There are so many things to bake and so many ways to bake them, especially at this time of year. Whether you need a recipe for a cookie exchange or you want a dessert to wow your family, or you just want to stretch your skills and try something new, we have recipes for all the cookies, brownies, bars, tarts, and other treats for the season.
Where are the cake and pie recipes? Check out:
Rose Levy Beranbaum originally tasted this version of a snickerdoodle at Gramercy Tavern in New York and adapted the recipe for the home kitchen. Photo by Matthew Septimus
COOKIES
Caramel Surprise Snickerdoodles
In 1988, Rose Levy Beranbaum came out with the nearly 600-page first edition of The Cake Bible. It became a bible for bakers, the sort of cookbook you refer to again and again. In 2022, she returned with another epic book, The Cookie Bible. It's just as encyclopedic and that's where we get this recipe. Get the recipe
America's Test Kitchen Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies
Chris Kimball, the editor of Cook's Illustrated and America's Test Kitchen, shared this recipe with us. Don't brown your butter in a nonstick pan, he advises, because the dark color of the nonstick coating makes it difficult to gauge when the butter is browned. He also recommends that you use fresh, moist brown sugar instead of hardened brown sugar. Get the recipe
Roxana Jullapat's Chocolate Chip Cookies
"Grains are seasonal, we're in California and we cannot escape it," says baker Roxana Jullapat. Researching for her cookbook Mother Grains, Jullapat made pilgrimages to discover barley, buckwheat, corn, oats, rice, rye, sorghum, and wheat. Seven of the eight ancient grains can be used in her chocolate chip cookie recipe, including the rye flour she uses at her East Hollywood bakery, Friends & Family. Get the recipe
Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies
The chocolate chip cookie is a classic, and for good reason. Cookie maven Roxana Jullapat says she's made them using every grain in the book. This version calls for sorghum flour, producing beautiful golden cookies with crisp edges and soft centers. Get the recipe
Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies with Hazelnuts
This recipe comes from Shauna Ahern's book Gluten-Free Girl Every Day. One of the flours in the cookies is teff, which is traditionally used in Ethiopian injera. Ahern says that teff has notes of chocolate and molasses. She also uses another interesting ingredient — psyllium husks. While some people use gums like xantham or guar to mimic the elasticity of gluten, Shauna is allergic to those, and she says psyllium husks can be cheaper. The husks have lots of fiber and they expand in water. If you can't find whole husks, you can also buy a powdered form. Get the recipe
Gluten-Free Mexican Chocolate Cookies
These intense, flourless Mexican chocolate cookies are a great option for gluten-free eaters. "They are deeply chocolatey and take well to experimentation with additional flavors," Evan Kleiman says. She recommends adding almonds, cinnamon, a hint of coffee, or a fruity liqueur. Get the recipe
Waffled Chocolate Chip Cookies
Dan Shumski wrote the book Will It Waffle?, a celebration of the waffle iron's ability to cook non-waffles. He has been a guest on Good Food to discuss his passion for waffleizing everything from hamburgers to smores to chocolate chip cookies. Get the recipe
Rugelach
If anyone knows cookies, it's baking guru Dorie Greenspan. She has a wealth of suggestions for making tip-top rugelach. Her most recent book, Baking With Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple, applies her years of professional experience to relatively easy recipes that you can dive into. Get the recipe
Bride's Bonn
Coinneach MacLeod hails from the Isle of Lewis, the northernmost island in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. As a man who loves his kilts, canines, and cookies, he became a TikTok superstar — The Hebridean Baker — during the pandemic. From traditional shortbread to vegetarian haggis, Coinneach MacLead shares his recipes from the Isle of Lewis in The Hebridean Baker: Recipes and Wee Stories from the Scottish Islands. Shetland Bride's Bonn was traditionally baked by the mother of the bride and broken over the bride's head as she entered the marital home after the wedding ceremony. Guests would scramble to get a piece of the broken shortbread to put under their pillow that night, as it was supposed to give you sweet dreams. Get the recipe
Sablé Cookies
What are sablé cookies? Thin and crisp, they're French salted butter cookies. They're similar to shortbread sablés and have lots of eggs and less butter than shortbread cookies. Scroll down at the link here to get Dorie Greenspan's recipe. Get the recipe
