Recipe Sifter

Spicy bean cake made with mashed pinto beans, diced apples, raisins, and warm spices like cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg. Add cocoa for a chocolate version.

Simple Irish soda-style bread with butter, raisins, and no yeast. Creamed butter and sugar give it a tender, cake-like crumb. Just mix and bake.

Irish yeast bread mix prepares a shelf-stable allspice-and-lemon-scented dry blend that bakes into a sweet raisin-and-currant yeast loaf. Make the mix once, bake fresh loaves on demand or gift in a jar with instructions.

Southern Japanese fruitcake with three layers: two plain butter cakes and one spiced with raisins and pecans, sandwiched with pineapple-lemon filling and coconut all around.

Buttery slice-and-bake cookies studded with candied fruit, walnuts, and raisins. Freeze the dough ahead, slice thin, and bake for festive sparkle in every bite.

Spiced cranberry relish caramelizes sugar, then cooks fresh cranberries with diced orange, lime, raisins, ginger, cinnamon, and vanilla bean for a complex holiday relish that improves with time.

Indian kheer vermicelli pudding made with butter-toasted noodles, simmered milk, raisins, slivered almonds, and a finishing cream pour. A classic South Asian dessert served chilled.

Lane cake filling with egg yolk custard, brandy, candied cherries, raisins, pecans, and coconut. The classic Southern frosting for a traditional Lane cake.

Lemon cream and nut cookies, buttery shortbread ovals spread with homemade lemon curd and crowned with toasted almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, prunes, rum-soaked raisins, and candied orange. A jewel-box holiday cookie.

The colors the fruits used in the cookies suggest those of the robes worn by the four ordres mendiants, monastic orders that originally lived on charity -- the Augustinians, Carmelites, Dominicans and Franciscans.

Little plum cakes packed with currants and raisins, lemon zest, and nutmeg in a rich butter batter. A traditional English drop cake baked at high heat for golden, fruit-studded bites.

Roast Long Island duck stuffed with tart apples, raisins, and orange zest. Crispy-skinned, classic Sunday-supper duck served with Burgundy wine jelly on the side.

Honey-mustard mayo salad dressing with lemon juice, half-and-half, and fresh parsley. Versatile creamy dressing for green salads with endless mix-in possibilities.

Low-Fat Cinnamon Swirl Bread with Applesauce recipe

Curry-scented desk lunch: a no-cook Tupperware assembly of rice, frozen peas and spinach, canned chickpeas, and raisins with a dusting of curry powder. Microwaves in minutes and beats the sad vending machine.

Maple bread pudding steamed in a double boiler with real maple syrup, raisins, and a vanilla egg custard. This stovetop method creates its own sauce as it cooks, no oven needed.