First, you should know that creating these recipes involved a totally normal number of open tabs related to cheesecake (roughly 10).

I will be honest: the first time I tried making babka, I fucked up so badly I felt like I’d brought shame on several generations of my family. A year later I was finally ready to try again. My family, tired of schlepping to the Lower East Side for babka, was delighted.

When I told my dad I was going to make knishes he said “only G-d can make a knish,” which I strongly suspected wasn’t true, but now know for sure.

My mother makes latkes using pulverized potatoes, so I always thought pulverized were the way to go. Only in college did I discover that most people shred their potatoes. I fought with my entire college Hillel about this every year, alienating many. In my old age, though, I’ve mellowed out: I realize that taste is subjective. People like what they grew up with -- latkes are, for many Jewish people, inherently linked to childhood holiday memories and…

I’m offering two recipes for pumpkin donuts today, one easy and one a little bit more complicated, so you can choose to either kill a whole afternoon baking or whip up a quick dessert/snack!

Previously by Lisa Yelsey: A Recipe for Cake Pops and A Recipe for Rugelach. HI. My most recent baking project was to make black-and-white cookies! Everyone in my family likes them, but none of us can agree on a good place to get them. The only real consensus regarding exactly what makes these cookies good is “not stale,” and not-stale versions of these cookies are surprisingly difficult to find. Just like all the other foods people vaguely mention…

Previously: Lisa Yelsey's recipe for rugelach. This post is generously sponsored by A Friend of The Toast, who wants to encourage others to support the site as well. Hi everyone! Hope your summer is going well. Here is what’s been consuming me for several months: CAKE POPS. Like many people, I tried one at Starbucks years ago and then forgot they existed. But then a pregnant friend asked me to make some to give…

This is a thorough and overly personal explanation of one of my favorite things to bake: rugelach. Rugelach are an Ashkenazi Jewish pastry consisting of dough rolled around a filling, usually in a crescent shape. The chocolate filling in this recipe creates moisture and density, and the dough is light but flavorful. All rugelach are kind of mediocre except for these. These are exceptional. Rugelach also conveniently merge my major interests: baking, obsessive TV-watching, and…