My Quest to Find the Best Banana Muffin Recipe

Crunchy Top Banana Muffins

Banana Cinnamon Muffins

Ingredients in Banana Cinnamon Muffin Recipe

Really, REALLY Ripe Bananas

Sour Cream

Brown Sugar

Cinnamon Sugar

Essential Banana Cinnamon Muffin Recipe Techniques

How to Quickly Ripen Bananas

How to Make High Domed Muffins

How to Make Wide and Crunchy Muffin Tops

Best Banana Cinnamon Muffin Recipe Tips

• {Ingredient Tip} Bananas are listed in the recipe by weight, not volume or size. Why? It's risky not to include exact measurements for banana baked goods. Too little banana and your baked good will turn out too dry, but too much will cause it to collapse in the center if underbaked. For best results, use a digital scale! First peel the bananas, then use the scale to weigh the naked fruit. But fine—for those who need volume measurements, this recipe needs approximately 1 ¼ cups mashed bananas, from around 2 ½ large bananas. 


• {Equipment Tip} For this recipe, tools are important. You'll need two muffin tins, a 1-tablespoon OR a 3-tablespoon cookie dough scoop, and an offset spatula (preferably with a short, metal blade). The cookie dough scoops are for filling each cavity with muffin batter—to get tall domes, you'll need to fill each one with SIX tablespoons of batter. It works best if you're precise. Anything more will cause the muffins to overflow, and anything less will result in squat muffins. You'll then need the offset spatula to "unstick" the wide muffin tops from the pan.


• {Muffin Making Tip} Use cooking spray to spray the muffin tin in order to turn the muffins out of the pan easily and quickly. To make it work, you'll need to spray the inside of each cavity with a GENEROUS amount of cooking spray—and when I say generous, I mean generous. You should be uncomfortable with the amount of spray you used, lol. You'll also need to spray the outer border around the cavities. And FYI—butter won't work, and will cause the muffins to stick to the pan. Use cooking spray!!! 


• {Muffin Making Tip} The recipe instructs you to rest the batter for one hour at room temperature; technically, this step is optional. You can bake the batter immediately after making and end up with some pretty damn good muffins. But if you want super domed muffins with seriously tall tops, rest the batter for an hour! This will allow the flour to hydrate and absorb the liquids in the batter more fully, leading to taller domes. Don't stick the batter in the fridge—chilled batter will cause the muffins to stick in their cavities. In fact, make sure ALL your ingredients are at room temperature before using in the recipe. Again, this is one of the secrets to super tall muffin tops. 


• {Muffin Making Tip} Because each muffin requires so much batter, the recipe produces an odd number of muffins: 9 total. You'll need to bake 6 in one muffin tin, and the remaining 3 in another muffin tin. When baking the remaining three, you'll need to pour water into every other cavity to mimic the placement of the batter in the first muffin tin. Don't skip this step! Skipping this step will cause the remaining three muffins to spread too much and potentially overflow into other cavities. 

Other Banana Recipes

• Banana Bundt Cake with Salted Dulce de Leche
• Banana Sheet Cake with Dulcey Cream Cheese Frosting
• Banana Tres Leches Cake
• The Violet Bakery's Sugar Crusted Banana Bread
• Triple Chocolate Banana Cake

Atlantic Beach Pie

Why You Should Make Atlantic Beach Pie

1. {Drinks} Sparkling Cucumber Basil Lemonade
2. {Drinks} Thyme Lemonade
3. {Cakelets} Lemon, Lavender and Earl Grey Mini Cakes and Petit Fours
4. {Cakelets} Mini Sour Cream Lemon Cakes with Beet Glaze
5. {Cookies} Raspberry Lemon Lofthouse Cookies
6. {Cookies} Tangy Meyer Lemon Sugar Cookies
7. {Showstopper} Atlantic Beach Pie!!!

What is Atlantic Beach Pie?

