Dessert, Baked Good Recipes

Bacardi rum cake made with yellow cake mix, vanilla pudding, pecans, and dark rum, then soaked in a buttery rum syrup. A boozy, sticky bundt cake that's a holiday classic.

Two-layer spice cake with cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, and plumped raisins, frosted with Swiss meringue mocha buttercream. A showstopper dessert for serious bakers.

Chocolate amaretto torte with a fudgy chocolate-almond base topped with amaretto cream cheese mousse and whipped cream. A make-ahead dessert that chills overnight and freezes beautifully.

Maple pecan balls are buttery brown sugar cookies infused with maple extract and rolled around chopped pecans, each topped with a toasted pecan half. Tender, nutty, and built for holiday tins.

Yankee maple sugar apple pie sweetens tart apples with a full cup of soft maple sugar instead of granulated. Just cinnamon, a hint of flour, and dotted butter under a cream-washed top crust deliver heritage New England flavor.

Babe's Surprise Apple Pie skips the top crust and crowns thinly sliced apples with a buttery brown sugar crumble topping instead. Cinnamon, lemon juice, and a hot oven do the rest.

Brown sugar ginger snaps cream butter with brown sugar, an egg yolk, and ground ginger into a roll-and-cut dough. Crisp edges, tender centers, no molasses needed.

Cottage cheese blended with pumpkin purée, brown sugar, and warm spices makes a lighter, creamy filling for this graham cracker crust pie. Low-fat pumpkin pie that still satisfies.

Crispy, thin ginger snaps made the old-fashioned way by boiling molasses and water first. Brown sugar and real ginger give these cookies a deep, spicy bite. Makes 2 dozen.

A no-bake strawberry banana pie with a fluffy gelatin and whipped topping filling layered over sliced bananas in a graham cracker crust. Chill it, slice it, done.

These Italian Baci di Dama cookies pair ground almonds and candied orange peel with a melted chocolate filling. Crisp, nutty, and citrus-bright, they're irresistible with espresso.

Chocolate angel food layer cake baked in heart-shape pans. Fat-free, cloud-light, cocoa-scented sponge made with egg whites and cake flour. No butter, no yolks.

No-bake chocolate rum balls made with crushed chocolate wafers, pecans, corn syrup, and dark rum. Rolled in sugar for a boozy, fudgy bite-sized holiday treat.

Vintage gumdrop squares: chewy brown sugar bars studded with chopped gumdrops and walnuts, finished with a tangy orange butter frosting. A retro Christmas cookie tray treat.

A deep dish apple pie with homemade crust and a secret: heavy cream poured through the slits mid-bake, creating a luscious sauce around every cinnamon-spiced slice.

Knockoff Neiman-Marcus chocolate chip cookies built on the famous internet legend recipe: blender-pulverized oatmeal for tender chew, two kinds of chocolate, and a generous load of toasted walnuts or pecans.