Dessert/4 recipes

Old-fashioned apple-blueberry cake with chopped Granny Smith apples and blueberries baked in a buttery cream cake batter. Serve warm with sweetened whipped cream.

Indiana persimmon pudding cake with ground almonds and buttermilk baked in a tube pan. Dense, moist, and warmly spiced with native persimmon pulp.

Quick oatmeal bars with apple butter, coconut, and brown sugar baked into chewy squares ready in 30 minutes for easy lunch box treats or snacks.

Soft-baked bars with apples, cranberries, and nuts baked into orange-scented batter, then frosted with tangy orange cream cheese icing. Perfect for holiday cookie trays.

Home-canned peach pie filling spiced with cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg, with apple and golden raisins for body. Four pints from one canning session means peach pie any month of the year.

Blueberry cheesecake with macadamia nut crust, creamy cream cheese filling, tangy sour cream layer, and fresh blueberry topping. A Hawaiian-inspired dessert that impresses.

French country apple pie with a ground almond frangipane filling topped with sliced Granny Smith apples. Toasted almonds and almond extract create a rich, nutty custard base.

Buttery chocolate shortbread with cocoa, melted unsweetened chocolate, and chopped walnuts baked low and slow into crisp, snappy wedges with a sugar-sprinkled top.

Three-layer Southern banana cake with mashed ripe bananas folded into a buttermilk batter. Topped with confectioner's sugar frosting and chopped pecans for a true heirloom finish.

A creamy tofu-based cheesecake loaded with almond flavor from almond meal, almond extract, and a crown of slivered almonds on a graham cracker crust. Blend, pour, bake. No dairy, no eggs, no stress.

Jewish apple pecan cake layers cinnamon-spiced Granny Smith apples through a moist tube cake batter brightened with orange juice. Pareve, dairy-free, and a Rosh Hashanah favorite.

A creamy raspberry chocolate pie with cream cheese filling on a pecan vanilla wafer crust sealed with melted chocolate. Topped with jam-glazed berries for a make-ahead chilled dessert.

These rich chocolate-toffee bars from Mary Lueke of Menasha were our top pick in the bar category.

Peanut butter and jelly cookies that taste exactly like the sandwich. Make sandwich-style or thumbprint cookies with jam centers. Soft, peanutty, kid-approved.

These gooey cream cheese bars start with a yellow cake mix crust and get topped with a rich layer of powdered sugar, coconut, and nuts. They vanish from the pan faster than you can say "save me one."

Honey pumpkin cookies sweetened with honey instead of sugar. Soft, cake-style drop cookies with raisins, pecans, cinnamon, and nutmeg. No refined sugar.