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Just a big, happy party cakeFrosting-swirled layer cakes are festive for birthdays, and ornate, tiered cakes are essential for weddings. But the best cake for any other large gathering is a sheet-pan cake. There is, of course, its size; a sheet-pan cake will feed two dozen or more of your favorite sweet-toothed revelers. Sheet-pan cakes are also convenient to transport and serve while still in the pan. And cutting them into even pieces is, quite literally, a piece of cake — there is no complicated Tetris of wedges and diamonds to measure. You can bake nearly any batter in a sheet pan if you don’t mind doing the math to get the quantities right. Or just follow Lidey Heuck’s recipe for vanilla sheet-pan party cake when you need a big dessert for your next big bash. With a tender, fluffy crumb and silky buttercream frosting, her cake is everything you’d want as a sweet finale for cookouts, potlucks, graduation celebrations or whatever you’ve got going on during this party-ful time of year. Featured Recipe Vanilla Sheet-Pan Party CakeAlso on the menuSlow-cooker BBQ pulled chicken: Before dessert, you should eat some protein. Ali Slagle’s easy pulled chicken is mostly hands-off and keeps the oven free, which is necessary when you’re baking a cake. Broccoli salad: Made with a light oil-and-vinegar dressing instead of mayonnaise, this sprightly salad from Hetty Lui McKinnon will provide the pre-cake green vegetables you need in a delightfully crunchy way. Hibiscus punch: Whether you’re looking to raise a toast or are just in the market for a colorful, kid-friendly party punch, David Tanis’s lightly spiced libation fills the bill. (And grown-ups can spike it with rum.) For a limited time, you can enjoy free access to the recipes in this newsletter in our app. Download it on your iOS or Android device and create a free account to get started. Reading and eatingDo you ever flip through cooking magazines from the 1980s and contemplate the food styling? The checkered tablecloth under pasta bowls, the hazy focus, the almost surreal positioning of raw ingredients. In her latest novel, “Lake Effect,” Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney takes us into that pre-Instagram world via Clara, a magazine food stylist with a fraught relationship to the family she fled in Rochester, New York (where D’Aprix Sweeney is from). Clara’s food styling is only part of the story — the book is a juicy 1970s family saga featuring adultery, divorce and a large supermarket chain. As my friend Katherine said, “It practically reads itself.” Clara’s breakthrough styling moment was for blueberry muffins. Maybe they were similar to the recipe from the Jordan Marsh department store, which The New York Times published in 1987?
Read anything good lately? Let me know at hellomelissa@nytimes.com. I’m always on the lookout for my next book.
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