15 confectioner recipes

Espresso brownie bars layered with a Kahlua-spiked cream cheese topping and feathered with melted chocolate for a marbled, bakery-window finish. Rich, fudgy, and built for a coffee-lover's dessert table.

Homemade sour cream cinnamon rolls with a soft yeasted dough, brown sugar cinnamon filling, and vanilla confectioners sugar icing. The sour cream makes them impossibly tender. Makes 12.

Austrian Mozart cookies with a buttery shortbread base, apricot rum filling, and confectioners sugar. Elegant sandwich cookies with a ring-and-circle design.

Cranberry apple quick bread with walnuts, warm spices, and a simple confectioners' sugar glaze. Tart cranberries and tender apples in every slice.

Puff pastry apple turnovers wrap diced apples, plumped raisins, and chopped pecans in flaky golden pastry squares. Sweet hand pies dusted with confectioners' sugar, perfect for breakfast or dessert.

Simple apple quick bread spiced with cinnamon and cloves, studded with chopped nuts. A dusting of confectioner's sugar adds an elegant finish to this homestyle loaf.

Cranapple cake baked in a tube pan with cranberries, shredded apple, and applesauce for moisture. A lower-fat fall cake with a vanilla confectioners sugar drizzle.

Nothing else can be better than it, big hit and a worthy keeper!

Election Day cake, a historic New England yeast-raised spice cake studded with raisins, citron and nuts, warmed with cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and mace, and glazed with confectioners' sugar. A colonial American tradition.

This three-layer coconut cake starts with a yellow cake mix shortcut, then gets loaded with shredded coconut, crunchy walnuts, and a from-scratch cream cheese frosting with toasted golden coconut on top. Ready in about an hour.

Layered pudding cake with a nutty oat crust, cream cheese layer, vanilla and chocolate pudding, and whipped cream topping. A no-bake icebox dessert.

Chocolate and strawberry stuffed French toast: whole-wheat sandwiches filled with ricotta, fresh berries, and chocolate chips, griddled until golden. A lighter twist on weekend brunch indulgence.

A decadent chocolate almond rum cake with ground almonds in the batter, rum-chocolate icing, and toasted flaked almonds pressed all around. A celebration cake with serious depth.

Creamy sour cream custard studded with tender Granny Smith apples, topped with buttery cinnamon crumble and served with fluffy ginger whipped cream.

A scrumptious cake made with raisins, glaced cherries and dark rum which makes it a popular Christmas favorite in the Caribbean.