How to win a bake off: Part 2
Interviews + recipes for our cookie, brownie and banana bread winners!
In case you missed it, this is a two-part series covering the winning recipes and their creators from our community bake off x Creator’s Table event that happened in April.
You can find the event recap and the recipes for the winning coffee cake and focaccia in part 1! In case you’re in DC this Sunday, May 18—I’ll be hosting another community bake off in collaboration with Capitol Jill from 2-4pm at La Collina. Tickets here!
Our winning chocolate chip cookies and banana bread with Deepika Kalla
I’m thrilled to share this interview with Deepika Kalla of @thedeeperlivingeats/Murray Hill. Deepika posts some of the most stunningly aesthetic food content on Instagram and I’ve been lucky enough to taste a number of her baked goods through our color dinner party series. All have been mind-blowingly delicious!
Deepika won both the chocolate chip cookie AND banana bread categories with her treats. If you’re thinking, wow this competition must be rigged—I can assure you that our guest cookie judge (@easygayoven) and banana bread judge (Creator’s Table founder @nck.ryn) independently judged these categories in a blind taste test and came to the same conclusion. Deepika really is just that talented!
Read on for some of her baking insights she’s developed from years of baking on the side (while maintaining her day job as a CPA)!
Tell us about your cookies! How did you come up with them and/or tweak the original recipe?
These whiskey brown butter marshmallow chocolate chunk cookies have everything I love in them! They are nutty and toffee-like thanks to the brown butter and the addition of a little whiskey. The other surprise element here is the marshmallow fluff. I tried adding these to my cookies a while back and I just loved the chewiness and texture they added to the cookie!
Finally, I use less chocolate than you would think. Counterintuitive I know for a chocolate chip cookie, but I find that too much chocolate takes away from the cookie while the perfect amount of chocolate leads to a well balanced cookie in my opinion. When I first got seriously into baking, chocolate chip cookies were that first recipe I wanted to nail down. I tried a lot of different ones but never found one I absolutely loved.
With a lot of research and using Handle the Heat's 'ultimate cookie handbook' (which is a great resource for cookies as it goes super in-depth into all the different factors that make the different types of chocolate chip cookies), I landed on a chocolate chip recipe I really liked. It's a riff off the original Toll House cookies but with a few extra steps that do make it more involved than a basic chocolate chip cookie recipe. I think each and every step is worth the extra effort for the results you get in the end!
And now tell us about your pecan praline banana bread!
I used Flour Bakery's recipe - the only difference here was that I used ripe bananas but not very ripe which led to a less sweet banana bread. The pecan praline topping and glaze is from Elisa Sunga's (@saltedrye) upcoming cookbook which will be released in Spring 2026.
This banana bread is so soft and plush and is my favorite banana bread to date! I feel like banana bread is one of those desserts that is easy enough to make and most recipes will yield a decent loaf but I was in the search for the best one!
I actually turned to [the banana bread] bake off to help narrow down which ones I should try. And of course Flour Bakery was the winner, so I had to try it. It’s super moist, only has a few ingredients and bakes up beautifully; it’s easy to see why it was the winner at the bake off.
For the Creator's Table event, I knew that I wanted to add a nutty element to the banana bread. Classic banana bread is great but I'm not the biggest fan of soggy nuts in the loaf itself. So I was inspired by a recipe I tested for @saltedrye's new cookbook that involved a pecan praline. I added a bit of the ground up pecan praline into the batter of the banana bread and used the rest of the praline to make a glaze to coat the banana bread and showered the rest of the banana bread with the pecan praline.
I will say - I think the addition of the sweet pecan praline glaze and pecan praline worked on this banana bread in particular because I used not too ripe bananas. I think if you use very ripe bananas you will get a sweeter loaf cake which may make the whole thing too sweet, but I will have to try it out again to see!
What has your baking journey looked like--when did you get started and what kind of bakes did you start out with vs. what kinds of things do you like to bake now?
There has always been this gravitational pull for me towards desserts. As a young child I remember reading the cookbooks in our house and always finding myself flipping right to the dessert section of the book. My family has always been open to trying new foods from different cuisines and whenever we went out to eat or traveled, we never said no to dessert. This exposed me to a variety of desserts and piqued my curiosity.
As I got older, I started taking charge with the desserts for parties, birthdays and gatherings. I would research recipes online and started making desserts that piqued my interest. Once I got a hang of basics like chocolate cake, chocolate chip cookies, etc. I began experimenting by combining/layering recipes together.
Nowadays I'm heavily inspired and driven to make things that echo the seasonal produce I see at the Union Square farmers markets as well as recreating desserts I try at restaurants.
Last but not least, I love trying new desserts that I've never heard of. @bucketlistbakeclub has been a great resource for this! This month they’re doing Karpatka, which is an oversized cream puff. I've never tried to make it but I'm excited to try my hand at it.
Who do you like to follow for recipe inspiration or where do you find most of your baking inspiration?
I get heavily inspired by what is in season, a quick stroll at Union Square market and I get a flood of dessert ideas with all the bountiful produce. I love learning about different ingredients from around the world to see what flavors I can leverage in my baking. Understanding the history, origin of different ingredients allows me to add them into a new application outside of what is typically used for.
Finally, I love following my fellow bakers and pastry chefs on Instagram. I get so much inspiration from them. A few of my favorite people to follow are @thepancakeprincess, @saltedrye, @nicolalamb and @honeyedsundays just to name a few!
For any other bakers out there trying to win a recipe competition (or simply just bake the best recipes out there), any other favorite recipes you'd recommend?
These are a few of my favorite that I barely adjust because they are perfect the way they are in my opinion!
Handle the Heat Chewy Brownies - these are my favorite chewy brownies ever! If you are a team chewy>fudgy these brownies are for you!
