Dessert/5 recipes

Whipped shortbread cookies that practically melt on the tongue. Beaten with cornstarch and powdered sugar for a cloud-light, almost feathery crumb. Top with a candied cherry or pecan half.

Fudgy chocolate brownies built on bittersweet chocolate, sour cream, and a final fold of chopped chocolate chunks. Dense, gooey center with a thin crackled top.

Chocolate fleck frozen yogurt creates tiny shards of dark chocolate throughout a tangy vanilla yogurt base. A lighter alternative to chocolate ice cream with the chocolate technique that creates the fleck effect.

Award-winning ginger cookies built on a cooked sugar-and-spice syrup base. Roll, cut, paint, or hand-mold this stiff gingerbread dough into any shape, then bake into crisp golden spice cookies.

Sugar and spice apple nut cake, a one-bowl single-layer cake loaded with chopped fresh apples, warm cinnamon and nutmeg, and crunchy nuts, baked in a square pan.

Flaky crescent roll pastries stuffed with a sweet cream cheese, vanilla, and lemon filling. Just 5 ingredients, 25 minutes, and 16 golden little bites that vanish the moment they hit the plate.

Double chocolate mint chip cookies with melted mint chips in the dough plus whole chips folded in. Rich, fudgy, and intensely minty with chopped nuts.

Authentic Scottish shortbread is a four-ingredient classic of unsalted butter, sugar, flour, and cornstarch baked low and slow into pale, sandy wedges. The traditional petticoat tails for tea time.

Paper bag apple pie: a vintage baking trick that wraps the whole pie in a brown paper bag during baking. Tender apples, golden streusel top, and an evenly browned crust without scorching.

Light-as-air angel food cake gets crowned with fluffy boiled icing in this classic dessert where vanilla and almond extracts perfume both the cake and the glossy meringue-style frosting.

Chewy brown sugar cookies studded with white chocolate chips and bright maraschino cherries. A patriotic twist on the classic drop cookie that bakes up in under 10 minutes.

Ultra-moist chocolate zucchini cake with buttermilk, brown sugar, cinnamon, and chocolate chips on top. Baked in a 9x13 pan, this one-bowl cake stays soft for days.

Frozen graham custard is a retro no-churn freezer dessert with whipped evaporated milk, lemon, and vanilla custard layered between buttery graham cracker crumbs. Six ingredients, no ice cream maker, pure midcentury nostalgia.

Velvety custard flan with a double dose of caramel from both a golden sugar base and melted caramel candy in the custard itself. A Mexican-inspired make-ahead dessert with a gorgeous amber sauce.

Bisquick pound cake with cream cheese, soaked in orange liqueur syrup and finished with a glossy apricot glaze. A bakery-worthy tube cake from a baking-mix shortcut.

No-bake marshmallow cream peach pie folds melted marshmallows, whipped cream, and diced fresh peaches into a graham cracker crust. Five ingredients, no oven, hours of fridge time for a cool summer slice.