​Welcome to Bon Appétit Bake Club, a community of curious bakers. Each month senior Test Kitchen editors Jesse Szewczyk and Shilpa Uskokovic share a must-make recipe and dive deep on why it works. Come bake and learn with us—and don’t forget to join the Bake Club Group chat over on Substack.. I spent years working as a food stylist, and during that time, I picked up a handful of tricks to make food look beautiful. For a steak that glistens, brush on some vegetable glycerin. For a pat of butter that melts just so, heat up an offset spatula and give it a swipe. And for a perfectly domed loaf with a crack right down the center? Keep reading—that’s what we’re learning today.. For the prettiest loaf cakes, slit your batter. Read through my recipe for Chocolate Guinness Cake and you’ll notice an unusual instruction in step TK: “Run a paring knife lightly coated in nonstick cooking spray down the center of the batter, dragging it through about ½-inch into the batter.” Sounds bizarre but this simple maneuver is the key to a symmetrically cracked loaf cake that looks like it came straight from a photoshoot. Let me explain.. Slitting the top of the batter creates a weak spot where your cake will naturally crack and expand. Think of this step like scoring a loaf of bread, allowing it to bake in a controlled, less chaotic, manner. It not only gives your cakes a pristine channel directly down the center of your cake (beautiful! clean! professional!), but allows the batter to rise without much resistance. If you’re adding a glaze on top, the accentuated sloped top allows glaze to drip downward instead of pooling on top. But it’s not just for aesthetics: The expansion opens up the crumb slightly, resulting in a lighter, loftier texture. Not only does it make it more dashing, but actually improves the cake as well.. A few recipes to try out your new styling trick. Of course I recommend trying this trick/technique/TK with the latest BA Bake Club recipe, my insert recipe link. But you can use the same technique with just about any loaf cake recipe you come across. I’m partial to our Lemon Pound Cake and Carrot Loaf Cake. Even our Banana Bread is fair game. If it’s baked in a loaf pan, go ahead and slit the top of the batter before baking. Let your inner food stylist shine! Your loaf cakes will be infinitely prettier—and more delicious. Don’t forget to send me a picture of how it goes in the chat.. Chocolate Guinness Cake. A generous glug of stout gives this snackable loaf a malty depth.. View Recipe  

​America’s largest city is also one of its greatest food cities—maybe even the greatest (certainly if you ask a New Yorker this question). Look at things by the numbers and you can’t deny New York City’s formidable culinary bonafides. The five boroughs are home to over 21,000 dining establishments. Of those restaurants, 72 boast Michelin stars; the most of any city in the western hemisphere.. But New York’s food scene isn’t defined by tasting menus and white table cloths. This city of 700 languages is an atlas of options, with places to eat featuring cuisines from pretty much every corner of the world, with something to suit every budget.. But for any visitor looking to explore the vast culinary landscape of NYC, you should know: (Incredibly exhausted but unfortunately apt cliché warning) You can’t eat the Big Apple in one bite. There’s simply too much to explore. This is a good thing, but it means you have to be strategic about how you take on the city—and where you choose to stay will make all the difference.. In creating a hotel guide for people who travel with their stomachs first, we had specific criteria in mind. The list had to feature top-notch hotels across a range of price points that could serve as ideal home bases for travelers looking to eat their way through the city. Since some of the best food neighborhoods are scant on quality accommodations, we broke up the city into geographic chunks with superb hotels that are within walking distance of great restaurants and also conveniently located for taking the subway to explore farther flung locales.. The Western chunk of lower Manhattan has become an epicenter of buzzy, hard-to-get-into places to eat. You’ve probably heard of Via Carota, a West Village institution created by chefs Rita Sodi and Jody Williams that’s so in demand there are hours-long waits for its rich yet simple seasonal Italian plates (the green salad is somehow the most famous). The constellation of Michelin guide picks in this area includes the three-starred contemporary Korean spot Jungsik, and Semma, which has made it to the top of numerous best-of lists for its celebratory menu of South Indian cuisine. Yet somehow, it’s the Corner Store—a see-and-be-seen joint for steaks and fries—that’s become one of the hardest reservations to land in the city. Try your luck, but just know that there’s no shortage of alternatives.. For example, if you want a slice from L’industrie Pizzeria but don’t want to stand in line like a sucker, you can step inside its next-door neighbor Talea and order one to your table to enjoy with a locally-brewed sour beer. And Via Carota’s sister restaurant the Commerce Inn speaks the same simple-yet-exquisite vernacular, with a an American Shaker accent, and does take reservations. There’s also Shukette for shareable mezze, the Odeon for martinis and frites, and Don Angie for red sauce comforts.. Reserve the Corner Store on DoorDash Now. Wine nerds and aspiring oen  

