MAKES ONE 9-INCH PIE

Use sweet, crisp apples, such as Golden Delicious, Jonagold, Fuji, or Braeburn. The two fillings can be made ahead, cooled, and stored separately in the refrigerator for up to 2 days.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
For an apple-cranberry pie recipe with a crisp crust and balanced flavors, we precooked the cranberries so they wouldn’t shed a lot of liquid during baking. Then we arranged the cooked cranberries and apples in two distinct layers, allowing the flavor of each to come through clearly in our apple-cranberry pie recipe.

MAKES 4 PIECES

This recipe worked best with a high-protein all-purpose flour such as King Arthur brand. Do not use nonfat yogurt in this recipe. A 12-inch nonstick skillet may be used in place of the cast-iron skillet. For efficiency, stretch the next ball of dough while each naan is cooking. This variation, which can be prepared in about two hours, forgoes the overnight rest, but the dough may be a little harder to roll out.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
We wanted a light and tender naan that approached the quality of the best restaurant naan, without the need for a tandoor. We started with a moist dough with a fair amount of fat, which created a soft bread that was pleasantly chewy, but the real secret was the cooking method. While we thought a grill or preheated pizza stone would be the best cooking method, we discovered that they cooked the bread unevenly. A much better option was a covered skillet. The skillet delivers heat to the bottom and the top of the bread, producing loaves that are nicely charred but still moist.

Makes 4 pieces
This recipe worked best with a high-protein all-purpose flour such as King Arthur brand. Do not use nonfat yogurt in this recipe. A 12-inch nonstick skillet may be used in place of the cast-iron skillet. For efficiency, stretch the next ball of dough while each naan is cooking.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
We wanted a light and tender naan that approached the quality of the best restaurant naan, without the need for a tandoor. We started with a moist dough with a fair amount of fat, which created a soft bread that was pleasantly chewy, but the real secret was the cooking method. While we thought a grill or preheated pizza stone would be the best cooking method, we discovered that they cooked the bread unevenly. A much better option was a covered skillet. The skillet delivers heat to the bottom and the top of the bread, producing loaves that are nicely charred but still moist.

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 about 40 cookies

Be sure that the cookie dough is well chilled and firm so that it can be uniformly sliced.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
Having slice-and-bake cookie dough in the refrigerator or freezer is great, because you can bake whenever the mood strikes. But because these simple cookie recipes have so few basic ingredients, imperfections are impossible to hide. With too much flour, the cookies are crisp but dry and bland; go overboard with butter, sugar, or egg and the cookies are rich but soft and misshapen. We set out to create a slice-and-bake cookie recipe that would combine both crispness and rich butter and vanilla flavor—in effect, shortbread shaped into a convenient slice-and-bake log. Using both granulated sugar and light brown sugar gave the cookies a richness and complexity that tasters liked. We used the food processor to combine our recipe ingredients quickly without whipping in too much air—our Orange-Poppy Seed Slice-and-Bake Cookies had the dense shortbread-like texture we were after.

MAKES 1 1/2 CUPS

Whisk the sauce gently so as not to create tiny air bubbles that can mar its appearance.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
For the best bittersweet chocolate sauce recipe—flavorful and rich with just the right consistency—we added corn syrup to a mixture of cream and butter, giving our smooth sauce a shiny finish. In our chocolate sauce recipe, we used bittersweet chocolate rather than cocoa or semisweet chocolate for a complex sauce that fell off the spoon in deep chocolate ribbons.

Serves 6 to 8

Avoid extra-sharp cheddar, which becomes grainy during slow cooking. And don’t soak potatoes in water before using or the scalloped potatoes will be watery.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
Potatoes contain moisture that diluted the sauce after hours in the slow cooker. We thickened our Slow-Cooker Scalloped Potatoes with a generous amount of cornstarch to ensure that the sauce could handle the added moisture given off by the potatoes. The prolonged heat of the slow cooker overheated most cheeses, causing them to clump up and ooze grease. We found that Monterey Jack—which melted easily without separating—paired with sharp cheddar produced a flavorful, lump-free sauce. Russet potatoes proved to be the variety of choice due to their high starch content. The starch helped the cheese sauce adhere to the potatoes, and tasters liked the fluffy texture of the russets. The potatoes wouldn’t cook evenly in the slow cooker, so we started them in the microwave before transferring them to the slow cooker. When direct contact between the potatoes and the slow cooker caused them to burn, we created a barrier with parchment paper to protect them.

Makes 1 cup

This tangy curd is great served with fresh berries, scones, shortbread, or buttered toast.

http://www.americastestkitchenfeed.com/recipes/lemon-curd/

MAKES ABOUT 3/4 CUP

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
The garlic was our biggest challenge in getting the four primary ingredients to come together in our aioli recipe. We found that a fine, even mince maintained the smooth texture of the sauce and prevented oversize garlic bombs that exploded in the mouth. A good garlic press or a rasp-style zester/grater ensured an acceptable mince. We also scaled back the quantity of garlic in our aïoli recipe—a single clove provided a pleasant, not shocking, heat.

SERVES 4

Serve the salad with the crisp inner leaves of romaine lettuce and wedges of pita bread.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
To keep our tabbouleh from becoming too soggy, we salted the tomatoes to rid them of their excess moisture. But to make sure that our tabbouleh recipe still guaranteed the fresh flavor we wanted, we soaked the bulgur wheat in some of the tomato liquid and lemon juice instead of in the flavor-robbing water found in most tabbouleh recipes.