Atlantic Beach Pie History

Bill Smith’s Atlantic Beach Pie

Atlantic Beach Pie Ingredients

Nonni’s Limone Biscotti

Lemons

Fresh Whipped Cream

Best Atlantic Beach Pie Recipe Tips

• {Timing Tip} Although this pie comes together fairly quickly, you’ll need to plan ahead and make it the day before you’re planning on serving it—the filling needs to chill for at least 4 hours, but preferably overnight. Make the whipped cream and garnish the pie right before serving to ensure that the whipped cream is at its fluffiest and the biscotti cookies are at their crunchiest, too.


• {Ingredient Tip} To make Nonni’s Limone Biscotti crumbs, use a digital scale to weigh out as many biscotti cookies as needed to match the weight listed in the recipe (if you don’t have a digital scale, the you’ll need approximately 6 ½ Nonni’s Limone Biscotti cookies—don’t discard the remaining ½ cookie, you can use it to garnish the pie like I did!). Use a food processor to pulse the crackers into fine crumbs.


• {Pie Making Tip} Use a glass or ceramic bowl to make the lemon filling. A metal bowl will react with the lemon juice, giving the filling a noticeable metallic taste.


• {Pie Making Tip} When making whipped cream, recipes often instruct you to whip the cream to specific textures like “soft peaks” and “firm peaks.” The best way to determine the cream’s texture is to do a test with a whisk: Dip the tip of the whisk (or the whisk attachment) into the whipped cream, remove it, and completely turn it upside down. If the cream is too soft, it will slide off the whisk, and you’ll need to keep whisking. If the cream has a cloudlike structure, with peaks that lose their shape, you’re at the “soft peaks” stage. Stop here—this is where you want to be for my Atlantic Beach pie recipe!


• {Styling Tip} If you follow me on Instagram and saw my Instagram Stories on how to make this recipe, you’ll notice that after chilling the pie, I decorated the pie’s edges with more cookie crumbs. This is NOT a requirement and is just to make the pie look extra pretty; the recipe below does not include the step. But if you’re interested in styling your pie in the same way I did, you’ll need to make an extra half-batch of cookie crumbs by halving the recipe for the crust below. Instead of pressing the crumbs down into a pie plate, simply spread them evenly over a parchment-lined sheet pan and bake for 10 minutes at 350°F to toast them.

King Cake

What is a king cake?

What does king cake taste like?

Mardi Gras King Cake

King Cake Season

King Cake Symbolism

1. King cake's shape represents the three kings.
I mentioned earlier that the Christian holiday of Epiphany is celebrated with king cake. That's because Epiphany commemorates the story of the three kings visiting baby Jesus and bearing gifts. Some sources argue that the shape of the cake represents their crowns; other sources say that it represents the unity of faith between the kings since all three came from different parts of the world. If you look online, you'll notice that, despite almost all king cakes having a hole in the middle, most vary in shape: some are round, while others are oval. Most homemade recipes make round king cakes, while professional bakeries make oval shaped ones. Let me clear the air: it's more traditional for king cakes to be oval. That being said, it's MUCH harder to achieve that oval shape at home, lol—be sure to check out my baker's notes to read all about how I got my homemade king cake to bake in its oval shape.


2. The purple, green, and gold colors of king cake represent justice, faith, and power.
The purple, green, and yellow gold colors of the king cake match the traditional colors of Mardi Gras. According to my research, these colors were chosen in 1892, when Rex, one of the most most prominent Mardi Gras parade organizers to this very day, declared the colors and their subsequent meanings for their parade theme that year.


3. A small plastic baby is frequently hidden in the king cake; this baby symbolizes Jesus. But also, not really.
Because king cake has such religious roots, it's generally accepted that the baby hidden inside the cake represents Jesus. But that's not 100% true. The tradition of hiding a small plastic baby inside a king cake was started by McKenzie's, a New Orleans-based bakery. And according to the bakery's late owner, they didn't pick the baby to symbolize Jesus; instead, they mostly picked it because it was cute and it wouldn't get as easily lost in the dough like a fava bean or pecan nut. Also, these days, it's more common for the purchaser of any commercially made king cake to actually hide the baby—that is, a person buying a king cake actually receives the baby on the side to hide in the cake after purchase. From my research, it honestly sounds like many bakeries were concerned about getting sued for including a choking hazard in their cakes (not to mention the potential food-safety issues that comes from baking a pastry with a plastic baby that could potentially melt and leech harmful chemicals into the cake...). Fair enough.

