Lazy Daisy Cake Is as Easy as It Sounds

“Lazy people, this cake is for you.”

So goes Melissa Clark’s clarion call to her lazy daisy cake, also known as Danish dream cake (drømmekage). The “dream” part, I’d guess, is the tender cake flavored with a generous dose of vanilla or cardamom. The “lazy” bit is its so-easy frosting of melted butter, brown sugar and coconut. As for the “daisy” part: Maybe that’s just satisfying alliteration, or maybe it’s because, after the frosted cake has had a quick run under the broiler, the toasted coconut strands stand out like daisies in a field. Something to ponder as I lazily make this cake and then actively inhale it.

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Lazy Daisy Cake

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To borrow a Sam Sifton-ism: That’s dessert sorted. Let’s turn to dinner, shall we?

I love spatchcocking a chicken — wielding my trusty kitchen shears to remove the bird’s backbone makes me feel so adept and crafty. A flat bird also cooks faster. I’d like to give Melissa’s spice-rubbed spatchcocked chicken a try this weekend, because her mix of brown sugar, sweet paprika and chile and dried mustard powders sounds like the perfect balance of sweet-salty-smoky-spicy.

Or maybe you’re chickened out? I’d then point you to Melissa Knific’s baked pork chops, which get a nice depth of flavor from a dry brine and a reverse sear. The comments are, by and large, ecstatic. “Amazing recipe,” Rose, a reader, writes. “I’ll never do pork chops any other way.”

To serve with your chicken or chops: A green salad and Dan Pelosi’s potato wedges, which are extra creamy-crispy thanks to a cold water soak for the cut potatoes to release some starch. And to drape all over your chicken and chops and potatoes: Princess Pamela’s sauce beautiful, a recipe from Pamela Strobel adapted by Korsha Wilson.

The base of this summery, serve-with-everything sauce is peach preserves brightened up with lemon and vinegar, and smoothed with butter. As for its name, “Princess Pamela, a moniker given to Strobel when she asked a printer what the name of her business should be, wore the title well,” Korsha writes. “She ruled over her minuscule soul food spot in New York City’s East Village, deciding who was let in (and who was kicked out).”

And for breakfast, I would very much like a wobbly stack of Genevieve Ko’s honey oat pancakes, which get their bulk and porridge-y flavor from quick-cooking or instant oats. Ground flax (or flax meal) replaces eggs in this recipe, enhancing the nutty flavor of the oats in their job as binding agent. But if you’d like to nix the flax, simply follow Genevieve’s tip for adding two beaten eggs to the buttermilk-soaked oats in Step 3.