Have you tried the classic French dessert called clafoutis? (It’s pronounced klah-foo-tee.) If not, please let me introduce you to this delightful and simple treat. Clafoutis is a delicious cross between a cake and a custard with a crackled top and luscious, fruit-studded interior. It’s sweet but not too sweet, making it the perfect ending to a lovely summer supper.

Clafoutis is typically baked with cherries, but you’ll see that I used berries here, and you’ll find more options below. My three-year-0ld loves clafoutis. She’s been asking for more “cherry cake” since last summer, and it’s about time we made more.

I made clafoutis over and over again last summer until I got the proportions of this recipe just right (nine times, to be exact). Each attempt was tasty, but the recipe I’m sharing today is perfection. I had to find the right balance between the amounts of flour, sugar, liquid and eggs to yield a silky interior that’s full of flavor but not too eggy or wet. Here it is!

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This blueberry cake is my official summertime dessert. I hope it becomes yours, too. It’s tender, fully loaded with blueberries, and simple to make—no mixer required. It’s a dream!

This blueberry cake recipe is naturally sweetened with maple syrup, which makes it extra delicious. Thanks to the blueberries and maple syrup, it’s nicely sweet but not over the top. Some cakes are so sweet that they give me a stomachache, but this one is just right.

This cake will absolutely be a hit at your Fourth of July festivities. Serve it as a “snacking cake” or make it celebration-worthy with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or whipped cream. I’ve even enjoyed a slice with yogurt for breakfast.

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These lava cakes are rich and decadent, with cakey outsides and irresistibly gooey chocolate centers. They’re like a warm mug of hot chocolate in romantic dessert form.

These molten chocolate lava cakes look and taste impressive, but they’re pretty quick and easy to make. You don’t need any special equipment—no mixer, just a couple of bowls and a whisk. Unlike most lava cakes, you don’t even need ramekins to make this recipe. I scaled it down to fit perfectly in your muffin tin!

Known as moelleux au chocolat in France, lava cakes became popular in the United States when Chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten started serving them in the 1990s. I’m excited to report that the ingredients are simple (you probably have them), and the muffin tin technique works like a charm.

This recipe yields two small lava cakes, perfect for two individual servings. They’re rich enough that you could also serve four people who are willing to share. I never manage to polish one off on my own.

You’ll find step-by-step photos and a detailed recipe below. Let’s make some lava cakes!

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Finally! Meet my tested and perfected carrot cake recipe. I’ve been working on this carrot cake for a long time, and I’m so happy to report that I’ve finally nailed it.

I was hoping to publish the recipe in time for Valentine’s Day, then Mother’s Day. Here we are, just in time for Father’s Day and your summer birthdays! I hope you have a carrot cake lover in your life, because this cake will make him or her very happy.

This homemade carrot cake would be perfect for any celebratory occasion. It’s exactly what I want my carrot cake to be: delicious and moist, gently spiced with cinnamon and ginger, infused with flecks of fresh carrots, and covered in luscious cream cheese frosting. It’s the best.

This cake is also simple to make from scratch with wholesome ingredients. You can easily make it in an afternoon, with plenty of time to kill while the cake cools.

I’m often intimidated by layer cakes, so if I can make this cake, I know you can, too. Ready?!

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Would you look at that red, white and blue showstopper? I’ve been dreaming of this almond cake concept for months, and I’m sharing it just in time for your Fourth of July festivities. It’s my abstract, gluten-free version of a flag sheet cake.

This gluten-free almond cake is lightly sweetened with maple syrup (or honey), infused with fresh lemon flavor, and topped with creamy Greek yogurt and fresh strawberries and blueberries. It’s a winner!

The cake itself is tender and possesses an almost graham cracker-like flavor, thanks to the combination of almond meal and maple syrup. It’s not overtly sweet like boxed cake mixes, but it definitely tastes like a treat.

This beauty would be a dessert for any occasion (use any variety of seasonal fruit). It’s also wholesome enough to pass for breakfast or a mid-afternoon snack.

The best part? It’s very easy to make! No mixer required.

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Here it is! Some sweet mamas have been asking me how to turn my naturally-sweetened banana bread into a cake for their little ones’ birthdays. It took me several tries to get it just right, but today, I’m introducing you to the best banana cake on the internet. Bold statement? Let me back it up.

