straight-sided traditional (not nonstick) metal baking pan works best for making baklava; the straight sides ensure that the pieces will have nicely shaped edges, and the surface of a traditional pan will not be marred by the knife during cutting, as would a nonstick surface. If you don’t have this type of pan, a glass baking dish will work. Make sure that the phyllo is fully thawed before use; leave it in the refrigerator overnight or on the countertop for four to five hours. When assembling, use the nicest, most intact phyllo sheets for the bottom and top layers; use sheets with tears or ones that are smaller than the size of the pan in the middle layers, where their imperfections will go unnoticed. If, after assembly, you have remaining clarified butter, store it in an airtight container in the refrigerator; it can be used for sautéing.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
We wanted our baklava recipe to produce crisp, flaky, buttery lozenges, light yet rich, filled with fragrant nuts and spices, and sweetened just assertively enough to pair with a Turkish coffee. To achieve this goal, we sprinkled store-bought phyllo dough with three separate layers of nuts (a combination of almonds and walnuts) flavored with cinnamon and cloves. We clarified the butter for even browning. We found that cutting the baklava rather than just scoring it before baking helped it absorb the sugar syrup. Finally, allowing the baklava to sit overnight before serving improved itsthe flavor of our baklava recipe and was worth the wait.

http://www.americastestkitchenfeed.com/bake-it-better/2012/10/secrets-to-better-baklava/