King Cake Traditions

Ingredients to Make a King Cake

Brioche Dough

Cream Cheese

Cinnamon

Sanding Sugar and Food Coloring

Plastic Baby

Best King Cake Recipe Tips

• {Timing Tip} One of my biggest pet peeves is waiting for dough to rise. Most doughs, especially ones molded into rolls or shapes like this one, usually need to rise twice: once after making the dough, and another time after shaping the dough. Each rise usually takes between an hour to two hours. That's a LOT of time sitting around waiting and doing nothing. As a result, I tend to break these recipes up over 2 days—on the first day, I'll make the dough in the evening and let it rise overnight in the fridge. The cooler temperature helps slow down the rise, and after about eight hours (hey, the amount of time I usually sleep for), it's perfect for molding. In the morning on the second day, I'll punch down the dough and shape it. I've written the recipe below to reflect this schedule (for more of this type of recipe hacking to make them work within your schedule, check out my cookbook, Weeknight Baking). But if you don't want to wait overnight for your king cake, you can make it in one day too: follow the instructions to make the dough. Let the dough rise in the covered bowl as instructed, but instead of placing it in the fridge, place it in a warm, draft-free spot for about 1 to 2 hours or until the dough looks puffy and has doubled in volume. Proceed with the recipe as instructed.


• {Ingredient Tip}  For this recipe, it's especially important to use the ingredients at the temperature they are listed in the recipe. Instant yeast needs to be activated at a specific temperature—specifically, with ingredients that are 120° and 130°F. Anything cooler won't be hot enough to get the yeast going, and anything warmer will kill the yeast, leaving you with a sad and flat king cake. Use an instant read thermometer to prep your ingredients; if you don't have one, you can guesstimate it (but I can't guarantee the results). Dip your finger in the warm butter and water; aim to heat them to a temperature that's similar to a "just barely too warm" bath. 


• {Styling Tip} After spreading the filling on the rolled out dough, you'll need to roll it back up again and then pinch the edges together to make a round shape. I'm not going to lie—this part of the recipe gave me a WHALE of a time. You'll need to make sure that, when rolling the dough, you do it as evenly as possible—if your log ends up thicker in some parts, the king cake will bake up unevenly! I also found that the sealed edges always left a seam in the cake. While that's not the biggest deal (especially since you end up covering the cake in frosting anyway), the sealed edges never rose as well as the rest of the cake. My first few king cakes came out looking like a giant croissant, with the seam side never rising as high as the seamless side. To remedy this, I started leaving out filling towards the edges of the rectangle that make the seam (this'll make more sense once you start making the king cake—come back and read this tip once you're at this step, lol). The lack of filling helped the seam rise almost as quickly as the seamless side of the cake.


• {Styling Tip} One of the most challenging things about making a king cake at home is getting the dough to bake in its oval shape. I still haven't quite figured out how professional bakeries do it (though some of their king cakes definitely look more rectangular than oval—I suspect many use a pan). My first attempts at homemade definitely ended up more round and circular than oval. For this cake, I ended up wrapping the dough log around a small, oval ramekin—I even baked it that way too! In the oven, the dough rose around the ramekin, helping keep its oval shape. That being said, I know most folks don't own an oval ramekin (I specifically bought one for this recipe myself). But don't let that stop you! Follow the recipe as instructed and shape your king cake by pinching the ends together; at this point, you'll notice that the cake looks more like a circle than an oval. You can either place a small bowl in the center, or just let it bake up without one. Both will result in perfectly round king cakes (though the one with the ramekin will likely have a more defined hole in the middle). Either way, it'll still be just as tasty.