This banana cake is fluffy, moist, tender and infused with banana flavor. It’s absolutely delicious on its own (it was adapted from banana bread, after all), but I couldn’t resist topping it with my favorite cream cheese frosting. I love this cake so much that it knocked my favorite local bakery’s chocolate cake down to second place.

I made this cake as a single layer for a zero-fuss, foolproof cake. It’s truly so easy to make. I whisked together the batter by hand, and whipped up the frosting with my hand mixer once the cake had cooled.

You can make this cake in a square baker if you’re serving up to nine people, or double it for a party. It also makes a great layer cake or cupcakes. See the final recipe notes for details.

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This is my kind of cake. The inside is naturally sweetened with honey and molasses, and spiced with my favorite warming spices. No mixer required!

Then I slathered the top with pillowy clouds of cream cheese frosting, because why not? It’s the holiday season. Let’s deck the halls. Bring on the cream cheese frosting. Sprinkle cinnamon on top.

I’ve received several requests for gingerbread cake over the years, and this one delivers. It’s more of a wholesome, hearty cake than a delicate bakery cake, but the frosting balances it all out.

I used my partner Frontier Co-op’s spices, which always smell and taste so fresh. Their Vietnamese cinnamon is sweet like snickerdoodles, rather than fiery like Red Hots.

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Here’s the paradox of producing a healthy cookbook: the stress of it leads to cravings for all kinds of not-so-healthy things. Like, mac and cheese. Pizza, delivered. Spoonfuls of vanilla ice cream. Those chocolate coconut almonds from Trader Joe’s (have you tried them?!). I’m only human.

I’m in the thick of recipe writing now, and it’s tedious work. I think and re-think how to structure each recipe so it’s easy to understand. I wonder how much detail to include—will this tip help you along, or just complicate matters?

Such as, do you need to know the weight of apples used in a salad? (Leaning toward no.) Do I tell you how to toast the nuts in every recipe that calls for toasted nuts? (Leaning toward yes.) How do I best explain how to shape veggie burgers to someone who hasn’t made them before? So on and so forth.

I’m so in love with the recipes, though. I have 100 sweet little recipe babies, and I’m struggling to keep them all to myself until next spring. They’re also keeping me from spending as much time here as I’d like. Please forgive me if I’m slow to answer your comments—they’re so important to me, and it’s killing me that I can’t get to each one.

I decided to indulge my sugar craving with a citrusy winter cake. This olive oil cake has made a couple of appearances on the blog already (orange poppy seed and lemon blueberry), and it’s always tender, light and complex in flavor. This time, it’s a pretty pink blood orange cake with blood orange icing.

The only problem is that blood oranges don’t have a ton of flavor compared to other citrus, so it’s not as intensely citrusy as the pink frosting would suggest. The lemon and regular orange versions definitely pack more of a punch, so I thought I would present this cake as a design-your-own olive oil cake with tips on how to change it up. You can use any crazy variety of winter citrus you can find!

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Let’s talk cake. This very lemony blueberry cake is the perfect sweet treat to bring to your summer celebrations. It’s basically a lightened-up pound cake.

Instead of being made with the traditional one-to-one ratio of butter, all-purpose flour and sugar (one pound each!), this cake is made with yogurt, olive oil, whole wheat flour and a reasonable amount of sugar.

The cake is easy to mix up by hand. Rubbing the lemon zest into the sugar brings out tons of lemon flavor. A drizzle of lemon honey syrup adds an extra burst of lemon flavor that seeps all the way down to the blueberries at the bottom.

Blueberries seemed like a festive choice, but you could substitute raspberries or chopped strawberries. Or hey, try a mix of the three!

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This cake was originally designed to be an upside-down strawberry-rhubarb cake. I envisioned a gorgeous, glossy pink-and-ruby top, but I turned over the cake to find a shaggy-edged, brown-ish mess. Usually, I don’t discriminate blog recipes based on appearance, but this cake was not cute. Not cute at all.

It was, however, a remarkably tasty cake. I relished a slice, took Cookie on a walk and carried on with my evening. Eventually, the idea to top the cake with roasted strawberries and rhubarb (baked in the oven at the same time as the cake) popped into my head, and here we are! Cake success.

I’m not going to make it home to celebrate Mother’s Day with my mom this year, but if I could, I’d bake her this cake. It’s about as easy as cakes get (no mixer required), it’s gluten free (possibly paleo as well, I’m not sure) and just a beauty overall. Happy Mother’s Day to all the mamas out there! You make the world go around.

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