Makes 3 8-inch layers or two 9-inch rounds
If you’ve forgotten to bring the milk and egg white mixture to room temperature, set the bottom of the measuring cup containing it in a sink of hot water and stir until the mixture feels cool rather than cold, around 65 degrees. Cake layers can be wrapped and stored for one day.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
We developed a recipe for White Layer Cake to bake up moist, tender, and flavorful, rather than dry and bland. We used a reverse creaming method for a sturdy cake with a tender crumb. Plenty of butter and vanilla extract add moisture and flavor to our White Layer Cake.

Serves 8 to 10

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
Similar to Lady Baltimore Cake, Pink Azalea Cake comprises three white cake layers swathed in billowy seven-minute icing. For our recipe, we used our favorite white cake recipe that yielded three 8-inch rounds. We made the filling by gently folding in the nuts, chopped fruit, and Kirsch (a clear cherry brandy) with some of the icing. Toasting the nuts in a skillet over medium heat until lightly browned intensified their flavor.

Serves 12
The best tool to remove an angel food cake from the pan is a thin, flexible, non-serrated knife that is at least 5 inches long. Present the cake sitting on its wide, crustier top, with the delicate and more easily sliced bottom crust facing up. To cut the cake, use a long, serrated knife, and pull it back and forth with a gentle sawing motion.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
To get an angel food cake recipe for a tall, perfectly shaped cake with a snowy white, tender crumb encased in a thin, delicate, golden crust, we experimented with egg whites. We found the key was the speed at which we beat the egg whites, starting at low speed just to break them up into a froth and increasing the speed to medium to form soft, billowy mounds. When large bubbles stop appearing around the edges, this is the point the sugar should be added. Once all the sugar is added the whites become shiny and form soft peaks when the beater is lifted. This is just right for making the perfect tall, light yet firm angel food cake.

Makes two 9-inch cakes
To quickly bring the eggs and milk to room temperature (65 degrees), submerge them in a bowl of warm water for about 10 minutes after mixing them together. Adding the butter pieces to the mixing bowl one at a time prevents the dry ingredients from flying up and out of the bowl.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
Traditional yellow layer cake should melt in the mouth and taste of butter and eggs. But many layer cake recipes that we tried came out crumbly, sugary, and hard. As for the flavor, they tasted merely sweet. We made a few refinements to the usual yellow layer cake recipe. For starters, we took down the sugar slightly, which allowed more buttery flavor to come through. Softened butter blended more easily into the dry ingredients and coated the flour particles with fat. If the butter was too cold or too warm, the cake became heavy or greasy. Rotating the pans once during baking ensured that both cakes cooked evenly and could stand up to a heavy slathering of frosting.

Serves 8 to 10

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
Lane cake gets its name from Emma Rylander Lane of Clayton, Ala., who first published the recipe in 1898, after it won the blue ribbon at a county fair in Columbus, Ga. Her cake became famous when it was featured in Harper Lee’s 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird. For a modern Lane Cake recipe, we made the filling by pulsing together pecans, coconut, cherry preserves, and bourbon in the food processor until coarsely ground. After spreading cherry preserves in a thin layer over the top of the cake, we decorated our Lane Cake with toasted and chopped pecans.

Serves 4
If part-skim mozzarella isn’t available at the deli counter, buy a 16-ounce block and cut it into 1-ounce slices. You will need cooking spray for this recipe.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
With its fried exterior and blanket of melted cheese, chicken Parmesan is a perfect candidate for slimming down. We tried lower-fat recipes, but all were scantily clad in a crust of dusty crumbs that either fell away from the meat or turned to mush at first contact with tomato sauce. For a dish we’d actually want to eat, we used fat-free mayonnaise instead of eggs and flour to bind the bread crumbs to our chicken cutlets on just one side. Instead of pan-frying, we oven-fried the chicken and used toasted bread crumbs to achieve a crispy exterior. We also didn’t skimp on the cheese—a full ounce of part-skim mozzarella, thinly sliced from the deli, blanketed each cutlet perfectly.

Traditional chicken Parmesan has 570 calories, 37 grams of fat, and 8 grams of saturated fat per main-course serving. Our Low-Fat Chicken Parmesan has 390 calories, 12 grams of fat, and 4.5 grams of saturated fat per main-course serving.

Serves 6 to 8
A heavy, deep-sided (3-inch) roasting pan is the best choice for this recipe, but a shallow broiler pan also works well. If you plan to make the Cuban sandwiches (see related recipe), slice off and reserve a half-pound piece of the roast at the beginning of step 4; if wrapped tightly, it will keep in the refrigerator for several days.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
For our Old-Fashioned Roast Pork recipe, we skipped lean loins and opted for deep-flavored and inexpensive pork shoulder or Boston butt, which we flavored with a classic roast pork spice rub. Cooking the roast in a low oven for seven hours rendered the fat and softened our roast pork’s tough connective tissue. And for easy slicing, we refrigerated the cooked roast overnight until firm.

Serves 6
If you don’t have buttermilk on hand, whisk 1 tablespoon of lemon juice into 1 1/4 cups of milk and let it stand until slightly thickened, about 10 minutes.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
Hearty buttermilk biscuits topped with creamy, spicy sausage gravy are a Southern staple, but many biscuits recipes feature hockey-puck baked goods soaked with pasty, flavorless sauce. We wanted our Biscuits and Sausage Gravy recipe to turn out big, fluffy biscuits with maximum lift, so we used a considerable amount of flour and increased the amount of baking powder and baking soda. Kneading the dough built structure so the biscuits were sturdy enough to stand up to the gravy. In the gravy, our tasters preferred milk to half-and-half or cream, which were overly rich. Bumping up the amount of sausage in our gravy recipe ensured plenty of meat in every bite. Ground fennel and sage supplement the seasonings in the sausage and, along with a generous dose of black pepper, give the gravy—and our Biscuits and Sausage Gravy recipe—some serious flavor.

Serves 6 to 8
Flap meat is sold in different configurations: as whole steaks, strips, and pieces. For this recipe, buy a whole steak and cut it into 2-inch pieces yourself. You’ll need a metal steamer basket and five 10-inch skewers.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
Browning our Slow-Cooker Barbecued Beef Tips in a skillet not only improved the flavor and texture of the beef, but also created the foundation for a concentrated sauce that would become a main component of the dish. To get a grilled flavor, we needed to keep the meat away from the juices in the slow cooker. Elevating the steak tips on an inverted steamer basket kept them out of the liquid while they cooked, while skewering the meat ensured that it cooked evenly.

A mixture of tomato paste, soy sauce, and brown sugar seasoned the meat, and waiting to apply it until after we browned the beef ensured that the rub didn’t burn.

Makes 12 buns
You’ll need the juice and zest of one orange for this recipe. If the dough becomes too soft to work with at any point, refrigerate it until it’s firm enough to easily handle.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
Instead of using complicated croissant dough for our Morning Buns, we switched to a quick puff pastry recipe. When we tried to incorporate the butter into our dough with a rolling pin, we wound up creating a mess. To streamline the process, we sealed quarter-inch butter slices in a zipper-lock bag with the dry ingredients before rolling everything right in the bag. We produced multiple layers in one step by rolling unfilled dough into a rectangle, then into a cylinder, and gently patting it flat. Better still: Cooling the butter required just one short rest in the freezer.

A packet of yeast and a little sugar added to the dry ingredients gave the cooked dough the yeasty flavor of a croissant. A blend of half brown and half white sugar added a subtle molasses flavor to the filling. Adding orange zest to the filling and orange juice to the dough provided a bright citrus aroma and flavor.