Dessert Recipes

Virginia Lane of Cudahy secured this recipe, with its nice complexity of flavors, in the late '50s or '60s when she lived in Iran.

Nusskipferl are Austrian yeast-leavened crescent cookies filled with sweet ground nut meringue. A traditional Viennese coffeehouse pastry rolled jelly-roll style and curved into delicate horns.

Tall honey cake (lekach) baked with 1¼ cups honey and a full cup of strong coffee for moisture and depth. Walnut-studded with warm spices, traditional for Rosh Hashanah and the Jewish New Year.

Single-crust pastry pie shell with margarine, blind-baked at high heat until golden in 10 minutes. A basic flaky pastry that works as a base for cream pies, custards, and fruit fillings.

Peanut butter cookie cake: a tube-pan cake with a cookie-dough crust, melted chocolate layer, and peanut butter cake filling. Shortcut dessert that eats like a showstopper.

Pineapple carob cashew brownies made with whole wheat pastry flour, applesauce, honey, and no butter, eggs, or refined sugar. A naturally sweetened, caffeine-free vegan brownie.

Pinon cookies bake into light sponge-like rounds topped with toasted pine nuts, made from just eggs, sugar, flour, and pignoli. Italian-style cookie with an elegant payoff.

Pistachio ambrosia salad mixes canned fruit cocktail, pineapple and mandarin oranges with pistachio pudding, sour cream and whipped topping. A retro potluck dessert in every shade of green.

Moist, light and delicious plum bread is good for breakfast, or can be a light and refreshing dessert after the main course.

Pumpkin chiffon pudding with canned pumpkin, evaporated skim milk, pumpkin pie spice, and whipped topping set with gelatin. A light, low-calorie no-bake dessert.

Quick red velvet cake: yellow cake mix hack with buttermilk, cocoa powder, and red food coloring. A doctored box shortcut that delivers moist, classic red velvet in under an hour.

Rocks cookies with oats, brown sugar, figs, nuts, and warm spices in a bumpy, hearty drop cookie. An old-fashioned spiced oatmeal cookie loaded with dried fruit and chopped nuts.

Instead of being hard, dry spice cookies, these are soft, moist spicy cookies with a medium hot disposition. Their heat is derived from ground Jamaican Scotch Bonnet peppers.

Spiced cherry biscotti studded with candied cherries and almonds, warmed with nutmeg, and dusted with cinnamon-nutmeg sugar. A ruby-flecked holiday coffee cookie.

Spiced spritz cookies with cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and allspice pressed into festive shapes. Egg-white based for a crisp, light texture with warm holiday spice flavor.

Streusel and cream pear kuchen with a yeasted hot-roll base, sweet cream cheese filling, cinnamon-pecan streusel, and fanned poached pears on top. A German-style coffee cake worthy of a holiday brunch table.