Peanut Butter and Bacon Cookies
Bacon in a cookie? Okay, why not. The texture of these cookies is dense and chewy but still tender. Ideally, you should use stabilized peanut butter. There are organic brands like Once Again Nut Butter which are perfect for these cookies. If you prefer natural-style peanut butter, be sure to stir it well before incorporating it into the dough. Get the recipe
Ma'amoul Cookies
Ma'moul cookies, butter cookies that are usually filled with dried fruits like dates and nuts, are served during celebrations like Ramadan. But you don't have to wait for a special occasion to break these out. This recipe comes to us from Soha Yassine of the Islamic Center of Southern California. Get the recipe
Gluten-Free Buckwheat Linzer Cookies
Buckwheat has a lovely earthy flavor. When it's ground into flour, its color is extraordinary. In this recipe from Flavor Flours, Alice Medrich pairs buckwheat with the butter to create a sandy sablé cookie. "I think it's a particularly beautiful cookie, at once familiar and just different enough to seem special for the holidays especially when paired with a purple or red jam," says Evan Kleiman. Get the recipe
Dark and rich with no nuts, food writer Leah Hyslop's favorite brownie could captan "Team Fudgey". Photo by Lauren Mclean
BROWNIES & BARS
Ultimate Fudgy Brownies
Leah Hyslop likes brownies so much she wrote a whole book about them. The Brownie Diaries features recipes for lemon blondies, Easter brownies, and holiday brownies with apricots baked into them (they're ideal for spring). But if she could only eat one brownie for the rest of her days, this would be it. "Dark and rich, without nuts or other extras to distract from its bewitchingly oozy center, I promise it will fill any hole in your life," she says. Get the recipe
Grilled Brownies
Valerie Gordon, the mastermind behind Valerie Confections, loves to experiment. While traveling through Texas, she fell in love with the rituals of Southern barbecue. She began wanting to contribute her own expertise to the grilling world. But when she looked up BBQ-ready confections, all she found was grilled fruit. She began playing with cast iron skillets and smokers and ended up with these smokey, gooey brownies. Get the recipe
Rye Chocolate Brownies
When working with alternative grains, pastry chef Claire Ptak says the key is not to mask the ingredients' natural flavors and textures. Instead, she works to highlight them. Her rye chocolate brownies are inspired by Tartine Bakery's Chad Robertson, whom she credits for her switch from spelt flour to whole grain rye flour. The result is a "chewy, rich, gooey, nutty chocolate treat." Get the recipe
Robert's Favorite Fudgy Brownies
When your last name is Scharffenberger and you've written a book called The Essence of Chocolate, we figure you ought to know something about chocolate. John Scharffenberger shared this recipe with us in 2006. Get the recipe
Nancy Zaslavsky's Chocolate-Chile Mole Brownies
Add some cinnamon, ancho chile powder and sesame seeds to classic brownies and boom, you've got an even more delicious and slightly spicy treat, courtesy of Nancy Zaslavsky. Get the recipe
Naomi Duguid's recipe for Miso-Espresso Caramel Custard was inspired by a flan from David Leibovitz. Photo by Richard Jung
SWEETS & TREATS
Miso-Espresso Caramel Custard
Naomi Duguid loves crème caramel. That's why she decided to use miso to flavor the custard with both miso and espresso, rather than the caramel itself. The salt in the miso mellows the bitter edge of the coffee. She recommends using a red miso. You can make this recipe in a loaf pan or in ramekins. Get the recipe
Skillet S'mores
So you love s'mores but you think the traditional method of making them (with a stick or a skewer) is too messy and inelegant for a holiday meal? We have the perfect alternative. Ashley Jones is such a big fan of cast iron cookware, she has written two books about it. Her latest is Skilletheads: A Guide to Collecting and Restoring Cast-Iron Cookware, and that's where this recipe comes from. Get the recipe
Cashew and Cardamom Fudge (Soy Paneer Kaju Barfi)
One of the most versatile, and surprising, uses for tofu is in dessert. This recipe from Andrea Nguyen's cookbook Asian Tofu: Discover the Best, Make Your Own, Cook it at Home is a perfect example. Get the recipe
Champagne Gelée
Valerie Gordon opened Valerie Confections in 2004. This recipe for Champagne Gelée comes from her cookbook Sweet. If you aren't lucky enough to have gold-rimmed Dorothy Thorpe glasses and a gold spoon, she suggests serving it in a similar see-through vessel so you can capture the beautiful champagne color. Get the recipe