Where to Buy King Cake

• "Where to Get King Cake This Carnival Season" by Eater NOLA (updated for 2020, too!)
• "The Ultimate New Orleans King Cake Guide" by GO NOLA

What is a Geode Cake?

Geode Wedding Cake

1. A lot of geode cakes look like vaginas.

2. Geode cakes are actually terrible to eat.

I don't know if anybody saw my Instagram Stories last week, in which I made my very first geode cake ever (this one!) and taste-tested it, too. But spoiler alert: it turns out all those large chunks of rock crystals ruin the texture of a very soft, pillowy cake covered in even silkier buttercream. Plus, you could potentially chip your teeth on one of the sugar chunks!!! Many of you guys DM'ed me that, similar to most fondant wedding cakes, you're not actually supposed to eat the crystals. That is, most people peel off/pick off/eat around the fondant parts of a wedding cake—you're supposed to do the same with the crystals and not sit there and eat the entire thing like I was doing. Oops.

While this makes sense to me on a theoretical level, it also low key offends me. I want all parts of my wedding cake to be tasty—I don't want to be picking around the gross/inedible parts of a colorful cake while wearing a very expensive white dress! Besides, there are so many good cake recipes (and designs!) out there that don't require you to even do this kind of work to eat it. I quickly came to the consensus that a geode cake is NOT what I'm going to be making and serving at our wedding. Womp.

That being said, I still think that making a geode cake at home is a fun and creative way to spend your time. Besides—these cakes usually cost an arm and a leg to have custom made, and it turns out they're actually quite easy to make at home! Here's how:

Ingredients To Make A Geode Cake

Here are the key ingredients you need to make a geode cake design:

A Really Good Cake Recipe

This should go without saying, but a good cake design should start off with a good cake recipe. One that's tasty and comes together quickly because you're going to be spending so much time on assembling the cake itself. For our cake today, I went with the chocolate cake recipe in my cookbook, Weeknight Baking. It's ALMOST one bowl (technically you need two bowls: one for the dry ingredients, the other for the wet ones), and you don't even need to pull out your stand mixer—you can just mix everything by hand!

A Really Good Frosting Recipe

Good frosting recipes are silky and easy to smooth, but will hold its shape when applied to the cake. For this reason, most decorators choose a meringue-based buttercream like Swiss meringue or Italian meringue buttercream frosting. But these buttercream frostings are time-consuming to make, and between you and me, I like the taste of classic American buttercream—which is made with just confectioners' sugar, butter, and vanilla—much better. The key is to find a good buttercream frosting that "crusts" and hardens slightly when applied. For this cake, we're going with a classic birthday cake type frosting from this awesome recipe in the Hummingbird High archive. Unlike most traditional American buttercream frostings, this recipe also has cream cheese (making it more of a cream cheese frosting tbh), giving it a wonderful tang that pairs well with the chocolate cake.

Rock Candy

Remember those rock candy lollipops you could buy at science museums and boardwalk shops? You're basically going to be buying that for this cake, but with the candy in chunks in a bag instead of wrapped around a lollipop stick. I was an idiot and paid a premium for a bag off Amazon. I'd completely forgotten that rock sugar—which are basically bigger granules of rock candy, and unflavored to boot—is available for purchase at most Asian supermarkets at a third of the price. But be warned: rock sugar comes in MUCH bigger granules than the candy. It's harder to eat (but maybe that doesn't matter, since you're not going to be eating it anyway per my rambling above?), but easier to work with when making your cake.

Food Coloring

You'll need food coloring to paint the rock candy colors to mimic a geode. I used two different types of blues from this Americolor food coloring kit. In a pinch, you can get away with using just one color—you'll still need to make two batches of food coloring for the full effect, but dye one with a higher quantity of the same food coloring to get it a darker shade than the other. Alternatively, if you're feeling lazy and/or don't want to deal with buying a paintbrush (see next section), you can just buy different shades of rock candy on Amazon (in addition to the clear rock candy I got fleeced on, I briefly considered buying this dark blue shade and this light blue one of rock candy).

