Dessert recipe collection

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.

Mom Stern's noodle kugel with wide egg noodles, sliced apples, raisins, and a sweet egg custard baked until crispy on top and springy inside. A classic Jewish comfort dessert.

Old-fashioned chocolate bread pudding made with unsweetened chocolate, half-and-half, and soft white bread crumbs. Bakes in a water bath into a silky, custard-set pudding. Top with whipped cream.

Self-crusting coconut pie that mixes in one bowl, pours into the pan, and forms its own crust as it bakes. Eggs, milk, butter, and coconut create a custardy slice with a tender brown bottom. The recipe makes two pies.

Easy two-layer peanut butter and chocolate fudge with sweetened condensed milk. No candy thermometer, no boiling sugar. Five ingredients, ready in three hours.

Buttermilk walnut bundt cake baked over a brown sugar and Karo syrup topping with whole walnuts. A sticky-bottomed cake with a tender, airy crumb from whipped egg whites.

Mom's yellow cake with butterscotch frosting is a three-layer buttermilk cake with folded egg whites for lightness, topped with a boiled brown sugar and butter frosting. A true from-scratch heirloom recipe.

Monster chunk cookies with hand-cut chocolate chunks, rolled oats, dark brown sugar, and butter baked low and slow for thick, chewy centers and golden edges.

Mother's Holiday Cherry Squares (Christmas) recipe

No-bake rum balls made with crushed vanilla wafers, pecans, cocoa, powdered sugar, and real rum. A classic Christmas cookie tin staple rolled in powdered sugar.

Wartime impossible pie from South London with one batter that splits into crust, custard, and filling as it bakes. Use it sweet with coconut and vanilla, or savoury with canned tuna or salmon and frozen vegetables. Pantry magic.

Thai mung bean pastries (khanom thuay) with a sweet mung bean flour base topped with coconut-rice flour cream and toasted yellow mung beans. A colorful, no-bake Thai dessert.

Mustikkapiiras is a traditional Finnish blueberry pie with a tender press-in crust and tangy yogurt-custard filling. Simple Nordic dessert with fresh berries and bright lemon.

Microwave creme de menthe bundt cake, a boxed mix cake laced with mint liqueur and a chocolate syrup swirl, cooked entirely in the microwave in just ten minutes. A retro shortcut dessert with mint-chocolate magic.

Deep-dish apple pie with a single top crust hiding a heap of brown sugar and cinnamon-spiced apples. Old-fashioned simplicity served with cream or hard sauce, just the way grandmother made it.

Virginia Lane of Cudahy secured this recipe, with its nice complexity of flavors, in the late '50s or '60s when she lived in Iran.