Our Best Christmas Recipes, Tips & Tricks

Hosting a holiday gathering means planning the menu, music, and atmosphere. I always include a festive appetizer to make the evening feel more celebratory and buy a little extra time to finish last-minute preparations once the doorbell starts ringing. Cranberry jalapeño dip is a play on the crowd-pleasing classic: pepper jelly and cream cheese. With its vibrant red hue and sweet-tart flavor, this cranberry jalapeño dip is a must-make this holiday season.

They’ll make any heart grow three sizes.

A cookie tin must.

Over my years of writing for The Kitchn, I’ve shared almost all of my favorite holiday cookies, from my mother’s famous peppermint cream-filled butter cookies (followed by the much less finicky peppermint cream squares the following year) to rugelach and gingerbread cookies. I’ve saved one of my most beloved cookies for last. These candy cane cookies are the best. Here’s how to make them. Fun and easy to make.

It’s a total flavor bomb.

They’re too cute.

This is the one breakfast casserole you need.

The perfect bite.

Down to the buttery breadcrumb topping.

Chex mix is the ultimate DIY snack. It’s crunchy, just the right amount of salty, and stays good for several weeks, making it the perfect thing to keep on the counter for midday or pre-dinner nibbling. Plus, our version can be made with whatever cereal, toasted nuts, and crunchy snacks you’ve stocked up on.Many Chex mix recipes (including the original) have you simply melt some butter and pour it over the ingredients.

You'll never want to prep it any other way.

Pumpkin cheesecake has become a fall and winter dessert classic for good reason. The lively, familiar spices of classic pumpkin pie are balanced by the cool and creamy goodness of a New York-style cheesecake. The combination makes each bite memorably delicious and worthy of any celebration — especially Thanksgiving. Even if you have never made a cheesecake or pumpkin pie before, this is a dessert that is within your reach.

Like the boxed stuff, but so much better.

Bonus: You can assemble it ahead of time.

Linzer cookies might look like another pretty sandwich cookie, but these sweet-tart cookies have a rich, tender crumb, thanks to a nearly invisible ingredient. Almonds turned into almond flour make an everyday sugar cookie dough a tender, melt-in-your-mouth treat, fragrant with the warm notes of toasted nuts. Two cookies serve as the bookends to the sweet and sticky jam of your choice to transform into a holiday cookie made for customization. Here’s how to make them.

Christmas Chex Mix is one of my favorite holiday treats that offers a welcome change from all the cookies and candy canes fighting for attention. This crispy, salty-sweet mixture even looks like Christmas — everything is coated in white chocolate, and red and green M&Ms peek through! My favorite Christmas Chex Mix blend is pretty simple — cereal, pretzels, and candy — but the sprinkle of flaky salt at the end is what takes it over the top.

They’re soft, pillowy, and perfect.

It has the best cinnamon-sugar streak in the center.

Grab some candy canes.

Crispy on the outside, buttery and tender on the inside.

From one Midwesterner to another.

It’s so easy.

Sweet and tangy.

No holiday table is complete without sweet potatoes. Some people like theirs mashed and marshmallow-ed, while others serve theirs for dessert, but me? I prefer mine souffléd. In this sweet potato soufflé, sweet potatoes are puréed until silky-smooth, topped with a candied pecan crumble, then baked until light and puffed. They’re elegant yet rich and always hit the spot — and it’s high time they made an appearance on your spread.

Every year as the holidays approach, I eagerly anticipate holiday baking and decorating sugar cookies. And every year, they don’t exactly turn out as planned. That’s because decorating cookies is a lot easier said than done — especially if you’re a perfectionist like me who likes straight lines and clean edges. But this year, I’m prepared. I recently got to work developing a simple royal icing recipe that makes cookie decorating as stress-free (and mess-free!

Is anyone else in disbelief that it’s almost Christmas already? I say let this be the year that you mix up the menu a bit with some new side dishes, or trade in your roast beef tenderloin and baked ham for something different, like Filipino beef short ribs adobo or French onion pot roast. I like the idea of this year’s meal having a festive start with Christmas appetizers (I’m looking at you, baked pepper jelly cream cheese dip!

Editor’s Note: If you’ve cooked this beloved recipe before, it might look a little different these days! We recently improved it to make it even easier to follow and more delicious.“Southern as sweet potato pie” is a saying I didn’t learn until I moved to Georgia over 10 years ago, but long before I ever came to the South I had fallen in love with sweet potato pie.

