Christmas
1676 recipes found
Chicken Tamales Leopoldo
Cranberry Crumb Cake
With their pleasant tang and gorgeous color, cranberries take this brunch staple to the next level. Here, they're nestled in a sour cream cake batter that's topped with a butter crumb, and cook down to add the perfect burst of sour. You can use fresh cranberries or berries that have been frozen and thawed, but note that the cooking time will vary depending on which you use. Lastly, while cranberries make this cake especially nice for fall and winter, blueberries, raspberries or blackberries would be excellent in the summer.
Creamed Corn
This is a sweetly comforting dish, and it's remarkably simple to make. Fresh corn is best for this, but frozen corn would work as well. If using the latter, add a bit of water when cooking before you add the milk.
Rich Cornbread Dressing
This luxurious Thanksgiving dressing is almost a bread pudding, with cornbread, eggs, celery, onion, a pint of oysters and lots of butter and heavy cream. If the oysters prove to be too controversial for your family, simply leave them out.
Savory Pecan Cookies
These little cookies are packed with savory flavors — black pepper, fresh sage and Parmesan — and are studded with chopped pecans. An ideal nibble with a glass of dry sherry or a cocktail, they are also welcome on a cheese board.
Bread Stuffing
Mark Bittman writes that this bread stuffing, based on a James Beard recipe, has been a staple on his Thanksgiving table for decades. First you make fresh bread crumbs: just whiz a few cups of slightly stale cubes of decent bread (crust and all, unless it’s super-hard) in a food processor. Keep the crumbs very, very coarse. Cook them with plenty of butter (yes, you can use olive oil) and good seasonings. Baked in a pan, this is delicious, with or without gravy. You could use it to stuff the turkey if you’d like — but once you've tried it cooked on its own, you won't look back.
Spicy Red Pepper Cranberry Relish
A kicky condiment, usually made with cranberries, can offset the neutral (read: bland) yet rich nature of the Thanksgiving meal. This hot red-pepper cranberry relish with jalapeños and cayenne fits the bill. You can keep the seasoning somewhat tame, or ramp up the heat to taste. It will keep for 2 weeks or so; make it in advance, as soon as cranberries are available, and have it on hand in the fridge through the holiday season.
Cranberry-Cheddar Gougères
Rose Apple Tart
This striking tart is all about the apples, and — believe it or not — it’s fairly simple to make. The crust is the pat-in-the-pan variety, and a mandoline makes quick work of slicing. For the most beautiful results, use firm tart apples with red or pink skin like Honeycrisp, Empire or Cortland, and stand the slices up vertically, rather than laying them flat. This tart is best the day it's made, but the shell can be made a day in advance, if you’d like to break up the work a bit. If you keep vanilla sugar in your pantry, this would be a great place for it. A sprinkle of cardamom wouldn’t hurt either. However you choose to embellish, make sure to use a smooth apricot jam, rather than chunky preserves, for a smooth finish.
Blondies With a Strawberry-Balsamic Swirl
Most blond brownie recipes rely on copious amounts of brown sugar for flavor, without calling for any chocolate. These, from "Marbled, Swirled and Layered" by Irvin Lin, are an excellent exception. Using white chocolate that has been roasted and caramelized, they have a rich, buttery character with a peppery undertone from a bit of extra-virgin olive oil whisked into the batter. A swirl of homemade balsamic strawberry compote gives them a vein of jammy fruit amid all the sweet, gooey cake. Stored in an airtight container at room temperature, they keep for up to 3 days.
Microwave Pralines
Cranberry Parker House Rolls
Here's a delightful, tangy twist on the fluffy breadbasket staple; cranberry butter is brushed between two layers of dough then baked until golden. They're fun, they're unexpected, they're delicious. (Bonus: they can be made ahead and frozen up to two weeks before.)
Turkey Gravy From Scratch
The stock can be made weeks ahead; so can the gravy itself. The golden turkey fat from the roasting pan is reserved and forms the base for a rich roux. The finished gravy freezes beautifully and only needs to be whisked in a hot pan and tasted for salt and pepper before serving.
