TASTElist

Strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate: These three colors are nostalgic for many of us, reminding us of the hot summers and ice cream parties of childhood. This cake is easy to make and shows off your creativity in the kitchen with the three different layers — cereal, ice cream, and whipped cream. You don’t even have to turn on the oven. The combination of soft ice cream and crunchy puffed rice will offer a great textual contrast. Plus, it’s just fun.

A cheesy, potato, bacon casserole is what you crave when you crave comfort food. While bacon is the best, you can use other types of meat, such as sausage or ground beef, if you have those on hand. No worries. This can part of dinner, or even better, a great breakfast or brunch. Game Plan: Assemble the night before, store in the fridge, and then bake off in the morning. Wash this down with this orangey treat, like this Orange Julius recipe, and maybe have a fruit salad on the side.

When you cook onions for a long time, they turn translucent and trade their bite for a sweet-savory flavor that’s so good you want to dive into it. Well, you can dive your chips and crackers and crudités in this recipe. Slow-cooking onions for 7 to 9 hours is taking caramelizing to the next level. We suggest that you double the recipe and freeze half of the onion mixture for the next time you make French onion dip.

They look like little armadillos, but that’s where the similarities end. Originally a Swedish potato dish, the name “hasselback” comes from the Hasselbacken Hotel Restaurant in Stockholm, Sweden. These hasselback potatoes are crispy in places, but still soft and buttery at their core, thanks to the increased surface area open to the oven’s heat. You can line up two knives on both sides of the potato to ensure you don’t slice all the way through.

This rich and creamy soup punctuated with dry sherry is similar to bisque except for those sweet chunks of lump crab meat. It’s a staple of natives of South Carolina’s coast and one example of celebrated Chef Mario Batali’s new cookbook, The Big American Cookbook, featuring 250 recipes from all corners of the country. Stay with the Southern theme and start off with this Bourbon cocktail recipe.

Apple dumplings are an early American food stemming from the Northeast, especially in Pennsylvania Dutch towns. Of course, you could trace it even further to Britain and other parts of western Europe too. It’s a great dish during the apple harvest in the fall. And, you can serve apple dumplings for breakfast or dessert. Game Plan: First, you’ll need to make a pie crust. Use our Basic Pie Crust recipe.

I could go on and on about how much I love olive trees. I even have olive trees growing in my yard — and that’s just the beginning of my obsession. So, it didn’t take much convincing for me to try making a dessert with olive oil, and citrus is a natural pairing. I like to serve this cake with plain whipped cream and basil leaves for garnish. Or simply dust the top with confectioners’ sugar and call it a day.

I can eat an entire bowl of these Brussels sprouts and still go back for seconds. It is a great side dish at dinner, especially in the fall and winter. The sweetness of the pear, the tartness of the dried cranberries, and the caramelized edges of the Brussels sprouts make for smiling faces around my family table. For the best-tasting Brussels sprouts, bake them on a large rimmed baking sheet to ensure they have plenty of room to spread out.

Embrace fall with a fluffy, warmly-spiced pumpkin layer cake. This versatile recipe doesn’t have to be for a three-layer cake, though. You can use the same measurements to fill two 9-inch cake rounds or one 13-by-9-inch sheet pan for a sheet cake. You might want to double the frosting recipe if you want to ensure that there’s more than enough to go all around the cake.

My husband, Jack, isn’t the biggest fan of avocados. I prep this one while he’s not looking, and he’s yet to realize that this decadent chocolaty dessert is made from pureed avocado.

Staffordshire, right in the middle of England, is a county famous for the invention of bone china, cute bull terriers. In harsh winters of years gone by, farmers in the area would grow oats rather than wheat and so the oatcake was born. They have a delicious natural malty sweetness that is traditionally topped with melted cheese and bacon and were traditionally sold directly from kitchen windows, how idyllic!

This way of making popcorn will change your life. Well, not really, but it will change the way you make popcorn! No need to buy those overpriced (and not to mention wasteful) prepackaged microwave popcorn bags. You can do it yourself with much more healthy and enjoyable results. Top off your popcorn with some nutritional yeast for an added protein boost and cheese-like flavor.