Recipes with water

Hot-sauce chili simmers cubed beef chuck with green chilies, hot pepper sauce, chili powder, and cumin into a no-bean Texas-style chili. Two-stage cook for fork-tender beef.

Swedish cardamom braid bread with raisins, a classic Scandinavian yeast bread shaped into a beautiful three-strand plait. Soft, fragrant, and lightly sweet.

Rich chocolate truffle cake made with a full pound of semi-sweet chocolate, barely any flour, and whipped egg whites for a dense, fudgy texture dusted with powdered sugar.

Fluted sandwich cookies filled with tinted vanilla buttercream in three pastel colours. A pretty bakery-style cookie with a cut-out window on top showing the green, pink or yellow filling underneath.

Fresh blueberry pie with a clever twist: whipped cream lines the bottom and sides of the baked shell before the cooked-and-fresh berry filling pours in. Three hours of chilling sets it into a cool, lush slice.

Raisin cookies use a boiled-water cooking method that plumps the raisins into the sweet brown sugar syrup before baking. No eggs, no butter required. Frugal Depression-era cookie that still satisfies.

Honey whole wheat bread recipe with vital wheat gluten for a lofty rise, plus a 50/50 blend of bread flour and whole-wheat flour. Soft sandwich crumb, gentle sweetness from honey, makes two loaves.

Stovetop oatmeal with cinnamon, plump raisins and toasty walnuts, finished off the heat so the oats turn creamy and soft. A filling, high-fiber breakfast bowl ready in about 10 minutes.

Yeasty sourdough starter is the shortcut version: unbleached flour, a packet of dry yeast, and water mixed into a thick batter and left warm for a day. A fast track to bread baking when you don't want to wait two weeks for a wild starter.

Peanut butter oatmeal chippers fold quick oats, peanut butter chips, and chopped pecans into a cinnamon-nutmeg cookie dough. A spice-warmed twist on the classic oatmeal cookie.

Homemade red chili sauce from dried red chili pods, garlic, and salt. Just three ingredients blended smooth for enchiladas, tamales, burritos, and any Mexican dish that needs real chile flavor.

Tex-Mex beans with chickpeas and kidney beans simmered in chili-spiced tomato sauce with green chiles. A vegan side or burrito filler ready in 25 minutes from pantry staples.

Clear fish soup with fresh ginger, quartered tomatoes, and a bright squeeze of lemon finished with scallion. A light, clean-tasting one-pot broth ready from pantry staples and whole fish.

Sweet fried bananas soaked in rum, lemon juice, and orange zest, dipped in a light egg white batter, and fried until golden. A Caribbean-inspired dessert served hot with sugar.

No-bake strawberry cheesecake with cream cheese, whipped cream, and frozen strawberries set with gelatin on a graham cracker crust. Light, creamy, and smooth.

My Go-To lemon meringue pie thickens with flour rather than cornstarch for a softer, custardy filling. High-heat meringue browning gives quick golden peaks over fresh lemon zest.