Dessert recipes

Choose-A-Fruit Ice is a flexible fruit sorbet made with your pick of strawberries, raspberries, oranges, or mandarins blended with sugar syrup and lemon. No ice cream maker, four ingredients.

Mocha crinkle cookies with deep cocoa, instant espresso, and a surprising pinch of black pepper, rolled in powdered sugar for that signature cracked-top look. A grown-up twist on classic chocolate crinkles.

Clubwoman's Cake, a Depression-era egg-free and dairy-free chocolate cake made with vinegar and oil. A pantry-staples cake that mixes in one bowl with a fork and bakes up moist in 30 minutes.

Lilly cookies: three-ingredient cream cheese pastry folded around a dab of jam into a lily-shaped cone. A delicate, flaky cookie with limitless filling options.

Swedish butter cookies are slice-and-bake shortbread topped with browned butter frosting. Five ingredients in the dough, nutty caramelized butter on top, and the kind of crisp-edge melt that makes Christmas cookie tins worth opening.

Dark chocolate layer cake with a bright orange cream filling made with sour cream, orange zest, and lemon juice. The chocolate-meets-citrus combo is a total crowd pleaser.

No-cholesterol chocolate cake gets its tender crumb from a surprising swap: cholesterol-free mayonnaise stands in for eggs and butter. One bowl, no creaming, deep cocoa flavor with a moist tight crumb.

Pignoli cookies (pine nut macaroons): the chewy almond-paste Italian classic studded with toasted pine nuts and dusted with powdered sugar. Naturally gluten-free, dairy-free, and totally addictive.

Chocolate chip snack cake with cream cheese pockets: a no-egg, no-butter chocolate cake topped with dollops of sweetened cream cheese, chocolate chips, and walnuts. The retro depression-era "crazy cake" upgraded.

Old-fashioned lemon meringue pie made with bread: a Depression-era thrift recipe that uses water-soaked bread as the thickener. Bright lemon, fluffy meringue, and pure pantry ingenuity in a baked pie shell.

Mocha brownies with cocoa and instant coffee topped with a boiled coffee icing and marbled melted chocolate drizzle. Fudgy, shiny, and intensely caffeinated.

Celebration rugelach stacks three tiers of cream cheese pastry filled with walnuts, golden raisins, cinnamon, and raspberry preserves into a stunning Hanukkah or holiday centerpiece.

Iced shapes are simple British cut-out biscuits made from a buttery lemon-scented dough, stamped with cookie cutters and finished with colored icing and sprinkles. A kid-friendly baking project.

Fresh strawberry pie with a homemade cornstarch glaze over 4 cups of whole berries in a flaky baked crust. A no-bake filling that sets up glossy and bright in just 20 minutes of hands-on work.

Sour cream rugelach rolled with cinnamon-sugar and chopped nuts. The tangy dough chills into a tender, flaky crescent that rolls easily without tearing.

Crazy cake mixed right in the baking pan with no eggs, no butter, and no milk. Cocoa, vinegar, and oil create a surprisingly moist chocolate cake from Depression-era ingenuity.