The week's pick: Chewy Black Sesame Cake, a one-bowl bake with 34 five-star ratings
Chewy Black Sesame Cake, adapted by Eric Kim for Chuseok, is the week's highest-rated new recipe: a one-bowl rice-flour bake that takes 75 minutes and one specialty ingredient.
Chewy Black Sesame Cake is the pick this week. NYT Cooking published the recipe on Sept. 22, 2026, and it had collected 34 reader ratings at an average of 5 out of 5 by the morning of Sept. 27, along with 52 comments. It takes 1 hour 15 minutes, makes one 8-inch cake, and comes together in a single bowl. 1
The cake belongs to Chuseok, the Korean fall harvest festival. Eric Kim adapted it from his cookbook "Korean American," and he aimed it at two reference points at once: songpyeon, the small rice cakes filled with honey and sesame that Koreans make for the festival, and the chewy black sesame rolls sold in Korean bakeries. 1 The crumb is dense and springy, more like a mochi cake than a sponge, and it gets that texture from glutinous rice flour. The recipe calls the flour glutinous rice flour and notes it is also sold as mochiko or sweet rice flour; all three names label the same flour, milled from sweet rice. Despite the name, the flour is gluten-free. 1
One detail decides how the cake looks. Half the black sesame seeds are ground to a rough powder and half go in whole, and the batter is dense enough that the seeds rise to the surface during the bake. They settle there in a thin black line, a nutty brittle layer sitting under a crackled brown top and over a squidgy vanilla base. 1
The 75 minutes is almost all oven time. The hands-on work is about ten minutes: whisk the eggs, sugar, honey and salt, whisk in the milk, vanilla, melted butter and sesame oil, grind 2 tablespoons of the sesame seeds, then whisk in that powder, the rest of the seeds, the baking powder and the rice flour. The cake bakes for 50 to 60 minutes and cools completely before it is dusted with powdered sugar. 1
Why it won this week
Reader consensus decided it, and the margin is wide. Of the recipes NYT Cooking published between Sept. 22 and Sept. 25, two had collected reader ratings by the morning of Sept. 27, and the cake's 34 was more than five times the other count. 12
| Recipe | Source and publication date | Reader signal | Time and yield | Main work |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chewy Black Sesame Cake | NYT Cooking, Sept. 22, 2026 | 5 out of 5 from 34 reader ratings 1 | 1 hour 15 minutes; 1 (8-inch) cake | Whisk one bowl of batter, grind half the sesame seeds, bake 50 to 60 minutes. |
| Golden Crispy Fish Sandwiches | NYT Cooking, Sept. 24, 2026 | 4 out of 5 from 6 reader ratings 2 | 40 minutes; 4 sandwiches | Batter and fry white fish in oil, then build the sandwiches. |
| Baked Mushroom Marsala Pasta | NYT Cooking, Sept. 24, 2026 | No reader ratings yet 3 | 40 minutes; 4 to 6 servings | Bake mushrooms, shallot, wine and a block of cream cheese together, then toss with rigatoni. |
| Chermoula Roasted Eggplant and Beans | NYT Cooking, Sept. 23, 2026 | No reader ratings yet 4 | 40 minutes; 4 to 6 servings | Roast eggplant and warm cannellini beans with a herb chermoula on one sheet pan. |
| Chickpea Saag | Bon Appétit, Sept. 22, 2026 | Reader ratings not disclosed 5 | 45 minutes; 4 servings | Simmer onion, garlic, ginger and yogurt, blend with spinach, fold in chickpeas. |
| Red lentil curry meal prep | r/MealPrepSunday, Sept. 26, 2026 | 406 upvotes; 22 comments; 97.4% upvote ratio 6 | 6 to 8 servings | Simmer red lentils into a curry and portion them with basmati rice and yogurt. |
The field behind the cake is thin on ratings and strong on cooking. Baked Mushroom Marsala Pasta uses the oven to melt a block of cream cheese into mushrooms, shallot and wine, and the result becomes the sauce for a pound of rigatoni. Chermoula Roasted Eggplant and Beans pairs roasted eggplant with canned cannellini beans and a Moroccan herb marinade, all on one sheet pan. Neither had a reader rating by Sept. 27. 34 Bon Appétit's new vegetarian dinner for the week, Chickpea Saag, runs 45 minutes and four servings, and Bon Appétit publishes no public reader-rating total to compare against the New York Times counts. 5
On r/MealPrepSunday, the week's highest-scoring post as of Sept. 27 was a photo set of breakfast, dinner and dessert prepping that drew 1,498 upvotes and 79 comments and carries no recipe. 7 The strongest post with a written method was a red lentil curry prep: 406 upvotes, 22 comments and a 97.4% upvote ratio, portioned at six servings of 600 calories and 31 grams of protein each, with the full recipe in the comments. 6 Behind it, a doubled chili batch packed into eight containers for baked potatoes drew 305 upvotes and 49 comments, and the author's own cost breakdown puts it under $3 a serving. 8 Serious Eats' newest weekly update, published Sept. 25, is its most-saved list again, led this week by beef stew, apple spice cake and French onion beans; that list ranks recipes already in the archive, so the week added no new Serious Eats recipe with a reader count of its own. 9