My very own Black Velvet Cake - my husband, mom and sister only request one cake for their birthday and it’s this one; I can't convince them otherwise.
Ryan Nordheimer's Funfetti Birthday Cake - made this one for my birthday this year and it might be my new go to birthday cake!
Any baking tips you've picked up along the way that you think would be helpful to share?
Investing in a kitchen scale is a game changer. Once you start using a scale, it’s so much easier to adjust recipes, to be precise with your measurements, pinpoint what went wrong, and clean up is the best—not a single cup needs to be dirtied!
When trying a new recipe, do NOT be adventurous. It is best to stick to the recipe the first time you try it so you can see if it’s the recipe for you. It'll be easier to identify what went wrong or what you didn't like. If you change things, it gets a little complicated to isolate the issue. Once you've baked it once as a control recipe, it’s fine to experiment and play around with it!
Always line your pans with parchment paper! The few times I tried to do it without, my bakes would always stick, even if I was using a non-stick pan. I believe in the phrase better to be safe than sorry and parchment always makes sure I'm safe.
Try to use quality ingredients. If your ingredients are good quality, they will translate to a better quality bake. A few of my favorite staples are Trader Joe's unsalted butter, Tony's 70's dark chocolate, Valrhona cocoa powder and King Arthur's black cocoa powder.
This tip took me a long time to get, but clean up as you go! It’s not a glamorous one but it definitely makes the entire baking experience easier and less chaotic. If you put things back along the way, your counter stays clean and less prone to accidents like dropping your entire bag of flour on the floor at 2am...
Finally, I highly recommend reading any recipe from top to bottom once before baking. Doing this allows you to understand the order of operations and helps you be less prone to mistakes when baking in real time.
Top 3 favorite baked goods in NYC?
This is tough…okay:
Black and White Halva Croissant from Librae Bakery
The Vero Bonbon from Stick With Me Sweets
Roscioli's oreo crumble tiramisu!
Our bake off winning brownies from Divya Samu
Brownies was a popular categories and our guest judge, Bilena Settepani, had a lot of thoughts! Here’s what she was thinking about in the judging process:
A good brownie has a rich, deep chocolate flavor — it should taste like actual chocolate, not just cocoa powder.
The texture is key: slightly crispy edges with a fudgy, chewy center (never dry or cakey).
The top should have that shiny, crackly crust — it’s the sign of a perfectly mixed batter.
It should feel indulgent without being overwhelmingly sweet — a balance of bitter chocolate and just enough sugar.
Bonus points for a little salt — it makes the chocolate flavor pop even more.
Per Bilena: “I picked the Ina Garten classic brownie: it was all the things that make a brownie really good. It was mixed well and had great flavor, didn’t taste like cocoa powder - I could’ve easily eaten a few without getting tired of it or overwhelmed.”
Her runners-up: the brown butter brookies by Jessica R., salted caramel brownies (very chewy and perfectly balanced) and the s’mores brownie bites by Amanda DeCrescito (so creative and very aesthetic).
And now onto our interview with our Ina Garten brownie baker, Divya Samu from Jersey City!
Your winning recipe was Ina Garten's brownies--did you make any modifications to the recipe/have any tips or tricks for making them?
I did brown butter instead of softened unsalted butter, and I also added in about 6-8oz of dark chocolate instead of the full amount of semisweet chocolate. I've made this recipe a few times and often don't have unsweetened chocolate so I sub dark chocolate and it still works just as great! It's also a very easy recipe to halve because this makes a *lot* of brownies as a full recipe and also uses so many ingredients.
Number one tip for these which Ina puts in her recipe, but you HAVE to refrigerate these brownies once you take them out of the oven so that they set fully - I normally refrigerate the pan once cooled and leave it overnight, and cut it the next day.
What has your baking journey looked like--when did you get started and what kind of bakes did you start out with vs. what kinds of things do you like to bake now?
I started with my mom! I grew up not eating eggs so we would make cakes and sub eggs for soda (club soda with vanilla cake mix, coke with chocolate cake mix), which was my foray into baking. My neighbor growing up also taught me how to make fudge with two ingredients, which as a kid was easy for me to try and make on my own (1 bag of chocolate chips, and 1 can of condensed milk, microwaved until melted and poured in a pan to set in the fridge for about 20 minutes).
Now, my sister, mom and I do a Christmas cookie box every year. We start planning what new recipes we are making in early November and mail them to all of our friends. Classic bakes (cookies, brownies, muffins etc) are definitely my go-to, but I am trying to experiment more with pastry and breads now that I've finally invested in a Kitchen Aid.
Any other creators/bloggers you like to follow for recipe inspiration?
Because I lean into classics, Broma Bakery is definitely one of my go to's (I love her CCC recipe, which is the most chocolate heavy recipe I've seen), and I also am a big fan of anything Dessert for Two because they're perfect for a weeknight treat where I won't have a ton of leftovers.
Do you have any other favorite recipes you'd recommend (perhaps for those also trying to win a baking competition or just bake the best recipes out there?
I think the Claire Saffitz chocolate chip cookie is the perfect classic cookie recipe that you can't go wrong with, and her youtube videos are super helpful in following along with her recipes as she makes them step by step.
Any baking tips you've picked up along the way that you think would be helpful to share?
Weighing my ingredients is so much better than cup measurements, and helps when you want to halve recipes or scale them up.
Brown butter almost always makes everything taste better, as does a sprinkle of flaky salt on top to finish.
Top 3 favorite baked goods in NYC?
Hani's Bakery Lemon Meringue Donut
Mia's Brooklyn Bakery Chocolate Fudge Cake
Radio Bakery Scallion Sesame Twist
I really enjoyed both of these articles! The interviews were great. Appreciate it!