419 holiday recipes

Lighter applesauce fruitcake with dates, raisins, walnuts, and candied fruit. No alcohol soak, no months of aging. Three loaves of moist holiday cake without the heaviness of traditional fruitcake.

Italian rainbow cookies (seven layer cookies): three almond paste sponge layers tinted red, green, and yellow, stacked with raspberry jam, and coated in chocolate. A classic holiday bakery tradition.

Old-fashioned raisin pastries: flaky pie-dough half-moons stuffed with ground raisins, nuts, and citron in a honey-cinnamon-jelly filling. Hand pies for the holiday cookie box.

Eggnog log cookies are festive holiday rolls flavored with rum and nutmeg, dipped in icing, and rolled in toasted pecans. The Christmas cookie tin classic with eggnog-inspired warmth.

Lester's fruitcake is a heirloom holiday loaf: pounds of candied fruits, figs, dates, raisins, pecans, and walnuts bound in spiced molasses batter. Slow-baked, brandy-soaked, aged a month.

Eggnog pie in pecan crust: a silky, no-bake rum-and-brandy custard filling spooned into a toasted pecan crust. The grown-up Christmas pie your holiday table needs.

Sesame seed cookies are an Italian-American holiday classic with a tender shortbread-like dough rolled in toasted sesame seeds before baking. Massive batch (240 cookies) for cookie tins.

Italian Christmas bread for the bread machine: an egg-rich, raisin-studded sweet loaf with an egg wash crust. A holiday panettone-style bake with minimal hands-on time.

Cranberry apple relish with brown sugar, cinnamon, and walnuts, simmered and water-bath canned for shelf-stable storage. A chunky, sweet-tart holiday condiment you can put up in jars.

So good impossible pumpkin pecan pie skips the crust: Bisquick in the batter makes its own as it bakes. A spiced pumpkin custard studded with pecans, topped with spiced whipped cream. Easy, no-roll holiday pie.

Bobalky are traditional Slovak Christmas bread balls made from soft yeast dough, baked golden, doused in boiling water, then tossed with poppy seeds and melted butter. A cherished holiday tradition.

A homestyle Christmas cake packed with dates, cherries, walnuts, and chocolate chips in a simple egg batter. Bakes into a dense, fruity loaf that wraps up beautifully for holiday gifting.

Soft applesauce spice drop cookies with cold coffee, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, raisins, and nuts. One batch makes 7 dozen with just a 7-minute bake time - a holiday baking staple.

A three-layer Christmas cream cake with coconut and walnuts in a buttermilk batter, frosted with cream cheese icing studded with chopped maraschino cherries. Southern holiday baking at its prettiest.

Big-batch Christmas hermit cookies loaded with raisins, currants, chopped nuts, and orange zest, spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg. A chewy, old-fashioned holiday drop cookie that makes 10 dozen.

German chocolate pies: two pies at once, gooey cocoa-pecan-coconut filling in flaky shells. One to eat now, one to freeze. A Southern dessert for holidays and church suppers.