10,000 four four recipes

Christmas shortbread with just five ingredients: butter, sugar, vanilla, flour, and salt. Shape as bars or wedges, plus four built-in variations including chocolate chip and lemon.

Moist chocolate sour cream layer cake with fluffy cocoa frosting, toasted nuts, coconut filling, and chocolate-dipped strawberries. A showstopper for birthdays and celebrations.

Use this recipe with peaches, sour cherries or pineapple with equally good results.

Light pumpernickel bread machine loaf blends rye and bread flour with cocoa, molasses, and caraway seeds. A softer, lighter take on traditional dark German pumpernickel.

Shasta Mountain brownies double down on chocolate with bittersweet chocolate, butter, eggs, and crushed chocolate chip cookies folded into the batter for a fudgy, soft-centered brownie speckled with toasted pecans.

Easy beef gravy made from scratch with butter, flour, and bouillon, no pan drippings required. A quick roux-based brown gravy ready in minutes for mashed potatoes, roasts, or stir-fry sauces.

Homemade cinnamon raisin bagels with your bread machine doing the kneading. Plump raisins tossed in cinnamon sugar, boiled for a chewy crust, baked until golden. Better than anything from the store.

Bite-sized cauliflower florets dredged in flour and dipped in a light egg yolk batter, then fried until shatteringly crisp and golden. Just 5 ingredients and 20 minutes for a crunchy vegetable side or snack.

Cold-oven popovers from a five-ingredient batter, started in an unheated oven and baked into hollow, crispy-shelled rolls with steamy interiors. Marion Cunningham's foolproof method.

My mother makes this Cardamom bread every Christmas morning. It's a real treat.

Cheese straws are a Southern cocktail-party classic: sharp aged cheddar and cayenne rolled into a buttery dough, fork-ridged, and baked crisp. Savory, spicy, and impossibly snackable.

A German-style blueberry kuchen with a buttery press-in crust, cinnamon-spiced baked berries, and a crown of fresh blueberries on top. Five cups of berries in every pie.

Add sophistication to a home-cooked meal with this dish that can even have a famous French Restaurant saying "Oui, oui!".

Southern-style fried rabbit with onions and pan gravy. Flour-dredged rabbit pieces browned in oil, then simmered in a simple flour gravy until tender and saucy.

Boston brown bread steamed in coffee cans with cornmeal, rye flour, whole wheat, buttermilk, molasses, and raisins. Dense, moist, and slightly sweet with no oven required.

A simple three-ingredient cheesecake crust starter: flour, sugar, and chopped nuts. The foundation for nutty, buttery cheesecake bases without relying on graham crackers or cookies.