Dessert recipes

Soft sour cream cookies with a sugar-pressed top, made from simple pantry staples. The sour cream keeps them pillowy and tender for days.

Cream cheese snowflake cookies with lemon zest, topped with powdered sugar icing and edible glitter. Delicate, buttery Christmas cutout cookies that sparkle.

Traditional British coconut ice with a white and pink layered look. Just sugar, water, desiccated coconut, and vanilla cooked to soft-ball stage and pressed into squares. A classic Christmas sweet that's dead simple to make.

Apees are a classic Pennsylvania Dutch sugar cookie made with butter, sour cream, and just five ingredients. Tender, lightly sweet rolled cookies with golden edges and a soft center.

Mom's red velvet cake with old-fashioned ermine frosting (the original red velvet topping). Buttermilk, cocoa, and vinegar give the cake its signature tang and tender crumb.

Nut gingerbread with molasses, brown sugar, and ground ginger topped with chopped nuts and a brown sugar crust. A warmly spiced, old-fashioned cake that fills the kitchen with aroma.

Homemade mint jelly with fresh mint leaves, vinegar, sugar, and pectin. A classic condiment for roast lamb that sets up crystal clear and bright green in about 20 minutes.

Pumpkin cake doughnuts with bran flakes and pumpkin pie spice, deep-fried until golden and rolled in cinnamon sugar. A spiced fall doughnut made from scratch with real pumpkin.

Sweet noodle kugel with egg noodles, raisins, walnuts, and lemon juice baked until golden with a bread crumb topping. A classic Jewish comfort dish for holidays or any day.

One-bowl brownies made with melted unsweetened chocolate, butter, and chopped nuts. Fudgy, rich, and minimal cleanup with the chocolate melted right in the mixing bowl.

Fresh strawberries baked under a flaky single-crust pastry with just sugar, flour, and butter. This rustic deep-dish strawberry pie is simple, juicy, and begs for a dollop of whipped cream.

Maryanne's cheesecake: a low-and-slow New York-style cheesecake with cream cheese, sour cream, butter, and lemon zest on a buttery graham cracker crust. Baked gently for an ultra-silky texture.

Taffy apple cookies are buttery bite-sized cookies on toothpicks, dipped in melted caramel and rolled in chopped nuts. Holiday party trick that looks like mini caramel apples.

No-bake raspberry yogurt pie with fresh crushed berries folded into raspberry yogurt and whipped topping, frozen in a graham cracker crust. Four ingredients, zero oven time.

Classic 4-ingredient butter shortbread with a sandy, melt-in-your-mouth crumb. Just butter, sugar, flour, and salt baked to pale gold. The quintessential teatime cookie from Bon Appetit, ready in 30 minutes.

Irish Porter Cake is a dense, dark fruit cake made with Guinness, currants, raisins, mixed peel, and warm spices. Bakes for up to 3 hours, then rests a full week before cutting.