Norwegian Pancakes
Nevada Berg, author of Norwegian Baking Through the Seasons, says these pancakes couple the sweetness of strawberries with a caramel sauce made with traditional brown cheese. It's a nod to the Norwegian farms where brown cheese, fresh fruit jams, and flat cakes (which are similar to griddle cakes) are staples. To get nicely browned and bubbly pancakes, cook over a higher heat and add butter. Get the recipe
Halva
Typically made from a thick paste of flour, butter or oil, then sweetened with sugar or honey and seasoned with saffron, rosewater, cocoa powder or sesame seeds, halva is a popular sweet throughout Armenia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, the Middle East and India. Journalist Liana Aghajanian wrote about the treat in the anthology We Are All Armenian: Voices from the Diaspora. This is her family's recipe. Get the recipe
Deep-fried Dessert Dumplings with Rum and Poppy Seeds
Dumplings don't have to be savory! This recipe, which comes from Zuza Zak's 2023 book, Pierogi: Over 50 Recipes to Create Perfect Polish Dumplings, has a complicated history. Its roots lie in Warsaw but it recalls southern Polish/Slovak cuisine. Get the recipe
Cinnamon & Spice Cream Cheese Rolls
Good and Cheap author Leanne Brown describes these as "comfort on comfort on comfort." They're like cinnamon rolls but the cream cheese frosting is baked in with the dough instead of slathered on top so there's "no sad, dry part in the middle, only a sublime final bite." Get the recipe
Halo Halo
This recipe for the popular Filipino parfait-style dessert halo halo (which means "mix mix") comes from award-winning Republique pastry chef Margarita Manzke, who also wrote Baking at Republique. "It's the quintessential Filipino dessert," she says. "And it's got all kinds of stuff: beans, fruit, just weird stuff." Scroll down the page for her recipe. Get the recipe
Gale Gand's Applesauce Cake
What do you do when you have too many apples this time of year? Make applesauce. Then, make this cake. Don't worry, you can also buy a jar of applesauce to use in this recipe. Get the recipe
Chocolate Bourbon Balls
Want an easy and very grown-up dessert? Try Abby Dodge's Chocolate Bourbon Balls from her book Desserts 4 Today. Amazingly enough, the recipe contains only four ingredients. Get the recipe
Gluten-Free Cinnamon Pavlova, Praline Cream and Fresh Figs
This is a stunning dessert for a special occasion.It also has a nice element of surprise, as the meringue base is not quite what you might expect: gooey, almost toffee-like — rather than dry and crispy. This is due to the brown sugar in the mix. Combined with the praline cream and fresh figs, it's absolutely delicious. You can thank Sweet: Desserts from London's Ottolenghi. Get the recipe
Cynthia Nims' Caramel-Masala Popcorn and Pistachios
Here's a recipe that makes caramel corn even more addictive thanks to garam masala, chopped toasted pistachios and brown-sugar. It comes from Cynthia Nims, author of Salty Snacks: Make Your Own Chips, Crisps, Crackers, Pretzels, Dips, and Other Savory Bites. Get the recipe
When you get lemons, why not make a lemon tart? Photo credit: Vincent Toesca/Unsplash
TARTS
Lemon Meringue Tarts with Canned Lemon Curd
When Mary Tregellas, author of Homemade Preserves and Jams: Over 90 Recipes for Luscious Jams, Tangy Marmalades, Crunchy Chutneys, and More, transformed the classic lemon meringue pie into a tart and canned her own lemon curd, we had to share it. Get the recipe
Lazy Mary's Lemon Tart
This recipe comes to us from former LA Times food editor Russ Parsons, who picked it up from Food52. If you have citrus trees in your backyard and you're looking for ways to use up that backyard bounty, this lemon tart is ideal. Get the recipe
Lime Meringue Tart from Meg Ray of Miette in San Francisco
Meg Ray, founder of Miette and author of Miette: Recipes from San Francisco's Most Charming Pastry Shop, says this tart started with the combined desire to reinvent Key lime pie and to find another use for Boiled Icing. Unlike traditional graham cracker crusts, which are made with cookie crumbs, the crust for this tart is made using the dough and baked off like a regular tart shell. You'll likely end up with extra lime curd. Cover it tightly and you can store it in the refrigerator for a week, or frozen for up to two months. Get the recipe
Brown Butter Fig Tart with Whipped Goat Cheese and Hyssop Honey
Licorice is one of those flavors that people either love or hate. Spencer Bezaire, formerly the chef of L&E Oyster Bar, can't get enough. He says every part of the shrubby hyssop can be used. To add a touch of savory to balance the sweetness of his brown butter fig tart, he whips up an airy goat cheese speckled with flecks of tiny purple hyssop buds. He then finishes each slice with a drizzling of the hyssop honey and a sprinkling of toasted pine nuts. Get the recipe
