Electric Mixer

Working on this book has taken us new places, and also back to explore taste memories from the past and from travel. Sometimes we've stumbled on childhood tastes, and sometimes we've gone looking for them. This dark gingerbread is from scribbled notes I found in an old cookbook of my mother's. I don't know where she got the recipe, but I do know that she made it regularly, especially in winter, when its rich, warm scent would draw us into the kitchen at dinnertime. Serve it as a snack or for dessert.

A tweed cake gets its name from the classic wool fabric it resembles. The effect is achieved by folding coarsely grated chocolate into the batter before baking. If you can't find matzo cake meal, you can grind batches of regular matzo meal in a clean electric coffee/spice grinder until it's the consistency of flour.

Scented with nutmeg, these distinctive light little cookies have been a family favorite for many years. They are easy to make, melt in your mouth, and are far better than store-bought meringue cookies.

For more information about melting chocolate, see Meltdown.

This recipe yields enough cookies to make the crust for the Tropical Cheesecake and the crumbs and garnish for the Banana-Cream Parfaits .

Chocolate-covered raisins turn into fudgy pockets of intense chocolate and chewy raisins in these easy brownies.

These Christmas cookies are topped with white icing and silver dragées for added elegance. Look for the dragées in the cake decorating section of your supermarket.

This recipe creates enough batter for a 3-quart bundt pan, but it can also be baked in smaller pans, though baking time will vary accordingly.

For a curved tuile-like shape, these cookies may be draped over a rolling pin after their second baking, while they are still warm. If the cookies become too brittle to form on the rolling pin, return baking sheets to oven for a few seconds to allow the cookies to soften.

The coconut in this recipe gives a chewiness to these thin cookies.