Dessert/8 recipes

Classic rolled sugar cookies with a buttery, tender dough that holds its shape when cut with pumpkin, leaf, or any seasonal cookie cutter. Sprinkle with sugar or frost after baking.

Chocolate leaves made by brushing melted chocolate onto real leaves and peeling away once set. An elegant no-bake garnish for cakes, tarts, and plated desserts.

Four flavor pound cake with lemon, vanilla, almond, and rum extracts in a light oil-based batter with folded egg whites. Served with fresh strawberries.

Mystery cake is a self-saucing chocolate pudding cake: pour batter into a pan, sprinkle cocoa sugar on top, then douse with cold coffee. As it bakes, the topping sinks into pudding under a tender cake layer.

Hazelnut melting moments with ground filberts, lemon zest, and a pool of melted chocolate in the center. A delicate thumbprint cookie dusted with powdered sugar.

Easy cherry cheesecake tarts use frozen puff pastry shells filled with almond-spiked cream cheese and cherry pie filling. Buttery, flaky, and assembled in under an hour. Four-ingredient dessert.

Brown sugar sour cream cookies wrapped around walnut-stuffed dates, baked and topped with a vanilla sour cream icing. A unique, old-fashioned holiday cookie.

This is one of the basic dessert sauces. It is luscious simply served with fresh fruit.

Lemon and pistachio Italian style biscotti, perfect with tea or coffee.

An old Welsh steamed carrot pudding -- This is a good steamed pudding, despite the list of ingredients that are "good for you". The sauce (following the recipe) is not a necessity for good taste, only for authenticity, although I LIKE it with the sauce.

Festive raisin tarts with a brown sugar, walnut, and orange juice filling in mini pastry shells. Bite-sized holiday treats similar to butter tarts, topped with whipped cream.

Apple cake with caramel sauce loaded with cinnamon, pecans, and fresh apples. A simple one-bowl batter topped with buttery brown sugar caramel poured on hot from the oven.

A no-bake cheesecake with a gooey marshmallow base and a creamy chocolate filling set in a graham cracker crust. Blends up in minutes, chills in two hours, and never sees the inside of an oven.

Just in time for summer, this sweet and delicious pie will have everyone crossing their fingers, hoping they can get a second helping.

Apple cookies with butterscotch chips, walnuts, and brown sugar topped with a cinnamon butter glaze and a walnut half. A soft, fruit-studded fall cookie.

Black chocolate sponge cake: deep dark chocolate sheet cake with boiling-water batter trick, topped with creamy peanut butter frosting. Old-fashioned chocolate-peanut butter combo.