Baked Good Recipes

Palm Beach pineapple squares: a chocolate walnut cake base topped with a lemon-scented pineapple layer, baked together into one tropical dessert bar.

Puff pastry apple turnovers wrap diced apples, plumped raisins, and chopped pecans in flaky golden pastry squares. Sweet hand pies dusted with confectioners' sugar, perfect for breakfast or dessert.

Traditional New Mexican biscochitos with anise seed and cinnamon-sugar topping. These shortening-based cookies are crisp, fragrant, and cut into festive shapes.

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.

Chocolate red beet cake: deep cocoa cake with mashed beets baked into a moist, tender crumb you'd never guess was hiding a vegetable. An old-school secret-ingredient cake.

Deluxe chocolate chunk walnut cookies with semi-sweet chunks and milk chocolate morsels in a chewy brown sugar dough. Bakery-style thick cookies with two kinds of chocolate.

Alice's white cake is a tender vanilla and almond-scented layer cake leavened with whipped egg whites for an airy, snowy crumb. The kind of from-scratch white cake that makes box mixes look amateur.

Classic French pâte à choux with detailed instructions for cream puffs, eclairs, and a show-stopping cream puff ring. Just 5 ingredients and a bit of technique for bakery-worthy pastries.

Key lime pie from the Pierhouse in the Florida Keys, a custardy filling of sweetened condensed milk, egg yolks and tart key lime juice in a graham cracker crust. Finished with a reduced lime syrup glaze.

Apple custard cake layered on a buttery lemon shortcrust, with rum-soaked raisins and tart apples under a baked vanilla custard that sets soft and creamy. A bakery-style dessert with a boozy backbone.

Kookie Cookies: no-bake peanut butter corn chip bars with corn syrup and sugar. A salty-sweet, crunchy 4-ingredient treat that kids can help make in 15 minutes.

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.

Copycat Red Lobster cheddar biscuits made with Bisquick, shredded cheddar cheese, and cold water, brushed with garlic-herb butter. Just 20 minutes from bowl to table.

Friendship cake starter made with pineapple, cherries, and peaches layered with sugar and brandy over six weeks. A fermented fruit base for holiday fruitcakes.

Brown sugar sour cream cookies wrapped around walnut-stuffed dates, baked and topped with a vanilla sour cream icing. A unique, old-fashioned holiday cookie.

Black Forest cheesecake layers chocolate wafer crust, almond-scented chocolate cream cheese filling, and cherry pie topping with whipped cream. The German classic, cheesecake-style.