Christmas
1676 recipes found
Rumplemayer’s Hot Chocolate
This version, adapted from Rumplemayer's, a now-closed New York restaurant once known for its hot chocolate and pastries, is rich, sweet and smooth. It calls for real semisweet chocolate (we bet a mix of semisweet and bittersweet would be delightful, too) so there's none of the chalky aftertaste hot cocoa often leaves behind. A dollop of whipped cream and a sprinkle of cinnamon, if you wish, take it over the top.
Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies
This delightful recipe, a veganized version of the legendary Times’s chocolate chip cookie, is the result of hours of research and more than 50 batches of cookies. In place of unsalted butter, this recipe calls for vegan butter, which provides plenty of flavor and just the right amount of spread. Instead of eggs, a combination of flaxseed meal and water provide structure and moisture, while granulated sugar and brown sugar — which are processed using animal products — are replaced with cane sugar and coconut sugar. Be sure to check the ingredient list on the chocolate, too: Sometimes even bittersweet bars contain dairy. The resulting cookie looks, bakes and tastes like a classic chocolate chip cookie. This recipe makes huge, bakery-style cookies, but if you want smaller cookies, use 1/4-cup mounds of dough and bake for 16 to 18 minutes, or 2-tablespoon scoops and bake for for 10 to 12 minutes.
Vegan Green Bean Casserole
The classic Thanksgiving side dish becomes instantly more flavorful with the use of fresh green beans, shallots and mushrooms. This recipe is also vegan, owing to a quick, creamy sauce made with non-dairy milk and thickened with flour. You can save yourself the trouble of deep-frying onions by using store-bought French fried onions. They’re usually vegan, but be sure to double check the ingredient label to be sure.
Slow Cooker Cranberry Sauce With Port and Orange
This classic, sweet and tangy cranberry sauce tastes complex but is quite easy to make. The slow cooker method saves in-demand stovetop space for other Thanksgiving dishes, and the sauce keeps well in the refrigerator for at least one week.
Slow Cooker Mashed Red Potatoes With Parmesan
When there’s no space on the stovetop to boil and mash potatoes, braise and mash them in a slow cooker — an easy and forgiving one-pot method. This rustic version has big flavors, thanks to the garlic that's cooked and smashed with the potatoes. The five garlic cloves lends a fairly assertive flavor, so decrease it to 2 or 3 cloves if you want a more subtle effect. You can leave the dish on warm for up to 3 hours after you mash the potatoes, just stir in the Parmesan and parsley right before serving.
Slow Cooker Sticky Toffee Pudding
Sticky toffee pudding isn't so much a pudding in the American sense, but an extremely moist baked or steamed British date cake topped with a glossy sauce of brown sugar and cream. Steamed cakes — a genre unto themselves in Britain — are easily made in the slow cooker. This adaptation uses espresso powder in the cake and sauce to balance the honeyed taste of the dates and brown sugar: Nevertheless, it is still quite sweet, as it should be. This recipe can also be made more quickly in the oven, and the resulting cake’s texture will be different than the steamed version — sliceable, like a moist quick bread.
Slow-Cooker Mulled Cider
A slow cooker is an ideal way to make and serve a warm cocktail for a party: Throw the ingredients into the cooker several hours before guests arrive and the cider will bubble away, making the whole house smell wonderful. Reduce the heat before adding the rye whiskey so it maintains its kick. The toasted spices make the flavors so vibrant that the drink is delicious even without the whiskey. No slow cooker? This recipe is your stovetop option.
Slow Cooker Creamy Kale With Fontina and Bread Crumbs
This recipe, made in a slow cooker or on the stovetop, is a rich, satisfying way to eat hearty winter greens, a dish especially suited to a holiday table. Crunchy, lemony panko lends a crucial counterpoint to the creamy braised kale. Use any variety of kale you like, though collards or mustard greens would also work well. Fontina melts beautifully and is a flavorful but relatively mild cheese, making it ideal here. The cream cheese adds tang while stabilizing the fontina and keeping it creamy even as it sits on the table for a long meal.