Vodka

If you're using a food coloring gel like I am, you'll need to thin the gel out with some vodka. The vodka also helps apply and adhere the color onto the rock candy without dissolving it completely like water would.

Edible Gold or Silver Leaf

Most geode cakes usually incorporate some sort of metallic, glittery patterning (see this cake as an example) to really bring life to the rock formation design. The best way to do this is with edible gold leaf, which is easily purchasable through Amazon. For this cake, I used edible silver leaf I bought on my last trip to Japan—I thought that silver leaf was a rarity in the US, but it turns out you can also purchase it quite easily on Amazon. Good thing I lugged it back all that way, ha.

Tools to Make a Geode Cake

You need a handful of tools to make a geode cake:

A Rotating Cake Stand

Most geode cakes start with a perfectly smooth frosted cake. The best way to frost a perfectly smooth cake is with a rotating cake stand. I use a heavy-duty metal one that I got from a restaurant supply store; it's very similar to this one by Ateco. The metal ones are great because they won't move at all even if you accidentally knock it with your elbow (which I've done many times). But in a pinch, you can also use lighter weight plastic ones—I like this one by Wilton, which allows you to tilt the cake side by side to help with decorating.

Offset Spatulas

You'll need a large offset spatula to smooth the cake's sides, and a smaller one to cover the cake's cut-outs with frosting. I know I sound like an ad for Amazon, but they actually sell reasonably priced sets of different sized offset spatulas that are perfect for this recipe.

A Serrated Knife

A sharp serrated knife is the best way to slice out the cut-outs for geode cake's rock candy crevices. Try to get a smaller/shorter one, like this 5-inch one by Wusthof—the shorter length will make it easier to carve your cut-outs more accurately. In a pinch, a sharp paring knife will do, but a serrated knife will work better against the chilled cake crumb (more on that in a second).

A Small Paintbrush

If you didn't buy colored rock candy, you'll need a small paintbrush to paint food coloring onto your rock candy. I actually didn't have a paintbrush on hand (I tried to buy one specifically for this project, but after biking to Fred Meyer's in the pouring rain, I discovered I left my wallet at home and let out a roar of frustration so loud that the person in line behind me jumped lol), so I used a brush meant for  for brushing egg wash onto pies. Because it's much larger than the kind of paintbrush I wanted (which was something like these brushes), my coloring is more all over the place and less of the ombre coloring that's traditional in geode cakes. But I actually ended up liking it more since it looked a lot less vaginal, so there's that.

Tweezers

Finally, you'll need some tweezers to apply the edible gold (or silver) leaf onto the cake.

How To Make A Geode Cake

Once you've frosted a perfectly smooth cake, it's time to make your geode cake design!

1. Use a small serrated knife to carve out cut-outs in the cake:

Don't worry too much about the shape and size of the cut-outs—just do what feels easiest! I literally just sliced out a chunk without thinking too much about it. You can do one giant cutout (which is traditional for geode wedding cakes), or do multiple ones like I did to make it look less vagina-y.

2. Use a small offset spatula to cover the cut-outs with frosting:

After you make your frosting, be sure to set aside at least ¼ cup to ⅓ cup of the frosting to use for this purpose. Unlike the rest of the cake, you don't need to perfectly smooth the frosting on the cut-outs—after all, you'll be covering it with rock candy! Also, don't worry if any cake crumbs get into the frosting in the cut-outs. Again, you're going to be covering that area anyway.

3. Use tweezers or your fingers to cover the cut-outs with rock candy:

The rock candy will be held in place with the frosting. You want to press firm enough so that the rock candy holds its place, but not so hard that you end up denting or destroying the cake inside. You'll also want to cover any crumbs or exposed parts of cake with rock candy to hide them.

4. Use a paint brush to paint the centers of the rock candy-covered cut-outs with a darker color, then paint the cut-outs' outer edges with a lighter color:

To make your "paint", mix as many drops of food coloring as necessary to achieve the color of your choice with 1 teaspoon of vodka.

