Yes, you can make a gingerbread house that actually tastes as good as it looks! Just follow Chicago pastry chef Mindy Segal’s lead: The Mindy’s Bakery owner starts with a soft, pillowy spice cake for her base, then attaches fragrant gingersnap cookie “walls” and snappy toffee “roof shingles” with a luscious butterscotch frosting. She uses the remaining frosting and plenty of powdered sugar to evoke the elaborately decorated houses her parents would take her to see in Lincolnwood—a Chicago suburb known for its lavish holiday displays—when she was a kid. “It should resemble a house in a Christmas wonderland,” she says. Get the recipe >

The holidays are the perfect time for project baking, and this yule log from Rose Levy Beranbaum, the grande dame of cakes, won’t disappoint. She tweaked and refined the recipe for the 35th-anniversary edition of her game-changing cookbook The Cake Bible, making each component, from the ethereal, almost soufflé-like chocolate cake and Chantilly cream filling to the dark chocolate ganache “bark” and meringue “mushrooms,” even more foolproof. While this bûche de Noël is certainly greater than the sum of its parts, you’ll be starting with some pretty great parts—and mastering essential baking skills along the way. Get the recipe >

Franco Palestinian chef Fadi Kattan wrote a beautiful tribute to his grandmother Julia and her beloved Christmas cake in his recently released cookbook Bethlehem: A Celebration of Palestinian Food. This simple fruitcake was the much-anticipated centerpiece at her annual Christmas Eve lunch—and baking loaves upon loaves of it is a ritual that Kattan still looks forward to every year. The cake is based on an old Betty Crocker recipe that Teta Julia adapted to showcase locally sourced Palestinian ingredients, including dibs, a thick, earthy grape molasses; and a whopping five different kinds of dried fruits: dates, raisins, apricots, cherries, and figs. Get the recipe >

Everything you love about the pfeffernüsse but in cake form! Hannah Ziskin, the pastry chef at Los Angeles pizza parlor Quarter Sheets, reimagines the classic German spice cookie as a light, airy chiffon cake with the same warming spices that makes the original dessert so appealing: cinnamon, cloves, ginger, nutmeg, and, of course, black pepper (pfeffernüsse is German for pepper nuts). Since the cookies are often served with mulled wine, or glühwein, in Germany, she gilds the lily with a vivid red wine glaze and sparkling slivers of candied ginger and citrus. Get the recipe >

According to New York City pastry chef Caroline Schiff, this statement cake has “main character energy”—it can’t help but stand out. The dramatic swooshes and tufts of torched meringue draw you in, and the interior, with its beautiful layers of cake and pastry cream, is no less impressive. Traditional eggnog ingredients like nutmeg and dark liquor (bourbon, brandy, and rum) pull double duty here, lending nostalgic spice and boozy intrigue to both the batter and the filling. “This stunner is a labor of love, but there’s no time like the holidays to take it on!” says Schiff. Get the recipe >

For Pan y Dulce: The Latin American Baking Book author Bryan Ford, few sweets can go wrong with the addition of chocolate, this tres leches cake included. He whisks cocoa powder into the batter, then ups the ante by inviting another beloved ingredient to the party: coconut. “Adding shredded coconut to the batter really helps the inside texture come alive, and switching the whole milk in the soaking liquid to coconut milk is a great way to get immersed in that fatty flavor,” he says. Torched meringue, toasted coconut, and cocktail cherries complete the presentation for this luxe dessert. Get the recipe >

While Canadian food writer and cooking teacher Camilla Wynne usually doesn’t like to pick favorites, she makes an exception for this tangy, ultra-creamy no-bake cheesecake recipe in her new cookbook Nature’s Candy: Timeless and Inventive Recipes for Creating and Baking with Candied Fruit—it’s that good. “Not only is it positively stunning, with its quince chips encased in sunset-pink translucent jelly as if in amber, but I could eat the whole thing myself,” she says. We feel the same way—and bet your guests will too. Get the recipe >

Pastry chef Gabriella Martinez isn’t shy about experimenting with flavors: at her cocktail and dessert bar Libre in Portland, Oregon, she serves bold creations like mole crème brûlée and bone marrow caramel tres leches. But, surprisingly, there is one dish that she’s hesitant to riff on: carrot cake. “It’s my dad’s favorite cake, and my mom loves cream cheese frosting, so we would make it for every holiday,” she says. Her recipe keeps the classic components of the family favorite but adds lush, milky dulce de leche to the frosting and smoky, caramelly piloncillo to the batter as a nod to her Mexican heritage. Get the recipe >

Persimmons may be underappreciated in the baking world, but Camari Mick, pastry chef at The Musket Room and Raf’s in New York City, is here to give the cozy fall fruits their due. In this plush, dense cake, she plays up the spiced undertones of ripe Hachiyas with aromatic cinnamon and introduces another dimension of flavor with rich, toasty brown butter. She tops it all off with a drizzle of sticky toffee sauce and a dollop of whipped crème fraîche for an ideal balance of sweetness and tang. Get the recipe >

For New York City pastry chef Natasha Pickowicz, nothing says “celebration” like the classic Chinese dessert ba bao fan, which translates to “eight treasures rice.” Her mom prepares the sticky rice pudding every Lunar New Year, filling it with the traditional red bean paste and going all out on the “treasures”—dried fruits, seeds, and nuts—for the topping. Pickowicz recently decided to create her own version incorporating a few of what she calls “cheffy steps,” like cooking the rice with dried hibiscus flowers, lightly candying the dried fruits in syrup, and bumping up the flavor of the sweetened adzuki beans with butter, salt, and five-spice powder. The result? An equally showstopping dessert that Pickowicz now brings to potlucks, Friendsgivings, and any special occasion. Get the recipe >

Crystal Kass, the pastry chef at Valentine in Phoenix, Arizona, often runs this exquisite cake as a special at the restaurant to great fanfare. With its wavy lines of piped frosting and artfully arranged candied citrus, it pairs a sleek, minimal aesthetic with elegant, balanced flavor. Sweet, nutty mesquite flour (dried and ground pods of the mesquite tree) and freshly brewed coffee bring depth to the chocolate cake batter, and a café de olla-inspired frosting—Swiss buttercream infused with espresso, canela, and orange zest—proves to be the perfect finishing touch. Get the recipe >

“The first time I took one of these out of the oven, I felt like Dorothy stepping out of her sepia-toned existence and into a wonderful world of tart, Technicolor fruitiness,” says Washington, D.C.-based pastry chef Paola Velez. A vibrant floral rendition of “the only rum cake you’ll ever need” in her new cookbook Bodega Bakes: Recipes for Sweets and Treats Inspired by My Corner Store, it utilizes the same base enriched with brown butter and warming spices, then adds an ingenious hibiscus rum punch soak. The dried flowers infuse the cake with a tart brightness and tint it a striking shade of deep magenta. As an opulent final touch, Velez garnishes the top with fresh edible blooms. Get the recipe >