Recipes with brown sugar

Parkin is a variety of gingerbread, good warming stuff to eat out of doors in cold weather. When I was a child, it was always a firm favourite for the firework party on Bonfire Night each year. This is adapted from my mother's recipe.

No-bake muesli bars with oats, crushed cornflakes, coconut, dried fruit, and peanut butter held together with a buttery honey sauce. Chilled and sliced into chewy snack bars.

Sweet and sour green tomato pickles with brown sugar, vinegar, and a bouquet of pickling spices. The classic end-of-summer way to use up unripe tomatoes from the garden.

Easy homemade barbecue sauce with ketchup, onions, butter, paprika, and a finishing splash of lemon juice and Worcestershire. The 15-minute pantry-staple sauce that beats anything in a bottle.

Homemade peach chutney with brown sugar, honey, raisins, and whole spices simmered for an hour and canned in a boiling water bath. Makes 4 pints of sweet-tart preserve.

Fig chess tarts with a buttery lemon-scented shortbread shell, filled with brown sugar custard studded with chopped dried figs and walnuts. A Southern chess pie translated into bite-sized tart form.

Pecan icebox cookies with brown sugar and toasted pecans, shaped into a log, chilled overnight, then sliced and baked. Classic slice-and-bake cookies that keep in the fridge for a week.

Apple cake with a cinnamon-nut streusel topping, chopped apples folded into a brown sugar batter with sour milk. A tender, spiced sheet cake for fall baking.

Oatmeal millet muffins with rolled oats softened in boiling water and toasty whole millet for crunch. The morning muffin with two grains, golden tops, and tender, rib-sticking crumb. Freezes well.

Brine for roasted chicken steeps a whole bird overnight in salt, brown sugar, lemon, garlic, bay, peppercorns, jalapeno, and Mediterranean herbs. The result: juicier, deeper-seasoned roast chicken from skin to bone.

Oatmeal snickerdoodles cross a chewy oatmeal cookie with a classic cinnamon-sugar snickerdoodle. Five dozen cookies, ten-minute bake, plenty for the cookie jar or to share.

Soysage, a homemade vegetarian sausage steamed in a can from whole wheat, wheat germ, and nutritional yeast, seasoned with fennel, garlic, and cayenne, then sliced and fried crisp. A meat-free breakfast classic.

Hot dogs stuffed with melty American cheese, layered over sweet and tangy baked beans, and topped with crispy bacon. Bake it or slow cook it. This cheesy franks and beans casserole is backyard cookout comfort in a dish.

Sailor's duff: a steamed molasses pudding from the age-of-sail tradition. Moist, dense, and warmly spiced, traditionally served with hard sauce or vanilla cream.

Santa's Thumbprint cookies with oats, brown sugar, and chopped nuts rolled on the outside, filled with jelly. A festive holiday cookie recipe that makes 3 dozen.

Pumpkin pecan cheesecake with a graham cracker crust, spiced pumpkin filling, and a brown sugar pecan streusel topping. A fall dessert that combines two holiday favorites in one.