Dessert, Baked Good Recipes

If you just want to make a basic cookie, try this delicious treat that goes well with a cup of tea for breakfast.

Italian biscotti with Sambuca liqueur, toasted pine nuts, star anise, and lemon zest. Twice-baked for a crisp, crunchy cookie built for dunking in espresso.

Lady Bird Johnson's famous lemon cake with 8 egg yolks, fresh lemon, and a tangy lemon icing. The First Lady's favorite recipe straight from the Texas White House.

Prize-winning cherry pie with a glossy filling thickened on the stovetop with grenadine syrup, almond extract, and butter, then baked in a flaky double crust until golden.

No-bake graham cracker fruitcake with maraschino cherries, raisins, chopped nuts, and a marshmallow-butter binder. A retro holiday icebox cake with no oven required.

George Washington cake is a moist, cinnamon-spiced apple cake baked over a layer of sliced apples, then crowned with tangy cream cheese frosting and a fan of fresh apple slices. A festive Christmas dessert.

Italian macaroons made from almond paste kneaded with egg whites and sugar, baked into chewy, fragrant amaretti-style cookies. A short rest before baking gives them their crackly top and tender center.

Southern Japanese fruitcake: a 4-layer cake alternating plain butter cake with spiced pecan-and-raisin layers, bound by a thick lemon-coconut filling. A vintage Christmas dessert from the American South with a name that has nothing to do with Japan.

Ultimate everything cookies: ground oatmeal, chocolate chips, grated chocolate bar, and chopped nuts in buttery dough baked to golden perfection in just six minutes.

This is the second recipe I'll post tonight--promised it to AH earlier tonight. My mother found this recipe 35 or so years ago in a magazine and it has become a family favorite. For years she only made it at Thanksgiving until I took over the baking reigns in the family; now she makes it more often especially when my brother, Lewis, is going to be in.

Flaky cream cheese pastry turnovers filled with homemade apricot filling, sealed like hand pies, and iced with powdered sugar.

Rich chocolate bundt cake packed with chocolate chips, pecans, and sour cream, soaked in butterscotch cream and topped with whipped cream and crushed Heath bar. Triple-threat decadence.

Real butterscotch pie made the old-fashioned way with brown sugar and butter melted in a cast iron skillet, topped with golden meringue. No pudding mix, no shortcuts, just pure caramelized flavor in every slice.

No-bake bourbon balls rolled in powdered sugar with crushed vanilla wafers, cocoa, and chopped nuts. A boozy Southern holiday treat ready in 20 minutes flat.

Rich flourless bittersweet chocolate cakes molded in heart shapes, served on a silky pistachio custard sauce. An elegant make-ahead French-inspired dessert that chills for 24 hours before its grand reveal.

Crispy baked Cornflake Cookies with buttery pecans and vanilla. These crumbly drop cookies bake golden in 12-15 minutes for quick homemade treats.