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 bakeclub@bonappetit.com.

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