Easter Baking

By Food & Wine
Updated March 23, 2017
Tina Rupp
From a classic lime-coconut cupcake to an exciting plum upside-down cake, here are the dishes we'll be baking come Easter.
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Lime-Coconut Cupcakes

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Agave syrup adds a mellow sweetness to the batter of these delicious gluten-free cupcakes, which are slathered with a tart lime buttercream.

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Cinnamon Cake with Chile-Chocolate Buttercream

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In the sixth grade, Lisa Ritter prepared Mexican hot chocolate as part of a social studies project. Years later, she wanted to re-create that sweet-spicy sensation in a layer cake, so she developed a cinnamon-flavored sponge cake and subtly spicy buttercream frosting made with ancho chile powder and cayenne pepper. "This recipe makes great cupcakes, too," Ritter says.

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Red Velvet Beet Cake with Crème Fraîche Icing

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Instead of red food coloring, this excellent cake features a beet puree, which keeps the layers nicely moist. The cake is topped with a wonderfully sweet-tangy creme fraiche frosting.

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Strawberry-Thyme Tarts

Credit: © Emma Galloway
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For those who may be a little scared to try gluten-free pastries, these little tarts are the perfect place to start. "Whenever I make pastries, I'll often blend unrefined cane sugar in an upright blender to achieve a finer texture–something closer to powdered sugar than super-fine cane sugar," blogger Emma Galloway says. "This helps to evenly distribute it throughout the dough, and you are left with a much nicer texture and look in the end product."

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Classic Carrot Cake with Fluffy Cream Cheese Frosting

Credit: Tina Rupp
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Carrot cake, that 1970s favorite, has a new audience at luxe restaurants like Manhattan's Le Bernardin. At the Urban Farmer in Portland, Oregon, pastry chef Jodi Elliot prepares the ultimate version: moist and not too sweet.

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Plum Upside-Down Cake

Credit: © Nicole Franzen
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This pretty cake from pastry chef Joanne Chang is moist and buttery, with plenty of sweet and tangy caramelized plums on top.

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Hazelnut-Brown-Butter Brownies

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"In Japan I got into all different flours, like roasted soy flour," says Stella Parks. "Then I thought, Why not use nut flour to make gluten-free brownies?"

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Pecan-Honey Buns

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The honeyed glaze on these sticky, nutty breakfast rolls is luscious and soft when warm, then turns nicely chewy when cool.

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Chocolate Truffle Layer Cake

Credit: PHOTO © ANNA WILLIAMS
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This outrageous chocolate cake was born from a lucky mistake. Kimberly Sklar, pastry chef at Literati II in Los Angeles, was baking a creme fraiche-spike chocolate cake and, by accident, took the pan out of the oven early. Discovering that the cake was superfudgy, she layered it with dark chocolate and white chocolate ganache, then covered it in dark chocolate frosting.

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Mini Cassata Cakes

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At Boulud Sud, pastry chef Ghaya Oliveira makes a version of cassata, the ornate Sicilian dessert with layers of sponge cake, sweetened ricotta, candied fruit, dark chocolate and marzipan. The easy recipe here is Grace Parisi's own interpretation.

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Deep-Dish Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie

Credit: Tina Rupp
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Grace Parisi's strawberry rhubarb pie recipe is classic and perfectly tart-sweet. The dough can be made with just butter, but swapping in some lard yields an even flakier crust. As for the filling, she has experimented with several thickeners, but cornstarch is her favorite for juicy fruit pies.

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