Dessert/4 recipes

Treat your kids for dessert with these scrumptious cookies that take hardly any time at all to make.

Easy chocolate pudding pie: a five-ingredient shortcut pie made with cook-and-serve pudding mix boosted with real semisweet chocolate and butter for a richer-than-boxed result.

Gingerbread cream pie with a spiced molasses cake split and filled with an apricot-vanilla custard set with gelatin. A unique two-component dessert for gingerbread lovers.

Three-ingredient chocolate cookie crumb pie shell with butter and sugar. The fast, no-roll crust for cream pies, ice cream pies, and chilled desserts. Ready in 20 minutes.

White chocolate mousse served in handmade dark chocolate cups. An elegant two-part dessert with airy mousse in edible chocolate shells, garnished with chocolate curls.

Light-as-air banana chiffon cake with tangy cream cheese frosting. Ripe bananas meet fluffy egg whites for a moist, tender crumb that melts on your tongue.

No-bake Hawaiian refrigerator cake with ladyfingers, sweetened condensed milk, crushed pineapple, marshmallows, and whipped topping. Sets overnight in a springform pan.

Pillowy soft buttermilk drop cookies baked until pale golden get frosted with sweet buttercream and sprinkled with colored sugar for nostalgic treats.

Chewy Rolo cookie bars: a yellow cake mix base studded with halved Rolo candies that melt into rivers of chocolate caramel. Five-ingredient bake-sale magic.

An easy recipe that creates scrumptious cookies just in time for Christmas.

Traditional baked Christmas pudding with candied fruits, pecans, molasses, and warm spices, served with brandy sauce. A festive holiday dessert with an optional flambé presentation.

Moravian sugar cookies rolled paper-thin and baked until crisp at the edges. Buttermilk keeps the dough tender while an overnight chill makes it rollable to 1/16-inch thickness for that signature wafer-like snap.

Traditional New Mexican biscochitos made with lard, egg yolks, anise, and vanilla. Rolled, cut into shapes, and baked until tender. New Mexico's official state cookie and a holiday staple.

German anise cookies beaten for 20 minutes until fluffy, dried overnight, then baked golden for distinctive chewy-crisp springerle-style treats.

Chocolate cake sweetened with fructose instead of granulated sugar, made with cocoa powder and skim milk. A lower-glycemic alternative to traditional chocolate cake with a rich, moist crumb.

Festive slice-and-bake Christmas tree cookies kissed with almond extract, rolled in sparkly green sugar crystals. Shape, chill, slice, and bake for a show-stopping holiday cookie tray.