Christmas

The Dark ’n’ Stormy is a festive and fiery cocktail made with spicy ginger beer, warm dark rum and a refreshing hint of lime — a welcome wake-up call for your taste buds. This cookie recipe is no different. Cayenne joins the classic spice mix of ginger, cloves and cinnamon, and candied ginger, infused with dark rum, is mixed in, adding chewiness and sweetness. It’s all finished with a tart, refreshing lime-and-rum glaze. But perhaps the best part is that, unlike the cocktail, there is no limit to how many you should consume.

This cranberry tea recipe is made with real cranberries, cinnamon, cloves, and apple juice. It smells like Christmas and tastes like a cranberry version of mulled cider. Plus, you can make a concentrate to give you tea for days!

Deliciously chewy Molasses Crackle Cookies are a holiday favorite! These cookies combine warm spices, rich molasses, and a delightful sugar-coated crackle finish. Perfect with a cup of tea or coffee, they’re a treat everyone will love!

Full of nubby oats and plenty of sweet raisins, these lightly spiced cookies are pleasingly chewy in the center and crisp around the edges, with a hint of butterscotch from the dark brown sugar. They keep really well, so you can make them up to a week in advance and store them in an airtight container at room temperature. They’re also great for mailing when a package of cookies is in order. Why You Should Trust This Recipe Melissa Clark, a food writer for more than 25 years, creates her fresh takes on classic recipes by trying at least half a dozen different approaches. A professional recipe tester then makes her recipe a minimum of three times (and sometimes more than 12) to ensure it’ll come out perfectly for all home cooks. For these cookies, Melissa achieved the ideal balance of chewy center and dark, crinkly edges by glossing the oats with brown sugar.

This Crockpot Mac and Cheese is a definite game-changer for those big holiday meals and family gatherings. It's creamy and delicious with minimal prep!

These easy, fun-to-make cookies taste and feel like you’re eating mint chip ice cream, thanks to the peppermint extract and its icy cooling effect. A crisp-tender sugar cookie base — made without a mixer — is topped with a layer of minty white chocolate that’s thinned out with olive oil. Dark chocolate shavings lend bitterness to balance the sweetness.

This is a recipe to win the dinner party sweepstakes, and at very low stakes: slow-roasted pork shoulder served with lettuce, rice and a raft of condiments. The chef David Chang serves the dish, known by its Korean name, bo ssam, at his Momofuku restaurant in the East Village and elsewhere. He shared the recipe with The Times in 2012. Mr. Chang is known as a kitchen innovator, but his bo ssam is a remarkably straightforward way to achieve high-level excellence with little more than ingredients and time. Simply cure the pork overnight beneath a shower of salt and some sugar, then roast it in a low oven until it collapses. Apply some brown sugar and a little more salt, then roast the skin a while longer until it takes on the quality of glistening bark. Meanwhile, make condiments – hot sauces and kimchi, rice, some oysters if you wish. Then tear meat off the bone and wrap it in lettuce, and keep at that until everything’s gone. Sam Sifton

These chocolate cookies are irresistible warm from the oven, when the chips or chunks inside are still luxuriously liquidy. They then cool to a fudgy, brownielike texture with a chewy edge — if any manage to stay around that long. Both fresh and candied ginger lend sophistication, but feel free to leave them out if you want a pure chocolate experience. These cookies are also ideal for late-night cravings: You can be eating them 30 minutes after you start measuring the cocoa powder.

Jessica Hulett’s tender, cakey ricotta cookies taste like the white part of the best black and white cookie you've ever had. The recipe comes from Ms. Hulett’s grandmother Dorie, who used to flavor the cookies with anise, if she used flavoring at all. Adding lemon zest gives the cookies a fragrant brightness. We approve. Melissa Clark

This recipe was brought to The Times in a 1990 article about traditional Christmas cookies, but we think these butter-rich confections are delicious any time of year. Sometimes called Mexican wedding cakes (or polvorones or Russian tea cakes or snowballs), their provenance is often debated, but this much is true: they are dead-simple to make and addictive to eat. This version is done completely in a food processor, so you can clean-up in minutes, and get to the important business at hand: eating cookies and licking your fingers.

