The unofficial birthday cake of the Test Kitchen comes to Bake Club this month as Shilpa Uskokovic shares her recipe for Strawberry Roll Cake. 

“I just love this cake,” explains Shilpa to co-host Jesse Szewczyk. “It has everything you could want! Tender cake, really nice cream…lots of fresh fruits. It's perfect.” 

Shilpa and Jesse answer your questions and also award the inaugural Baker of the Month to one lucky listener whose Strawberry Roll Cake stood out on BA Bake Club Substack page. 

And in our segment Baker You Should Know, celebrated author and food stylist Donna Hay stops by to talk about her latest book Sunshine Lemons and Seasalt. Donna introduces us to her favourite cooking utensil, the spoonula. 

You can find Donna Hay’s work on her website and you can watch her series Coastal Celebrations on Disney+. 

We’d love to hear from you - send your questions to BA Bake Club! Find us on Substack or send us a voice memo to [email protected].

This month, Bon Appétit’s Bake Club is putting a spin on a classic. Listen in as Jesse Szewczyk breaks down his popular recipe for Chocolate Guinness Cake.

“The cake came to me rather easily. I had a vision. I got lucky,” Jesse explains to co-host Shilpa Uskokovic. But the challenge came when it was time to develop the frosting. “I feel like everyone in the Test Kitchen had an opinion on what it should be…I definitely tried at least 10 different frostings.”

Ultimately, Jesse landed on a brown butter frosting as the perfect topper, not just for taste but also because it matched the visual of an expertly poured Guinness, with its creamy head. “It’s reinforced with just a tad of Guinness, two tablespoons,” says Jesse. “I found it important to have Guinness in both places.”

Jesse and Shilpa also dive deep into the mailbag and answer questions about the cake and troubleshoot issues listeners encountered.

Plus, baker and psychologist Helen Goh stops by in our “Baker You Should Know” segment. Helen confesses that she has been living a double life for years and explains how she juggled working with the acclaimed Yotam Ottolenghi on developing sweet treats while seeing patients in her psychology practice. Her latest book, Baking & the Meaning of Life, bridges the gap between the two worlds.

As always, we’d love to hear from you! To send your questions to Bon Appétit Bake Club, subscribe to us on Substack, or send us a voice memo to [email protected].

This month, Bake Club takes inspiration from a popular chain restaurant for our own take on a beautiful, fluffy and cheesy biscuit that is transformed with the help of Old Bay seasoning. Hosts Shilpa Uskokovic and Jesse Szewczyk make the case for why biscuits are a must for any occasion. “Anything bread can do…a biscuit can do better,” says Shilpa. 

Jesse and Shilpa tackle listener questions and baker and writer Cheryl Day, a biscuit guru who made them everyday for 22 years in her bakery, stops by the clubhouse. Cheryl’s advice for the best biscuit is simple. “I would say: practice, practice, practice … then, take notes.”

We’d love to hear from you! Send your questions to BA Bake Club! Find us on Substack or send us a voice memo to [email protected].

Links:
Garlic Bread Biscuits Recipe
An Ode to Old Bay, the Great American Condiment from The New Yorker
Old Bay Breakfast Potatoes
Peel ’n’ Eat Old Bay and Garlic Shrimp
Old Bay Chips With Lemon Mayo
Glazed Fried Chicken with Old Bay and Cayenne
Baltimore-Style Crab Cakes

January is bleak, but this month’s Bake Club recipe is bound to put a smile on your face! Hosts Jesse Szewczyk and Shilpa Uskokovic dive into the world of bagels. Jesse talks us through the tips and tricks of how to make the perfect bagel from the comfort of your own kitchen. “Bagels are like this blank canvas,” says Jesse, “Where the yeast and the wheat are the flavor…and the toppings, obviously.”

Plus, Melissa Weller from Bub’s Bakery in New York City drops by the clubhouse. Melissa is a James Beard nominee and author of two beautiful books, A Good Bake and Very Good Bread. She discusses her love of bagels and how her past life as a chemical engineer helped her hone her craft as a recipe developer. Melissa also tackles a tricky listener question on how to make gluten-free bagels.

