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.

Menenas are an essential part of Sephardi baking tradition. Traditionally, they are shaped with tweezers, but a wooden mold can also be used. 

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.

Red wine, seltzer, and yeast enrich the dough for these cookies with a sweet, chewy walnut filling. As they bake, the kindl are basted with honey and oil, creating a crispy outer layer. 

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!

These fluffy macaroons, filled with chopped apricots and sprinkled with orange blossom water, come from Sarit Packer and Itamar Srulovich, owners of the beloved Honey & Co. restaurant in London.

In Jennifer Indig’s family, there is always a stash of mandel bread in the freezer ready to be taken out and enjoyed alongside her grandmother’s walnut raisin cookies and turtle cookies with caramel, nuts, and chocolate.

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.

Acclaimed food writer, and cookbook author Bonnie Stern, is known for her rugelach. In place of a cream cheese-based dough, her recipe opts for a yeasted one, and instead of chocolate or jam, she uses meringue that becomes slightly chewy as it bakes.

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.

This classic recipe comes from Carol Becker, owner of the iconic New York City bakery William Greenberg Desserts. The batter is made with buttermilk, which helps these soft, cake-like cookies to rise.