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Something might be wrong in the baking world today. Bakery shelves are stacked high with the trendiest dessert, filled or flavored or “kissed” with the latest popular ingredient, and hidden under a crazy design. These are delicious and fun to look at, but somewhere along the line, we have to ask ourselves, “Where is the cake?”

Look friends, birthdays happen and nothing hits the spot like a good old-fashioned sugar-eggs-flour-butter birthday cake. Every decent baker should have a good cake recipe as his or her trump card. If someone tells you they don’t agree, they’ve never had a from scratch birthday cake, and since you are reading this, it is now your responsibility to make them the birthday cake of all birthday cakes—Yellow Cake.

Yellow cake is a cake Ron Swanson from Parks & Recreation would appreciate. It’s no nonsense, has a couple ingredients, and tastes like cake. Let’s remember that on a birthday, it should be ok to indulge. This cake requires a couple more eggs and some more butter than most which gives it a rich taste while keeping the texture airy and moist. Paired with a simple fudgy frosting, which can be whipped together in a food processor, yellow cake is a marriage of kid birthday party nostalgia and adult sophistication. Adding touches like neon dinosaur shaped nonpareils (a friend of mine picked these up for me at Home Goods) or an assortment of colorful jimmies makes the decoration even more fun.

In my experience, if you show up to a birthday with a messy, handmade cake, you’ll be forgiven of faults and suddenly attract many more friends.

Today is Leap Day. For some of us, it means trading childrens’ tears for candy. For others, its an extra day to read, write, and/or bake.

If you’re the sort that can’t wait to spend the extra free time whipping up some treats for post-Leap Day festivities, you’re in luck. Tomorrow happens to be National Peanut Butter Lover’s Day. So to help you out, we’ve got this delicious recipe from our Peanut Butter & Co. Cookbook.

Read on to learn how to make peanut butter swirl brownies. Yum!

Are you ready… for Marsh Madness?

No, that isn’t a typo. Starting today, we’re kicking off Marsh Madness with Serious Eats. It’s our version of March Madness, only we’re replacing basketballs with marshmallows .

We’ve created four brackets with sixteen super sweet bloggers, and each food blogger is crafting his or her own unique marshmallow. The recipes start with the original vanilla mallow recipe in Shauna Sever’s Marshmallow Madness, and then the sky is the limit.

At the end of the tournament, Shauna will select her favorite of the bunch, and we’ll award that food blogger with a Quirk Books cookbook library and $100 gift card to Williams-Sonoma.

We’ve got the full schedule and the entire bracket below. Check back regularly on Serious Eats for recaps on the marshmallows, bookmark the blogs and keep up with Marsh Madness on Twitter via #marshmadness.

Last year, while I was busy doing blogger research for The Cookiepedia, I stumbled upon a lot of outrageous macaron recipes. There were plenty of wild flavor combinations, from the subtle like lavender and vanilla bean to the adventurous like pistachio with vanilla raspberry & rhubarb jam.

I felt bad for Quirk’s Margaret McGuire (editor) and Katie Hatz (designer) during this process, as I was filling their inboxes with link after link. So, here are my favorites from those days of assaulting their email accounts.

Read on to scope out the recipes, for a chance to share your favorites, and an opportunity to win a copy of The Cookiepedia! Oh and Margaret? Katie? I apologize for nothing.

With all the indulging these holidays, wouldn’t it be nice if you showed up to a party with the healthiest dish? One of the healthiest grains, brown rice, was used in this casserole.

This is a versatile side that can double as an entrée too, with its combined flavors of nutty brown rice, two hearty sausages, various vegetables, crisp almonds and broth. Just the thing to complement roasts or salads anytime of the year.

Last week, Stacy Adimando visited the Brooklyn Kitchen in… well, Brooklyn, for a cookie making demo.

During her demo she whipped a tasty batch of pistachio butter cookies, and taught everyone how to melt chocolate and dip espresso shortbread.

Stacy's little sister came along to the event, and snapped up a bunch of photos for us. Take a look at the pictures on our Flickr page, or just read on. I've posted her delicious pistachio butter cookie recipe, as well as a Flickr slideshow below.

Enjoy!