12 lace recipes

French lace cookies bake corn syrup, shortening, brown sugar, flour, and pecans into thin, delicate, caramel-toffee disks. Optional chocolate drizzle. Five ingredients, holiday tray classic.

Open face apple tart with overlapping Golden Delicious slices, apricot glaze, and a buttery pastry shell. The classic French tarte aux pommes done simply at home.

A retro Southern appetizer of boiled shrimp suspended in seasoned consommé aspic with lemon, green onion, and a kick of hot sauce. Unmold onto crackers for a showstopping starter.

Clown face pancake breakfast with poached or fried eggs for eyes, orange slices for ears and mouth, and cherry tomato halves for noses. Fun kids' breakfast plate.

Daube glace: the classic New Orleans cold beef aspic from Louisiana Creole tradition. Shredded pot roast suspended in jellied savory consomme with celery, lemon, and Tabasco. A summer Creole appetizer.

Vegetarian shao mai dumplings with hand-rolled hot-water dough and two filling options: mashed tofu or minced water chestnut and mushroom. Bamboo steamer classic, freezer-friendly.

Make glace fruit at home with this classic four-day method, slowly saturating apples, peaches, cherries, or citrus peel in sugar syrup until candied and leathery. The spent syrup becomes a fruit-flavored pancake syrup.

Monkey-faced cookies: old-fashioned molasses drop cookies with ginger and cinnamon, decorated with three raisins for eyes and a mouth. Makes 36 cookies in 30 minutes. A classic kids baking project.

Fresh strawberry glace is a glossy ruby cake topping cooked from macerated strawberries, sugar, lemon, and cornstarch. Pours like syrup, sets like jelly, and turns any plain cake into a centerpiece.

Halloween face paint mixes cornstarch, water, cream, and food coloring into a homemade non-toxic costume paint. Skin-safe, kid-friendly, and ready in seconds for trick-or-treat night.

Open-faced sub sandwiches on toasted English muffins with salami, lettuce, tomato, onion rings, basil, and melted American cheese. Broiled 5 minutes for a quick hot lunch.

Open-faced pita sandwich: vegetarian flatbread topped with sauteed carrots, zucchini, mushrooms, peppers, and tomato. Healthy low-calorie lunch under 25 minutes.