Better Baking: Wholesome Ingredients, Delicious Desserts

Updating classic baked goods with flavorful whole grains, nuts, flours, fruits, vegetables, and fats.

After more than a dozen years developing recipes for food and health magazines and collaborating with noted pastry chefs, Genevieve Ko was determined to create treats that were just as indulgent as their original counterparts, as well as more full flavored and nourishing. In a word, better. Healthful oils prove superior to butter, giving Mocha Chip Cookies crisp shells and molten insides, liberating the citrus in Lemon Layer Cake with Olive Oil Curd, and tenderizing Melting Walnut Snowballs. Refined white sugar pales beside concentrated sweeteners like pure maple syrup, brown sugar, and molasses in muffins and granola. Pomegranate Pistachio Baklava uses reduced pomegranate syrup instead of the usual saccharine one. Nubbly flours with personality—whole wheat, spelt, rye, buckwheat, graham flour, and almond flour—bring richness to such desserts as Glazed Apple Cider Doughnuts. And pureed fruits and vegetables (beets in Red Velvet Roulade with Strawberry Cream Cheese; grated zucchini in Chocolate School Party Sheet Cake) keep desserts extra moist.