Dessert Recipes

Soft pumpkin cookies with white chocolate chips, pecans, brown sugar, and pumpkin pie spice. Baked low and slow for a cakey, tender fall cookie.

Mini cheesecakes baked in muffin cups with a graham cracker crust, sour cream topping, and golden lemon sauce. Perfectly portioned individual desserts for parties and potlucks.

Mom's yellow cake with butterscotch frosting is a three-layer buttermilk cake with folded egg whites for lightness, topped with a boiled brown sugar and butter frosting. A true from-scratch heirloom recipe.

No-bake butterscotch bars with applesauce, vanilla wafers, raisins, and wheat germ, cooked in the microwave in 8 minutes. A quick, chewy snack bar the kids will love.

Waldorf red velvet cake with buttermilk, cocoa, and a cooked flour frosting that tastes like whipped cream. The original Waldorf-Astoria recipe from scratch.

Four-minute brownie pie with no crust needed. Beat everything together for 4 minutes, pour into a pie pan, and bake. Fudgy, crackly-topped, and best served warm with ice cream.

Rum pecan pie with a brandied butter crust, layered chopped pecans under a mosaic of pecan halves, and a dark rum and maple-kissed filling. Holiday dessert with a grown-up flavor twist.

Honey-dipped cookies, the Greek melomakarona, are oval spiced cookies fragrant with orange, cognac, and cinnamon, soaked in honey syrup and showered with walnuts. An irresistible Christmas tradition from the Aegean kitchen.

Rich flourless chocolate mousse cake spiked with Cointreau or Chambord, baked in a water bath and topped with billowy whipped cream. An Italian-style showstopper dessert.

Cranberry walnut tart layers a flaky blind-baked crust with a brown sugar and corn syrup custard studded with tart cranberries and toasted walnuts. The holiday pie's more sophisticated cousin.

Saure Kartoffel, a traditional Swabian sour potato dish with a tangy butter-onion sauce flavored with bay leaf, lemon zest, clove, and caraway. German comfort food.

Texas-style chocolate sheath cake with buttermilk and a warm marshmallow-nut cocoa icing spread on while the cake is still hot. One pan, one hour, and feeds a crowd.

Oatmeal peanut butter drop cookies with plumped raisins, cinnamon, and vanilla. A hearty, old-fashioned cookie packed with oats and peanut butter flavor. Makes 3 dozen.

Blueberry cookies with fresh blueberries, brown sugar, cinnamon, and lemon zest, topped with a citrus powdered sugar frosting. Soft, cakey drop cookies.

Summer's best fresh peach pie with juicy fruit filling spiced with cinnamon, nestled in a buttery double crust that bubbles with sweet peach nectar as it bakes.

Bolognese sponge cake layered with vanilla custard and rum, frosted in coffee zabaglione buttercream, then crowned with chocolate-dipped almonds and walnut sides. From Il Cantoncino restaurant in Bologna.