15 Baking Recipes That Are Easy To Cut in Half

Why wait for company to come to enjoy a baked good? You don’t have to worry about a whole brownie pan going stale (or finding co-workers to foist the extras on) when you can just cut that recipe in half. Sometimes halving can be dicey—calculating half of a third of something? Or halving an egg? (Difficult but not impossible—turn here for help.) What about baking pans? Yes, of course you can just find recipes designed for smaller yields or follow our rules of thumb and figure it out, but here, we’ve curated a collection of recipes where halving is truly a no-brainer, because the amounts are easily divisible by half. (As an added bonus, many of these easy desserts and baked goods only call for a few ingredients, too). Remember, a smaller recipe means that technique become a little more important, but beyond that, go ahead and enjoy these recipes that bring new meaning to “half-baked”—starting with these super chocolaty cookies. Yes, we can get on board with the double-chocolate experience. Cocoa in the dough complements the chopped walnuts beautifully, but some chocolate chips or even candies that go gooey in the oven really take them to another level.

Sometimes you just need some solid biscuits in a hurry—the best possible vehicle for over-the-top egg sandwiches or base for sausage gravy. Tyler to the rescue with these fluffy, flaky, golden and impressive biscuits, that are also worthy of eating on their own with butter and honey.

Don’t let the inherent whimsical air of a cupcake fool you—these little cakes are fancy, and chock-full of fresh banana flavor. The cake contains banana but also crushed vanilla cookies to really drive home that classic pudding profile, and each gets a spike of creamy white chocolate to mimic the puddingy texture. Finally, a dollop of buttercream gets topped with a cookie and banana slice. They are best eaten same-day.

These sum up the experience of eating red velvet cake—gently cocoa-y, with a fluffy tang from cream cheese frosting—but in a form that’s much easier to pack in a picnic basket than, you know, a cake on a pedestal.

And then sometimes you might want to keep half as much of something around because you sincerely will keep eating it until it’s gone. Cheese straws are definitely that thing. Made with a cookie press, they have a deep Cheddariness with a wonderful, toothsome texture that really will keep you munching on them until they are gone.

We love muffins straight out of the oven, split, with some butter on top, and we love them later in the day, or even the next day, for breakfast or coffee. But we’ll admit—if there are under three people in the house, 16 to 18 muffins is definitely overkill. Ina’s homey, golden muffins, studded with strawberries, halve super-easily (if halving the 1 1/4 cups milk is giving you a brain freeze, no worries, it’s 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons).

Sometimes a little focaccia is all you need to round out dinner. If you like it really fresh out of the oven, making two mini batches in a week can be more satisfying than one big one. It’s the perfect work-from-home project, as your work is minimal, but you’re around to deal with a few rises. Choose a quarter-sheet pan (9 1/2-by-13-inch) instead of the half-sheet called for here, and start checking for doneness sooner (we recommend about 1/3 sooner, which here, would be about 20 minutes).

These have all the attitude of French petits fours, but with flavors that we absolutely adore stateside. Underneath a little dome of chocolate is a dark bite of minty brownie, and chopped mint chocolates on top give them a jaunty look and an extra dose of chocolate mint.

Tyler’s giant chocolate chip cookies are enough to satisfy after just one—even for a few days! That leaves you with the option of freezing the discs of dough to bake individually when the craving strikes (also an excellent choice) or with halving that recipe to get just a few out of it.

What an appealing idea: using melted ice cream as a stand-in for many other ingredients—eggs, sugar, vanilla, cream, and in this case, even cookies! Turn them into muffins, and then pop an actual cookie into each one for a real homage to the classic ice cream flavor.

We’re quite often left with just 1/2 cup heavy cream sitting in the fridge. When you’re rooting around on a Sunday morning for a fun breakfast idea and you spot that carton, go to this recipe. A little sweet and a little tart, these scones crumble just how you want them to.

Coconut lovers rejoice—these little treats contain little else, just enough of other ingredients to emphasize that coconut-forward flavor and maintains their chewy, flaked texture that makes you feel like you’re eating fresh coconut.

Turn to an 8-inch square pan to halve these ooey-gooey blondies, a cross between a brownie and a chocolate chip cookie. A little flaky salt on top really brings out their butterscotchy glory. Start checking for doneness at about 13 minutes.

These appealing treats combine the aromas you’d get from dipping a chocolate-hazelnut cookie into a cup of espresso—but even if you’re not drinking an espresso. Mocha, it turns out, goes well with hazelnuts, too.