5. Tweeze gold or silver leaf onto the cake to finish the design:

Bakers making traditional geode wedding cake designs typically create a gold leaf border around the cut-outs. Again, I avoiding doing so because I thought this enhanced the vagina effect of the design, lol. So instead, I just placed silver leaf at random throughout the cake. But you do you!

Make It Weeknight Baking

Although I broke this down fairly easily, it can be time-consuming to make a geode cake—in fact, it took me almost the entire afternoon just to assemble, frost, and make the geode design. It would have taken all day if I'd made the cake in the same day, too.

Because I don't like to spend eight consecutive hours in the kitchen all at once, I divided the recipe over a few days. I actually do this for many of the cake recipes in my cookbook, Weeknight Baking. Here's how it went down:

1. Day One: Make the Cake! (around 1 hour, including Bake Time)
   Follow the instructions in the recipe below to cool the cakes to room temperature, then turn each layer out into its own individual sheet of plastic wrap. Cover tightly with the plastic wrap and freeze overnight—do NOT refrigerate! Refrigerating cakes dries them out, while freezing the cakes locks the moisture in. In a pinch, I'd rather you leave the cakes wrapped at room temperature. However, I don't recommend doing so; the cake has such a soft crumb that it's much easier to carve when it has frozen overnight. So freeze the cakes!


2. Day Two: Make the Frosting and Frost the Cake (around 1 to 1 ½ hours)
   In general, it will take about 10 minutes to make the frosting and then the rest of the time to assemble the layer cake and frost it perfectly smooth. Depending on your experience with frosting cakes, it could take far less (or far more!) time to do so—I'm a bit of a perfectionist, so it always takes me at least an hour to smoothen out my cake. Don't forget to save at least ¼ cup to ⅓ cup of the frosting for your cut-outs the next day; you can place this frosting in an airtight container and refrigerate overnight. 


3. Day Three: Make the Geode Cake Design (around 1 ½ hours) and Serve! 
   Follow the instructions above to complete your geode cake. You may want to warm your frosting before using on the cake—simply scoop it into a heatproof bowl and microwave it on low in 10 to 20 second bursts until creamy, using a rubber spatula to mix it up. 

Best Geode Cake Tutorial Tips

• {Ingredient Tip} I'm not usually one to harp on sifting ingredients (see: this article in Bon Appetit, where I talk about why you don't really ever need to sift your flour), but for the frosting recipe, it's especially important that you sift your confectioners' sugar. The recipe uses a LOT of it, and you don't want any lumps showing (especially when you're trying to perfectly smooth a cake!).


• {Cake Making Tip} For this cake recipe, it's especially important to add the coffee while it's still hot (almost boiling, if possible!). The hot coffee will bloom the cocoa powder in the recipe, giving it a deeper flavor and an extra-dark color that's signature to this cake.


• {Cake Making Tip} For even cake layers, I like to actually weigh out the layers with a digital scale to make sure they're even. The easiest way to do this is to set a prepared cake pan on a digital scale and tare it to "0". Pour batter into the pan until the scale registers the weight listed in the recipe (because yes, I've included the approximate weight of the batter needed for each pan!). Repeat with the second and third cake pan. 


• {Decorating Tip} In general, chilled cake is easier to carve; even if you don't follow the weeknight baking schedule above (I get it, three days is a long time to wait for a cake!), I recommend baking the cakes the day before and freezing them overnight. Before making the frosting, set the cakes out on the counter and let them thaw slightly while making the frosting. Assemble and frost the cake as instructed above—at this point, the cake will be the perfect temperature (not rock hard, but still pretty chilled) for carving the cut-outs.


• {Decorating Tip} When filling your cut-outs the rock candy, start by placing the candy on the outside of the cut-outs and work your way in. The outer rock candy will help protect your hands from the frosting (though you'll definitely still need to wipe them off as you go—this is a messy job!).

