Mother's Day

This homey bread salad smartly includes seared chicken livers and wing meat, which bring all the flavors of the dish together.

Chef Bradley Ogden's 1987 recipe for ultrarich bread pudding is perfect for dessert or brunch. It can be made with store-bought bread, but it's best made with a fresh bakery loaf, sliced 1/2 inch thick.

These muffins are crisp on top with light, fluffy centers and plenty of big juicy blueberries. They’re terrific spread with sweet, creamy banana butter.

This is a real old-fashioned American chocolate layer cake. It's very moist, very chocolatey, a snap to make and best baked the day before serving.

Gently simmering salmon in a flavorful white-wine broth is a classic cooking method that gives the fish a delicious flavor and a delicate texture. Serve this hot or at room temperature. Raita, the cooling condiment served in India, makes a superb sauce.

These light pastries are filled with a terrific pistachio-studded pastry cream and topped with a creamy glaze.

Little slices of party rye are a Southern favorite for tea sandwiches: "You don't see regular rye down here every day," Martha Hall Foose says. If party rye isn't available, use a cookie cutter to create rounds from regular bread slices.

These pleasantly dense cranberry-studded scones get a toffeelike flavor from light brown turbinado sugar, which has large, crunchy crystals. Sugar in the Raw is a good brand.

Ryan Fitzgerald always wanted to incorporate the floral scent of jasmine tea into a cocktail. He chose to add it to the late-19th-century Silver Fizz by using gin infused with jasmine tea.

For Mission Street Food's breakfast-for-dinner night, we came up with this riff on Cinnamon Toast Crunch—a thick slice of brûléed bread, sitting in a pool of sweetened milk. For us, this dessert combines the satisfactions of childhood and adulthood: the simple joy of buttered toast, the sugary crackle of crème brûlée and the indulgent moistness of tres-leches cake.

A well-made café cubano has a thick layer of sweet crema (cream) floating over strong espresso. To get the crema right, whisk about 1 tablespoon of the espresso with sugar until it turns foamy, then pour the pot of espresso over it. Lourdes Castro says you can't overbeat a crema, so stir it energetically.

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A Spanish tortilla is like a frittata. Francis Mallmann makes a lovely spring version with yogurt, fresh mint and sweet peas, baked in an oven (preferably a wood-fired oven) until just set. It's delicious served warm or at room temperature.

Nichole Birdsall tops these crêpes with strawberries, a superfruit high in vitamin C and potent antioxidants, and a creamy, orangey sauce sweetened with a splash of Bonterra Muscat dessert wine instead of sugar.

"I like big flavors through small bites," says Steve Sicinski. His salad combines plenty of vibrant-tasting ingredients, like pomegranate, watercress and orange, so a little goes a long way.

A lot of butter in the batter makes these waffles extra crisp. As a general rule, adding less butter to a batter results in a fluffier waffle.

The idea for this creamy-tangy omelet comes from a fish dish often on the dinner menu at Grace Restaurant that includes some of the same ingredients here: shiitake mushrooms and delicate fresh pea shoots.

In the winter, Individually Quick Frozen (IQF) fruit, like the kind sold by Cascadian Farm, is often a superior alternative to fresh fruit shipped to the US. IQF raspberries are terrific in these soft, puffy yeast rolls—a fun twist on a cinnamon bun.

Mario Batali’s seafood salad combines white beans and chunks of crab with a lively mint oil. The chef frequently makes this dish with poached rock shrimp in place of the crab.

Make-ahead Tip: The frosting can be refrigerated for up to 2 days; bring to room temperature before using. The frosted cake can be refrigerated for up to 3 days.

Make-ahead Tip: The gelée can be refrigerated for up to 2 days.

Heidi Swanson, who blogs about healthy food on her excellent website 101 Cookbooks, shares this lightened bread pudding in her cookbook, Super Natural Every Day.

Tyler Florence made these pancakes at home one weekend morning with his son Hayden. They're a slight variation on a recipe from his book, Tyler Florence Family Meal.

Gale Gand, an F&W Best New Chef 1994, got this recipe from her mother-in-law, Vita Seidita; the fritters are also good sprinkled with cinnamon sugar or dipped in jelly.