Christmas

Tasteful and understated: two things that Christmas should never be.

Sugar is still in your future.

Not everyone gets the day off on Christmas—here's how a pilot, EMT, and firefighter celebrate while on duty.

You may be able to find pre-made everything spice in the grocery store for these palmiers. If not, it’s easy enough to make. Double the recipe and keep it around for topping plain yogurt.

These cheesy bites puff in the oven and taste like gougères, aka fancy French cheese puffs, but this recipe makes them way easier.

Starting with store-bought puff pastry for this recipe means these crispy, buttery, savory palmiers only look hard.

The hermit has been a cookie of its times: able to survive without refrigeration and to change with American households and taste.

Give it up for the spritz.

You can create a variety of shapes and colors with a cookie press. We love OXO’s cookie press for this recipe since it has sturdy metal plates and all the parts unscrew easily for cleaning.

There is just no getting around the fact that almond paste is indispensable for these meringue-like cookies; it transforms their flavor and helps them brown evenly. Some brands sell in a tube; others will be in a can in the baking aisle. Using the tube is ideal since the canned might be looser, but either works for this recipe.

These recipes are Seth Cohen-approved.

If you're a Brit in a post-Brexit era, you can count on food to keep you European.

Our readers can't stop making this festive cranberry pie.

The best way to tackle this duck recipe is to braise the legs and make the relish in advance, then cook the breasts and crisp the legs on party night.

This punch recipe easily scales down by half, or even all the way to festive drinks for two.

The best way to describe the results of this tea cakes recipe? The most tender cinnamon cake doughnut you ever had, in muffin form.

A super-easy, no-mixer-needed cookie dough recipe that doesn’t dirty any bowls and leaves plenty of time for the fun stuff—baking, decorating, and eating dough scraps, of course.

In this recipe, a few textured and vibrant toppings gussy up a tender, buttery, and ultrasimple shortbread.

Crush candies in a plastic bag with a rolling pin. Using a hand mixer is more effective than a stand mixer for this chocolate-peppermint fudge recipe.

Brown butter and rosemary are the ultimate, timeless pairing for sweet potatoes. Making your own breadcrumbs from sourdough bread shoots this recipe into all-star status, but using store-bought in a pinch is perfectly fine too.

The freshness of the blanched green beans and crisp apple cider vinegar help cut through a heavier meal.

Smoked almonds and black olives are our suggestions for this appetizer, but use any nut or olive that you like.

For this holiday-worthy recipe, roasting the butternut with several bay leaves slipped between the slices results in a subtle aromatic backdrop for the chile glaze.

Richly spiced gingerbread with the texture of a moist, dense devil’s food cake, this recipe only gets better if you make it ahead.