We’d love to hear from you! Send your questions to BA Bake Club! Find us on Substack or send us a voice memo to [email protected]

A special bonus episode this week from our friends at The Chef’s Cut podcast. Every Tuesday Top Chef alums Adrienne Cheatham and Joe Flamm share behind-the-scenes chef insights and candid conversations with people in the food industry. Recently, they caught up with Editor-in-chief of Bon Appétit and Epicurious, Jamila Robinson. They discuss what it takes for a chef to get noticed by Bon Appétit, how much testing goes into each recipe on our site and the countless hours that go into working on helping to pick the 50 Best Restaurants for North America.

BA Bake Club will be back on February 3 as we tackle this month’s recipe for bagels. 

This month on BA Bake Club, hosts Jesse Szewczyk and Shilpa Uskokovic break out their whisks and create a picture perfect pavlova. It has all the top textures of a showstopping bake: It’s crunchy, it’s chewy, it’s decadent and it’s boozy. Inspired by Shilpa’s childhood favorite, Black Forest gâteau, we dive into the inbox and dig into listener questions. And Shilpa preaches about the virtue of a cracked meringue. “My point is if it cracks, it's okay,” says Shilpa. “That's really what the whipped cream and the toppings are for sure. Just patch it back together.” Watch Shilpa make her fool-proof pavlova on Instagram. 

2025 James Beard award-winning cookbook author Nicola Lamb also stops by to help weigh in on what you can do with leftover egg yolks and comes up with some creative suggestions! You can find Nicola on Instagram and her Substack called Kitchen Projects. 

Send your questions to BA Bake Club! Find us on Substack or send us a voice memo to [email protected]. 

We like big cinnamon buns and we cannot lie. December’s Bake Club is dedicated to the tireless efforts of Shilpa Uskokovic and her creation of a giant, gooey cinnamon roll. Not only is this recipe perfect for any festive gathering, but it also has all the nostalgia of a mall food court in the 90s. Shilpa tells Jesse about her decision to include two specialty ingredients and the importance that they had in shaping the structure of the recipe. And we meet another baker we think you should know: Patrick Shaw-Kitch of Brooklyn Granary & Mill. Patrick not only bakes, but mills his own flour for his creations and tells us why we should think more about where our flour comes from and how to harness it in our bakes.

Meet Wally Amos. He founded the ubiquitous Famous Amos Chocolate Chip Cookies in 1975, turning the brand into an overnight sensation and himself into a pop-culture fixture in the 1970s and 1980s.

But there’s a darker side to Wally’s seemingly sweet story. One filled with five marriages to six women and a string of bad business decisions that led him to lose the empire he had created.

When he passed away in 2024, host Sarah Amos set out to untangle her father’s complicated past and finally face the life and legacy she had been avoiding.

New episodes every Wednesday: swap.fm/l/vf-toughcookie-feed

Finally, Jesse, BA's resident cookie expert, treats the Bake Club to his latest creation: Chocolate Chip Cookies With Olive Oil and Sea Salt. In this episode, Jesse and Shilpa discuss how this accidentally vegan chocolate chip cookie came together. They explore the best methods to ensure the perfect chocolate distribution in the cookie and what Jesse meant by cooking flour to the color of ‘desert sand’. Plus, listeners share how they managed with the October Bake Club treat and cookie enthusiast Dorie Greenspan (of xoxoDorie) tells us when to tap and not to tap our cookie sheets on the counter. 

This episode is from our friends at Milk Street Radio. Bon Appétit columnist Maggie Hennessy helps us navigate the new rules of dining out. Is it ever OK to take out your phone? What’s the best way to grab your server’s attention? And how fussy is too fussy? 

Hold onto your piping bags, Bake Club! In September, Jesse set bakers a showstopper-worthy challenge in his Banana Pudding Paris-Brest. In this episode, he and Shilpa break down the many worthwhile steps for making this "drag queen of French desserts." They're also joined by superstar baker Zoë François (of the ZoëBakes newsletter) to answer a listener question about conventional vs convection ovens.

Recipes & Links:

Pictures: Jeannine's choux tire, Elyse's choux ring, Katy's bananas

Zoe's Raspberry Paris-Brest

Join us on Substack!

You can find all the BA Bake Club recipes, including this one, here.