The Easiest Blueberry Cake, Extremely Moist Tahini Masa Cornbread, Simple Honey Pepper Wings

The perfect bakes for your summer cookouts.

Jul 05, 2025

Ok, so it’s the first weekend of the month and that means all of my FREE subscribers are going to get to enjoy all of the deliciousness this weekend. That being said, make sure you upgrade so that you can access the Baking Simplified recipes every weekend, as well as live baking workshops with me.

ALSO REALLY QUICK HOUSEKEEPING! Apparently my book Pan y Dulce was selected as part of the Amazon Prime Day Deals. You can get the E-Book for just $4.99! What? Yeah, so go ahead and do that. The deal is good until July 11th so go scoop it up here.

Summer cookout season is in full swing, and as each week goes by, I’m finding plenty of opportunities to cook for my friends, neighbors, and family. At the core of every summer cooking playbook should be a recipe for incredibly moist cornbread, some form of wing situation, and a simple fresh fruit cake. And that’s where this weekends edition of Baking Simplified comes in handy for you, because I’m brining you exactly those three things.

As usual, these recipes take under an hour each, and quite frankly I executed all three of them in an hour and some change, give or take. Just make sure you have all of your ingredients on hand and ready to be measured out.

Bridget (my wife, if you didn’t know) has been craving something with blueberries because we stocked up with so many of them at the farmers market. Obviously we love to just eat handfuls of them, but they were so juicy and fresh that I definitely needed to approach a bake in a simple, but delicious way. Another ingredient that’s been sitting lonely on our countertop is a jar of tahini. I’ve been meaning to use it for a cookie recipe, and perhaps I still will, but I’ve always wondered how cornbread can be taken to different heights and thought this is a great time to find out (I don’t think I’ll ever make cornbread without tahini again btw).

Bridget also loves wings - classic, buffalo always seems to be the winner, but I’ve been trying to find a sauce that can make her happier than buffalo. Enter the honey pepper sauce on these simple baked wings. Admittedly though, I still used Franks Red Hot so maybe that’s cheating. Oh well, the key is to make sure she has a satisfying wing experience.

And alas, our little boy is still on a milk only diet, but the good thing is that it gives me plenty of time to prep a playbook of recipes that will work for him once he is ready to eat actual food. My hope is to be able to satisfy his sweet tooth in the healthiest possible way.

So let’s get going with the details on these recipes and the shopping list you need to get through the bake this weekend.

Tahini Masa Cornbread with Honey Butter

So, everything that makes this cornbread the best cornbread in history is in the title: tahini and masa. If you are unfamiliar with masa, it is the nixtamilized corn that is used to make corn tortillas. In this case, i’m using masaharina, which is the dry flour form of masa. You can find this at ANY grocer store in the form of various brands, but most notably Maseca. Don’t let this scare you off! If you’ve never heard of or used masaharina before, this is the time to try it out. Trust me, pick up a bag, it’s a more versatile ingredient than you could imagine. The combination of regular cornmeal (stoneground if you can find it) with masaharina gives a robust excellence to the corn experience, with the tahini adding an unbeatable nuttiness that pairs perfectly with corn.

Shopping List:

Masa harina
Stone-ground cornmeal
All-purpose flour
Baking powder
Baking soda
Kosher salt
Sugar or honey
Eggs
Whole Milk Kefir (substitute buttermilk if necessary)
Organic Tahini
Unsalted butter or neutral oil

Honey Pepper Wings

Oven baked wings are without a doubt the easiest way to prepare wings in history. The key is using a good roasting pan, of which I use the incredible ones made by Ooni. This allows the skin to get really crispy as the fat renders. This recipe comes together incredibly quick. For the honey pepper sauce, I used Jimmy Nardello peppers because I found a jar of them in my kitchen and had no idea what they were. Turns out, they aren’t really spicy at all, which was a bummer, but they did have a nice sweet kick to them. Anyway I added some red pepper flakes to the honey as well and the sauce came out quite nice.

Shopping List:

Chicken wings (drums and flats)
Salt
Black pepper
Baking powder (optional, for extra crispiness)
Neutral oil (like avocado or canola)
Honey
Jimmy Nardello pepper flakes (or any sweet red pepper flakes)
Red pepper flakes
Salt
A splash of vinegar or lemon juice (optional, for balance)
Franks Red Hot
Garlic Powder
Olive Oil

The Easiest Blueberry Cake

The dessert is always the star of the show in my house, because let’s face it, everyone wants the perfect dessert, and when you get it, it can be one of the most satisfying bites. This cake brings together the perfect blend of sweetness from fresh fruit with a touch of piloncillo.

*Quick Side note* If you haven’t baked my recipes ever in your life, you might not know what piloncillo is. This is a form of sugar that you can find in round or cone shaped brown blocks, and is made from unrefined sugarcane. It is the BEST form of sugar to use in baking because of the unique flavor profile that it has. You can find it at every big box grocery store, either in the baking isle or the “international foods” isle.

Anyway, this cake comes together easily because it is an upside down cake and the blueberries don’t need to be treated in any way. Simply dump them in the pan, grate some piloncillo all over them, make the batter, add to the pan, and bake. I like to serve this with some plan yogurt and lemon zest for extra freshness.

Shopping List: