"by volume: Water, baking soda, salt, oil, sour cream, mayo (frosting), pinch of salt (frosting)
by weight: cocoa, sugar, flour, cake flour, butter (frosting), powdered sugar (frosting)
by item: eggs, egg yolks

Cake tasted great. Chocolaty but not too sweet. I accidentally did not mix the cocoa mixture with the other wet ingredients before combini"

"Duck was good, not great. I used Morton Kosher salt, cured for 3 days, rinsed, and it was salty. Not too salty with the other food. I recommend cutting salt in half. The duck was still a little fatty after cooking. I wonder if lowering the temp and cooking longer would render more of the fat. I didn't make the stuffing.

"I made a 1/2 recipe, and the family loved it. Didn't have black olives, so used green olives. The only negative is that every part of the recipe has “season with salt and pepper”. They should give an average amount.

Even though I made a 1/2 recipe, I made a whole recipe of the Spicy Tomato Sauce. I used more than a 1/2 recipe of sauce. The red pepper gave the sauce a nice kick.

What they don’t tell you: Prep time unrealistic. Took me 20+ min to fry the eggplant. A 1/2 recipe filled a 9x13 pan. 1 cup of olives is probably 1 cup of whole olives, and then you chop them. I used 1 cup of chopped olives. I would have liked slightly less olives. Maybe because I used green olives rather than black olives. Used part skim ricotta an mozzarella (not whole milk), and it was fine. I “Trimmed” the skin off the eggplant. Used 5 eggs along to bread the 1/2 recipe of eggplant. I eventually cut the eggs with milk. Used canola oil for the frying.