These thin wafer cookies are perfect for gifting.

The best thing to happen to a chocolate kiss.

Some people have always understood that soup can be easy. I’ve just never been one of them. I’ve found myself on more than one occasion eating lunch with a friend who packed leftover soup — incredibly delicious-looking soup they’d just casually “whipped up” the night before. What was this sorcery? Doesn’t soup involve lots of chopping and simmering and layering of flavors? Apparently not, as I discovered while working on this easy pumpkin soup.

Editor’s Note: If you’ve cooked this beloved recipe before, it might look a little different these days! We recently improved it to make it even easier to follow and more delicious.Let’s talk about holiday appetizers and cocktail party snacks. Everyone needs just one or two really reliable crowd-pleasers around the holidays, no? It’s a relief for a cook to set out a plate of tasty bites while he puts the finishing touches on a meal.

We tried every method out there to come up with the very best.

Editor’s Note: If you’ve cooked this beloved recipe before, it might look a little different these days! We recently improved it to make it even easier to follow and more delicious.My heart beats a little faster when I talk about caramel cake. The tender yellow cake, the thick, crystalline frosting that marries caramelized sugar and butter — it’s an easy cake to fall in love with.

They're ever-so-slightly crisp on the outside and perfectly soft on the inside.

It's a game changer.

Oreo cookie crust + brownie + chocolate pudding + whipped cream = heaven.

These creamy, caramelized coins are almost too good to be true.

Everything I know about cornbread dressing — and Thanksgiving — I learned from my mother, which she in turn learned from her mother. It is a long line of resourceful Southern cooks, and I trust them with this important meal completely. The secret? It’s all about the butter! My very wise nanna once said, “Whatever the amount of butter called for in a dressing recipe, double it, triple it, heck, even quadruple it!

I married into a family that believes pretty much everything is made better with cheese. I can’t say I blame them, because these potatoes are so decadent and showstopping that I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to go back to the original. What’s more is that these mashed potatoes are the ideal make-ahead side dish.

Editor’s Note: If you’ve cooked this beloved recipe before, it might look a little different these days! We recently improved it to make it even easier to follow and more delicious.Anyone else here think that the stuffing is the best part of Thanksgiving dinner? I love its mix of textures and flavors – the buttery aromatics, herbs, and broth-soaked bread — oh mama, that’s good stuff!

Think Pocky stick, but peanut butter.

It’s no secret that one of the best ways to enjoy Brussels sprouts is when they’re deeply crispy and caramelized. While there are several paths that can get you there — including high-heat roasting and air frying — there’s nothing quite like the taste and texture of Brussels sprouts that have been deep-fried.

Sure, warm egg white bites hit the spot when I’m hungry and in a rush. And I have a soft spot for the lemon loaf and trio of cake-y petite vanilla bean scones, which my mom used to pick up for me whenever she stopped for an extra-hot latte on her way home from work. But the very best thing from Starbucks’ bakery case is their pumpkin bread. It doesn’t matter whether I’m buying it at 6 a.m.

My mother-in-law isn’t a baker, but she has a serious sweet tooth. When she pulled out a chocolate-smudged cookbook on our first shared Thanksgiving holiday, she turned straight to the chapter on pies — and specifically, a recipe for whipped cream-topped chocolate pie. Ever since, I’ve accepted chocolate pie as a welcome addition to any holiday spread.The version I’m sharing here is one I know she’d be proud of.

Against all odds, yes, it works.

Baked brie in puff pastry takes “rich and luxurious” to a whole new level. Add a few friends and some good tunes playing in the background, and you’ve got yourself a bonafide party situation. When I make this appetizer as part of a big holiday gathering or for a cocktail party with lots of other nibbles, I often like to bake it in a pie plate instead of on a baking sheet.

Southern biscuits are the perfect fictional device for telling the narratives of Southern families. One cook makes his biscuits with White Lily flour only because that’s how his Maw Mae did it. Another swears by lard, as her family never had the funds for high-dollar butter or shortening. Most Southern cooks bake biscuits at least once a week — a ritual and rite of passage as the recipe is handed down through the generations. My biscuit recipe is much the same.

It's classic and potato perfection.

It's key to the juiciest Thanksgiving bird.

Pommes aligot is more than just a cheesy twist on mashed potatoes. This incredibly magical blend of creamy potatoes and cheese was born in the French region of Midi-Pyrénées, and it is a celebration of regional cheese, served on special occasions alongside sausage or roasted meat.

They’re so soft and pillowy.