New Year’s Day
363 recipes found
Spinach and Gruyère Breakfast Casserole
Filled with sautéed spinach and nutty Gruyère mixed into a nutmeg and lemon-scented custard, this breakfast casserole is a rich, meatless option for a special occasion breakfast or brunch. Like most of its kind, you can assemble the casserole the day before you want to bake it, then pop it in the oven an hour or so before serving. It will emerge puffed and golden on top, ready for its star-turn on any festive table.
Big Chocolate Tart
For how elegant this looks and how complex it tastes, this dessert is incredibly easy to put together. Instead of a dense ganache filling, this one has a shiny top that hovers between the delicate softness of custard and the creaminess of pudding. The crisp-tender cocoa crust is pressed only into the bottom and forgoes the usual sides of a tart because it’s baked in a standard metal cake pan. Not only is this easier to pull off — no rolling sticky pastry or trying to unmold it after baking — it makes a tart big enough to feed a crowd. With a pure chocolate taste that’s great on its own, it also can be customized: simply sprinkle each piece with toppings of your choice.
Spiced Vegetable Phyllo Pie
In this spectacular meatless meal, crisp sheets of buttery, golden phyllo surround vegetables and chickpeas stewed with sweet spices, preserved lemon and earthy turmeric. You can prepare the vegetable stew the day before; just reheat it so it's warm when it meets the phyllo pastry. Once it’s baked, you can serve this hot or at room temperature, making it perfect for a party. Since it’s baked on a sheet pan, it makes enough to feed a crowd.
Chicken Cook-Up Rice
Hearty and satisfying, this one-pot meal combines tender coconut rice and black-eyed peas with chicken. Marinated in a slightly spicy and herbaceous green seasoning, the meat ends up deeply flavorful. The term “cook-up” is a Caribbean expression for a dish that incorporates the ingredients at hand, so it changes from cook to cook. Different iterations vary among the islands, including the types of beans and meat used. This version of cook-up rice is inspired by a one-pot Guyanese rice dish generally made on the weekends and also on New Year's Eve. With a tradition similar to American Southerners preparing black-eyed peas for a lucky new year, this beautiful dish is hearty and satisfying.
Rainbow Rave Cookies
This recipe is adapted from “Start Here: Instructions for Becoming a Better Cook” by Sohla El-Waylly and is originally titled Lisa Frank Cookies. It earns that name by being a big sucker punch of sugary nostalgia. A trio of extracts (pure vanilla, imitation vanilla and almond) is key to giving these cookies the aura of that prepackaged baked good you might’ve tucked into your lunchbox as a kid, but they’re better because you’re making them fresh. Best of all, they come together in a snap, stirred up in one bowl and baked on the same day. You can throw a rainbow rave for your mouth almost instantly.
Gingerbread Blondies
With the chewy texture of the best fudgy brownie and all the festive flavors of your favorite gingerbread cookies, these spicy bars make a bold statement for the holidays. Browning the butter gives them a deep, caramelized flavor, which rounds out the warming brown sugar and fragrant spices. The white chocolate drizzle on top is purely for looks, so feel free to leave it out if you’re short on time. These bars taste just as good without it.
Matcha Latte Cookies
This is a matcha latte in cookie form. Atop the chewy, Grinch-green cookie sits a cloud of ermine icing, an old-fashioned boiled-milk frosting (like the kind you might find in midcentury American baking and grocery-store cupcakes), whose sugared lightness balances out the more intense, bittersweet base. Out of the oven, these cookies might look puffy, but as they cool on their pans, they will continue to cook and deflate, becoming their truest chewiest selves. If you want to skip the frosting, a little powdered sugar is a lovely, snowy finish.
Lemon Butter Curls
Delicate but sturdy, these lemon butter shortbreads are perfect for a casual afternoon treat or relaxed holiday cookie. A combination of butter, egg yolks and a bit of cornstarch ensures a texture that melts in your mouth. Lemon zest adds a bright sparkle, and a light glaze of lemon juice and powdered sugar lends a tart finish. Make these into curls as shown or pipe them into any shape you prefer: Rings, squiggle or pushing the dough through a cookie press can all be fun. You also can roll and shape the dough by hand instead of piping or pressing it.