​As the weather warms and we start to move beyond root vegetables, we’re especially excited to cook our favorite spring side dishes. One lap around the farmers market is enough to inspire spring vegetable recipes that make the most of thick stalks of asparagus, perky pink radishes, purple-streaked spring onions, tender sweet peas, thin-skinned new potatoes, and more.. Whether you’re planning an Easter brunch, a Passover seder, or just another weeknight dinner, nothing makes roast chicken—or any main—shine quite like a bright, colorful side. Think crunchy vegetable salads with salty cheese, green sauce–coated rice, and even vegan deviled “eggs.” With recipes like these in the mix, consider your spring side dish needs officially sorted.  

​What happens when the restaurant widely believed to be the best in the world implodes? Seems like we’re about to find out.. Noma, which opened in 2003 and has earned a generous sprinkling of Michelin stars since 2011, opened its long anticipated Los Angeles residency on March 11. In the weeks leading up to opening night, discourse burbled along healthily. Angelenos’ eyes bulged at the $1,500-a-head price tag. They gossiped about the private school at which Noma might enroll its relocated chef’s children. Critics wondered how successful this next iteration of Noma might be. Simultaneously, a much more serious conversation came to a boil on Instagram as former chefs and interns at Noma posted allegations of abuse against founder René Redzepi.. This week we’re getting into the ins and outs of the Noma controversy. How did we get here, and where do things stand amid the public outcry against its founder and figurehead? —Sam Stone, staff writer. Noma announces LA residency to mixed reactions. The near-instantaneous sellout of tickets to Noma’s LA residency, where the team plans to transport its Copenhagen-born ethos to Silver Lake for four months, might suggest unanimous enthusiasm—in a vacuum. On the contrary, LA chefs expressed mixed feelings: optimism that the pop-up would bring visibility to the local dining scene, and apprehension that it could siphon reservations away from their restaurants.. Chefs who formerly worked under Redzepi took to social media with more troubled reactions.. Former workers allege abuse from chef René Redzepi, culminating in a New York Times investigation. The Instagram page of Jason Ignacio White, a former head of Noma’s fermentation lab, is plastered with screenshots of anonymous DMs, all allegedly from former Noma chefs who experienced abuse and exploitation at the hands of Redzepi. They began to flow in after White began sharing criticism of Noma and its head chef on his account in early February.. The New York Times followed the trail, publishing an investigation on March 7 (just four days before the pop-up’s opening) that “independently [interviewed] 35 former employees, whose accounts trace a pattern of physical punishment Mr. Redzepi inflicted on his staff,” writes reporter Julia Moskin. “Between 2009 and 2017, they said, he punched employees in the face, jabbed them with kitchen implements, and slammed them against walls. They described lasting trauma from layers of psychological abuse, including intimidation, body shaming and public ridicule. Mr. Redzepi, they said, threatened to use his influence to get them blacklisted from restaurants around the world, to have their families deported, or to get their wives fired from their jobs at other businesses.”. Redzepi responded in a statement to the Times, writing: “Although I don’t recognize all details in these stories, I can see enough of my past behavior reflected in them to understand that my actions were harmful to people who worked  

​Outside of the festive season, I’m not usually hand-washing much glassware, but I do clean my knives nearly every day. And let me tell you, this special sponge happens to fit perfectly around sharp blades too. It glides seamlessly along both sides of a knife (or kitchen shears) at once, neither tearing, snagging, nor slipping along the way. Once I realized it worked so well on my santoku (decidedly not a wine glass), nothing was safe. The Mitt left my little glass prep bowls, mini tongs, jiggers, measuring spoons, and thermometer probes sparkling clean. Honestly, the more I used it, the more uses I found for it. It’s like a precise extension of your hand in the sink. Bonus: it’s dishwasher-safe, so it’s a cinch to sanitize.. Now, you might be thinking, “I too can fold a sponge in half and approximate this utility.” And, yes, you can. But approximate is the keyword here. The Mitt’s open-cell foam structure means it dries quickly (less chance of mold) and, most importantly, it means it is precisely flexible enough to clean fragile things well. It doesn’t force you to squeeze too hard to fit the form of your glass. The shape is so intuitive to hold and use, it makes me wonder why all of my other sponges are just rectangles. It’s a Goldilocks sponge, not a unitasker, but it is still particularly great at the thing it is specifically designed to do.. So I will be keeping my Mitt sinkside, right on its handy little sponge rest, no matter the season. I will be spreading the word too. I think they make the loveliest hostess gift, paired with a bottle of your favorite drink, of course.. Keep those wine glasses shining