Rose Levy Beranbaum

Rose Levy Beranbaum’s base recipe allows you to mix and match pantry ingredients to create the cookie of your dreams.

This recipe adds a little cornstarch for a more delicate cookie that is also easier to pipe or push through a cookie press.

At first glance, this cake seems to contain no butter or oil. But on closer analysis, I discovered that the butterfat contained in the cream was more than equal to the usual amount of butter added.

This fragrant olive oil cake stays moist and flavorful for over a week, so feel free to make it a few days before serving. The caramel glaze is an optional, but highly recommended.

Satiny and pleasingly sticky, caramel is one of the most delicious additions to cakes and pastries. The longer the caramel cooks, the darker and less sweet it becomes. You can judge the color by eye or with an accurate instant-read thermometer. Cream of tartar and corn syrup both help prevent crystallization in the finished caramel sauce.

Baking a batch of these classic Austrian sandwich cookies is a project—but totally worth it.

Editor's note: This recipe appears as part of our editors' Christmas Cookie Swap, 10 beloved holiday recipes from the editors of Epicurious and Gourmet Live.

I first encountered this old-time recipe fifteen years ago, when I worked in the test kitchen of Ladies' Home Journal. I was a bit of a food snob back then and questioned how anything with marshmallows and cornflakes, not to mention green food coloring and cinnamon red-hots, could be considered edible. To my surprise, the crunchy, wheaty, sticky sweetness of these wreaths was quite pleasing when freshly made, and the air-dried wreaths were shiny, adorable, and perfect for adorning the mantlepiece as well as hanging from window frames and on the Christmas tree.

These beautiful, gossamer soft rolls make the perfect complement to any dinner. Mashed sweet potato is responsible for the moist texture and gorgeous color.

TIME SCHEDULE
Dough starter (sponge): minimum 1 hour, maximum 4 hours (or overnight refrigerated)
Minimum rising time (including starter): about 4 1/2 hours
Oven temperature: 400&Deg;F
**Baking time:**12 minutes

This is a whole-wheat version of basic white sandwich bread. It's a little less soft but a lot more wheat-y and substantial. The use of bread flour gives this bread a lighter texture, while the milk powder and oil help soften it.

TIME SCHEDULE:
Dough starter (sponge): minimum 1 hour, maximum 4 hours (or overnight refrigerated)
Minimum rising time (including starter): about 4 hours
Oven temperature: 450°F, then 400°F
Baking time: 40 to 50 minutes

This is my best white bread for sandwiches, dinner rolls, cinnamon swirl or herb swirl breads, and toast. I developed it to match my childhood memory of my favorite bread, Silvercup, a soft, light, and airy bread like today's Wonder Bread, which made the best toast. This homemade version has the same texture but has a more yeasty and fuller flavor. In fact, this bread is like a brioche, with less butter and no egg. It has an even yet open crumb but is softer and lighter in texture. Part of the secret of its light texture is that, like brioche, it is made from an exceptionally moist dough. Lightly toasted and topped with soft scrambled eggs, it is nothing short of ambrosial. Michael Batterberry, publisher of Food Arts magazine, tasted this bread and said, "Mmmm. . . . This is what Wonder Bread, in its soul, really always wanted to be!"

TIME SCHEDULE
Dough Starter (Sponge): minimum 1 hour, maximum 24 hours
Minimum Rising Time: about 4 hours
Oven Temperature: 350°F
Baking Time: 50 minutes

Editor's note: To make your own sourdough starter, follow Beranbaum's instructions.

This bread is as homespun as bread can get, using a stiff sourdough starter cultivated from wild yeast. It has a characteristic sourdough profile: tangy, complex flavor; thin, crisp crust; and springy moist crumb with uneven holes of moderate size.

I love this small loaf because of the size of the whole slices when cut. Also, for those who may have just one banneton (dough-rising basket), I wanted to provide a recipe for just one loaf. A loaf of this size is ideal for two people for three days, with a few slices to share with anyone who comes by to visit. If your family is larger, you will want to double the recipe.

Sharing the sourdough starter for bread is a time-honored tradition around the world. I got my first starter from Kurtis Baguley, a baker in San Francisco. And when my friend Angelica Pulvirenti asked me for a bread recipe to use on her boyfriend's boat, one that was easy and had good keeping qualities (so it wouldn't mold from the humidity), I gave her this recipe and some of my starter to make it. She was especially delighted because sharing a bread starter was a long-standing custom in a small village near Ragusa, Sicily, where she grew up. She said that her mother, at the end of baking day, always passed some of her unbaked bread dough to her friends. She loved the sense of community this imparted and is thrilled that she and I are continuing it.

TIME SCHEDULE

Stiff Sourdough Starter: minimum 13 hours, maximum 34 hours
Minimum Rising Time: about 9 hours
Oven Temperature: 475°F, then 450°F
Baking Time: 25 to 30 minutes

This fluffy flat bread has large, irregular holes thanks to a wet, sticky dough and gentle handling during mixing.

TIME SCHEDULE:
Minimum rising time: 2 1/2 Hours
Oven temperature: 475°F
Baking time: 12 to 15 minutes

This is my basic brioche recipe, soft, light, and intensely buttery. For those who desire even more butter, it can be increased to 6 ounces, which will also make the crumb finer, denser, and more cake-like. This is actually a very easy dough to make, especially in a bread machine, which handles this small amount of dough perfectly.

TIME SCHEDULE
Dough Starter (Sponge): minimum 1 1/2 hours, maximum 24 hours
Minimum Rising Time: 10 hours
Oven Temperature: 425°F (350°F for the loaf)
Baking Time: 10 to 15 minutes for small brioche, 35 to 40 minutes for the loaf

In this pie, one cup of berries is cooked to form a syrup. The remaining three cups of berries are heated in this syrup just enough to turn the blueberries a midnight blue with overtones of purple. The filling is then spooned into a prebaked crust. If you've made the crust ahead, this pie comes together in minutes. By dessert time, the filling is set.

This classic cookie combines two of my favorite sweets: buttery-tender Scottish shortbread and satiny lilting English lemon curd. The problem has always been getting a firm enough topping and avoiding a soggy shortbread base. The special technique discovered for this recipe virtually guarantees success.

The clean, refreshing flavor of lemon makes these the perfect sweets to follow a rich Christmas goose.

If you love peanut butter, these cookies will be It. I created what I believe to be quintessential peanut butter cookies to honor the one hundredth anniversary of peanut butter. They are very peanut buttery yet exceptionally light, with a lovely "sandy" bite. At my husband's urging, I doubled up on the peanut butter and decreased the flour, making the chocolate cookie centers seem like biting into a Reese's peanut butter cup.

Chocolate centers blend wonderfully with the peanut flavor, but the bright, tart, sticky cherry centers, are my first choice.

Moist, billowy, light as a feather, and perfumed with fresh orange juice and zest, this is an incomparably refreshing cake. If you live in a part of the world where oranges grow, you could not ask for a more appropriate and aromatic adornment than orange blossoms, but fresh daisies also convey the lighthearted spirit of this lovely cake. A serving contains only 129 mg. of cholesterol.

This is perhaps my favorite way to eat pound cake! The fresh light flavor of lemon blends beautifully with the buttery flavor of pound cake. The lemon syrup tenderizes, adds tartness, and helps to keep the cake fresh for a few days longer than usual. Poppy seeds add a delightful crunch. Lemon blossoms and lemon leaves make a lovely and appropriate garnish.