Mexican Hot Chocolate Cookies
These spiced and spicy cookies, chocolaty and brimming with molten marshmallow, are a terrific treat to keep you warm in the colder months. The dough itself is imbued with cinnamon and a bit of ground cayenne, a combination commonly found in Mexican hot chocolate that also gives these cookies a flavor reminiscent of the holidays — and a slight kick when you least expect it. The marshmallowy interior provides a wonderful chew and maintains a pillowy soft texture, even after a few days in an airtight container. Make sure to freeze the marshmallows fully to give the cookies their hallmark ripple of white peeking through their sparkly chocolate exterior. (Otherwise, the marshmallows will dissolve into the cookies as they bake.)
Technicolor Cookies
Cookies artfully decorated with royal icing are a holiday classic, but their fine details and beautiful colors can take hours to achieve. Not with these gorgeous cookies. Once the icing is made and stained, it takes only a few minutes to decorate. The icing is simply poured over the cookies, a technique inspired by the one used to pour swirly colors of mirror glaze over smooth cakes. (For a quicker alternative to royal icing, simply dip or drizzle the cookies with melted chocolate.) No two cookies will be the same, and that’s a big part of the charm. Underneath the exterior is a crisp, satisfying shortbread flavored with heaps of bright orange zest and quintessential winter spices.
Spiced Holiday Punch for Everyone
Start with a spiced, citrus base, made with lemon peels muddled with brown sugar, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, star anise, black peppercorns and tea leaves. Then, make a holiday drink your way. If you choose to spike it, reach for a favorite spirited bottle. Gin leans your drink refreshingly botanical, while whiskey feels a bit boozier and plays nicely off the base’s warming spices. If you want to make a nonalcoholic drink, simply add soda water, tonic and, if you like, a few dashes of Angostura bitters. (Note that, while the bitters lend a nice layer of flavor and depth, they do contain a small amount of alcohol, so if you’re abstaining just leave them out.) The point here is to make a drink you want to drink — and for your friend, partner, cousin or parent to make the drink they want to drink.
Neapolitan Checkerboard Cookies
This recipe combines the classic flavors of chocolate, strawberry and vanilla — reminiscent of Neapolitan ice cream — all in one bite. While the assembly may seem daunting at first, it can be a fun project, and the end result is graphic and delicious. In making a perfect checkerboard pattern, you’ll inevitably have some scraps. Roll them into a log, which can then be sliced and baked into marbled shortbreads.
Homemade Cinnamon Rolls
A few techniques produce these ultra-pillowy and lightly bready cinnamon rolls: The first is scalding the milk, which leads to improved gluten development in the dough; the second is cooking a portion of the liquid and the flour into a rouxlike mixture called a tangzhong, which, when added to the dough, increases its ability to hold onto liquid; and the third is a long, slow mix, which fully develops the gluten network and allows the buns to trap air as they bake in the oven.
Prime Rib
Prime rib, also known as a standing rib roast, is a cut of meat that makes an impressive centerpiece for a holiday meal or special occasion. There are several different ways to cook a prime rib, but the most forgiving is the reverse sear: The roast goes into the oven at a low temperature for several hours, then rests on the counter before getting a final blast of high heat. While it’s not difficult to cook, precision is important here, so you should use a meat thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the roast to test the temperature. This method works well with smaller or larger rib roasts, though the time will vary accordingly. Serve with jus and traditional side dishes, such as Yorkshire pudding, green beans and mashed potatoes.
Roasted Beef Tenderloin
A whole beef tenderloin is a splurge, an ideal party centerpiece for Christmas or any other holiday, that tastes as good hot as it does at room temperature. It also looks impressive, especially if it’s evenly rosy through the center and nicely browned on the outside. To achieve that, a combination of soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce and sugar is mixed with butter to slather all over the meat. It helps create a caramelized yet delicate deep-brown crust without the hassle of searing and gives the mild meat a more complex savory flavor. So does a classic creamy horseradish sauce. This cut would also be delicious with herby chimichurri or a rich béarnaise and goes with just about any holiday side dish. An untrimmed beef tenderloin costs a lot less than one that comes peeled and tied. Follow the tip to prepare it yourself and use the trimmings to make stock.
Wine-Braised Chicken With Mushrooms and Leeks
Adding crème fraîche and fancy mushrooms to a pan full of wine-braised chicken makes it ultrarich and extra special. This recipe is perfect for a festive dinner when you’re looking for a chicken dish that’s a little more dressed up than your average weeknight meal, but it isn’t overly difficult. Make it a day or two in advance, and, like all braises, it gets even better with time.
