Dessert
3848 recipes found
White Bark Balls
Brandied Pumpkin Pie
Pumpkin pie made with canned pumpkin is all well and good, but pumpkin pie made with fresh butternut squash purée is even better. Thin-skinned and easy to cut, butternut squash turns soft and velvety if you roast it, and a quick whirl in the food processor or a blender quickly reduces to it to a luscious purée. Here we’ve kept the seasonings on the light side to best showcase the character of the squash. But feel free to amp up the cinnamon and ginger if you like a spicier slice. The brandy is optional, and if you’d rather not use it, you can leave it out or substitute another spirit; bourbon is excellent. (Don't let making your own pie crust intimidate you: our pie guide has everything you need to know.)
Buttermilk Layer Cake
Though there is nothing wrong with a bakery cake — all those gorgeous piped roses! — there is really nothing better than a homemade cake. Homemade cakes say, "It is perfectly fine to stuff into my smallish home, play pin the tail on the donkey and leave with a loot bag holding edible bracelets and a plastic puzzle that will break in a week." Take back childhood, people! Here is a marvelous recipe adapted from “The Joy of Cooking,” which calls out lustily for a chocolate frosting.
Marbled Tahini Cookies
Inky black tahini gives these cookies their dark swirl, sandy texture and nutty taste, which is reminiscent of halvah. But, if you can’t get your hands on black tahini, simply omit it. Instead, add 1/2 cup plain tahini to all the dough in Step 4, and skip Step 5. The crunchy black sanding-sugar edge makes them truly modern, but you can also use black sesame seeds or turbinado sugar to adorn the cookies.
Color-Field Cookies
This tribute to the artist Ellsworth Kelly’s work “Nine Colors,” requires just one decorating skill: mixing colors. Use gel food coloring for the best results, and blend the colors together gradually, using the tip of a toothpick to control their transformation. For muted tones, add a touch of brown, or a complementary color, like a drop of purple to bright orange. Try a mixing lighter color first. Then, once you’ve used it, make it darker. For example, sky blue can be deepened with the addition of royal blue, navy blue or a combination. Don’t feel tied to the colors produced in Kelly’s work, but rather, think of these as an experiment in color.
Mexican Buñuelos With Piloncillo Syrup
These buñuelos, which are made by deep-frying dough shaped like a disk, are typically eaten year-round as a street food in Mexico. But buñuelos are most popular around the Christmas season when many people make them on Nochebuena, or Christmas Eve. The ingredients in buñuelos vary depending on the region, but this version is adapted from Mely Martínez, a food blogger and the author of “The Mexican Home Kitchen: Traditional Home-Style Recipes That Capture the Flavors and Memories of Mexico.” The dough is rolled out flat, and though it’s not called for here, can be laid on an inverted bowl covered with a pastry cloth or parchment to stretch it even thinner (similar to when women flattened the dough on their knees) to make a crispy, paper-thin buñuelo. The finished buñuelos are topped with granulated sugar and spiced syrup made with cinnamon, anise, orange zest and piloncillo, a raw form of cane sugar.
Royal Fans
Abstract Art Cookies
Some cookies feature tightly piped designs that require a master draftsman’s talents. That’s not this cookie, which looks best decorated with a looser hand. Here, sugar cookie dough is flavored with rosemary and lemon zest, baked, coated with lemony glaze, and sprinkled with crushed pistachios, freeze-dried raspberries, rose petals and pomegranate seeds. Finally, they are drizzled with a bit of pink glaze, Jackson Pollock-style. Each one looks like a little abstract painting, no special skills needed.
Graham Cracker Crust
Everyone loves pie, but not everyone loves the sometimes-finicky task of making a traditional rolled-out pie crust. For them, there is this press-in crust made with just graham cracker crumbs, sugar, salt and butter. It works best with fillings that don't require the structure and heft of traditional pie dough, like this Key lime pie or this ube pie.
Tangerine-Scented Almond Cookies
Rich with almonds and flavored with tangerine, these simple, no-bake cookies are adapted from a version found in Aglaia Kremezi’s "Foods of the Greek Islands." It's the perfect summer sweet to make when just the thought of turning on the oven makes one wilt.
Crème Brûlée Pie
This crowd-pleasing dessert imitates the velvety custard and caramelized sugar shell of a crème brûlée, with the added bonus of a flaky crust. A food processor makes easy work of the all-butter pie shell, which can be chilled, then baked, a day in advance. Unlike with traditional crème brûlée, there’s no need to simmer the cream on a stovetop or use a blow torch, ramekins or water bath to pull this dessert together. The filling is simply blended together, baked in the pie shell, then chilled. Broil the pie just before serving to achieve that characteristic crackle on top; like a typical crème brûlée, the filling will be delicate, loose and delightfully wobbly.
Chocolate Mug Cake
If you Google “mug cake,” you’ll get more than 100 million results for the one-serving cake that’s baked in a mug in the microwave. Yet finding the right recipe — not too dense, not too sweet — is harder than one might hope. This version, adapted from “Baking Class: 50 Fun Recipes Kids Will Love to Bake!” by Deanna F. Cook, is great, and requires just a few pantry staples. For a molten chocolate mug cake, sprinkle the top with some mini chocolate chips before popping it into the microwave, then remove it a few seconds early. This cute little cake may have been developed for children, but everyone loves it.
Gingerbread Cookies
These traditional cookies came to The Times by way of Jennifer Steinhauer in an article about her grandmother's beloved Christmas cookie recipes. Isabelle Steinhauer would bake between “15 and 20 varieties each season: cream cheese wreaths shot from a cookie press; papery wafers carefully dipped in colored sugar; elaborate cutout cookies of nursery rhyme characters, their eyes fashioned from metallic dragées that the F.D.A. has written off as inedible; all manner of confections with nuts.” There's nothing fancy about these gingerbread cookies, but they are tender, gently spiced (feel free to add more to taste) and completely wonderful with a glass of cold milk. If you don't like using shortening, some readers have had good luck using half solid coconut oil and half softened butter instead.