Sour-Cherry Sauce
Salty Pluff Mud Pie
Community-supported agriculture takes many forms these days, but only in Charleston, S.C., will you find a C.S.A. for pie. Amy Robinette, who grew up in Spartanburg, S.C., is committed to adapting Southern desserts, which have often come to rely on supersweet and artificial ingredients, back to real food. In her kitchen, the chocolate chess pie her grandmother always made — filled with white sugar, evaporated milk, and cocoa powder — has been adapted to local ingredients. The pie gets its name from “pluff” mud, the sticky, sulfurous sediment that lines the bottom of the South Carolina tidal marshes; some say it is the true source of Lowcountry flavor. (Don't let making your own pie crust intimidate you: our pie guide has everything you need to know.)
White Chocolate Truffles
White chocolate does not engender feelings of neutrality; typically, one either loves or hates it. These truffles, adapted from the pastry chef and cookbook author Nick Malgieri, are unapologetically sweet and rich, everything one loves (or hates) about the controversial ivory sweet. This ingredient list is short (just five!), but quality is key. Skip the supermarket white chocolate chips and invest in a good brand like Valrhona or Callebaut.
Popcorn Crunch
Apple Crumb Crostata
When I saw my mother making her apple turnover, I knew company was coming. I also knew the dough scraps would be my treat. She’d roll them in sugar and cinnamon, bake them and we’d enjoy the flaky, light, buttery morsels together with a cold glass of milk. My mom’s specialty was that apple turnover. Mine, apple crostata. I love its organic shape, and fact that it doesn’t require a dish or pie pan. And because the crostata is baked directly on a sheet pan, it retains its flakiness better than a pie.
Peanut Brittle
Here is a recipe for the easiest candy to make: brittle. The only thing even remotely tricky about it is getting the sugar to the tint of brown you want -- not too light, and definitely not too dark, which can happen in a flash. You can use any nut you want with this, but do add some salt if you use unsalted nuts.
Cane Syrup Popcorn Balls
Cane syrup, a caramelized, concentrated version of pure cane juice, is one of the basic flavors of southern Louisiana, where about half the sugar cane in the United States is grown. Here, use it to give popcorn balls a deep, buttery caramel taste, perfect for a Halloween treat. Make sure to butter your hands well before shaping the mixture into balls. And if you live outside a region where you can get cane syrup, try Lyle’s Golden Syrup, a British sweetener often found in supermarket baking aisles.
Squash Stuffed With Vegetables
Charred Tangerines on Toast
For an unexpectedly good hors d’oeuvre, char tangerines. Yes, tangerines. Letting the blackened citrus steep in an herby oil yields a sweet, silky and pleasantly bitter result. They’re delicious on baguette toasts with just a spoonful of the oil, flaky salt and cracked black pepper. Or serve them with rich crème fraîche, ricotta, prosciutto or leftover ham, which offsets the sourness of the citrus.
Maple-Pecan Bourbon Balls
The bourbon ball was created in 1938 by Ruth Hanly Booe, a former Kentucky school teacher turned candy maker. The creamy original was whisky-spiked, covered with chocolate and topped with a pecan. Modern-day versions, like this one, are simpler to put together: Vanilla wafers, toasted pecans, cocoa powder, confectioners' sugar and bourbon are combined in a food processor, rolled into balls and dunked in melted chocolate or rolled in confectioners' sugar. Ours also includes a bit of maple syrup for added depth. Bar chocolate, as opposed to chocolate chips, works much better for enrobing candies because chocolate chips have less cocoa butter and become too thick to coat evenly when melted.
Sugared Cranberries
These little gems are the perfect garnish for just about any dessert, and they are delicious on their own, too. They are pleasantly sweet, tart, and addictively crunchy. Standard granulated sugar is what you need here, but vanilla sugar is really nice if you have it.