Easter
563 recipes found
No-Bake Chocolate Mousse Bars
Ethereal and ready to melt in your mouth, chocolate mousse bars are easy to make and even easier to eat. With so few ingredients, it’s important to use a chocolate you would be perfectly happy to snack out of hand. The instant espresso powder is optional but adds depth to this simple dessert. To cut beautiful, neat slices, use a long sharp knife warmed in hot water and wiped clean before each cut.
Blueberry Pie Bars
At first glance, these bars may look like every other fruit crumble bar you’ve had, but they have a secret. Between the jammy fruit and buttery shortbread is a bonus layer of sweetened cream cheese you never knew you needed until now. Wild blueberries are less watery than conventional blueberries and have a more concentrated blueberry flavor that works beautifully in this recipe. They are available frozen and need not be thawed before using, but you can use whichever variety you find. These bars will be delicious no matter what.
Roasted Green Beans With Pancetta and Lemon Zest
This simple, bright green bean dish is as welcome alongside weeknight salmon as it is a Thanksgiving turkey. Green beans are delicious roasted at a high temperature and take just 15 minutes to cook, which particularly important on Thanksgiving when oven space is precious. Trim the green beans ahead of time, and this dish will come together in a flash. Many grocery stores sell packages of diced pancetta, a shortcut that makes this recipe a cinch. If you’re dicing the pancetta yourself, make sure to chop it very finely so it roasts in time with the green beans. (This recipe is easily halved: Simply cut the quantities in half and roast all the green beans on one sheet pan. The cooking time will remain the same.)
Sautéed Kale
This is a technique that elevates basic sauteed greens into something even more savory and tender.
Roasted Broccoli With Tahini Garlic Sauce
One of my favorite Middle Eastern mezze is deep-fried cauliflower served with tahini garlic sauce. I decided to try the dish with broccoli, but instead of deep-frying the broccoli I roasted it, a method that requires a lot less oil. The buds on the broccoli florets toast to a crispy brown, and the texture of the stalk remains crisp. It goes wonderfully with the classic and irresistible tahini garlic sauce.
Broccoli Salad With Garlic and Sesame
This salad is made from uncooked broccoli tossed with an assertive garlic, sesame, chile and cumin-seed vinaigrette slicked with good extra-virgin olive oil and red wine vinegar. The acid “cooks” the florets a little as ceviche does fish. After an hour, the broccoli softens as if blanched, turning bright emerald, and soaking up all the intense flavors of the dressing. You’ll be making this one again.
Carrot Tart With Ricotta and Feta
Carrots work beautifully in this simple tart, but onions, parsnips, beets, zucchini or pumpkin work just as well. The key is to cook the vegetables before putting them on the tart, since the moisture released by baking raw vegetables would make the puff pastry soggy and prevent it from rising. Once you remove the tart from the oven, let it cool for 10 minutes before cutting to allow the cheese to firm up slightly. The tart can be served warm, or cooled to room temperature, and would make a great addition to a picnic.
One-Bowl Carrot Cake
The tangy, rich cream cheese topping on this cake can travel — even on a hot day. Silky with sour cream, it bakes right over the batter and develops a caramelized flavor reminiscent of Basque cheesecake. As it cools, the deeply browned surface ripples, and the custardy cream cheese layer sets. The carrot cake beneath packs more carrots than most classic versions for a more complex natural sweetness and fine, sturdy crumb. Both batters are mixed by hand in the same bowl, making prep and clean up especially easy.
Buttery Breakfast Casserole
The word “buttery” in the title refers to croissants, which make an especially rich foundation for this golden-topped baked breakfast classic. Toasting the croissants before building the casserole adds caramelized notes that can stand up to the bits of browned sausage, sage and melted Gruyère strewn throughout. Make this the night before a special breakfast or brunch, then pop it in the oven an hour before you plan to serve it.
Creamy Double-Garlic Mashed Potatoes
Roasted garlic is the secret to these deeply flavored mashed potatoes with a lively crunch from garlic chips. This dish takes a little more planning and prep than your average mashed potatoes, but it is well worth the effort. You can roast and fry the garlic and peel the potatoes ahead of time, storing the prepared potatoes submerged in water in the refrigerator for up to 12 hours before cooking. Feel free to use either red or russet potatoes here: Red potatoes will make a thick and creamy mash, while russets will yield a lighter and fluffier result (see Tip). If you run short on time, trim the garlic chips from your to-do list. Canned fried onions from your local supermarket, or fried shallots or fried garlic flakes from most Asian markets provide the same jolt of texture on top.
Fluffy Mashed Potatoes
For the silkiest fluffy mashed potatoes, start with firm, cool Russet Burbank spuds, also known as baking potatoes. They’re the easiest to mash without becoming pasty and are even tastier steamed instead of boiled. Boiling potatoes can leave them waterlogged, diluting their earthy subtle sweetness, but steaming them preserves their inherent flavor. As the potatoes soften, they absorb just the right amount of moisture. Seasoning the dish only at the very end heightens their intrinsic subtle sweetness. If you have a ricer, use it for an exceptionally smooth texture: Press the steamed potatoes through the ricer back into the pot, then gently fold in the butter and milk with a wooden spoon or flexible spatula.