To Wit
Witbier, an unfiltered white beer made with wheat and spiced with coriander and citrus, lends its bready, citrusy and spicy tones and smooth texture to this Calvados-laced cocktail. To best play off the citrus notes of both the beer and orange juice, choose a citrus-forward amaro. Bonus points for saving the orange wheel to savor after you finish drinking: The cocktail’s flavors will slowly seep into the fruit, providing a refreshingly boozy snack to end on.
Midnight Fizz
While a classic gin fizz uses lemon juice, the sweet acidity of lime in this variation skews it toward a (very) frothy gimlet. To ensure plenty of that froth, use a double shake to make the cocktail: first without ice to foam the egg white, then a second time with ice to chill and dilute the drink. Serve traditionally without ice in a small Collins or fizz glass, or go rogue and serve over a few cubes. Either way, as with all egg white drinks, drink with efficiency to capitalize on the drink’s froth and avoid its inevitable separation.
Classic Champagne Cocktail
This minimalist drink of sugar that’s been soaked in bitters and topped with Champagne was first mentioned in Jerry Thomas’s book 1862 “How to Mix Drinks.” It’s both festive and resplendent with bubbles as written, but there’s also room to customize: Split the amount of Angostura bitters with a lesser-used bitter (grapefruit, celery, orange, persimmon, for example) from your bar. Trade granulated or Demerara sugar for the sugar cube: The drink’s flavor will remain the same, lacking only in the drama of the cube bubbling to its demise at the base of the glass. Finally, use Champagne if you’re on a champagne budget, and dry sparkling wine if you’re not.
Gravlax With Herb Butter
I think of making my own gravlax — the Nordic sugar-salt cured salmon — as the gentle, blue-square cooking analog of an intermediate ski trail: It’s mostly easy, but requires some experience. While butchering a whole salmon and cold smoking what you’ve butchered are also exhilarating milestones in the life of an advancing home cook (both a little farther up the mountain and a little steeper on the run down), buying a nice fillet and burying it in salt, sugar and a carpet of chopped fresh dill for a few days is a great confidence-building day on the slopes, so to speak. The cured gravlax will last a solid five days once sliced, in the refrigerator. If a whole side of salmon is more than you need at once, the rest freezes very satisfactorily.
Broiled Grapefruit With Brown Sugar and Flaky Salt
A classic at a fancy breakfast or brunch, the best broiled grapefruits have a glossy caramelized topping covering sections of the warm, juicy citrus. This recipe also includes a little cinnamon for a heady fragrance, and a touch of sea salt, which softens the bitterness of the grapefruit peel. It’s best served warm from the oven, when the brown sugar is still melted and syrupy. Ruby or pink grapefruits make for the prettiest presentation, but white ones work just as well, and have a livelier, more acidic flavor.
Batched 50-50 Martini
Martinis are bound to kick up strong opinions that tend to intensify as more martinis are consumed. Gin versus vodka. Shaken versus stirred. Dirty? How dirty? Olives, lemon twist or both? This batched recipe makes the biggest decisions for you: Gin — the spirit of choice — is paired with vermouth in equal measure, a ratio that means you and your guests can and should pour freely. From there, the drinker has full control to dirty and garnish to their heart’s content.
Speculoos Cookie Butter Pie
Traditionally served on St. Nicholas Day in Belgium and the Netherlands, crisp, gingerbread-like speculoos cookies have risen in popularity after airlines began offering them as mid-flight snacks. Cookie butter, a creamy spread, incorporate that cookie’s flavors. This easy pie uses crumbled speculoos (also known as speculaas) in its crust and the cookie butter in its filling, doubling up on the flavor of warm spices like cinnamon and ginger. The whole thing comes together in about 30 minutes. The pie is perfect all on its own, but if you want to dress it up, add some unsweetened whipped cream and a sprinkle of cookie crumbs. Avoid sweetened whipped cream, which would take this pie from sweet to cloying.
Chocolate Lava Cake for Two
Chocolate lava cakes gained popularity in the late 1990s thanks to the chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, and they have stuck around on dessert menus for good reason: They are rich chocolate cake and velvety sauce all in one, and they are surprisingly easy to make in under an hour. If you like to plan ahead, you can prepare the batter a day in advance, refrigerate it, then pop the cake into the oven when you are ready for dessert. This recipe, made in a 10-ounce baking dish, is meant for sharing, but you can also make it in two 6-ounce ramekins. Just cut the baking time to 7 to 9 minutes. Also, be sure to use chopped chocolate bars or chocolate fèves rather than chocolate chips here. Chips are made with stabilizers that inhibit melting and will negatively affect the texture of your dessert.