Recipes with vanilla extract

Sigi's chocolate torte: store-bought pound cake layered with a silky chocolate ganache-style icing made in a blender. Four-layer torte ready for the fridge in 30 minutes.

Homemade maple syrup ice cream served in crisp sablé pastry barquettes with a maple custard sauce. A French-style plated dessert made from real vanilla beans and pure maple syrup.

Buttery cookies with a chocolate Kiss hidden inside and mini chocolate chips throughout the dough. Each one cracks open to reveal a melted chocolate center.

Fruit nut breakfast bars with rolled oats, chopped almonds, and golden raisins bound with brown sugar and a hit of almond extract. Make-ahead bars that beat any granola bar in the cereal aisle.

Spiced pumpkin layer cake built on yellow cake mix with pumpkin, walnuts, orange zest, and pumpkin pie spice, finished with cinnamon cream cheese frosting. A semi-homemade fall dessert with bakery-level results.

Chocolate bar nut cake melts ten ounces of chocolate bars into a buttermilk batter loaded with two and a half cups of chopped nuts and chocolate syrup. Baked low and slow in a tube pan for 90 minutes. A dense, fudgy Bundt-style chocolate cake.

Layered apple kuchen: a tall German-Jewish bundt cake with three batter layers and two ribbons of cinnamon-sugar apples baked in between. The honey cake's apple-loving cousin.

Classic cinnamon French toast made with egg, milk, vanilla, and warm cinnamon. Soaked, browned in butter, and ready for syrup, honey, or fresh fruit on top.

Black currant vodka cheesecake on a toasted almond and graham crust, baked low in a water bath for a silky, crack-free top. Crowned with fresh strawberries and a glossy strawberry-Kurant glaze.

Chocolate chip snack cake with cream cheese pockets: a no-egg, no-butter chocolate cake topped with dollops of sweetened cream cheese, chocolate chips, and walnuts. The retro depression-era "crazy cake" upgraded.

Spumoni slice-and-bake cookies with three layered doughs: cherry pink, chocolate, and pistachio green with rum flavoring. A colorful Italian-inspired Christmas cookie.

French silk pie with a whipped chocolate-butter filling in a baked pie shell, topped with vanilla whipped cream. A classic no-bake chocolate pie with a texture like dense mousse.

Cranapple snack bars with fresh cranberries, sliced apples, walnuts, and silken tofu in a honey-sweetened cinnamon batter. A naturally sweetened fruit bar with no refined sugar.

Halloween black widow spider muffins with black cream cheese frosting, a red hourglass mark, and licorice string legs. A spooky, fun baking project kids will love.

Coconut macadamia nut cookies are buttery slice-and-bake shortbread loaded with shredded coconut and Hawaiian macadamia nuts, then dusted twice in powdered sugar for a snowy, tea-time-perfect crumb.

Chocolate snowy cake with a fluffy whipped cream filling between a cocoa sheet cake and a poured chocolate frosting. An eggless cake base with vinegar for lift.