Join the Bon Appétit Bake Club

Is baking your entire personality? Is The Great British Baking Show your comfort watch? Or maybe you just love eating cookies? Either way, you’re one of us. Come join our Bon Appétit Bake Club.

We’re Jesse and Shilpa, senior editors and the resident bakers of the Bon Appétit test kitchen. We love to bake—some might even call us obsessive—and we love to talk about all the hows and whys and what-didn’t-works that come with it.

Think of the Bon Appétit Bake Club as a book club, but for baking. Each month we share a brand-new meticulously tested recipe. Bake along with us, share your wins (or your fails—we’ve all been there), post pictures, ask us your pressing questions. We’re creating a community of confident, curious bakers who find just as much joy in the process of baking as the final results.

Want to join the club? Here’s how:

• First, and most important, bake this month’s recipe, which you’ll find below.
• Join our Close Friends on Instagram—just DM @bonappetitmag proof of your Bon Appétit subscription and we’ll add you to the group. We’ll take you behind the scenes of our recipe development process and you can ask us your baking questions.
• Post and share photos of your beautiful bakes on Instagram using the hashtag #BABakeClub.
• Share feedback and ask us questions in the Recipe Notes section of the recipe page in the Epicurious app. We read every comment and look forward to talking with you about butter, sugar, and more.
• Send your baking questions to bakeclub@bonappetit.com or call in at 212-286-7071 for a chance to be featured on our podcast. Each recipe’s episode goes live at the start of the following month on the Dinner SOS feed.

March 2025: Pistachio Bundt Cake

The key to this pistachio cake’s tender crumb and mown-grass green hue? A blender. It does all the hard work for you, decimating the nuts into a coarse flour and evenly distributing the dry ingredients (no sifting needed). This cake is satisfyingly hefty, with the regality of a cruise ship out at sea, and sturdily moist, thanks to the pistachios’ natural fat content, a combination of melted butter and oil, plus a pearlescent lemon glaze. I’ve kept it on the counter under a mixing bowl for days, sawing off slices each time I saunter past.

I know many of us are nervous about inverting a cake in a Bundt pan. There’s always a moment of: Will it or won’t it? Over the years, I’ve found the best insurance against stickage is a can of baking spray—not cooking spray, which is a different product entirely. Made with oils and flour, baking spray works particularly well for Bundt cakes, getting into the valleys of the pan more effectively than just oil or butter. It comes out of the can in a beige mist, making it easy to see any missed spots. I stock Baker’s Joy in my cabinets both at home and at work.

February 2025: Tiramisu Basque Cheesecake

If you’ve been on social media at all this past year, you’ve likely been served an image of Basque cheesecake, a chubby wedge of it with a scorched top the color of a walnut coffee table. It’s easy to see the appeal—dramatic visuals aside, it’s astonishingly easy to make. You don’t need a crust, or a water bath, or the long, slow cook of a NY–style cheesecake. The trick lies in cooking it hot and fast, much like pizza or steak, resulting in a cheesecake of epic contrasts, deeply caramelized on the outside whilst remaining quiveringly soft inside. Not one to leave well enough alone, I’ve gone and added buttery mascarpone and a not insignificant amount of instant espresso to the batter to mimic another custardy classic, the iconic tiramisu. Topped off with a rosette of cocoa-dusted cream, it is two desserts for the effort of one.

A springform pan is essential for this recipe. Choose one with a light finish and a minimum height of 2″. Pans with a raised, rather than recessed base, make removing your cheesecake much easier, enabling you to neatly slip a spatula between the metal and the pastry. Having an overhang on the base plate makes it easier to hold the pan, especially when it’s full of runny batter. This pan fulfills all our requirements and is the one we turn to in the test kitchen.

January 2025: Incredibly Good Homemade Pizza

We live in NYC, one of the greatest pizza cities in the world. So of course we don’t need to make pizza at home. But we choose to! Because it is fun and rewarding. Our new recipe for homemade pizza meets you right where you are: It can come together in fewer than 4 hours and is adaptable to an overnight rest. You don’t need a stand mixer, a clunky baking stone, a specialty oven, or even to change out of your pajamas. And you’ll still get a world-class pie. The decidedly untraditional two-step cooking method (stovetop plus broiler) is a game-changer, guaranteeing a puffy crust with enviable char (or leoparding, as the pros call it).

The dough starts off wet and sticky. To make handling easier, we highly recommend a flexible bowl scraper. A staple in professional kitchens, it’s terrific at gathering doughs and batters, scraping them out of bowls and off of fingers and counters. It’s hard to overstate how often we reach for this unassuming tool every time we bake.

December 2024: Chocolate Olive Oil Cake

We love a one-bowl cake. This recipe has fruity olive oil in both the chocolate cake and the swooshy ganache-like frosting. It’s a low-effort, high-reward centerpiece for your next get-together or celebration. And if there are any leftovers, thanks to that olive oil, the crumb will stay moist and plush for days.

Using Dutch-process cocoa powder gives this cake an intense chocolaty flavor. Our go-to brand for pretty much anything baking-related is Guittard Cocoa Rouge. It has a bold, concentrated complexity without any of the dull chalkiness common in other brands.

November 2024: Caramel Apple Monkey Bread

This project bake screams autumn. The perfect follow-up to apple picking, it’s a fruit-studded beauty, drenched in a tangy cider caramel. Between the dough and caramel, this recipe uses almost half a gallon of apple cider. Bake it on Sunday, serve it up for a lucky crowd, and dig in with your hands—pulling apart the caramel-drenched pillows one by one.

Make sure to use a 12-cup or larger Bundt pan for this recipe. Using a smaller variety can result in the dough proofing out of the pan. Nordic Ware actually invented the Bundt pan, and we love their version for its sturdy construction and even heat distribution.

Coming Up

Next month, Jesse is making a treat that tastes like a million bucks. Get yourself a tin of sweetened condensed milk and a sharp knife.

Meanwhile, on the podcast, Jesse and I will be talking all things pistachio cake on the Dinner SOS feed going live on April 1. Give us a listen—we often tackle reader-submitted questions and you might find one of yours answered. And as always, if you have any baking queries, whether on pistachios, cake, Bundt pans, or more, write us at bakeclub@bonappetit.com.