Our Most Popular Recipes This Week

This week’s most popular recipes are a mix of easy skillet suppers and simple, one-layer cakes, with spicy, tangy Korean Fire Chicken, one-pan Fettuccine Alfredo and a cake that’s so easy, a child could make it.

Korean Fire Chicken

Sweet, spicy, tangy and savory, these buldak-inspired chicken thighs get huge, complex flavor from a four pantry ingredients, including the Korean fermented chili paste called gochujang, which gets charred under the broiler and reduced to a glaze. Look for it in the international aisle in supermarkets or in Asian grocery stores. Different brands can vary in spiciness, so you may want to start with the smaller amount, then taste after whisking with the vinegar and soy. If desired, whisk in additional gochujang, keeping in mind that the flavors in the finished dish will be slightly more concentrated. Serve with rice and, if you like, lettuce leaves for wrapping.

Gâteau Basque au Chocolat

Gâteau Basque au Chocolat is a traditional Basque pastry with a buttery, cookie-like dough encasing a rich chocolate custard, and it might be the most forgiving recipe we've ever made. It does not matter how good you are at rolling out dough. It's essentially a self-correcting recipe that rights itself in the oven. If you can shape Play-Doh, you can work with this crust. Even if the dough breaks when you transfer it to the pan, even if it cracks, this dessert will emerge from the oven looking great. The layer of chocolate custard between the layers of pastry doesn't hurt either.

French Apple Cake

This is the cake for apple pie filling lovers. French Apple Cake is less cake than a pile of sautéed apples, suspended in an airy, bouncy crumb that bakes up with a thin, crisp crust. “It is a last-minute dessert thrown together without a recipe,” Chris Kimball writes. “When one requests exact measurements, French cooks explain the process with a disdainful flick of the head, an exhalation of cigarette smoke and a phrase of discouragement: ‘N’importe.’”

Skillet Fettuccine Alfredo

If you’re familiar with the cold-start method for pasta, you probably have heard that fresh pasta cannot successfully be cooked that way. We, however, discovered otherwise. The one-pan, no-drain technique utilizes the starchiness of cooking water to build the sauce for fettuccine Alfredo. There are, however, two caveats. First, make sure to use a basic but brand-name store-bought fresh pasta such as Buitoni or Rana, as the noodles separate more easily than premium brands. Second, Grana Padano, not Parmesan, is the cheese of choice here. It is a hard cow’s milk cheese from Northern Italy, but because it’s typically aged less than Parmesan, it is moister and softer, which means it melts more readily and more smoothly. (It also is easier on the wallet.)

1-2-3-4 Yogurt Cake

In France, gâteau au yaourt is a cake that uses an entire container of yogurt then cleverly employs the empty container as the measuring cup for the flour, sugar and oil. It’s easy to throw together and a perfect recipe to make with children. The cake is very forgiving this way. It’s also a blank canvas, so feel free to flavor it to your liking with vanilla or other extracts, ground spices or grated citrus zest

Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Pinterest.

And if you're looking for more Milk Street, check out our livestream cooking classes with our favorite chefs, home cooks and friends for global recipes, cooking methods and more.

Claire Lower

Claire Lower is the Digital Editor for Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street, with over a decade of experience as a food writer and recipe developer. Claire began writing about food (and drinks) during the blogging boom in the late 2000s, eventually leaving her job as a lab technician to pursue writing full-time. After freelancing for publications such as Serious Eats, Yahoo Food, xoJane and Cherry Bombe Magazine, she eventually landed at Lifehacker, where she served as the Senior Food Editor for nearly eight years. Claire lives in Portland, Oregon with a very friendly dog and very mean cat. When not in the kitchen (or at her laptop), you can find her deadlifting at the gym, fly fishing or trying to master figure drawing at her local art studio.