Slow Cooker Mashed Potatoes With Sour Cream and Chives
When stovetop and oven space is at a premium, the slow cooker can be a good friend. This hands-off, one-pot recipe makes creamy, slightly tangy mashed potatoes, and, unlike most mashed potato recipes, this one doesn’t call for milk. The potatoes give off enough moisture as they braise, so just some extra butter and sour cream is enough to make them smooth. After mashing, the potatoes hold very well on warm for up to 3 hours: Just add the chives and give the potatoes a quick stir before serving.
Cream Cheese Pound Cake
Reminiscent of Sara Lee’s loaves in the freezer aisle, this tender, buttery treat is like a pound cake in sheet cake form. For a Barbie-pink dream house finish, prepare this with the optional toppings: raspberry preserves, gently salted whipped cream and a snowy, psychedelic blanket of freeze-dried raspberries. Any toppings should be added right before serving, but if it’s simplicity you’re after, then you can skip them and dust the cake with confectioners’ sugar or nothing at all. The cake, undressed, will keep in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 to 4 days or well-wrapped in the freezer for up to a month.
Caramelized Sheet-Pan French Toast
Caramelized and crunchy on the outside, soft and custardy on the inside, these almost comically thick sourdough slices taste like the love child of bread pudding and French toast. But instead of the usual brioche or challah, this calls for sturdier bread, preferably a not-too-tangy sourdough or country bread with a crust that’s neither chewy nor thick. You want a round or oblong loaf large enough for big pieces and soft enough to absorb the custard. It’s easy to caramelize the French toast in the oven, but the timing depends on your oven and pan, so check it frequently to ensure that it’s burnished but not burned.
Crispy Oven Bacon and Eggs
Bacon browns and crisps evenly in the oven without the hassle of flipping slices on the stovetop, while eggs can oven-fry alongside for perfect sunny-side-up runny yolks and tender whites. The oven’s encompassing heat helps egg whites set on top before the yolks start to stiffen. Make sure to have the eggs sit at room temperature before cracking them into the hot pan: It ensures they’ll cook quickly and evenly.
Pumpkin Cheesecake
This dessert delivers all the warm spices of pumpkin pie along with the tangy creaminess of cheesecake. To help the filling come together easily, make sure your ingredients are at room temperature, and refrain from mixing on high, which will incorporate too much air, causing the cheesecake to rise, then fall. The cake is finished in the oven with the heat turned off; that gentle reduction in heat eliminates the need for a water bath and reduces the likelihood of cracks or a grainy texture.
Salted Chocolate Chunk Shortbread Cookies
These wildly popular cookies were developed by Alison Roman for her cookbook, “Dining In: Highly Cookable Recipes.” “I’ve always found chocolate chip cookies to be deeply flawed (to know this about me explains a lot),” she writes. “Too sweet, too soft, or with too much chocolate, there’s a lot of room for improvement, if you ask me. But no one asked me, and rather than do a complete overhaul on the most iconic cookie known to man, I took all my favorite parts and invented something else entirely. Made with lots of salted butter (it has a slightly different flavor and a deeper saltiness than using just salt — I prefer unsalted butter everywhere else but here), the dough has just enough flour to hold it together and the right amount of light brown sugar to suggest a chocolate chip cookie.”
Citrusy Cheesecake
The nice thing about this cheesecake is that it doesn’t require a water bath or any sort of special baking pan: More shallow than a traditional version, it gets baked right in a pie plate (or tart pan, if you’ve got that). While there are zest and juice inside the cream cheese filling, it’s the fresh sliced citrus on top that makes this cake Creamsicle-like, so don’t skip it. The ultimate do-ahead dessert, this cheesecake can be baked three or so days in advance, just make sure to wrap it tightly as cream cheese tends to easily pick up on that “fridge” scent.
Sweet Potato and Gruyère Gratin
This rich, cheese-laden gratin is a more savory take on the usual Thanksgiving sweet potato casserole, with sage and rosemary giving it an herbal bite. If you'd like to make it partway ahead, you can peel and slice the potatoes the day before; store in a sealable plastic bag in the fridge. You can also simmer the cream mixture (don’t add eggs) and grate the cheese the day before as well, storing them covered in the refrigerator.
