The Bundt cake. For some sweets lovers it’s the ultimate retro dessert. Still others write off this dense confection as pure kitsch. At times I’ve found myself in both camps. One look at that perfectly fluted ring and I flashback to elementary school and all the Bundt coffee cakes that my mother would bake. Iced with a mixture of confectioner’s sugar, milk and florescent yellow, orange or red food coloring, these day-glo treats were the psychedelic stars of her late 1970’s kitchen. Chances are that Bundt cakes popped up my grandmothers’ kitchens, too. In 1949 the Minnesota-based cookware company Nordic Ware produced its first Bundt pan. Crafted from heavy cast aluminum, the 10-cup mold was derived from a ceramic, German cake pan. Unique to the Nordic Ware creation, the form’s fluted sides allowed for even, easy slicing. Initially, consumers baked pound cakes in the pan. As the years passed, cooks discovered other uses. Quick breads, molded salads, Jello, steamed puddings and ice cream cakes could all be made in it. Although I’ve yet to shape …

As a kid, I thought of toffee only as the dark, crunchy center found in those chocolaty Hershey’s treats, Heath bars. It wasn’t until adulthood, when I ventured into Scotland, the land of sweeties and sticky toffee pudding, that I realized how versatile and tasty this confection could be. Although my toffee epiphany happened in the UK, the sweet itself comes not from Great Britain but from Canada. There a 16th century French educator, Marguerite Bourgeoys, created a molasses candy to attract, as she reputedly called students, the “little savages” to her French Canadian school. While Bourgeoys’s toffee featured molasses as its main ingredient, British and American versions use a combination of sugar, butter and water or cream. The three are boiled together in a large saucepan until they reach a temperature of anywhere from 260 to 300 degrees Fahrenheit. The higher temperature produces a brittle, tawny candy while the lower yields a luscious, amber syrup. If firm candy is the goal, the hot toffee is poured out to set. Once it has hardened, it …