Gingery Brownie Crinkle Cookies
These chocolate cookies are irresistible warm from the oven, when the chips or chunks inside are still luxuriously liquidy. They then cool to a fudgy, brownielike texture with a chewy edge — if any manage to stay around that long. Both fresh and candied ginger lend sophistication, but feel free to leave them out if you want a pure chocolate experience. These cookies are also ideal for late-night cravings: You can be eating them 30 minutes after you start measuring the cocoa powder.
Homemade Twinkies
Dispirited by the possible demise in 2012 of Hostess, the company that makes Twinkies, Ho Hos, and Hostess cupcakes, Jennifer Steinhauer began to wonder if she could make Hostess snack cakes, as well as other much-loved junk food from the past, in her own kitchen. She started with this classic, the Twinkie, by buying a canoe pan, which conveniently came with a cream injector. This recipe is a traditional sponge cake-style recipe, with whipped egg whites and sugar forming the base, then filled by cream injector with seven-minute frosting. Neighbors were delighted when she shared the results, but it was short lived. By the next day, the cake had absorbed the cream -- so make sure to eat them fast.
Blackberry Jam Cake With Caramel Icing
Birthday Cake With Sherry Glaze
If you are a reluctant baker and make only one cake a year, let it be a birthday cake for someone you love. There is so little effort and so much glory to the project. A two-layer cake is simple to produce, but if even that seems daunting, no complaints will arise from a golden Bundt cake. In our times, the simple fact of a homemade cake is enough to impress. Drizzling a liquid glaze over the cake is much easier than frosting, just as pretty, and does not require alarming specialty gadgets such as an "offset spatula."
Cazuela
Puerto Rican cazuela, a richly spiced crustless pie with a texture between thick custard and bread pudding, is a unique dessert with a complex history. The name means “cooking pot” in Spanish, and the key ingredients — batata (white sweet potato), pumpkin and coconut milk — and the traditional cooking process speak to the island’s African ancestry. Flavored with ginger, cloves, cinnamon and anise, this dish also includes spices brought to the Caribbean during the spice trade. Cazuela has been prepared since at least the 19th century, and today it’s largely reserved for holidays. This version is an adaptation of the classic, with sweet plantain added for flavor, and a tip for using canned ingredients. While this dessert may seem challenging at first glance, it is incredibly adaptable and can be prepared days in advance in a casserole dish, ramekins or even foil cupcake tins.
White House Apple Cake
Iced Oatmeal Cookies
These extra craggy oatmeal cookies start by beating sugar with eggs, instead of mixing the typical way: creaming butter and sugar first. This method gives the cookies a crusty exterior, which eventually cracks, creating deep fissures along the surface over centers that are still gooey and chewy. With a couple of teaspoons of cinnamon (or pumpkin pie spice) and vanilla for flavor, they make a wonderful and simple pantry cookie to bake over and over again. Don’t skip the final step: These cookies are visually and texturally incomplete without their classic coat of glossy white icing.
Limber de Coco
Originating in Puerto Rico and coming in many flavors, limber is named after the pilot Charles A. Lindbergh, who landed on the island in 1928. According to El Nuevo Día, Puerto Rico’s newspaper of record, he was greeted with this delicious frozen juice, which came to be called limber, it’s said, after how many on the island pronounced the pilot’s name. In New York, this simple dessert may be one of the best things about summers in the Bronx. Serve it in cups — squeeze the cups, take your first lick, then turn the dessert upside-down — or as ice cubes. The cubes are especially nice in coconut-flavored rum after a long day. It’s the much-needed cool-off you’re yearning for.
Peanut Shortbread With Honeycomb
A giant crumbly peanut cookie topped with airy honeycomb and lashed with dark chocolate, this recipe is especially good if you love salty-sweet flavors, and fun to eat too, since you break off shards to serve. Honeycomb candy is one of the easiest confections to make, but, like any candy, it requires careful attention to timing and safety. It’s helpful to have a clip-on candy thermometer to tell you when the sugar is at the right temperature, and you’ll want to transfer the hot sugar mixture to a large bowl. Doing so not only ensures that there is plenty of room for the dramatic billowing that occurs when the baking soda is added, but it also slows the cooking, to avoid burning. This recipe yields quite a lot of pieces, making its perfect for packing into tins for gifts.
Pumpkin Flan
This flan recipe comes from Margarita Velasco, who left Cuba for America when she was 10. She got it from a relative who for years made it when Ms. Velasco and her family would gather for big American-style Thanksgiving dinners. Ms. Velasco makes it with three kinds of squash: butternut, a cooking pumpkin like a calabaza and canned pumpkin. But it works just as well with a mix of pulp from the squash and the pumpkin, which you can get by cutting them into large chunks, seeding them and then roasting or boiling. In a pinch, you could use canned pumpkin.
Sesame Candy
This sesame candy is a traditional Chinese candy that is available year-round but also eaten during the Lunar New Year celebrations. This recipe produces a slightly chewy candy, with some crunch on the sides. It’s a relatively easy candy to make, but you’ll want to follow the directions closely when preparing the syrup. The addition of water helps to evenly dissolve the sugar as the syrup cooks. Do not stir the sugar as it cooks or it will crystallize, forming small clumps instead of a smooth syrup. It can be hard to see a visual cue when toasting black sesame seeds. A subtle indication that they are toasted is that they feel a bit hollow compared to before they are toasted — or you can simply trust their scent: They’ll smell fragrant and toasted.