Pickleback Slaw
Those artisanal pickles from the farmers’ market sure are expensive, so don’t throw out the juice in which they’re pickled. You can serve the stuff as a shot to accompany a glass of whiskey and a cold beer, as the New York chef Zakary Pelaccio has done, or you can whisk it into the dressing used for coleslaw, as is done here. Don’t have any? Never fear: a few tablespoons of relish from the market will offer a similar effect.
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.
Zucchini and Egg Tart With Fresh Herbs
Store-bought puff pastry makes easy work of this colorful tart, adapted from “The Modern Cook’s Year,” a vegetarian cookbook by the British author Anna Jones. When you’re rolling out puff pastry, thin flatbread or any other flattened dough, invert the baking sheet so you can unfurl the dough directly on it without the rim getting in the way of your rolling pin. Then parbake the tart without toppings first so that the base cooks through before it’s slathered with crème fraîche, piled with a mess of vegetables and eggs, and returned to the oven to finish. (You’ll want to bake just until the whites of the eggs start to look glossy and custardy, not firm.) Top with any torn, tender herbs you have on hand, like small parsley sprigs, chives, tarragon or dill, cut into quarters, and serve warm.
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.
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.
Vegan Chocolate Pudding Pie
This vegan pie pairs a thick, creamy, chile- and cinnamon-laced pudding from Mark Bittman with a graham cracker crust adapted from the cookbook "Vegan Pie in the Sky." The pudding, whose flavors recall Mexican hot chocolate, can also stand alone. It's made with silken tofu, and it comes together in 10 minutes in the blender, which whips in air for a mousse-like texture. The chocolate is of the utmost importance here; its flavor will be the one that dominates, so be sure to buy the highest quality you can. Top with shaved chocolate if you'd like.
Avgolemono Rice
This avgolemono rice uses lamb stock because we love its connection to the roast leg of lamb at Easter, but you can happily use chicken stock at any time of year. The rice is cooked “pasta style,” in plenty of boiling salted water and drained when done, which is how we cook rice pretty much all the time now, dodging the sometimes mushy, sometimes waterlogged, sometimes al dente results of the usual cooking method. The egg-lemon sauce is tart and creamy at the same time, a unique richness without any cream or butter, that is killer almost anywhere it lands, from warm asparagus, to gently roasted salmon, to cold poached chicken, to steamed artichokes, even to orzo pasta.
Classic Brioche
A classic brioche should be tender, eggy and contain croissant levels of rich, delicious butter. Sure, it requires a stand mixer (incorporating the butter by hand wouldn't be possible by most bakers' standards) and 24 hours, but the results are bakery-worthy. It can be made in one day, but an overnight stay in the refrigerator will not only give the dough a deeper flavor, but it will also firm up the butter, making the dough easier to shape and handle when it comes time to bake.
Cheddar Beer Bread Rolls
These cheesy rolls pack a lot of flavor considering their short ingredient list. Thanks to the beer, they’re also especially light and fluffy, taking any meal to the next level. But they're also perfect all on their own, slathered with butter.
Cheesy Garlic-Potato Monkey Bread
This savory monkey bread begins with a yeasted dough made with mashed potatoes, which helps make it the extra light and fluffy. Each round of dough is coated in garlic butter, cheese (Parmesan and white cheddar), and a generous dose of coarse black pepper. Think of it as cacio e pepe monkey bread. It’s best served warm. The dough rises overnight in the refrigerator, which makes this recipe especially great when you’re looking to plan ahead.
Brussels Sprouts With Walnuts and Pomegranate
Roasting brussels sprouts brings out their nutty sweetness and keeps them crisp-crunchy around the edges. Tossing them with walnuts and tangy, jewel-like pomegranate seeds adds texture and brightness. It’s worth seeking out pomegranate molasses (widely available in most large grocery stores) to finish this dish. But if you can't find it, don’t let it stop you from make this celebration-worthy side.
Key Lime Pie Bars With Vanilla Wafer Crust
Some say that a Key lime’s juice is slightly more floral than that of its more well-known cousin, the Persian lime, the kind you can find in every supermarket and corner deli. Key limes are hard to find, though, so use bottled Key lime juice or conventional lime juice in this easy recipe that's great for a crowd.
Mimosa
Like most mixed drinks, the Mimosa, that brunch staple, is better when the ingredients are of high quality. This doesn’t mean you should use that incredible bottle of Champagne you were given as a birthday present, but it does mean you should use a good, dry sparkling wine that tastes delicious without the addition of fruit juice. Cava, which may bring to mind Champagne more than prosecco does, is also substantially lower in price. As to the juice, squeeze it fresh — from whatever sorts of orange citrus you like best — and strain it.