Dessert/2 recipes

New Year's Eve clock cake: three airy white cake layers stacked with silky chocolate cream filling, wrapped in rich Hungarian chocolate frosting and decorated to look like a clock striking midnight.

Irish Christmas cake soaked in whiskey with dried fruits, almonds, candied orange peel, and a marzipan coating. A rich, dense celebration cake that starts with an overnight whiskey fruit soak.

Chocolate-strawberry scone cake with a layer of chocolate chips sandwiched between two buttery scone rounds, served warm with fresh strawberry whipped cream.

Chocolate banana split cake with cocoa-banana layers, fresh sliced bananas, homemade chocolate sauce, whipped topping, and a cherry on top. No butter, no egg yolks.

Crustless Oreo cheesecake with chunks of cookie folded right into the batter and a cookie-crumb top. Baked in a water bath until silky, then flipped so the bottom becomes the top.

Four-ingredient baked apples stuffed with raisins and cinnamon, brushed with orange juice. Low-fat, diabetic-friendly, and ready in 45 minutes.

Boozy whiskey cake made from a doctored box mix with vanilla pudding and walnuts, then soaked in a hot butter-whiskey-brown sugar syrup. Outrageously moist and dead simple to pull off.

Better than sex cake is a four-layer chocolate-pecan icebox dessert: a buttery pecan shortbread crust, sweet cream cheese, chocolate pudding, and whipped topping. A make-ahead potluck legend.

Rich pumpkin cheesecake with cream cheese, warm spices, and heavy cream in a crumb crust. Sweetened with fructose and spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg for a holiday showstopper.

Honey-sweetened Italian figure-eight cookies made with olive oil and just six ingredients. These charming consolation biscuits puff up golden and light with a tender, not-too-sweet crumb.

A three-layer cake with two rich cocoa layers and one maple-walnut layer, all covered in homemade chocolate fudge frosting. Vermont cocoa cake is a New England showstopper.

Low-fat Dutch apple cake spreads a thin, biscuit-like batter under overlapping cinnamon-sugar apples. Egg whites and skim milk keep it light, more fruit than cake in every slice.

Austrian Gugelhupf is a buttery yeasted bundt cake studded with raisins, currants, and orange zest, crowned with blanched almonds and a snowy dusting of powdered sugar. A Viennese coffee house classic.

Butternut squash pie with a from-scratch shortening crust, spiced with cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and a touch of lemon extract. A sweeter, nuttier alternative to pumpkin pie.

Got his recipe in an email. From the Harvest restaurant, Cambridge, MA

German chocolate brownie cookies marry fudgy cocoa cookies with the classic coconut-pecan caramel topping. Brown-sugar dough loaded with chocolate chips, crowned candy-bar style.