Dessert recipe collection

Upside-down grape and mascarpone cheesecake: red seedless grapes in a glossy sweet-tart sauce under a silky mascarpone filling, inverted to reveal the jewel-like fruit on top.

Vanilla buttermilk panna cotta with fresh strawberry jam on top. A make-ahead individual dessert that sets in small glasses and feeds six for dinner parties or date nights.

Crispy vanilla rosettes fried on a decorative iron, then dipped in vanilla icing. Scandinavian holiday cookies that look like edible snowflakes. Yields 12 cookies.

Vanilla pecan slice-and-bake cookies from a make-ahead dough that chills into logs and freezes for up to 3 months. Crisp, buttery icebox cookies baked from frozen in 12 minutes.

Versoffene Jungfern: a German dessert sauce of spiced red wine reduced with cinnamon, clove, and lemon zest, poured hot over fresh dumplings. Simple, warming, and ready in 40 minutes.

Old-fashioned vanilla fudge: a heritage recipe with sugar, corn syrup, milk, and butter cooked to soft-ball stage and beaten by hand until stiff. Add cocoa for chocolate fudge or fold in nuts and cherries.

Watermelon cubes with a spicy lime dipping sauce made from lime juice, salt, and hot pepper sauce. A three-ingredient summer snack ready in 10 minutes.

Wespennester (wasp nests), a rare traditional German fried pastry from the Oberallgau region. Batter layers are built on wooden spoon handles and filled with honey.

No-bake bourbon whiskey balls rolled in powdered sugar with vanilla wafer crumbs, pecans, and cocoa. A classic Southern holiday treat that gets better the longer it chills.

White cake creams shortening with sugar, then folds in stiffly beaten egg whites and almond extract for an airy, snow-white crumb. The classic American layer cake base for any frosting or filling.

Whole wheat carrot pineapple cake is a moist, dairy-free, low-fat one-bowl cake sweetened with applesauce and pineapple. No oil, no butter, no yolks, all the carrot cake flavor.

Whole wheat oatmeal cookies with molasses, honey, raisins, and walnuts. Sweetened three ways with brown sugar, molasses, and honey for a chewy, spiced high-fiber cookie.

Whoopie pies sandwich two soft chocolate cake-cookies around a fluffy vanilla cream filling. Maine and Pennsylvania Dutch dessert with a cult following.

Brown sugar chocolate chip cookies topped with red candy-coated chocolate pieces before baking. Shortening-based for chewy centers with a 5-7 minute bake time that keeps them soft.

Winter pie cooks raisins, finely chopped carrot, and apple with cinnamon, clove, and nutmeg in a spiced syrup, baked between two crusts. Thrifty old-fashioned mincemeat-style pie without the meat.

Witch hat Halloween treats made from chocolate cookies, sugar cones, and chocolate frosting with hidden candy inside. A no-bake kids' craft activity with a candy surprise.