Holidays recipes

Company ham sauce turns the drippings from a baked ham into an elegant sweet-savory sauce, thickened with cornstarch and layered with currant jelly, Dijon, sherry, and plump currants. The finishing touch your holiday ham deserves.

So good impossible pumpkin pecan pie skips the crust: Bisquick in the batter makes its own as it bakes. A spiced pumpkin custard studded with pecans, topped with spiced whipped cream. Easy, no-roll holiday pie.

Traditional New Mexican biscohos cookies spiced with cinnamon, star anise, and cloves, then dusted with cinnamon sugar while still warm from the oven. A cherished holiday cookie that fills the kitchen with the most intoxicating aroma.

Pumpkin pie layered with a sticky brown-sugar date and walnut base, then spiced with cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves. A holiday upgrade on the classic that tastes like pecan pie had a baby with pumpkin.

Rolled ginger cookies with whole wheat flour, molasses, and a warming mix of ginger, cinnamon, and cloves. Chill the dough overnight for clean cut-out shapes that bake up crisp with spicy, old-fashioned holiday flavor.

Slice-and-bake Swedish coconut cookies with golden edges and a buttery, tender crumb. Shape the dough into logs, chill, slice thin, and bake. Makes a whopping 8 dozen from one batch. Ideal for holiday cookie swaps.

Ham fritters with creamy sauce: golden, crispy-edged spoonfuls of ham-studded batter deep-fried until puffy, served with a rich, velvety sauce. A Southern diner classic that turns leftover holiday ham into crowd-pleasing finger food.

Mandel-Halbmonde are German almond crescents: buttery shortbread cookies shaped like half-moons, baked pale, then rolled twice in powdered sugar. The kind of melt-in-your-mouth Christmas cookie every German bakery puts on the holiday plate.

Ham vegetable soup that puts a leftover ham bone to work, roasting it first for deep flavor, then simmering into a hearty broth with carrots, celery, onion, and cubed ham. A smart, frugal use for a holiday ham bone.

Kiss cookies tuck a whole chocolate kiss inside a buttery walnut shortbread, baked until just set and rolled in powdered sugar. Crack one open and the melty chocolate middle is the payoff. An easy holiday cookie that keeps for days.

If you have egg whites left over from other recipes, use them for making kisses. For the holidays you can dress them up by sprinkling some green sugar or red cinnamon hearts on each kiss to make them more festive.

How to roast a whole turkey in the microwave: finish the bird in a roasting bag at reduced power, then rest it tented under foil so it cooks through and stays juicy. A faster route to a moist holiday bird.

Pozole is a New Mexican holiday stew of pork shoulder simmered until tender with hominy and mild chili powder. The long cooking produces a rich broth and meat that falls into silky shreds. Serve it with warm corn tortillas for Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve.

I got this recipe from "TheSouthernLadyCooks.com" Here's a blurb from her website: "These rolls will melt in your mouth. I have made them for years and they are wonderful. My family looks forward to these rolls during the holidays. I think this recipe was on a box of grits years and years ago."