Make Ahead

Like brownies, these cookies are dense and fudgy beneath their crackly exteriors. Use your favorite nuts in place of the walnuts, or omit them altogether. The dough can be shaped into balls and refrigerated for up to two days or frozen for up to three weeks; freeze on a baking sheet until firm, then transfer to a resealable plastic bag.

Unlike in recipes for chewy cookies, we used more butter and less brown sugar to produce the ideal thin and crisp cookie.

We like the way this cake looks glazed with white chocolate, but you can substitute semisweet chocolate in the glaze recipe, if you prefer. Be careful not to over swirl the vanilla and chocolate batters when you are running a knife through the two; the marbling won’t look as beautiful if you overdo it.

If you are using the miniloaf pans, place them on a baking sheet, and bake cakes for about forty-five minutes.

Poppy seeds give these cakes an interesting texture and appearance, but you can certainly omit them if you prefer.

This recipe does not contain the traditional pound each of butter, eggs, flour, and sugar, but its proportions produce the most delicious results.

For the prettiest chips, use blemish-free pears that are not quite ripe. A mandoline will help make the pear slices perfectly even.

This is a slight twist on applesauce cake, relying instead on a homemade pear sauce. The cake can be made a day ahead. Keep it at room temperature, then glaze it and garnish it with pear chips just before serving

The addition of raisins, caraway seeds, and egg makes this version richer and even more delicious than traditional Irish soda bread.

Sautéed corn moistens this cornbread, but you can omit it if you are using the bread in a traditional stuffing. For a spicy variation, add two medium jalapeños, seeded and finely chopped, to the corn before sautéeing.

If you use miniloaf pans, reduce the baking time to forty-five minutes. Because this recipe calls for dried figs, it can be made year-round; the figs’ seeds give the bread a nice crunch.

If you use miniloaf pans, reduce the baking time to forty-five minutes. This bread is delightful as soon as it cools, but it’s even better the next day, when the flavors have had a chance to develop.

If you use miniloaf pans, reduce the baking time to forty-five minutes. The recipe comes from Deanna Caceres Cahn, a former brand manager in the Martha Stewart Signature furniture group.

The dough for these savory scones gets its unique texture and flavor from a combination of butter and olive oil. It was inspired by a similarly flavored yeast bread sold at Amy’s Bread in New York City.

These scones are so rich and dense, you may prefer to eat them as an afternoon snack, rather than for breakfast. Either way, they’re great with coffee.

Feel free to substitute other dried fruits for the apricots. We particularly like using sour cherries, cranberries, golden raisins, or chopped figs.

Sanding sugar is coarser than granulated sugar and lends a lovely sparkle when sprinkled over the tops of scones, biscuits, pies, and cookies before baking. It is available at baking-supply stores and many grocery stores.

You can freeze the unbaked biscuits on a baking sheet, then store in a resealable plastic bag for up to three weeks. When ready to serve, bake them (without thawing) on a parchment-lined sheet (the baking time will be the same).

The icy strawberry filling in this pie is pleasantly complemented by the luscious whipped cream. The pie tastes just like a margarita—the tequila flavor adds quite a zing. The recipe calls for freezing the whipped cream on top of the pie, but you can also freeze just the strawberry part and add the whipped cream when you serve the pie.