There is nothing like a delicious piece of cake, sweet and moist after dinner or a potluck buffet. This recipe called Crazy Cake also goes by the name of “Wacky Cake” or “Folk Art Cake”, due to its roots in American baking during wartime when many basic foods were rationed. To vegans and AMarg vegetarians, it is more rational and wonderful than wacky.

The winter squash season is just about over but this dish is too good to wait for next year. My supermarket still has the precut chunks in the produces section. I had it at a friend’s house and I couldn't stop raving about it. It's amazing. Beans and squash are just great together.

Genevieve So is Padma and Pranesh’s daughter and a trained pastry chef and adept home baker. She often bakes on consignment at Christmas for margiis. This is one of her specialties, the beloved sour cream coffee cake with a spiced nut crumb filling. Coffee cakes rank among the most popular of comfort foods, welcomed at breakfast with a glass of milk, lunch, afternoon tea, or even dessert.

Two Holiday Potato Casseroles

Maple Candied Yams

Here is a super simple seasonal holiday side dish. I use Garnet yams, but any dark-fleshed sweet potato will do. These candied yams are good hot from the oven or room temperature, even cold out of the fridge. Serves 12

3/4 cup unfiltered unsweetened apple juice

1/2 cup packed light brown sugar

Manicotti pasta shells are sold in 8-ounce packages containing 14 tubes, all laying contently in their individual beds of molded plastic to keep them from shattering. When I was learning to cook, manicotti shells became one of my favorite and most successful casseroles.

I went to a buffet at a friends right after she returned from her first visit to Rancho La Puerta spa, right over the border from San Diego, California, in Baja, Mexico. The spa, opened in the 1940s, was run according to the founder's research into the ancient Persian religion of Zoroastrianism, which focuses on man's good deeds.

Summer Brown Sugar Berry Cobbler

There is another fabulous receipe with filo , which is also Greek. The green filling is wrapped in layers of filo pastry with the butter-olive oil, then folded into individual triangular servings. It is really tasty snack!

Spice filled sweet rolls are an irresistible homey morning treat, especially when eaten warm. An easy-to-handle dough is made like a baking powder biscuit, filled, and rolled up to form into a simple spiral, which retains a perfect shape during baking.

Some one asked me one day
to say what was on my mind.
They wanted to know how I pray,
and what it is I am trying to find.

I reached inside and took a look,
and all I could see was Your face.