28 brandy cake recipes

Apricot brandy pound cake with sour cream, four extracts, and a fragrant boozy crumb. A tall tube-pan cake with a tight golden crust and tender, custardy interior.

Old-fashioned tube cake packed with fresh apples, nuts, and raisins, then doused with brandy while still warm. Moist texture that improves overnight.

Friendship cake made with brandied fruit starter, cake mix, and instant pudding for a moist, boozy tube cake with nuts. Endlessly customizable with different mix and flavor combos.

Brandy-laced bundt pound cake served with a saffron-tinted lemon curd. The classic 1-1-1 pound cake gets a boozy lift, while saffron steeped in lemon juice turns the cream sunset gold.

Friendship cake made with brandied fruit starter, butter pecan cake mix, and instant pudding for a dense, moist Bundt cake loaded with pecans and boozy fruit.

Friendship cake using yellow cake mix, vanilla pudding, brandied starter fruit, raisins, and pecans baked in a Bundt pan. The shortcut version of the gifted-starter holiday cake.

Chocolate hazelnut mascarpone torte layering a coffee-deepened chocolate butter cake with framboise-spiked mascarpone cream, fresh raspberries, and caramelized hazelnuts under a glossy chocolate ganache glaze.

Greek Easter cookies (koulourakia) are buttery braided twists brushed with egg wash and sprinkled with sesame seeds, a traditional Orthodox Easter treat with a tender, not-too-sweet crumb.

"This cake is a rich, dark, moist fruit cake, very flavorful at Christmas. Try icing with almond paste for a more festive touch. This recipe is started in October or November so as to let it mellow before the holidays. I remember very well my mother storing her fruit cake in an old butter churn that belonged to my grandmother and great grandmother. I wish that I had that old crock."

These homemade biscotti will impress everyone, it is good for a breakfast or snack, with a cup of coffee or tea.

Spiced cranberry hazelnut bread with cinnamon, cloves, and orange juice baked into mini loaves. Wrapped in brandy-soaked cheesecloth, this holiday quick bread deepens in flavor for weeks.

Almond cinnamon-raisin biscotti with brandy and vanilla, twice-baked in the classic Italian style. Crisp, lightly spiced cookies for dipping in coffee, tea, or a glass of vin santo.

Victorian jewels, glistening mini fruitcakes: brandy-soaked candied fruit and raisins in a spiced walnut batter, baked as bite-size muffins and glazed with melted jelly so they shine. A jewel-like holiday gift.

Mother's fruit cake is a brandy-soaked holiday classic with cherries, apricots, pineapple, peel, raisins, and currants bound in a spiced chocolate-scented batter. Baked slow and aged for two months.

Kourabiedes are traditional Greek butter cookies with ground almonds and brandy, dusted heavily in powdered sugar. Fragile, sandy, and meant for celebrations.

Melomakarona are Greek honey-soaked cookies with orange zest, cinnamon, cloves, and brandy. Baked until golden, dipped in hot honey syrup, and topped with chopped nuts.