BA Bake Club’s August Recipe Is a Sky-High Cream Puff Cake

Welcome to the Bon Appétit Bake Club

Is baking your entire personality? Is The Great British Baking Show your comfort watch? Or maybe you just love eating cookies? Either way, you’re one of us. Come join our Bon Appétit Bake Club.

We’re senior editors and the resident bakers of the Bon Appétit Test Kitchen. We love to bake—some might even call us obsessive—and we love to talk about all the hows and whys and what-didn’t-works that come with it. Think of the Bon Appétit Bake Club as a book club, but for baking. Each month we share a brand-new meticulously tested recipe. Bake along with us, share your wins (or your fails—we’ve all been there), post pictures, ask us your pressing questions. We’re creating a community of confident, curious bakers who find just as much joy in the process of baking as the final results.

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First, and most important, save each month’s recipe and bake it! You’ll find all of them below.
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Send your baking questions to us for a chance to be featured on our podcast. Each recipe’s episode goes live at the start of the following month.

This Month’s Bake: Sky-High Cream Puff Cake

Published August 1, 2026. This month, Jesse riffs on Polish karpatka with a no-bake cheesecake filling swirled with tangy plum jam. Photo by Travis Rainey, food styling by Micah Marie Morton, prop styling by Adrian Ababović.

For those unfamiliar with karpatka—a.k.a. Carpathian Mountain Cake—let us enlighten you. Traditionally, two discs of tender, airy pâte à choux house a layer of pastry cream lightened with whipped cream or crème mousseline. This version ditches the classic filling for a no-bake cheesecake (!) ribboned with homemade plum jam. It’s make-ahead-friendly and endlessly fun; just the thing to keep the summer vibes going a little longer.

