An homage to his grandparents’ Brooklyn pastry shop, chef Dave Dreifus’ rugelach dough is enriched with butter and cream cheese, lending a soft and smooth bite to this classic pastry.

This sweet tart was inspired by a heritage trip chef and artist Elazar Tamano took with his father Melaku to Ethiopia. Elazar uses Ethiopian white honey for this recipe and strongly recommends seeking it out.

One of culinary educator Anna Gershenson’s signature recipes, teiglach are small knots of dough boiled in honey. They are often served on Rosh Hashanah as a nod to a sweet new year.

Darázsfészek is similar to a cinnamon roll, filled with butter and nutty walnuts, and baked until caramelized on top. If you prefer a dessert without nuts, swap them for a splash of vanilla.

Baklava can be prepared with lots of different nut fillings, but pistachios and walnuts are particularly popular. Growing up in Cairo, cookbook author Vivianne Bowell recalls baklava was served at special occasions alongside Turkish coffee.

These delicate cookies filled with dates and walnuts come from Stella Hanan Cohen’s Sephardi community. You will need a cookie mold (which are readily available online) and a bit of time to make them, but the results are well worth it.

Stern’s Bake Shop in Yonkers specialized in cakes for special occasions like weddings, birthdays, and bar mitzvahs. At home, the Stern siblings celebrated birthdays with a three-layer cake with fresh raspberry filling and vanilla buttercream.

Holocaust survivor Alta Blima Hartstein used to make kindl for holidays and big family gatherings. The dough is made with red wine, seltzer, and yeast and the cookies have a sweet, chewy walnut filling.

Any filling you like will work with this hamantaschen recipe, but marzipan, which you can buy in a block, or a simple homemade lemon curd are particularly nice. 

This traditional compote recipe comes from Benjamin Lesser’s grandfather who lived in Mukatch, Hungary before the Holocaust. His home was “on a major street called Sugar — an appropriate name for that sweet home,” Benjamin explains.

These chocolate tahini truffles take just 10 minutes to make — but they will need an hour in the freezer to firm up, so be sure to make the recipe before dinner. 

Sivan Kobi, whose grandparents and father were professional bakers, fries her sufganiyot until they are perfectly golden and fluffy. You can fill the ones in her recipe with strawberry jam, chocolate spread, Nutella, or custard.

Lyuba Sheynin uses an old baking trick to aerate her poppyseed cake batter: a dash of baking soda and splash of vinegar and your cake will be light and fluffy!

This cookie recipe from Sarit Packer and Itamar Srulovich, the duo behind London’s Honey & Co. brings together honey, dried apricots, and orange blossom water. They are naturally gluten free.

In Jennifer Indig’s family, her grandmothers’ cookies are always on hand. There are thin mandel bread from grandma Mitzi and these shortbread cookies topped with caramel, nuts, and chocolate from grandma Syl.

Disguised as a gentile, Martha Roth survived the Holocaust as a teenager by escaping from Slovakia to Hungary. After the war, she made her way to Israel with no physical tokens of her past, but strong memories of her mother's recipes, including this one.

Cookbook author Viviane Bowell’s mother used to stock her refrigerator in Cairo with homemade jams like this one, which she served to guests along with candied oranges and sweets like menenas and baklava.

Full of blue plums, surrounded by a muerbeteig crust, and flavored with brandy, cinnamon, and lemon zest, this tart has always been part of cookbook author Joan Nathan’s family.

Baker Jessie Sheehan’s visits to her grandmother’s home were always marked by lemon sheet cake. This deeply lemon-y cake is sweet, tart, moist, and topped with a thin layer of glaze that shatters as you bite into it.

This 100-year old recipe comes from cookbook author Bonnie Stern's aunt Lil, who always made the cookies for Hanukkah. In place of a cream cheese dough, it opts for a yeasted dough and a filling not of jam or chocolate, but meringue that becomes slightly chewy when it puffs out of the dough.

Chef Einat Admony serves this apple and date bread pudding for Rosh Hashanah, but it can be enjoyed throughout the fall and winter, or anytime when apples are in season.

An icon of Jewish American baking, black and white cookies push the boundary between cake and cookie, with a tender texture and their signature icing. They’re best eaten within a few days of baking.