Snack

This lightly spiced chocolate cake from Yossy Arefi's book Snacking Cakes is packed with pumpkin purée and features spices often found in Mexican chocolate. If you choose to use it, the pinch of cayenne adds a pleasing bit of warmth. 

A gorgeously textured cookie with crispy-edges, a chewy center, toasty pecans, and tiny crispy pecan brittle bits throughout.

We’ve swapped out the ground nuts in a classic linzer for tahini, which makes for a rich, buttery crust that gets filled with jam.

Not to be confused with wafer-thin waffled pizzelles, this rich brownie-like cookie packed with warm spices is exactly the opposite.

Rick Martinez’s take on the popular Mexican pig-shaped cookie goes all out with a ginger-spiced dough and tons of sprinkles.

Buttery, crumbly, sugar-glazed cookies that you can make with any nut, really.

These grown-up moon pies are made with shortbread cookies loaded with blitzed-up pretzels and salty potato chips—the perfect contrast to the sticky-sweet marshmallows and bitter dark chocolate.

Blanching the citrus peel in several changes of boiling water removes bitterness while still leaving plenty of bright flavor behind.

Embrace biscotti as the anti-gooey-chewy cookie that can be packed with coffee, chocolate, and nuts, and dunked in amaro, bourbon, or cold milk.

This cheesecake has a vanilla pound cake base, because why the hell not? You bake the cheesecake first, then the pound cake on top, and flip the whole thing over before decorating and serving. Room temperature eggs, cream cheese, and butter are vital to an evenly mixed cheesecake and fluffy pound cake. If you’re in a hurry, place the eggs in a bowl of hot tap water and zap the butter and cream cheese in the microwave in 10-second increments to quickly warm them up.

A creamy custard pie with an extra-milky flavored meringue.

Juicy ripe peaches, raw sweet corn, and roasted peanuts come together in this peak summer snack—a perfect way to refresh after a day in the sun.

A member of the larger umbrella group of easy fruit desserts, a buckle features tons of fruit barely held together by tender cake. We're talking so much fruit that the cake buckles around it, hence the name. There are many regional buckle variations, and not all have a streusel topping. This particular recipe, however, has got lots of big crumbs—and we think you’ll be glad that’s the case. 

Tangy cream cheese and sour cream play up the shrimp’s natural sweetness in this summer appetizer.

Think of your favorite granola packed full of nuts and surrounding a layer of sweet-tart rhubarb jam and you’ve got these bars. 

Guaranteed to make any raw vegetable taste good.

Here’s what happened after carrot cake met carrot halwa, the milky, long-cooking, spoonably-soft confection common in South Asia. Raisins, cinnamon, and cream cheese frosting made way for brown-butter pistachios, cardamom, and sticky carrot glaze and the rest of their romance was history. 

Wheat germ, the nutrient-rich heart of wheat kernels, gives these cookies their hearty, nutty crunch while also keeping them tender and crumbly. You can often find wheat germ in the bulk bin aisle of the grocery store, but toasted rolled oats or ground flax can be used in its place for a similar texture. These cookies are ideal for making in advance, as their flavor and texture improve after a few days. The butter and milk can be substituted with plant-based alternatives without sacrifice, so make them vegan if you want.

White conchas may look plain, but with a boost of high-quality vanilla, they’re unexpectedly flavorful.

If you like the sound of a choco-coconut concha, give the classic Mexican sweet bread tropical twist by using virgin coconut oil.