Recipe Sifter

Scotch mock apple pie: a Depression-era trick that uses soda crackers, lemon juice, and warm spices to taste exactly like apple pie. No apples required.

Healthy sweet potato muffins with warm spices and minimal fat. Moist breakfast muffins made with skim milk and vegetable oil instead of butter.

Traditional English plum pudding, a steamed Christmas classic packed with raisins, currants, apples, walnuts, and beef suet. Spiced, dense, and deeply boozy-optional.

Apple crumble pie with cooked apples and allspice under a chunky streusel topping of flour, sugar, and margarine. No pie crust needed, just a crumble on top.

Spiced pumpkin or winter squash cake with a classic cooked caramel frosting. Four autumn spices, buttermilk tenderness, and a rich old-fashioned finish worth the candy thermometer.

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.

Carrot fruit cake loaded with raisins, candied fruit, and pecans in a spiced batter. No eggs needed. Soak with rum or brandy and store for up to 3 months.

Old-fashioned boiled fruitcake with raisins and warm spices. Simple one-bowl method where you boil fruit first then fold into spiced flour for incredibly moist cake.

Mexican red onion soup with cumin, coriander, cinnamon, allspice, red wine vinegar, and orange juice. A vegan twist on French onion soup with warm Latin spices and a sweet-tart broth.

Ginger Puffs are soft drop cookies made with cooked oatmeal, molasses, brown sugar, ginger, allspice, and cinnamon. One bowl, 30 minutes, yields 4 dozen warm-spiced cookies.

Sauteed chicken livers dusted with warm spices, deglazed with blueberry vinegar, and finished with creme fraiche and fresh blueberries. A French-inspired dish.

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.

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.

Instead of being hard, dry spice cookies, these are soft, moist spicy cookies with a medium hot disposition. Their heat is derived from ground Jamaican Scotch Bonnet peppers.

Pumpkin snack cake spiced with cinnamon, ginger, and allspice, made lighter with egg substitute and low-fat milk. Soft, moist, and dusted with powdered sugar.

Moist carrot walnut quick bread spiced with cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice. Loaded with grated carrots, chopped walnuts, and raisins for a warmly spiced loaf.