Pear Charlotte
This is one of Roxana Jullapat's "no muss no fuss" Thanksgiving desserts. You can prepare most of this tart in advance then pop it in the oven as you sit down for your Thanksgiving meal. Best of all, you only need a handful of ingredients, many of which you likely have on hand in your kitchen right now. Get the recipe
Gladstones Key Lime Tart
Dean Grill, who was once the chef at Gladstones, says his grandmother used to make this recipe when he was a boy and would visit her in southern Florida. This recipe calls for homemade graham cracker crust, but a 2.5 inch premade tart crust will work since they bake the pies for individual consumption. They finish off the tart by bruleeing the sugar on top. Get the recipe
Chocolate Bourbon Fudge Tart
The filling for Hedy Goldsmith's tart, which comes from her book Baking Out Loud, uses dark cocoa powder, semisweet chocolate, sour cream, bourbon, and Lyle's Golden Syrup. Get the recipe
Nuts for Nutella Chocolate Tart
Cindy Mushet, author of Baking Kids Love, says this tart is perfect to make with kids because of its press-in crust and no-bake filling. If you decorate the top with powdered sugar or cocoa powder using stencils, it'll look professional. Get the recipe
Pear Tart with Olive Oil-Cornmeal-Pine Nut Crust
Mollie Katzen, author of the landmark Moosewood Cookbook and the new The Heart of the Plate: Vegetarian Recipes for a New Generation, brings us this tart. "Baking lemon-laced pears in a sturdy, slightly crunchy cornmeal–pine nut crust, crowned with a beautiful lattice top, might well become your new tradition," she writes. As a bonus, this tart freezes and defrosts seamlessly. Get the recipe
Cooks County's Chocolate Cherry Tart
Roxana Jullapat has updated the Black Forest Cake and turned it into a tart with a chocolate shortbread crust, a cherry compote and a soufflé-like chocolate filling. You can also use the cherry compote for other things, like drizzling it on a pork chop and using it in a chocolate cherry chunk ice cream. Get the recipe
Ginger Plum Tart
The recipe for this Ginger Plum Tart, which uses black plums and nutmeg, comes to us from Liz Hollingsworth of Ginger Corner Market in Pasadena. She says that you can also adapt the tart instructions to make galettes. Get the recipe
Easy Apricot and Greek Yogurt Tart
This tangy tart makes a great breakfast with a side of toast. It's best during the summer, when apricots are abundant. Get the recipe
Apples and sultanas (golden raisins) are added to a cheese curd plăcintă, or pie, to give texture to this Romanian dessert. Photo by Matt Russell
A FEW MORE PIES
Curd Cheese & Golden Raisin Pie (Plăcintă Cu Brânză)
Gently scented with lemon zest and golden raisins (aka sultanas), Plăcintă is the second most-famous sweet pie in Romania. Together with its twin sister the apple pie, they make an interchangeable duo on Romanian tables. You can swap the fillings easily for a slightly different variation, says Irina Georgescu, author of Tava: Eastern European Baking and Desserts From Romania & Beyond. Get the recipe
Angel Pie
Originating around the 1930s, angel pies are unique in the fact that the filling is poured into a meringue crust rather than having a meringue top. The filling looks like it's floating high above the clouds. This pie needs to firm up in the refrigerator overnight, so plan ahead when making it. Get the recipe
Clara Polito's Vegan Cookies 'n' Milk Pie
What is it about a warm homemade chocolate chip cookie that calls for a cold tall glass of milk? Or a cool glass of soy milk, if you're vegan baking diva Clara Polito of Clara Cakes: Delicious and Simple Vegan Desserts for Everyone!. This pie combines chocolate chip cookie goodness and sweet pudding made from soy and coconut milk in one tasty slice of pie. Get the recipe
Lemon Ice Box Pie
Sarah Lange's recipe, from The Hart and The Hunter, has a lemon semifreddo filling topped with an Italian meringue. Get the recipe
SippitySup's Lemon Cake Pie
We get this recipe from Greg Henry of the blog SippitySup, who makes this pie in honor of his mother. It's sort of a Southern recipe and although it comes from his mother's cookbook, he says it's not completely original to her. He recalls seeing this recipe in a Betty Crocker Cookbook. All you do is mix the ingredients, put them into a pie shell and miraculously during baking, it separates into a lemon curd on the bottom and the lightest, fluffiest cake you can imagine on the top. Thanks mom! Get the recipe