Serves 4
Don’t skimp on the marinating time; any less than 3 hours and the chicken won’t be as flavorful or tender. Conversely, marinating for more than 6 hours will make the chicken mushy. Serve with Yogurt-Herb Dipping Sauce (see related recipe).

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
To keep the chicken in our Grilled Chicken Kebabs recipe from drying out, we marinated it in a blend of yogurt, olive oil, garlic, and herbs. The tangy, mildly acidic yogurt tenderized the chicken in our recipe and added valuable flavor—as long as the chicken only marinated for three to six hours. For the vegetable component of our kebabs recipe, we preferred firm vegetables like sweet red onion and red bell pepper. When cut into similarly sized pieces, they cooked evenly and became soft—but not mushy—by the time the chicken was cooked through.

Makes one 9‐inch crust

If the dough becomes too soft to work with when pressing it into the tart pan in step 3, let it firm up in the refrigerator for a few minutes.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS: We wanted to come up with a way to make a healthier tart crust. First, we swapped in 6 tablespoons of olive oil for the 8 tablespoons of butter a tart crust typically contains. Furthermore, we substituted whole-wheat flour for a portion of the all-purpose white flour, which gave the crust not only a healthful boost, but a heartier flavor as well. The dough is soft and cannot be rolled out, so we pressed pieces of the dough right into the tart pan. A sprinkling of Parmesan cheese over the crust admittedly doesn’t cut calories or fat, but it does add important flavor and provides a moisture barrier to a variety of savory fillings.

http://www.americastestkitchenfeed.com/bake-it-better/2013/04/secrets-to-olive-oil-tart-crust/

Serves 6

The creamy flavor of part-skim ricotta is important in this tart; do not use fat-free ricotta.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS: Both zucchini and tomatoes are heavy with water and release a significant amount during the cooking process. Simply layering them on top of the cheese yielded a wet filling and soggy crust. We realized we needed some way to purge the excess water from the vegetables before cooking. Precooking our vegetables left us with mushy vegetables with lackluster flavor once the tart was baked. Our solution turned out to be salting. We simply salted the vegetables to draw out excess water and then patted them dry before adding them to the tart. This technique yielded a crisp, flavorful tart with fresh-tasting, perfectly cooked vegetables.

http://www.americastestkitchenfeed.com/bake-it-better/2013/04/secrets-to-olive-oil-tart-crust/

Serves 12 to 14
Our favorite spiral-sliced ham is Cook’s Spiral Sliced Hickory Smoked Bone-In Honey Ham. This recipe requires a turkey-size oven bag. Serve the ham with Hot Mustard Sauce (see below).

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
To get crispy crumbs and moist ham, we start by using an oven bag. We bake the spiral-cut ham under—not in—the bag so we can easily pull it off and apply the coating once the meat is warmed through. Cooking down the spicy-sweet glaze on the stovetop makes it super-concentrated—all the better to cling to the crumb coating. We found that panko bread crumbs stayed the crunchiest, and we season them simply, with salt, pepper, and fresh parsley.

Makes 12 cookies
These cookies are inspired by Mallomars but taste much better. Freezing the Fluff-topped cookies before coating them with chocolate prevents the Fluff from losing its shape. We like Carr’s biscuits in this recipe for their round shape, crisp texture, and gentle sweetness. You can substitute 1 1/3 cups bittersweet chocolate chips for the bittersweet chocolate.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
Our Chocolate Fluff Cookies are the homemade alternative to Mallomars, a popular supermarket cookie a graham cracker base topped with marshmallow and covered with chocolate. We skipped the graham cracker in favor of Carr’s Whole Wheat Crackers, an English import found in the cookie aisle at most supermarkets. They are only lightly sweetened and have a crisp but sturdy texture. We froze the Marshmallow Fluff-topped cookies to enable easy covering with the chocolate. Adding a little vegetable oil to the melted chocolate helped it spread smoothly and kept it shiny.

http://www.americastestkitchenfeed.com/bake-it-better/2013/04/secrets-to-chocolate-fluff-cookies/

Serves 4
To make sure the melts hold together, use rye bread that’s sliced about 1/2 inch thick.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
Because Patty Melts are traditionally cooked twice—browned once in butter and a second time while the sandwich is griddled—many recipes produce something resembling dried-out hockey pucks. To solve the problem, we incorporated a panade (a paste of bread and milk) into the meat. To bump up the flavor of our burgers, we used rye bread and onion powder in the panade. Covering the cooking onions with the patties trapped some of the steam and helped the onions to soften quicker. This also allowed the flavors of the meat to seep into the onions and vice versa.

Serves 4
If you have leftover jus from the roast, use it. Otherwise, make the Quick Jus (see related recipe).

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
This French Dip Sandwiches recipe is our favorite way to use up leftover roast beef. For a quicker version of long-simmering jus, we enriched a blend of canned beef broth and chicken broth with browned scraps of beef, then thickened the broth with a little flour. The beefy jus is the perfect finishing touch for French Dip Sandwiches.

Serves 6
Trim the slices of meat and cheese as necessary to fit neatly on the bread.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
We loved the idea of preparing a retro Monte Cristo sandwich recipe at home for the whole family, but the traditional method of pan-frying them wasn’t practical since it only allowed us to make them one (or, at the most, two) at a time. For a Monte Cristo sandwich recipe that can feed the whole family, we toasted the bread before the dipping the sandwiches in sweetened egg batter to jump start the browning and keep the bread from turning soggy. And for a sweet and spicy mixture that our tasters love, we spread the bread with strawberry jam swirled with Dijon mustard.

Serves 4
Leftover turkey works great here.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
These open-faced sandwiches are made from toasted white bread topped with sliced chicken or turkey, smoky ham or bacon, and a rich, cheesy white sauce. Vegetables often show up in this hefty sandwich as well, and we opted for tomato and sautéed mushrooms in our version. After it’s assembled, the whole thing is passed under a broiler until it’s golden brown and bubbly. We used sturdy, thick-cut bread to stand up to all the toppings and made the sauce extra thick so it stayed put under the broiler.

Makes 12 cupcakes

You can substitute 3/4 cup hot coffee for the boiling water and instant espresso powder. For an accurate measurement of boiling water, bring a full kettle of water to a boil, then measure out the desired amount.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS: A cupcake piled high with creamy chocolate buttercream frosting is the perfect single-serving dessert, yet on average it packs in more than 25 grams of fat, leaving plenty of room for improvement. To start, we tried a number of low-fat cupcake recipes that included “alternative” ingredients like prunes or applesauce, but they were overwhelmingly disappointing, giving us dry, crumbly cakes. Instead, we worked with a more traditional recipe and trimmed the fat by reducing the amount of chocolate and switching from butter to canola oil, which is lower in saturated fat. Adding a hefty dose of cocoa along with a bit of instant espresso powder boosted the chocolate flavor immensely, and swapping in bread flour for the all-purpose flour provided plenty of lift and structure to our lean batter. Finally, topping the cakes with a simple yet ultra-creamy frosting made of confectioners’ sugar instead of an over-the-top buttercream frosting helped to make these cupcakes a reasonable, yet still indulgent, treat.

http://www.americastestkitchenfeed.com/comfort-food-makeovers/2013/04/recipe-makeover-challenge-chocolate-cupcakes/