Recipe Sifter

Deep chocolate cookies spiced with cinnamon, ginger, and cloves, made lighter with yogurt instead of butter. Crisp edges with chewy centers at just 41 calories per cookie.

Lulen's grated apple pie shreds the apples instead of slicing for a custard-style filling bound with butter, egg, and cinnamon. Topped with pecans for crunch in a single-crust pie.

Maple macadamia quick bread with whole wheat flour, buttermilk, and a warm maple-cinnamon glaze. Rich, nutty, and sweetened entirely with real maple syrup.

Mini chocolate chip cheesecakes: fudgy chocolate cupcake batter topped with a creamy cream cheese dollop and studded with mini chips. Pop-in-your-mouth sized, bake-sale ready, impossible to eat just one.

Mocha buttercrunch pie with a pecan-chocolate shortbread crust, a frozen mocha mousse filling, and a coffee whipped cream top studded with chocolate chips. Three layers of coffee-and-chocolate richness in every slice.

Mocha spice roll cake is a warmly spiced sponge rolled around billowy coffee-cocoa whipped cream, then frosted and fork-scored to look like a bark log. A holiday-ready bûche de Noël with cinnamon, clove, and allspice woven through.

Moist chocolate cake with hot coffee, cocoa, and vegetable oil for an extra-tender crumb. Topped with the old-fashioned cooked-flour buttercream that tastes like whipped cream.

The shredded zucchini makes this cake very moist, and the topping adds a nice crunch. Whenever zucchini is in season I freeze some, shredded, in 2 cup amounts so I can make this favorite anytime of the year.

Monkey-faced cookies: old-fashioned molasses drop cookies with ginger and cinnamon, decorated with three raisins for eyes and a mouth. Makes 36 cookies in 30 minutes. A classic kids baking project.

Munich cheesecake with a shortcrust base, vanilla bean cream cheese filling, poppy seed-raisin layer, and brown sugar streusel topping broiled until crisp.

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

Buttermilk quick bread studded with walnuts and raisins, made lighter with egg substitute and just two tablespoons of oil. No yeast, no kneading, and ready to slice in under 90 minutes.

Old-fashioned spice cake with cinnamon, allspice, cloves, and nutmeg, sweetened with brown sugar and studded with raisins. A tender crumb built on evaporated milk and topped with caramel frosting.

One-bowl orange marmalade tube cake with warm spices, chopped walnuts, and a hint of lemon. A bittersweet British-style tea cake that dusts clean from a vanilla-wafer-lined pan.

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.

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.