Dessert Recipes

Thanksgiving sweet potato pie with egg-white-only spiced filling in a flaky phyllo crust topped with chopped chestnuts. The lighter holiday pie that swaps butter pastry for crackly phyllo layers.

Banana ginger cake with 2 teaspoons of ground ginger baked in a 9-inch square pan, topped with spiced whipped cream. A lighter snack cake using margarine and skim milk.

Mom's apple cookies are soft, cake-like drop cookies with grated fresh apple, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and walnuts. Old-fashioned spiced bakery flavor from a lunchbox-friendly batch of three dozen.

Cornmeal cookies blend stone-ground cornmeal with flour for a sandy, slightly crunchy crumb. Studded with dried cherries or raisins and warmed with nutmeg. An Italian-American Christmas tin staple.

Layered apple cake with a buttery crust, tangy cream cheese filling, sliced apples, and silky custard topping crowned with pecans. A showstopper baked in a springform pan.

Traditional German Lebkuchen honey cakes spiced with cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and nutmeg, studded with candied citron and brushed with a clear sugar glaze.

A scrumptious dessert that is perfect thing to warm you and your tastebuds up on that cold winter night.

Four-layer spiced chocolate torte filled with apricot jam and frosted with a cocoa-espresso ricotta cream. Warm cinnamon, allspice, and nutmeg give this butterless cake a complex, grown-up flavor.

New Orleans-style bread pudding loaded with pecans, raisins, and apple, baked low and slow in spiced custard, then drenched in a rich bourbon butter sauce. Pure Southern indulgence.

Slice-and-bake coffee cookies with brown sugar, rum extract, and nutmeg. Roll the logs in chocolate sprinkles or dip baked cookies in melted chocolate. Makes about 60.

Chewy molasses drop cookies loaded with candied fruit and warm spices like cinnamon, mace, nutmeg, and allspice. These colorful Christmas Jewels look like stained glass on a cookie platter.

Old-fashioned Christmas Rocks cookies bursting with candied fruit, dates, figs, pecans, raisins, and currants in a cocoa-spiced batter with a hint of coffee. Dense, chewy, and built to last.

I made this with the shortbread crust recipe and it was fabulous! Will make again many times... everyone loved it!

Classic New Orleans king cake: a brioche-like yeast ring scented with nutmeg and lemon, filled with citron, glazed with lemon icing and purple-green-gold sugar. Mardi Gras tradition baked at home.

Old-fashioned sandwich cookies with a choice of two homemade fillings: raisin with lemon, or chopped date with orange zest and nutmeg. Three dozen per batch.

Fresh strawberries and chopped pecans tossed with cinnamon and nutmeg, baked under a golden lattice crust until bubbling. A Southern-spirited fruit pie that puts a spin on tradition.