From the Bake Club Archive

Bake Club highlights

This sunflower yellow cake with an alluring bounce is Bake Club’s midsummer stunner. Fresh (or frozen!) corn blended with a can of sweetened condensed milk and the recipe’s defining ingredient makes up the bulk of the batter. The end result is a textural masterpiece with gentle resistance and slight elasticity that tastes like buttered corn, toasty coconut, and nutty caramel all at once.
If a tomato sandwich, pizza, and flaky pastry started a band, these tomato galettes would be their first hit single. Start by making a black-pepper-spiked pie dough, which needs no specialty equipment to bake up crisp and layered. Each little round is filled with a dollop of garlicky Parmesan and herb mayo, which acts as a barrier between each little galette’s juicy tomato slice and delicate pleated crust.
Lemons are a powerful ingredient. So why miss out on their full potential by only using their juice and zest? That was the thesis behind these bars. By blitzing up two whole lemons into the curd, then straining out the pulpy bits, we keep lemon’s most exciting qualities: the bitterness of the pith, the essential oils of the skin, and of course, the acidity of the juice. Think Lemonhead candy. It’s everything I love about classic lemon bars with the volume turned up to a reckless decibel level.
Last year, for deputy food editor Hana Asbrink’s birthday, I made a strawberry roll cake filled with whipped cream and tiny jewel-red strawberries. It was an immediate hit and we decided right then that it belonged in Bon Appétit Bake Club. With fluffy cake, vanilla-bean-flecked cream, and juicy berries, it’s a dream dessert, tailored for this joyful season. Roll cakes traditionally require a complex series of steps when it comes to shaping, but this version utilizes an oil-based chiffon sponge, making it particularly easy to roll with no cracks and no heartbreak.
After last month’s cheesy biscuits, we’re going back to our dessert-loving roots and baking chocolate cake. But not just any old chocolate cake—this is a malty, brawny loaf imbued with Guinness stout. The crumb is tender beyond belief because of how you mix the batter. You’ll combine the dry ingredients, then rub in the butter by hand, until it practically disappears. This mimics a technique called reverse creaming and prevents excess gluten from forming. And there’s no special equipment, like a stand mixer, required.
A biscuit warm from the oven, split open so the steam rises to meet you, rivals the pleasure of an exalted loaf, all for a mere fraction of the effort (and wait time). This month’s recipe is packed with cheese and zhuzhed up with Old Bay seasoning. These biscuits are tall and layered like a lasagna, thanks to a lamination method not unlike croissants. You don’t need any special equipment for these, but a good bench scraper is highly recommended—it makes shaping the dough so much easier.
With a few pantry staples and a little time, this recipe yields a dozen delightfully chewy bagels that rival the most beloved of NYC shops. The trick? A two-step process: The bagels are first boiled, then baked. This dual approach gives them their signature chew, tanned sheen, and pleasantly dense (not tough) interior. And for a little fun: You can top these bagels with just about anything you like. Some of our favorites are furikake, Parmesan, sesame seeds (classic), and flaky salt.
This bake is inspired by Black Forest cake, a Bavarian dessert defined by its layers: chocolate cake, cream, cherries, and kirsch, a cherry brandy. Over the years it spread far beyond its woodland origins, to countries like India, Fiji, the Philippines, and the Caribbean Islands. One bakery in Chennai, India, where I grew up, made tall triangular slices, a treat my parents brought home if we did well on our school tests.
Pavlovas are prone to crack, weep, or turn soggy and chewy. The key is in the ratio of sugar to egg whites. Two parts sugar to one part egg whites (by weight, of course) gives you a sturdy, crisp, snow-white pavlova.
Designed to maximize the ratio of sticky, gooey insides—arguably the best part of the pastry—this giant cinnamon roll was received with joy almost every time I made it. A little something mixed with cinnamon sugar mimics the ooey-gooey texture of mall-famous cinnamon roll filling, thanks to the modified food starch it contains. It’s purposefully large enough to cut into slices like a cake, but if you’re like us, you won’t be able to resist tearing it apart with your bare hands. Nor should you.
I am more than happy, if not downright eager, to make a vegan dessert if the results are equal to, or better than, their dairy-laden counterparts. This recipe is one of those cases: my (accidentally) vegan chocolate chip cookies made with olive oil. Olive oil and chocolate are a fated match—both nuanced, fruity, and a touch of bitter. As an added bonus, the oil keeps the cookies soft and moist for days. It’s a true win-win.
For those unfamiliar with the old-school pageantry of this French pastry: A Paris-Brest is a giant wreath of choux pastry (a foundational pastry dough) that puffs and expands dramatically in the oven. This version swaps the traditional praline mousseline filling for a banana-peel-infused (yes!) diplomat cream (just a fancy term for pastry cream lightened with whipped cream) and layers it with candied nuts and slices of banana. Everything good about a cream puff, just in a flashier, French package.
Turn on the AC, because this month we’re making a lovely, homey pie. It’s everything good about summer (fruit! leisure! long days!) tucked away in a crisp, flaky crust, lightly scented with cardamom, and topped with a brown sugar streusel. There are some powerful learning moments in this bake: How to make a crust that will never fail you. How to select the best fruit for a pie. Why it’s important to precook a high-moisture filling so your pie crust is crisp rather than soggy. And perhaps the hardest and most important lesson of all: How long to wait before you dig into your pie (it’s longer than you think).
This is no squishy sandwich loaf, but rather a big, browned boule studded with fresh jalapeños and chunks of cheese. It’s ultra-savory and just a touch spicy. For those who might be intimidated by homemade bread, think of this recipe as an intro course. It’s made with a quick dough, so it comes together quickly, without having to fuss over finicky starters or preferments. And you don’t have to knead it; a few quick folds is all it takes.
This month we’re making Hummingbird Cake, an imposing icon from the American South. It’s a storied dessert with an origin story that involves a Caribbean island, possibly a bird, and a magazine that’s over five decades old. If you’re unfamiliar, think of it as a banana version of carrot cake, full of nuts, spices, fruit, and cream cheese frosting.
The tang of cultured dairy from sour cream makes these scones stand out, keeping them moist but not claggy. And with that addition, channeling coffee cake became the natural next step. With clusters of streusel on top and a cinnamon sugar swirl within, these are scones that anyone will love.
Millionaire’s shortbread is the ultimate show-off bake. Our version went through about 10 rounds of testing until every detail was just right. The base of these bars—a simple, ultra-tender shortbread—gets a special upgrade: toasting a bit of the flour beforehand. This lends a deep nuttiness, almost like coffee, without any extra ingredients. The caramel takes a hybrid approach, bolstering caramelized sugar with sweetened condensed milk, so you get a bittersweet flavor with a sliceable texture. The final layer combines chocolate with butter for a mirror-like shine and fudgy bite.
The key to this pistachio cake’s tender crumb and mowed-grass green hue? A food processor does all the hard work for you, decimating the nuts into a coarse flour and evenly distributing the dry ingredients (no sifting needed). This cake is satisfyingly hefty and moist thanks to the pistachios’ natural fat content, a combination of melted butter and oil, plus a pearlescent lemon glaze.
It’s easy to see the appeal of this dramatic cheesecake—dramatic visuals aside, it’s astonishingly easy to make. You don’t need a crust, or a water bath, or the long, slow cook of a New York–style cheesecake. The trick lies in cooking it hot and fast, much like pizza or steak, resulting in a cheesecake of epic contrasts, deeply caramelized on the outside while remaining quiveringly soft inside. I’ve added buttery mascarpone and a not insignificant amount of instant espresso to the batter to mimic another custardy classic, the iconic tiramisu. Topped off with a rosette of cocoa-dusted cream, it is two desserts for the effort of one.
Our pizza recipe meets you where you are: It can come together in fewer than 4 hours and is adaptable to an overnight rest. You don’t need special tools, a clunky baking stone, or complicated equipment. And you’ll still get a world-class pie. The decidedly untraditional two-step cooking method (stovetop plus broiler) is a game changer, guaranteeing a puffy crust with enviable char (or leoparding, as the pros call it). To make dough-handling easier, we highly recommend a bench scraper.
This one-bowl cake has olive oil in both the chocolate cake and the ganache-like frosting. It’s a low-effort, high-reward recipe. And if there are any leftovers, thanks to that olive oil, the crumb will stay moist for days. Using Dutch-process cocoa powder gives this cake an intense chocolaty flavor. It has a bold, concentrated complexity without any of the dull chalkiness common in other brands.
This project bake screams autumn. The perfect follow-up to apple picking, it’s a fruit-studded beauty, drenched in a tangy cider caramel and using almost half a gallon of apple cider. Make sure to use a 12-cup or larger Bundt pan for this recipe. Using a smaller variety can result in the dough proofing out of the pan.

About the Editors

The bakers behind the club

Jesse holds the distinction of being named one of Forbes 30 Under 30 in the food and drinks landscape for 2021. A graduate of The Culinary Institute of America, Jesse held positions at The Kitchn and BuzzFeed Food before joining the food team at Bon Appétit and Epicurious.

A graduate of The Culinary Institute of America, Shilpa worked in some fancy-pants, Michelin-starred restaurants in New York City (like Perry St, Jean-Georges, Marea, and The NoMad) before joining Bon Appétit as food editor. At BA, Shilpa transforms her restaurant experience into reliable recipes.

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