4,750 night recipes

Crunchy twice-baked biscotti loaded with chopped Heath bars, pecans, and butterscotch extract. Makes 36 to 48 cookies that are built for dunking in coffee, tea, or hot cocoa.

Tropical pound cake made with fruit yogurt for a moist, tender crumb and subtle fruity flavor. A simple one-bowl bundt cake with only eight ingredients.

Avocado in the brownies? It may sound strange, but it tastes very pleasant. Avocado adds delicious creaminess and richness to these moist and chocolaty brownies.

Applesauce cinnamon bread for the bread machine, with buttermilk for tang and a full tablespoon of cinnamon for serious spice. An eight-ingredient yeast loaf that loads and starts in under 5 minutes.

Carolines, French savory choux pastries split and filled with warm crab and asparagus spears, finished with a beurre blanc-style lemon dill butter sauce. An elegant first course or canapé for eight.

Pineapple Dream: light no-bake dessert mousse with pureed pineapple and cottage cheese set with gelatin, topped with toasted coconut. Tropical-tasting low-calorie treat for eight.

Quick sweet pickles for canning, eight pounds of cucumbers in a sugar-vinegar brine spiced with allspice, celery seed, and mustard seed. A big-batch summer canning project.

A simple and delicious Christmas pudding made with dried figs, tapioca and toasted walnuts.

Streamlined boeuf bourguignonne with beef chuck, bacon, garlic, and dry red wine simmered for two hours. A simplified take on the classic French stew with eight core ingredients.

These deliciously moist and lemony ricotta muffins are made with most whole wheat flour and olive oil, which adds health benefits to your diet without losing any great flavor and texture.

Cream cheese rugelach with a tender, flaky pastry rolled around fruit jam. The classic Eastern European Jewish cookie, bakery-style at home with eight ingredients and zero kneading.

Japanese-style beef stir-fry with thinly sliced flank steak, snow peas, red pepper, escarole, and fresh ginger in a soy-brown sugar glaze. A fast, colorful skillet dinner.

Baked Italian sausage and mozzarella pasta casserole scaled to feed 150 people. Layered with corkscrew pasta, mushrooms, and spaghetti sauce across eight 6-quart pans.

Norwegian kringla cookies shaped into figure-eights with a tender buttermilk dough. Chilled overnight, baked fast at high heat for a light, slightly sweet pastry.

Norwegian kringla are soft pretzel-shaped buttermilk cookies twisted into figure-eights. A traditional Scandinavian coffee-time treat that needs an overnight chill for flavor.

The original General Tso's chicken from Chef Peng: crisp-fried dark-meat chicken tossed in a tangy soy-and-vinegar sauce fired up with dried chilies. Savory and hot, not the sticky-sweet takeout version, and gluten-free with tamari.