Buttermilk

Serve as a side dish or a vegetarian main course. Look for bouillon base in the market’s soup section or order it from amazon.com.

Buttermilk and cake flour are the secrets to the incredibly light texture of this sophisticated cake with its gooey caramel topping. It's baked in a cake pan on a baking sheet to prevent the dates from getting tough.

Elegant and deliciously buttery, these golden fantails are an obvious choice for entertaining. Their shape resembles a blooming flower, with each petal forming a perfect pull-apart bite. But don’t worry—they are surprisingly straightforward to put together in a muffin pan.

These crunchy cornmeal morsels are nothing short of fried perfection.

You can bake this cake as two layers, fill it with your favorite fruit preserves (try black cherry or raspberry), and frost it with the Mocha Buttercream Icing. Or bake it in a tube pan and top it with any icing or just a light sifting of cocoa or confectioners' sugar (like snow on mountaintops!).

Classic spoon bread is a savory pudding served as a side dish. In this dessert version, the slightly sweetened batter is baked in individual ramekins, then topped with strawberry preserves.

Spice up winter nights with this variation on a popular bar snack. In our version, the cream cheese is frozen and grated and the jalapeños are diced and folded into the batter to create a chunky, spicy fritter.

These quick, flavorful biscuits with a touch of cornmeal are perfect for Thanksgiving.

When you put okra and cornmeal—two icons of the southern table—together in a hot greased skillet, magic happens, especially when you've tossed in a little crisp bacon for good measure. These fritters are best when eaten immediately, but try not to devour them all before they've even left the kitchen.

This frozen treat is low in calories and fat. You can top it with mango and crystallized ginger, if desired. If freezing overnight, thaw briefly in the microwave, stopping to stir, or let the frozen yogurt stand at room temperature for 15 minutes before serving.

This light spring recipe, from chef Daniel Patterson of San Francisco's Coi, is a great way to use the buttermilk left over after making Patterson's homemade butter . Strips of yuba are simmered in the buttermilk and then topped with a bright-green sauce of fresh peas, basil, and fava leaves. Yuba, also called tofu skin, is made by heating soy milk until a skin forms on the surface. Here, strips of tender, slightly chewy yuba stand in for pasta. (See the Test-Kitchen Tips, below, for more information on ingredients and substitutions.)

This wholesome bread is tender and sweet enough to appeal to kids, while the toasty sesame flavor and mix of grain, nut, and legume flours will also appeal to adults. Using a small loaf pan gives the bread a better rise and a higher proportion of tasty crust. See our related story for more information and sources for gluten-free ingredients<\a>.

To prevent curdling, be sure to cool the ice cream custard to room temperature before adding the buttermilk and crème fraîche.

This is one of our most popular cakes at the bakery. Half of the customers love it because they haven't eaten it since their grandmother made it when they were kids, and the other half because they think the red color is really neat. But everyone thinks it's delicious.

Perfectly textured inside and out, these scones truly are the real deal. Just a touch of butter or your favorite jam is all the embellishment they need.

These are best served warm.

Whole wheat flour gives these clever cookie S'mores a graham-cracker flavor. Leave the marshmallows out for a day or two on a plate to get stale—they'll hold their shape better during baking.

Using whole grain flour and wheat germ in these pancakes isn’t just a healthy gimmick that adds fiber and protein—it also adds a nutty flavor that tastes really, really good.