During the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, having an easy, crowd-pleasing, big-batch recipe in your back pocket is key — especially when it’s a cocktail. A pitcher of sangria will win over any crowd, and guests can serve themselves, meaning you don’t have to play bartender all night. Here are our 11 favorite holiday sangrias, ready for any and all wintertime festivities.
Over the last few years, we’ve published more than 120 meal plans from our own Kitchn editors and contributors alike. There’s a lot to be gleaned from those meal plans and how you’ve incorporated them into your own meal planning and meal prep in that time.
This week, instead of a classic meal plan — because, let’s be honest, with a holiday ahead meal planning is taking a backseat — we’re rounding up the 10 most popular Next Week’s Meal Plans from the whole year. Let these serve as inspiration as you head into winter break or set a goal to meal plan more in the new year.
Holiday baking season is in full swing — which means it’s time for sugar cookies in all sorts. But how to make pretty cookies that hold their shape, without spending the whole day mixing, chilling, and rolling? Here’s the easiest and best way to save time and make the most perfect-looking cookies. It’s all in the chilling. Here’s how to do it.
Ganache! Buttercream! Whipped Cream! Frostings are something that get me excited about cake, because they (along with a few sprinkles) turn any cake into a celebration. Whether you’re baking a chocolate Bundt cake, a chocolate pound cake, or, my personal favorite, chocolate sheet cake, here are 10 frostings that upgrade classic chocolate cake to something unique and special to celebrate anytime.
There really is nothing the slow cooker can’t do. This year it became my go-to for working even more meatless recipes into my meal plan — and many of our readers seemed to do the same. And that makes sense, because the slow cooker is a natural fit for beans and legumes, ultra-hearty vegetables, slow-simmered stews, veggie pot pie, and so much more. Here were our most popular vegetarian slow cooker recipes of the year.
If you made me choose a favorite cookie from Dorie Greenspan, I’d have to plead the Fifth. There are far too many delights to choose from — beginning with those classic, chocolatey World Peace Cookies to these Jammers. But if I had to pick a favorite Dorie Greenspan cookie story, this one would be it. Because these cookies — made with a vanilla sablé dough, topped with thick jam, surrounded by tender, crumbly streusel — came to Dorie in a dream. And I can’t think of anything more marvelous than that.
Named for their resemblance to the nuts from the Ohio buckeye tree, buckeyes are the impossibly delicious confection made with a ball of smooth peanut butter coated nearly all the way — save for a small area around the top — with a layer of chocolate. When choosing chocolate for this sweet holiday treat, the options are plenty, including chips, wafers, and chocolate bars.
But it’s important to remember that not all varieties of chocolate are created equal. For the very best result, this is the type of chocolate you’ll want to stick with every time you make buckeyes.
I have something really pretty and really festive for us today. I hope it doesn’t send you running for the hills. When recipe hybrids are good — think pretzel croissants, cronuts, donut-looking cakes, donut-tasting muffins, brownie cookies, and pretty much everything on one of my favorite wildly creative cooking blogs — it’s usually because the two desserts that are mashed up have more in common than just cleverness, elements in each that make each other better.
It was the honey syrup that convinced me that babka-meets-baklava could clear this hurdle. Syrupy finishes are common in desserts from across the Middle East and Levant. It’s the finishing soak in baklava’s crispy baked phyllo and chopped nuts layers, pulling them together. It’s the finishing, shiny soak in the kranz-style babkas popularized by Ottolenghi. And it’s what makes this buttery, nutty, braided sweet bread wreath sweet glossy perfection, and deeply baklava-like.
Everyone has a favorite holiday cookie from the cookie plate. Sugar cookies are nice, and yeah I can get down with some gingerbread, but I’m always secretly eyeing the peanut butter blossoms or the spritz cookies. What about you?
This year for the holidays, we asked Google to tell us the most-searched holiday cookies in every state. They looked at searches across the country during the beginning of December and compiled this very interesting list. I’m honestly a little surprised by their findings! You’ll see lots of chocolate chip cookies, pumpkin cookies, and no-bake finds. The Midwest is dominated by spritz cookies (no surprise there), and apparently there’s something called a “monster cookie” that I have yet to try.
Welcome to Snapshot Cooking, the home of Kitchn’s easiest recipes. These mini recipes are so simple you can practically cook from the before-and-after snapshot itself.
Searching for a last-minute holiday treat that everyone will love? Christmas bark to the rescue! It’s a salty-sweet classic that goes by many other names (like Christmas Crunch, Christmas Crackle, or Christmas Crack), but the baseline idea is usually the same: You pour a simple homemade caramel sauce over a layer of crackers, bake it, then cover it with chocolate to create a no-fail toffee that’s broken up like bark.
Below, you’ll find our tried-and-tested take on the traditional version — plus four new variations if you’re looking for something different (and equally delicious!) this holiday season. The best part? Each one only needs a handful of ingredients to make.