Speculoos Cheesecake Bar Ingredients

Now that you've invested in a jar of speculoos cookie butter for this recipe, you're probably wondering what on earth do do with the rest of it. Because like, what are you actually supposed to eat with speculoos cookie butter?

In my household, a jar of cookie butter never lasts too long. We tend to use it as a substitute for nut butters, slathering it on morning toasts, waffles, and pancakes, pairing it with fruit like strawberries and bananas, adding spoonfuls to bowls of granola and oatmeal, and so on. Sometimes, when I'm craving something sweet at night, I'll even just dip a spoon in the jar and have a small spoonful as a treat. Is that gross? Sorrynotsorry.

Why This Is The Best Speculoos Cheesecake Bar Recipe

Alright, you've read this far. But maybe you're still wondering why you should bother making these cheesecake bars at home, especially since you can just buy them at Trader Joe's instead (where you're going to be heading to buy most of this recipe's ingredients, anyway!)? Here's why:

No Weird Ingredients and Preservatives

Looking at the ingredients list of a box of Trader Joe's Speculoos Cheesecake Bites was a little dismaying. Sure, there were the usual suspects like cream cheese, eggs, and speculoos cookies, but then also weird stabilizers and thickeners like soy leicithin, xanathan, and guar gums. Also, carob bean (although I detected no coffee or chocolate flavors in the bars whatsoever)? Like... why? You don't need any of that junk! Spare yourself from the weird chemicals by making these at home instead.

The Best Flavors

Since you're making these at home, you'll be able to modify the cheesecake bars to your taste.  I already mentioned that I added sour cream to the cheesecake base to help balance out the sweetness of the speculoos cookie butter swirl. But if you find that there's still too much speculoos cookie butter, you can absolutely reduce the amount used in the recipe to your tastes. Conversely, if you think I didn't go hard enough, increase the amount, too (but definitely check out the baker's notes below, since increasing the cookie butter has a little bit of an effect).

Weeknight Baking Friendly

The best part? It's actually incredibly easy to make these bars at home. The recipe is based on the cheesecake bars recipe in Weeknight Baking, my cookbook about baking efficiently on weeknights. That means that the recipe comes together really quickly and easily, thanks to these few tricks:

1. You can pour the cheesecake filling into the crust while it's still warm.
   Most cheesecake recipes will first instruct you to make, bake, and cool the crust completely to room temperature before filling it with cheesecake filling. With my recipe, there's no need to cool the crust—you can pour the filling over it while it's still warm! You can work efficiently by making the filling while the crust is baking in the oven; while it takes about 10 minutes to bake the crust, it only takes about 5 minutes to make the filling. By the time the crust is done baking, your filling will be more than ready to go!


2. Unlike with other cheesecake recipes, there's no need to use a water bath.
   Most cheesecake recipes ask you to bake the cheesecake in a water bath (or bain-marie, if you're feeling fancy and want to use the culinary school term). The theory behind this is that, because water only boils up to a certain temperature, it will prevent the cheesecake from overcooking by keeping the batter at that same lower temperature too. But because we're making cheesecake bars, there's not as much risk for overcooking the cheesecake since the bars don't need to be in the oven that long to bake completely. That means you can skip the water bath! 


3. These are make-ahead friendly, too!
   Okay, so the biggest bummer about making these speculoos cheesecake bars is that they'll need to chill for at least 4 hours before serving (but preferably even be chilled overnight). Now if that made you blanch and decide to just buy the Trader Joe's version instead, KNOW THIS—you also need to thaw the Trader Joe's version for at least 4 hours before you can even sink your teeth into them, too! There's no win-win here. Except maybe this: make these bars the night before you're planning on serving them! Once you do, they'll keep in the fridge for up to 3 days—honestly, 5 days if we're not being conservative—and even longer in the freezer. Because the recipe only takes about 20 minutes or so, I just whip them together after a weeknight dinner and place them in the fridge to forget about them. The next day, I'm greeted with slices of cheesecake bars to snack on for the next few days.