Baked Good Recipes

Three-layer buttermilk cake with cranberries, pecans, shredded wheat cereal, and orange zest, topped with orange cream cheese frosting. A unique, textured celebration cake with tangy-sweet flavor.

Lemon pignoli biscotti with toasted pine nuts, fresh lemon juice, and lemon zest. Twice-baked into crisp, citrusy Italian cookies perfect for dipping.

Spiced prune walnut bread with simmered chopped prunes, cinnamon, cloves, and crunchy walnuts. Eggless quick bread with deep, jammy prune flavor and a tender whole wheat crumb.

Chewy date and nut cookie balls rolled in powdered sugar. Baked in a sheet pan, cut into squares while hot, then shaped by hand into bite-sized treats with almond extract and corn syrup.

The 2nd place winner in the Chicago Tribune's 1996 Annual Holiday Cookie Contest, a simple brown-sugar shortbread from Sandra Petrille of Naperville, Illinois.

Chewy ginger cookies made with prune butter instead of fat, loaded with warm spices and molasses. Low-fat but big on flavor with crispy edges and soft centers.

Ricotta and cream cheese blend with amaretto liqueur and vanilla in this lighter cheesecake where a graham cracker crust supports creamy filling that's less dense than New York style but just as satisfying.

Crisp, buttery slice-and-bake cookies with brown sugar, a hint of nutmeg, and bold black walnut flavoring. Shape the dough into logs, chill overnight, and slice thin for a quick batch of 48.

Easy cheese Danish made with crescent roll dough and a sweet cream cheese filling. Only 5 ingredients and 10 minutes of prep for a bakery-style breakfast treat.

A tropical coconut cheesecake with cream of coconut in the filling, a coconut-graham cracker crust, and fresh mango slices on top with mango puree. Rich, creamy, and vacation-worthy.

Classic Southern sweet potato pie with boiled sweet potatoes whipped smooth with butter, sugar, cinnamon, evaporated milk, eggs, and vanilla. This recipe makes two pies, because one is never enough.

Bakery-style blueberry muffins with a cinnamon streusel crumb topping. Two cups of berries pack each muffin while the pea-sized streusel bakes into a crackly sweet shell.

Moist banana bread swaps butter for applesauce and uses egg whites instead of whole eggs. Low-fat quick bread sweetened by 4 ripe bananas with cinnamon. Freezes up to 2 months.

Applesauce oatmeal cookies are soft, cakey, and warmly spiced with cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves, studded with raisins and oats. Applesauce keeps them moist and tender with only a little shortening.

Low-fat oatmeal raisin cookies built on applesauce instead of butter, with cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, and orange zest. Soft, chewy, and warmly spiced.

Oatmeal cookies with dried cranberries and three warm spices: cinnamon, nutmeg, and cardamom. The chewy holiday-leaning take on the classic. Four dozen per batch.