Gourmet

Why, we wondered, should traditional bread stuffing have to use white bread? Rye and pumpernickel stand up much better to the sweet caramelized onions and earthy turnips in this very autumnal version.

This stuffing uses polenta two ways—half of it is left creamy, while the other half gets browned, for a nice contrast of texture.

Our resident Louisianan, associate food editor Alexis Touchet, remembers this dressing from her childhood—and it's the one that still graces her family's Thanksgiving meal, year after year. This dressing is not considered a stuffing for the turkey, but a dish that "dresses up" the table.

Creamy, cheesy, and light, this wonderful custard packs a few of the most delicious ingredients—sweet corn, earthy mushrooms, and spicy chorizo—into one amazingly satisfying dish.

Easily made with puff pastry, these light, thin apple tarts provide just the right amount of dessert. The skins get added to the syrupy glaze, enhancing the tarts with a bit of sweetness and the faintest blush of pink.

We've made one of America's most famous holiday desserts — pecan pie—even more delicious by adding an unctuous layer of moist caramel, a touch of bittersweet chocolate (to cut the sweetness), and some finely shaved nuts on top.

Nothing beats buttery sweet rolls fresh from the oven—and you get the pleasure of filling your house with their warm, yeasty scent as they bake.

It was summer when we received a letter from a reader requesting a recipe for fruit ice cream that was as lush and rich as Ruth Reichl's chocolate ice cream . The secret is to cook the fruit down to a jamlike consistency with sugar, which lowers the freezing point. We were working on our fall issues at the time, so we developed a seasonally appropriate cranberry ice cream ; we also couldn't resist taking advantage of the local peaches sitting on our countertop. Frozen peaches are a perfectly good stand-in for fresh in this case, and a scoop of peach ice cream on a slice of toasted pound cake can be a beautiful thing in the dead of winter. For the silkiest peach ice cream ever, work with the all-cream base for the cranberry ice cream .

Sweet and tart, this robust fruit ice cream is a perfect finish for any holiday feast.

A bite of this flan, fragrant with traditional pumpkin-pie spices, is very comforting despite the dessert's modern looks; a topping of pumpkin seeds, seasoned with cayenne, creates a play of sweet and heat.

As great as the original, but with a lot of crunch, too.

If any cake could be called refreshing, this would be the one. Rich but light, it loses absolutely nothing from the absence of white flour.

When the pumpkin pie is gone, but you've only just begun to get your fill of pumpkin desserts, this bundt will fill the void quite nicely (and the somewhat more assertive spices will welcome the season ahead). Best of all, the flavors continue to develop and the cake tastes even better a few days after it's baked, so it's perfect to have on hand at this time of year, when guests tend to drop in unexpectedly.

This meltingly tender jelly is to that stuff in the can what a fine Barolo is to supermarket cooking wine.

A high roasting temperature caramelizes the pan drippings, adding fantastic flavor and color.