Recipes with butter

Easy steak au poivre: filet mignon crusted in cracked black peppercorns, pan-seared in butter, finished with a red wine pan sauce. French classic in 15 minutes.

This cake is so rich and moist and it keeps well for some time in a well covered cake tin or wrapped in plastic in the refrigerator.

Kapusniak is a Polish fresh cabbage soup with browned pork, paprika, bay leaf, and a splash of sherry, finished with sour cream. A 65-minute warming Eastern European bowl.

Praline cream pie with a graham-praline crust, silky vanilla custard folded with crumbled pecan pralines, and pillowy whipped cream on top. A New Orleans dessert through and through.

Microwave baked apples stuffed with dried apricot, walnuts, brown sugar, and butter, cooked in orange juice. Ready in under 15 minutes with a rich, fruity filling worth trying.

Fairfax chocolate icing made with unsweetened and semi-sweet chocolate, melted marshmallows, and butter. A glossy, fudgy frosting that spreads thick and sets with a soft bite.

Homemade cinnamon bread with a soft, honey-sweetened yeast dough rolled with a thick cinnamon-sugar filling and shaped into S-coils in the pan. Makes 3 loaves or can be shaped into dinner rolls.

Easy coffee cake builds a quick monkey bread-style bundt from refrigerated biscuits dipped in melted butter and pecan-brown sugar, then baked into a sticky pull-apart loaf. A four-ingredient brunch shortcut for sleepy mornings.

Graham granola bread machine loaf with whole wheat, rolled oats, buttermilk, and walnuts. Hearty breakfast-bread texture packed with crunch and fiber.

Banana cake sweetened with fruit sweetener instead of refined sugar, with sour cream, chopped nuts, and optional coconut. A naturally sweetened banana cake that bakes in 25 minutes.

Coffee-almond cake with an espresso-cocoa custard baked in caramel, inverted over an amaretti cookie cake layer. A showstopping Italian-inspired dessert with two baked components.

Fudgy bonbons: Hershey's Kiss-stuffed chocolate truffle cookies with chopped nuts, drizzled with white chocolate. A Pillsbury Bake-Off winner that still knocks cookie exchanges out of the park.

Microwave chocolate marshmallow fudge with chopped nuts. Sugar, butter, and evaporated milk boiled in the microwave, then beaten with chocolate chips and marshmallows for creamy fudge in 15 minutes.

Pan-seared perch fillets with savory Chinese black bean sauce, fresh ginger, garlic, and sake. Restaurant-style Asian fish dinner in under 30 minutes.

Whole trout wrapped in foil with butter and a squeeze of lemon, then nestled on coals to steam over an open fire. The classic three-ingredient campfire fish for fresh catch.

Penne alla vodka tosses tubular pasta with a quick sauce of butter, vodka, hot pepper, puréed plum tomatoes, cream, and Parmigiano-Reggiano. A 20-minute Italian-American classic.