404 christma recipes

Let your garden become a part of your baking skills with these rich biscuits.

Oyster loaves stuffed with butter-sauteed fresh oysters in hollowed-out French bread, wrapped in milk-soaked cheesecloth, and baked until golden and crisp.

Cranberry ketchup is a sweet-spiced condiment with whole cranberries, brown sugar, vinegar, clove, mace, and cinnamon. The forgotten Thanksgiving table sauce for turkey, ham, and beyond.

Easy elephant ears cookies (palmiers) bake from rolled puff pastry, sugar, and egg wash into crisp golden hearts, dipped in melted chocolate. Four-ingredient bakery-style treats ready in 40 minutes.

Buttery spiced fig thumbprint cookies, tender brown-sugar dough rolled in a crunchy flax-sugar coating and filled with jammy fig preserves. Warm cinnamon and nutmeg make them a standout on the holiday cookie tray.

Melt in your mouth Russian tea cookies with walnuts. Perfect accompaniment for a cup of tea.

Buttery shortbread cookies studded with spiced mincemeat and finished with sweet vanilla glaze. Festive holiday treats that taste like Christmas in every crumbly bite.

Lighter cranberry apple cookies made with egg whites and skim milk, loaded with fresh fruit, cinnamon, and orange zest. A guilt-free holiday cookie that yields 2 dozen.

Two-ingredient cranberry relish made with fresh cranberries and sugar. The simplest stovetop cranberry sauce that beats canned every time, ready in under 15 minutes for Thanksgiving or Christmas.

Molded cranberry relish with raspberry Jello, fresh cranberries, grapes, celery, and crushed pineapple. Served with a fluffy cream cheese and marshmallow whipped dressing. A retro Thanksgiving and Christmas centerpiece.

Jewish rugelach with a flaky cottage cheese dough, apricot jam, cinnamon-sugar, walnuts, and currants rolled into golden crescents. A holiday cookie jar essential for Hanukkah or Christmas.

These rich chocolate-toffee bars from Mary Lueke of Menasha were our top pick in the bar category.

The crisp, densely chocolaty cookies, with an unusually long baking time, were an annual favorite among the 20-plus recipes that Susan Couchman of Hartland remembers were made each year by her mother, Gloria Kuchler.

Mexican wedding cakes are always a holiday favorite but this recipe takes it up a notch or two, writes Mary Wilhelm of Sparta.

Chocolate and caramel give this thumbprint cookie from Kathy T. Preston of Milwaukee a different twist.

Experimentation led Mary Ann Zarczynski of Franklin to create this recipe, which she described as "very rich and delicious."