Candied Sweet Potatoes
When Fred Harvey opened his first Harvey House restaurant in 1876 on the railway line in Topeka, Kan., his idea was radical for the time: Railroad passengers would be fed good food in a pleasant environment. His concept was so successful that it spawned 84 restaurants, a Hollywood movie and an official cookbook. And it was in “The Harvey House Cookbook” that we found this excellent recipe for sweet potatoes candied with confectioners’ sugar and butter. It is best served warm rather than piping hot, which makes it convenient for big meals like Thanksgiving. Bake it before you roast your turkey, then reheat it briefly just before serving.
Garlicky Hasselback Sweet Potatoes
Tender in the middle, with charred ruffles on top, hasselback potatoes — sliced thinly all the way through so that they fan open like an accordion — are the ultimate treat for people who can’t choose between creamy and crisp. In this recipe, the sweet potatoes are halved first, so they cook faster and so their flat sides sear in the hot pan, leaving a caramelized edge. If your spice cabinet is fully stocked, try adding red-pepper flakes, smoked paprika or dried oregano to your garlic-butter mixture. A sprinkling of chopped parsley, right before you’re ready to eat, would also be welcome. Serve these as you would roasted potatoes, like alongside roast chicken.
Sweet Potato Aligot
In a classic French pommes aligot potatoes are mashed with butter and enough cheese to turn them into a stretchy purée that’s soft, gooey and eminently comforting. This version, made with sweet potatoes, has a gently caramelized flavor and a deeply satiny texture. Pan-fried sage leaves make a crisp, herbal garnish that’s worth the few extra minutes of work. Note that the bigger the sage leaves, the easier they are to fry. If you can’t find Saint-Nectaire or Tomme de Savoie cheese, you can use fontina or mozzarella. And if you want to make this ahead, or reheat leftovers, let the mixture cool, then store it in the fridge for up to 3 days. Reheat it on low, stirring in a little cream until the mixture is elastic and smooth. Serve this as a side dish to sausages or roasted meats, or as a meatless entree with a fresh, crunchy salad.
Paul Prudhomme's Sweet Potato Pecan Pie
This recipe came to The Times in 1983 from the renowned Louisiana chef Paul Prudhomme. Like its traditional pecan cousin, this pie is very sweet, so serve it with a little Chantilly cream on top.
Chile Sweet Potatoes
The chef Rick Bayless offers a wonderful recipe for sweet potatoes glazed with an ancho chile paste in his book “Rick Bayless’s Mexican Kitchen.” Instead of making the paste, I make a thinner glaze with canned chipotle and some of the adobo they’re packed in. The glaze makes a spicy contrast to the sweet potatoes. You can make this recipe vegan by using light brown sugar instead of honey.
Sweet Potato Meringue Pie
Everything about this sweet potato pie is surprisingly light and creamy, from the soft custard filling to the swoopy toasted meringue. Piping that meringue dresses it up even more. Instead of focusing on making uniform shapes and sizes with the piping tips, give into spontaneity — use two tips with different shapes and use them to make different effects within a designated portion of the pie. The untopped pie can be made up to 1 day ahead, but it’s best to make and apply the meringue within 2 hours of serving.
Fiery Sweet Potatoes
Coconut milk and Thai red curry paste turn up the heat, but brown sugar and butter are part of the mix too in this side dish — an amazing combination of flavors. It would be a fine addition to any table from Thanksgiving through May.
Roasted Cabbage Wedges With Lemon Vinaigrette
Sliced into wedges and drizzled with a tangy lemon-mustard dressing, cabbage roasts in high heat as it tenderizes and sweetens for this easy, make-ahead salad or side. Apply some heat and the cruciferous vegetable loses its crunch, turning sweet and silky like leeks vinaigrette, with unexpected nutty notes. This salad is best enjoyed chilled, but it can also be enjoyed hot or at room temperature, making it particularly party-friendly. Because sturdy cabbage holds up better than fragile salad greens, this dish can be prepared in advance and refrigerated. Drizzled with a tangy crème fraîche-and-mayonnaise sauce that is faintly reminiscent of ranch dressing, this wedge salad is fresh and cooling, its chill an unexpected delight.