Recipe Sifter

Cream cheese rugelach filled with raspberry jam, cinnamon brown sugar, cocoa, and hazelnuts. Flaky crescent cookies that freeze beautifully baked or unbaked.

Old Greek bread blends barley, rye, and white flour with honey and olive oil into hearty rustic loaves baked hot to a deep brown crust. Traditional Mediterranean peasant bread.

Homemade chocolate sandwich cookies filled with a fluffy marshmallow cream filling. Think whoopie pies with a cocoa twist. Soft, cakey cookies meet sweet, pillowy filling. Makes 2 dozen sandwiches.

Artisan whole wheat bread loaded with sunflower seeds, sesame, herbs, and decorative seed toppings. Hearty high-fiber yeast bread with beautiful scored patterns.

This fresh strawberry pie is absolutely ultimate. It's loaded with strawberries, and packed with strawberry flavor. Best of all, you don't have to bake it. A perfect cool-fruity dessert for a hot summer day.

Idiot's Delight: a layered no-fuss dessert with pecan shortbread crust, cream cheese filling, butter pecan pudding, whipped topping, and praline pecans. Potluck royalty.

Red velvet pound cake baked low and slow in a tube pan with cocoa, shortening, and seven eggs for a dense, velvety crumb. Topped with cream cheese icing.

Prize winning shepherd's pie made with ground roast beef, mushrooms, red wine, and a splash of cognac. Slow-simmered filling under egg-washed mashed potatoes, baked golden. The cottage pie elevated.

James Beard's persimmon bread folds ripe persimmon puree into a spiced quick-bread batter with cognac, mace, raisins, and walnuts. Legendary holiday bread adapted for the bread machine.

Tagalong cheesecake turns the peanut-butter-and-chocolate Girl Scout cookie into a dessert. A Tagalong cookie crust, peanut butter cream cheese filling, glossy chocolate ganache and crushed peanuts.

Pineapple oatmeal cookies with crushed pineapple, rolled oats, toasted almonds, and raisins. Soft, fruity drop cookies with a cinnamon-spiced chew.

This is an authentic family recipe that my mother taught me in 1950 in New Orleans. It makes a great dinner party main dish. Like chinese food, it is long on chopping and assembling, but goes together and cooks rather quickly.

Egg-free and dairy-free carob cake made with whole wheat flour, honey, and a splash of apple cider vinegar for lift. Naturally sweet, moist, and ready in under an hour.

Rich, fudgy chocolate bars loaded with chocolate chips, chopped nuts, and a gooey sweetened condensed milk layer. Makes 36 bars with a cocoa crumb crust that's ready for game day snacking.

Traditionally cantucci combine with vin Santo generally or liqueur wines, although they are very good even with the dry wines such as sparkling wines.

Pimblett's shepherd's pie: ground beef (technically cottage pie) with thyme, sage, carrots, and Dijon under a nutmeg-scented mashed potato crown. A classic British pub pie baked bubbling golden.