Thumbprints are the simplest of cookies, but these are packed with flavor from freshly toasted nuts, each paired with its own filling: pecans with dulce de leche (or homemade caramel sauce, if you have some on hand), hazelnuts with Nutella, or pistachios with a festive pool of red currant jelly in the center. Choose a single combination, or make a batch of each. These cookies benefit from forming the thumbprint halfway through baking, but if you can't take the heat, let the dough soften a bit and then press the thumbprints into the dough before baking.

These wildly popular cookies were developed by Alison Roman for her cookbook, “Dining In: Highly Cookable Recipes.” “I’ve always found chocolate chip cookies to be deeply flawed (to know this about me explains a lot),” she writes. “Too sweet, too soft, or with too much chocolate, there’s a lot of room for improvement, if you ask me. But no one asked me, and rather than do a complete overhaul on the most iconic cookie known to man, I took all my favorite parts and invented something else entirely. Made with lots of salted butter (it has a slightly different flavor and a deeper saltiness than using just salt — I prefer unsalted butter everywhere else but here), the dough has just enough flour to hold it together and the right amount of light brown sugar to suggest a chocolate chip cookie.”

Brownies can be contentious. You may be an edge person or someone who loves middle pieces, a fudgy fanatic or a cakey purist. These cookies will please all brownie lovers, with chewy edges, tender centers and crunch from crushed peppermint candies. While any unsweetened cocoa powder will work in this recipe, Dutch-processed cocoa will make the cookies taste more chocolaty and round out their peppermint flavor. Whisking the eggs and sugars for a long time may seem fussy, but this process gives the cookie body, makes the batter easier to scoop and ensures a shiny top, the hallmark of any good brownie.

This Chocolate Easter Egg Nest Cake is a delightful and festive dessert perfect for celebrating Easter. Moist chocolate cake layers are topped with a rich, silky chocolate ganache and adorned with a delicate chocolate nest filled with mini chocolate eggs, creating an impressive and delicious centerpiece for any spring celebration.

Christmas Chicken Spaghetti is a hearty and comforting casserole perfect for festive gatherings. It features tender chicken breasts combined with spaghetti, creamy cheeses, flavorful Ro*Tel tomatoes, and savory seasonings, all baked until bubbly and golden. This dish is easy to prepare and makes a delicious centerpiece for holiday meals or cozy family dinners.

If you’re the kind of person who chooses cookies over cake every time, this Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake is your dream dessert. It’s everything you love about classic chocolate chip cookies — soft, chewy, and packed with chips — but baked in one impressive round that’s perfect for decorating or adding candles. (We found a 12" round to be the perfect size for feeding a crowd and creating slices of an ideal thickness, though a 9" x 13" pan also works.) For an extra-polished look, finish the cookie cake with a piped border of swirled chocolate and vanilla frosting; it’s a simple touch that makes this cookie cake feel just as impressive as any sheet cake.  

These tender, buttery, crisp buttermilk biscuits satisfy all urgent cravings. You can happily set aside any hesitancy about preparing biscuits because these tangy, fluffy ones come together quickly — no cutting cold butter into flour or rolling out dough. The batter is combined in one bowl and then spread over melted butter, giving the impression of a batter swimming in butter, as the name suggests. While the biscuits bake, they absorb all the buttery goodness and crisp up around the edges. Butter swim biscuits are best served warm and fresh out of the oven but will keep covered at room temperature for up to one day (see Tip).

Classic creamy and cheesy scalloped potatoes made with thinly sliced Yukon Gold potatoes layered with a garlic-thyme white sauce and melted cheddar cheese, baked to golden perfection. This comforting side dish is perfect for family dinners or holiday gatherings.

These crab tartlets have long since been a family favorite and are requested often at holiday get togethers.

This corn casserole, made with Jiffy mix, creamed corn, whole corn, sour cream, cheese, green chiles, and pimentos, is a crowd-pleasing holiday side dish.

My Sheet Pan Pancakes make holiday breakfast easy—prep wet and dry ahead, add toppings, and bake until just set for soft, fluffy pancakes.

Sweet potato purée is easy to make with oven-baked sweet potatoes, buttermilk, whole milk, and butter for a simple and delicious holiday side dish.

An easy, yeast dough monkey bread that you can make right away or keep overnight in the fridge to bake in the morning. Everyone's favorite recipe and fun to do with the kids!

We love mashed sweet potatoes and sweet potato fries. Could we create a delicious mash-up of the two?