Dessert, Baked Good Recipes

Peanut butter puffs made with phyllo dough folded into crispy triangles around a sweet peanut butter filling, then drizzled with melted chocolate and chopped pecans.

Sugarplum cookies with dried or candied fruit hidden inside each ball of vanilla sugar cookie dough. Topped with creamy frosting and colored sugar for Christmas cookie trays.

Italian ricotta cheesecake with candied orange and lemon peel, golden raisins, and a splash of amaretto in a shortbread crust. Lighter and less sweet than American cream cheese cheesecake, dense in a softer way.

Better Than Sex Cake is a rich Bundt cake made with yellow cake mix, vanilla pudding, sour cream, chocolate chips, grated German chocolate, and pecans.

An old-fashioned chocolate meringue pie with a rich cocoa pudding filling cooked from scratch and a tall, glossy meringue. Two simple tricks keep the meringue from weeping or shrinking.

Impossible buttermilk pie forms its own crust while it bakes. Just blend buttermilk, sugar, eggs, melted butter, Bisquick and vanilla, pour, and the magic happens in the oven.

Jan's 1940s apple pie heaped with McIntosh and Cortland apples, finished with a quick water-rinse trick on the top crust that produces an exceptionally flaky finish.

Sirups kager are traditional Danish brown spice cookies made with dark corn syrup, cinnamon, and cloves. Crisp, warmly spiced, and ideal for holiday cookie tins and Christmas baking.

Lard anise cookies cream pure lard with sugar and anise seeds for an Italian classic with melting tenderness and licorice perfume. Shape into letters or slice from a chilled log.

Old-fashioned pound cake with shortening, six eggs, and no leavening. Vanilla and almond extract give this dense, tender tube cake its signature flavor.

Warsaw chrusciki, the crisp Polish bow-tie cookies known as angel wings. An egg-yolk-rich dough spiked with rum, rolled paper-thin, twisted, fried light, and dusted with powdered sugar.

No-bake eggless pumpkin chiffon pie layered with sweetened cream cheese, vanilla pudding, pumpkin puree, and warm spices on a graham crust. Light Thanksgiving alternative ready in 2 hours.

Friendship cake brandied starter ferments pineapple, cherries, and peaches with sugar and brandy over 6 weeks. A slow-building fruit base you share and pass along.

Moravian sugar cookies rolled paper-thin and baked until crisp at the edges. Buttermilk keeps the dough tender while an overnight chill makes it rollable to 1/16-inch thickness for that signature wafer-like snap.

St. Nicholas cookies are buttery, spiced Dutch-style holiday cookies loaded with cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, ginger, and chopped almonds. Slice-and-bake or press into carved wooden molds.

Oatmeal apple cake with three cups of oats, chopped apples, brown and white sugar, cinnamon, and nuts. A dense, hearty cake that's more oat than flour with chunks of apple throughout.