Dessert Recipes

Layered pecan crust dessert with cream cheese, vanilla and chocolate pudding, and Cool Whip. No-bake except for the crust. Refrigerate overnight for best results.

Apple snack cake mix shortcut: stir cake mix, egg, and milk right in the baking pan, press sugared apple slices into the top, and bake. A single-pan dessert ready in 40 minutes.

Pumpkin-shaped Halloween cake bakes two fluted bundts, fills them with a pecan cream filling, and stacks them into a sphere iced in orange buttercream with a green ice cream cone stem. A novelty cake kids love.

Chinese toffee-coated apples and bananas with crispy batter and caramel sesame coating. Deep-fried fruit dunked in ice water creates a shatteringly crisp candy shell.

Chocolate tiramisu layers espresso-soaked ladyfingers with mascarpone cream spiked with Marsala, Triple Sec, and brandy, then folds in bittersweet chocolate between every layer. A grown-up Italian no-bake dessert that chills in just one hour.

Popcorn fruit cookies made with ground popped corn, cornmeal, dried fruit, and nutmeg. A crunchy, unusual rolled cookie with a satisfying corn-forward crumble.

Juicy blueberries and raspberries bubble beneath a buttery lattice crust that shatters at first bite, perfect for celebrating milestones or summer picnics.

Whole Bartlett pears cored and filled with currant jelly, wrapped in golden puff pastry and baked, served pooled in Calvados caramel sauce. A bakery-window dessert that looks impossible but isn't.

Rosehip, Hibiscus & Currant Pie or Cake Filling recipe

Apple cream pie with sliced apples baked in a cinnamon-nutmeg custard made from half-and-half and melted butter. A simpler, creamier take on classic apple pie.

Soft, fudgy chocolate cookies with cocoa and mini chocolate chips, made with cream cheese for an impossibly chewy texture. Just 8 minutes in the oven and you've got 32 eggless cookies.

Chinese steamed pears in a cinnamon sugar syrup, gently cooked until tender then drizzled with reduced syrup. Four ingredients, elegant, and served warm or chilled.

Easy chocolate-covered cherry cookies from a brownie mix: fudgy chocolate drop cookies studded with pecans and maraschino cherries, baked just until set for a soft, brownie-like center. A quick holiday cookie.

Vintage ribbon cake: plain vanilla and spiced molasses batters layered in stripes with a tart lemon-raisin filling between. An old-fashioned American cake worth reviving.

The crisp, densely chocolaty cookies, with an unusually long baking time, were an annual favorite among the 20-plus recipes that Susan Couchman of Hartland remembers were made each year by her mother, Gloria Kuchler.

Jelly Christmas Eyes are sandwich cookies with a window cutout showing raspberry or strawberry jelly through the center, coated in sugar. A festive holiday cookie plate classic.