Dessert, Baked Good Recipes

Quick red velvet cake: yellow cake mix hack with buttermilk, cocoa powder, and red food coloring. A doctored box shortcut that delivers moist, classic red velvet in under an hour.

Rocks cookies with oats, brown sugar, figs, nuts, and warm spices in a bumpy, hearty drop cookie. An old-fashioned spiced oatmeal cookie loaded with dried fruit and chopped nuts.

Spiced pumpkin or winter squash cake with a classic cooked caramel frosting. Four autumn spices, buttermilk tenderness, and a rich old-fashioned finish worth the candy thermometer.

Pfeffernusse-style German pepper cookies with white pepper, cinnamon, mixed spice, candied peel, and lemon zest. Small, puffy spice balls dusted in powdered sugar.

Apple cookies with butterscotch chips, walnuts, and brown sugar topped with a cinnamon butter glaze and a walnut half. A soft, fruit-studded fall cookie.

Homemade banana layer cake with mashed ripe banana and buttermilk for a moist, tender crumb. A classic two-layer cake ready to frost with your favorite icing.

Half moon cookies with a soft, cake-like buttermilk crumb, frosted half white and half chocolate. The classic upstate New York holiday cookie, also known as a black-and-white.

Chewy peanut butter cookies loaded with ground and whole sesame seeds, brown sugar, honey, and a warm ginger kick. Rolled in raw sesame seeds for a nutty, crackly coating.

Pumpkin pie built on heavy cream and sour cream for a richer, tangier filling spiced with cinnamon and ginger. Optional apricot preserve layer at the bottom adds a tart-fruit twist.

One butter cookie dough, eight different cookies. Drop cookies, snowballs, butter fingers, cinnamon balls, chocolate mint creams, and more from a single batch.

Simple cookie frosting made with powdered sugar, butter, vanilla, and cream that pipes smoothly for decorating sugar cookies and cut-out cookies.

Apple crumble pie with cooked apples and allspice under a chunky streusel topping of flour, sugar, and margarine. No pie crust needed, just a crumble on top.

Flourless-style chocolate mini-cakes baked in a heart pan with semisweet morsels, butter, walnuts, and just two tablespoons of flour. Finished with ganache.

Fallen chocolate souffle cake: a dense, fudgy flourless-style cake of bittersweet chocolate, almond, and egg whites that puffs then collapses into a crackled top. An elegant, almost gluten-free dessert.

Low calorie Snickers pie is a no-bake frozen dessert with chocolate ice milk, sugar-free chocolate pudding, crunchy peanut butter, Cool Whip, and Grape-Nuts for that candy bar crunch. Five ingredients, no oven, ready after freezing.

Loaded oatmeal cookies packed with bittersweet chocolate chunks, raisins, and pecans. Chewy centers with crisp golden edges from a brown sugar butter dough.