The best way to start making homemade sweets? Follow these basic instructions and tips. Credit...Photographs by Joseph De Leo For The New York Times. Food Stylist: Monica Pierini. Supported by By ...

In my house, you didn’t enter the kitchen when mom was cooking. Our meddlesome kiddy fingers were always getting into the wrong things. So, we turned our curious culinary minds to the Easy-Bake Oven.

Many recipes call for baking powder, but who bakes enough to use a whole can before it expires? In fact, I learned the hard way about best-use-by-dates when we tried baking a cake with an old can of ...