Dessert Recipes

Rich mahogany chocolate pound cake with cocoa, sour cream, and both white and brown sugar, baked in a bundt pan. Dense, moist, and deeply chocolatey with an optional quick chocolate sauce.

A foolproof 4-ingredient pie crust made with flour, salt, shortening, and ice water. Step-by-step instructions walk you through cutting, rolling, fluting, and blind baking like a pro.

No-bake oatmeal cookies made with strawberry gelatin, coconut, and chopped nuts. Cooked to soft-ball stage on the stovetop and dropped onto waxed paper to set. Quick, chewy, and fruity.

Mayonnaise spice cake with raisins, cinnamon, cloves, and chopped nuts. No eggs or butter needed. The mayo keeps this old-fashioned cake incredibly moist with a tender, spiced crumb.

Pineapple casserole: a Southern bread pudding-style side dish with crushed pineapple, white bread cubes, butter, and sugar. The traditional sweet companion to baked ham at Easter and Christmas.

Homemade fig newtons: a tender brown sugar and sour cream cookie dough wrapped around real homemade fig jam, baked in logs and sliced into soft bars. So much better than the boxed kind.

Pineapple-coconut chess pie with crushed pineapple and flaked coconut bound in a sweet cornmeal-thickened custard. A Southern classic with tropical flair and a slightly chewy texture.

Hundred-dollar chocolate cake made with mayonnaise-style salad dressing instead of eggs and butter. Moist, fudgy, and topped with a boiled cocoa frosting.

A thin, fudgy chocolate sheet cake baked right on a cookie sheet and iced while still hot. Feeds a crowd in 30 minutes flat. The ultimate potluck and church supper cake.

Chewy brown sugar cookie sticks baked low and slow, cut into thin fingers, and rolled in powdered sugar. Toasted walnuts take these from good to great.

Peppernuts cookies with ground raisins, coconut, and nuts in a brown sugar-buttermilk dough, rolled into ropes and cut into bite-sized pieces. A Mennonite holiday tradition.

Knäckebröd, the traditional Swedish rye crispbread baked thin and crackling. Just six pantry staples turn into snappy crackers, perfect with butter, cheese, smoked salmon, or pickled herring.

Make-ahead slice and bake sugar cookies with lemon extract. Shape the dough into logs, freeze for up to 6 months, and bake fresh cookies in 10 minutes whenever the craving hits.

Krumkake are crisp Norwegian waffle cookies pressed in a decorative iron and shaped while warm into cones or cookie bowls. Six ingredients for an elegant Scandinavian dessert vessel.

Puffy sour cream drop cookies topped with cinnamon sugar before baking. Soft, cakey, and lightly golden around the edges. Simple pantry ingredients, 30 minutes start to finish. Makes 18.

Whoopie pies sandwich two soft chocolate cake-cookies around a fluffy vanilla cream filling. Maine and Pennsylvania Dutch dessert with a cult following.