The holiday season is here, and it’s time to fill your home with the irresistible aroma of festive treats! Whether baking for loved ones, hosting a holiday party, or simply treating yourself, My Christmas and Holiday Sweets Collection has everything you need to satisfy your sweet tooth.
From timeless classics to innovative creations, this collection features recipes crafted to bring joy and flavor to your celebrations. Think buttery cookies, decadent cakes, spiced confections, and a touch of global inspiration to make your holiday dessert table stand out.
Explore my curated recipes, perfect for gifting, sharing, or savoring on a cozy winter evening. Let’s make this season deliciously unforgettable—click the link and dive into the ultimate collection of holiday sweets!
The Flavor Equation: Gingerbread Cake with Date Syrup Bourbon Sauce
We’re heading into fall, cooler temperatures necessitate warmer flavors and this week I share my recipe for the classic gingerbread cake that comes out of the Chapter on Fieriness in my new book, The Flavor Equation. Ginger is prized for its fragrance and heat in both sweet and savory preparations and in gingerbread, it’s the star ingredient.
burnt honey and earl grey tea pound cake
A few months ago, Samin Nosrat recipe for the famous Russian Honey Cake of the 20th Century Cafe in San Francisco. If there’s one thing I regret never eating all the years we lived in the SF Bay Area, it’s this cake. When I read Samin’s recipe, I noticed how she burned the honey in the recipe and that was one of the ideas I wanted to incorporate in this cake. The second excuse to make this pound cake came from my pantry. I have a lot of random boxes of tea with 1 to 2 Tbsp of leftover tea leaves or rather the dust that sits inside after all the leaves are used, this is my way of using that up. Earl Grey tea which contains bergamot is perfect in this burnt honey combination but other fragrant teas will work just as great.
Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Buttercream Frosting
A rich chocolate cake painted with a layer of silky velvety chocolate buttercream that would fit the bill for a celebration or on those days you need a slice of cake.
Molten Lava Chocolate Cakes
Hot with a captivating aroma that takes over the senses, molten lava chocolate cakes soothe my deepest and splendid desires for chocolate whenever I have a craving. That luscious sauce that seeps out of the steaming cake as the spoon sweeps through is one of the most dramatically delicious moments that I can think of. It makes a great treat for Valentine’s Day. This recipe is based on the one by Chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten.
Date And Tamarind Loaf
It’s here, it’s finally here! It took me two years to get to this day and I’m so happy and excited that today, SEASON comes out worldwide in bookstores! Coincidentally, today also happens to be the wedding anniversary of my late maternal grandparents and I think they’d be proud to see become an author. I learned all I knew about Goan cooking and cooking in general from my grandmother, so it would have been amazing to have her see this day.
Black Pepper and Cardamom Cannelés
If you love caramelized flavors in desserts, then you will love cannelé or canelé de Bordelaise. This baked custard originated in the winemaking regions of Bordeaux, and the cannelé refers to the fluted appearance of the mold used to prepare the pastry. The story goes that these pastries came about to finish up the excess unused egg yolks left behind during the clarification of wine (egg whites were used to clarify wines). The remaining unused yolks would be sent to nuns to feed poor children and thus came about the cannelé.
Honey Almond Lemon Cake
Quite a few of you asked asked for this recipe after seeing it in my Instagram stories last weekend, so here is the almond cake recipe that infused with the delicious refreshing aroma of lemons and rosemary. I got this recipe a few years ago from a friend’s mom who can’t consume foods with gluten. It use baking powder and eggs for leavening and the result is a lovely spongy cake. I’ve thrown in a bit of very finely chopped rosemary leaves in the cake batter and topped it with a sprig of sugared rosemary.
Cardamom and Lemon Madeleines
When you have a craving, at least in my mind, you should satisfy it, if not you’ll be thinking about more and more and more. Madeleines were on my mind all week, they go superb with tea and coffee. They’re exceptionally simple to make and cute. This is a recipe from Julia Child’s book which really needs no changing and the only thing I did was introduce new flavors. I’ve been wanting to play with perfumes more and more this year and this heavenly mix is hard to pin down as one scent so I’m going to go with “scented Madeleines”. I used a metal mold that I found at a thrift store in North Carolina many years ago.
Chocolate Hazelnut Praline Cake
I love chocolate and hazelnuts; in my mind, this is one of the most perfect combinations on the planet. This birthday cake exemplifies that. Both the frosting and the cake are made using a food processor. To create a speckled chocolate texture in the frosting, I don’t melt the chocolate with hot water, but if you prefer it smooth, by all means, do it. The hazelnut praline is a throwback to all those delicious nut candies I ate as a kid, and here it becomes the topping for the cake but is also ground and mixed in with some of the buttercream to create a surprise layer of hazelnut goodness in the middle.
