Dessert

Celebrate a birthday with a cake decorated to look like the face of the PBS Kids star Donkey Hodie!

Try a recipe for a passion fruit-flavored take on lemon tart from the grande dame of British cookery. It's perfect for a sunny spring gathering. 

In the PBS Kids show Lyla in the Loop, Lyla and her family enjoy doing the carrot cake dance together – the perfect excuse to make a carrot cake with your kids and have fun at the same time! 

Photographer Kathleen Hinkel visited Delightful Pastries on Lawrence Avenue in Jefferson Park to get a behind-the-scenes look at the colorful preparation that goes into creating thousands of pączki in the days leading up to Lent. 

New Orleans' popular Carnival dessert king cake descends from sweet European treats associated with Epiphany, on January 6. And it has a cousin in the Mexican rosca de reyes. 

Sugar was first refined in India, and the country consumes more sugar than any other. Indian sweets or mithai are unlike anything else in their variety, flavors, and prepartion, but they are little-known in the West.

It can be difficult to find recipes that please both children and adults, but these cookies from Martha Stewart manage to do so by adding chocolate chunks to ooey-gooey molasses cookies.

In Puerto Rico, budín de pan or bread pudding is typically served during Nochebuena or Christmas Eve. This recipe from PBS KIDS' Jessica Martinez is adapted from her grandmother, who took out the traditional raisins in favor of making the budín like a pineapple upside-down cake.

Fruitcake may be a polarizing holiday dish, but if you make it fresh at home with your children, it can become a memorable new tradition – and it's easily customizable in terms of what fruit and nuts you include in it.