What to buy
Everything below makes one 8-inch cake, and the list is short. 1
- Cooking spray
- 2 large eggs
- 1 cup sugar
- 1/4 cup honey
- 3/4 teaspoon coarse kosher salt, such as Morton
- 1 cup whole milk
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
- 1/2 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
- 4 tablespoons toasted black sesame seeds
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 8 ounces glutinous rice flour, also sold as mochiko or sweet rice flour
- Powdered sugar, for serving
The ingredient worth checking before you shop is the rice flour, because the package may label it with any of its three names. The sesame oil here is the dark, toasted oil sold for seasoning, the kind that carries the flavor. The pale neutral oil sold for frying brings none of it. 1
The cook-through
- Heat the oven and prepare the pan. Heat the oven to 350 degrees and mist an 8-inch round cake pan with cooking spray. 1
- Whisk the wet ingredients. In a large bowl, whisk the eggs, sugar, honey and salt until the mixture turns fluffy and pale yellow, 1 to 2 minutes. Whisk in the milk, vanilla, melted butter and sesame oil.
- Grind the seeds and finish the batter. Pulverize 2 tablespoons of the black sesame seeds into a rough powder in a mortar and pestle or a spice grinder; the powder should smell strongly of sesame. Add the powder, the remaining 2 tablespoons of whole seeds, the baking powder and the rice flour to the bowl and whisk to combine, then pour the batter into the greased pan.
- Bake. Bake until the top is browned and slightly cracked, 50 to 60 minutes. A chopstick or toothpick inserted into the center should come out clean.
- Cool and finish. Cool the cake in the pan for 5 minutes, turn it onto a wire rack, and let it cool completely. Dust it with powdered sugar, cut it into wedges, and serve. The cake keeps in an airtight container at room temperature for up to five days.
Two steps carry the result. The sesame grind decides the flavor of the top layer: a rough, freshly ground powder smells and tastes far stronger than whole seeds, and a stale jar of pre-ground sesame will show up in the finished cake. The other is the wait for a clean toothpick, since pulling the cake at 50 minutes gives a softer, moister center and pushing past 60 dries the crumb. 1
Reader notes
The comment thread runs 52 deep, and Eric Kim answers questions in it. One reader asked about swapping the milk, and Kim replied that milk is the least important ingredient in the batter and that he has made the cake with oat milk. 1
Two readers reported running low on sweet rice flour. One of them finished the batter with 4 ounces of all-purpose flour alongside the 4 ounces left in the bag, pulled the cake at 50 minutes, and described a fluffier texture and a very good result; Kim replied that he had wondered what all-purpose flour would do. 1
A third reader swapped in full-fat canned coconut milk and lost the cake's signature top: the batter came out too thick for the seeds to separate, so they stayed scattered through the crumb and no black line formed. That reader still called the cake delicious and recommended a different milk next time, which lines up with Kim's advice to treat the milk as the flexible ingredient and keep it thin. 1
Two readers also asked how the black line gets there at all, a question the recipe page answers by explaining that the density of the batter pushes the sesame crumble upward. One reader asked whether poppy seeds would work in place of the black sesame. 1
Bottom line
Cook Chewy Black Sesame Cake if you want ten minutes of work and a 75-minute oven bake to turn out something that reads like a bakery cake, and if you are willing to buy one bag of glutinous rice flour. It is the highest-rated recipe published in the past week with a public reader count, and the most hands-off of the week's top candidates. 1
If your goal this week is a fridge full of lunches instead of a cake, the community posts are the better lead: the red lentil curry at 406 upvotes covers six servings at 600 calories and 31 grams of protein each and comes with a written recipe, and the chili at 305 upvotes portions 16 dinners over baked potatoes for under $3 a serving by its author's own tally. 68
References
- 1Chewy Black Sesame Cake recipe
cooking.nytimes.com
- 2Golden Crispy Fish Sandwiches recipe
cooking.nytimes.com
- 3Baked Mushroom Marsala Pasta recipe
cooking.nytimes.com
- 4Chermoula Roasted Eggplant and Beans recipe
cooking.nytimes.com
- 5Chickpea Saag recipe
bonappetit.com
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9Our 10 Most-Saved Recipes This Week
seriouseats.com
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