Cocoa and Hazelnut Brownies
These brownies contain cocoa and my favorite nut – hazelnuts/filberts because honestly, IMO, that is the most irresistible combination. Serve me any chocolate and hazelnut concoction, and I will clean the plate. It’s also one of my favorite combinations when I make Chocolate Chip Cookies, and if I could, I would eat them with a steaming cup of hazelnut-flavored cocoa (this might sound like a sensory overload, but I can’t help it, I love it).
All My Favorite Holiday Christmas Cookies
The holiday season is here, and with it comes the irresistible aroma of freshly baked cookies wafting through the kitchen. Nothing quite like the joy of mixing butter and sugar, sprinkling festive decorations, and sharing the results with loved ones. Whether you’re looking for classic favorites or cookies with a flavorful twist, my collection of
The Best Grilled Chocolate Sandwich
This sandwich is the easiest and quickest fix for all those chocolate cravings when I can’t be bothered to bake cookies or a cake. Use your favorite chocolate and a sprinkle of flaky salt.
Cranberry Moscow Mule
Moscow mules are one of my favorite cocktails, they’re fizzy and gingery, a perfect combination in my books. This version uses cranberries for a touch of fruitiness and a bright red festive color.
Vegan Cinnamon Hot Chocolate
You’ll notice this drink is vegan, but when I developed this recipe, I quickly realized why I fell in love with it. I fell in love with the flavors. A cup of hot chocolate is, in many ways, a fantasy that comes to life. The dark and deep flavors of cocoa and chocolate come to the forefront with the beautiful caramel sweetness from the dates. I’ve used cinnamon in this version but jump to the notes section and try out the other flavor variations to see what rocks your boat.
Spiced Hot Chocolate
This silky smooth hot chocolate recipe relies on a combination of three chocolate types, delicately infused with a concoction of the aromatic trio of black pepper, cardamom, and cinnamon. The result is a creamy, smooth, fragrant drink that you’ll keep returning for more. Avoid using whole milk to make this drink; it acquires its velvety, luscious texture from the fat present in the chocolate.
Guava Onion Jam Swirl Buns
I crave savory baking more than I do sweet pastries. When I’m traveling, I hunt down all the savory pastries first. On a recent trip to London, I adored the sausage-stuffed croissants coated with miso at Arôme bakery and couldn’t wait to bring that idea back to my kitchen. These swirl buns are filled with my guava onion jam (there’s a quick cheat for those of you who want to skip making the jam in the recipe’s cook’s notes below) and then topped with a glaze of miso, nigella seeds, and a generous sprinkling of parmesan. These buns are sweet and savory, making them a wonderful way to start the day.
Chocolate Orange Swirl Buns
During the holidays, my baking leans towards more festive and seasonal ingredients. These swirl buns look impressive and yet are surprisingly easy to make. The wonderful scents of winter citrus, cardamom, candied orange peel, and chocolate will permeate your kitchen as the buns bake in the oven.
Perfect Cinnamon Rolls
‘Who doesn’t love cinnamon rolls? There’s a good reason this fragrant recipe was chosen as our Recipe of the Year in 2021. It’s a great illustration of the benefits of the tangzhong method, resulting in the most tender rolls you can make, with a shelf life that keeps them delectable for days. Used more commonly in enriched doughs, this technique—which has origins in Japan’s yukone (or yudane)—cooks a small percentage of the flour and liquid very briefly before combining the resulting thick slurry with the remaining ingredients. We use bread flour instead of all-purpose flour because of its higher protein content, which allows it to absorb more liquid without diluting the structure of the gluten strands. The more liquid in your dough, the softer it will stay for longer, which you’ll notice in these incredibly pillowy rolls that won’t go stale quickly like regular ones.’ – King Arthur Baking Company.
Spiced Christmas Bread Wreath With Raspberry Jam
There is a clear positive relationship between the Christmas season and my baking activity. This year, I’ve been baking festive bread wreaths in all sorts of shapes and all sorts of fillings. Today with King Arthur Baking Company, I’m sharing my recipe for this easy bread wreath that’s spiced with a good dose of black pepper and cardamom and then filled with a layer of bright red raspberry and lime jam. I usually cut a big slice and then lather some cold butter on top.
Apple Cinnamon Turnover Wreaths
If you love apple turnovers with a strong sweet cinnamon aroma, then you will love this simple yet fun version. These apple turnover wreaths were inspired by the way mummies are wrapped in cloth, and I don’t mean my mother but those in horror movies. Weaving the pastry into the apple rings might remind you of making a pom pom.Eat these warm because that’s when they taste their best.
Lucy’s Peppermint Marshmallows
A marshmallow is like a soft pillow that jiggles with the finesse of a belly dancer to a song. It should be able to bounce in your hands when tossed and stretch when pulled apart with your hands. Marshmallows are light and can be used as an accent to garnish so many desserts like cookies
Milk Creams
Of all the holidays, Christmas remains the one I look forward to most. In my childhood household in Mumbai, India, the first weeks of December were entirely devoted to preparing loads of cookies, cakes, and sweets. The sweets were made ahead of time because, like the cashew-based milk cream recipe I’m sharing today, they kept
