Dessert Recipes

Old-school peanut butter cream pie with a hidden layer of crumbly peanut butter and powdered sugar at the bottom, topped with vanilla custard and meringue or whipped topping. A diner-counter classic.

Chocolate mayonnaise cake with a caramel-like brown sugar frosting. The mayo keeps this old-fashioned cake incredibly moist without eggs or butter in the batter. Frost immediately for the best texture.

Old-fashioned blueberry cake topped with hard sauce and a hot lemon-blueberry compote that melts the butter into the warm cake. A classic New England dessert with bright berry flavor.

Lighter cranberry apple cookies made with egg whites and skim milk, loaded with fresh fruit, cinnamon, and orange zest. A guilt-free holiday cookie that yields 2 dozen.

Lemon butter cookies are crisp rolled-and-cut cookies scented with lemon extract, perfect for decorating with colored sugar. A no-fuss eight-dozen batch for cookie trays and bake sales.

Traditional German Dampfnudeln: soft steamed yeast dumplings stuffed with prunes, drizzled with buttery poppy seed sauce. A cozy Bavarian dessert that's surprisingly simple to make.

Old German muffins with ground almonds, rum, orange zest, raisins, and cinnamon. Buttery, fragrant, and lightly spiced with a hint of boozy warmth in every bite.

Alice's white cake is a tender vanilla and almond-scented layer cake leavened with whipped egg whites for an airy, snowy crumb. The kind of from-scratch white cake that makes box mixes look amateur.

Old fashioned sweet potato meringue pie tops a spiced sweet potato custard with fluffy toasted meringue peaks. A Southern Thanksgiving dessert that beats pumpkin pie at its own game.

Apple custard cake layered on a buttery lemon shortcrust, with rum-soaked raisins and tart apples under a baked vanilla custard that sets soft and creamy. A bakery-style dessert with a boozy backbone.

Lace cookies with lemon buttercream filling, thin caramelized oat-and-molasses wafers sandwiched around a silky lemon curd buttercream. Delicate, bakery-style cookies worth the patience.

Classic counting cake with foolproof 1-2-3-4-5 proportions: butter, sugar, flour, eggs, and baking powder create a tender vanilla cake that's ridiculously easy to memorize and bake from scratch.

Steamed persimmon pudding with cinnamon spice, raisins, and chopped almonds. Dense, moist loaf baked in a water bath and served warm with hard sauce.

Dense tube cake loaded with apples, coconut, and pecans. Bake 90 minutes, then soak with hot buttery brown sugar topping poured over.

Creamy rice pudding folded with mashed banana and whipped cream, garnished with fresh kiwi slices. Made with sugar substitute, this diabetic-friendly dessert is ready in 30 minutes.

Make Ben & Jerry's New York Super Fudge Chunk at home: rich chocolate ice cream loaded with white and dark chocolate chunks, pecans, walnuts, and chocolate-covered almonds.