Recipe Sifter

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

Dark molasses gingerbread cookies spiced with cinnamon, cloves, and ginger. Dough chills overnight to develop flavor, then rolls out easily for classic cutout shapes. Makes 80 cookies.

Enjoy the sweet aroma of this drink that can warm you up on a cold night.

Italian-style pickled artichokes preserve tender artichoke hearts in herbed olive oil with garlic, bay, basil, oregano, and optional chiles after a two-stage vinegar cure.

Fresh apple chiffon cake, light and airy with shredded McIntosh apples, warm cinnamon and nutmeg, and a caramel drizzle. Whipped egg whites give this oil-based tube cake its tall, tender, moist crumb.

Pumpkin cobbler with a spiced pumpkin custard base topped with dry yellow cake mix, melted butter, brown sugar, and nuts. Like pumpkin pie crossed with a dump cake. No mixing the topping required.

This spicy harvest bread is full of plump raisins and tart apples, then topped with nuts for a delicious crunch.

A warmly spiced brown sugar cake with chopped prunes, walnuts, and buttermilk baked in a 9-inch square pan. Cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and cloves fill every moist, tender bite. Serve with sour cream or whipped cream.

Christmas memory fruitcake steams then bakes a bourbon-soaked, dense old-fashioned fruitcake loaded with Brazil nuts, raisins, candied fruit, figs, and warming spices. Heirloom holiday recipe.

Pumpkin pie cognac with a silky custard of half-and-half, dark brown sugar, candied ginger, and a generous splash of brandy. The grown-up holiday pie that smells like Thanksgiving in a glass.

Instead of your regular sandwich loaf, make this applesauce-honey pumpkin bread, it's moist and packed with deliciousness from cinnamon, nutmeg, all-spice and cloves. Great for breakfast, or bake some mouth-watering bread puddings.

Traditional green tomato mincemeat with suet, raisins, apples, oranges, and warming spices simmered low for hours. A homestead recipe for filling pies, tarts, and turnovers from the late-season garden haul.

Spiced cranberry hazelnut bread with cinnamon, cloves, and orange juice baked into mini loaves. Wrapped in brandy-soaked cheesecloth, this holiday quick bread deepens in flavor for weeks.

Cold pumpkin souffle is a no-bake gelatin-set dessert with whipped cream, eggs, pumpkin, rum, and warm spices. A make-ahead alternative to pumpkin pie that stands tall above its dish with a foil collar.

Southern Japanese fruitcake: a 4-layer cake alternating plain butter cake with spiced pecan-and-raisin layers, bound by a thick lemon-coconut filling. A vintage Christmas dessert from the American South with a name that has nothing to do with Japan.

Madeira is one of the places where Christmas traditions are so closely adhered to that one really looks forward to the festa. Cooking preparations starts months in advance. It is at a time of year that the prize pig is slaughtered so that there is enough pork for Christmas lunch of Vinha d’Alhos.