Recipe Sifter

Babe's Surprise Apple Pie skips the top crust and crowns thinly sliced apples with a buttery brown sugar crumble topping instead. Cinnamon, lemon juice, and a hot oven do the rest.

Creamy crawfish pasta in a Dijon mustard cream sauce made from crawfish-soaked milk. Two pounds of tender tails over fresh pasta, Cajun-style and ready in an hour.

Peanut butter balls rolled in coconut and shaped into spiders with licorice legs and raisin eyes. A fun no-bake Halloween craft snack kids can make in 10 minutes.

A layered tube cake with banana sour cream batter and a crunchy coconut-oat-pecan streusel swirled through every layer. Semi-homemade with yellow cake mix. Serves 12.

Blueberry crunch cake bakes a buttermilk cornmeal cake under a crown of fresh blueberries with a cinnamon-sugar crackle on top. Lighter than coffee cake, sweeter than cornbread. The Southern morning cake that disappears fast.

Sour cream coffee cake with a cinnamon-pecan ribbon and a chocolate glaze swirled through the middle. A holiday brunch standout with tender crumb and fudgy chocolate veins.

Hearty one-pot stew with browned tortellini, stewed tomatoes, green beans, mushrooms, potatoes, and corn, finished with fresh parsley and Parmesan. Feeds a crowd in 40 minutes.

Moist bran date bread with sourdough starter, buttermilk, and lemon zest baked into a dense, naturally sweet loaf. Spread with cream cheese for something truly special.

Chicken and bean burritos with spiced poached chicken shredded into smooth pureed pinto beans, rolled in flour tortillas with cheese and sour cream, then baked crisp. A lighter, hearty burrito with all the taco toppings.

Homemade Thai green curry paste with fresh green chilies, lemongrass, galangal, shrimp paste, and coriander. Blends in minutes, beats store-bought every time.

Authentic pad thai with rice noodles, dried shrimp, fried tofu, tamarind sauce and crushed peanuts. Real Thai street food, not the gloppy Westernized version.

Italian rice and endive soup with fresh tomatoes, carrots, and basil. A light vegetarian meal ready in 45 minutes, simmered in vegetable stock with curly endive for a pleasantly bitter depth.

Hearty potato salad with steamed red potatoes, hard-boiled eggs, black olives, and red onion rings in a creamy yogurt-dill dressing with Dijon mustard and lemon. Diabetic-friendly and satisfying enough for a main dish.

USDA-style beef loaf for a crowd: makes four 8-inch loaves with milk-soaked bread, eggs, ketchup and Worcestershire. Bake all four, freeze three. Government-tested batch cooking at its most practical.

Fluffy sweet potato scones made with mashed yams and butter, lightly golden on the outside, tender within. Serve warm with honey for a Caribbean-inspired treat.

Laksa: a rich, fragrant Southeast Asian noodle soup with coconut cream, fish, kaffir lime, lemongrass, and fresh chili over rice vermicelli. Layered spice and silky coconut in every spoonful.