Recipes with vegetable shortening

Kahlua orange nut cake is a moist tube cake with a buttery walnut crumb crust, fragrant orange-Kahlua batter, and a coffee liqueur glaze. Coffee, citrus, and toasted walnut in every bite.

Giant Texas-sized cookies loaded with oats, cereal, chocolate chips, coconut, and pecans. Scooped with an ice cream scoop for massive, chewy, everything-in-it cookies.

Asparagus cream soup blends frozen asparagus with chicken broth, milk, and egg yolks into a silky velouté finished with a hit of hot sauce. Old-school stovetop classic that uses pantry staples and feeds a crowd.

Old-fashioned raisin pastries: flaky pie-dough half-moons stuffed with ground raisins, nuts, and citron in a honey-cinnamon-jelly filling. Hand pies for the holiday cookie box.

Friendship banana bread made with Amish friendship starter for extra tang and moisture, plus walnuts and a choice of orange zest or vanilla. A sourdough-style banana loaf.

This pecan pie can be make a day ahead and stored in the refrigerator until about one hour before serving time.

Old-fashioned rolled and cut oatmeal cookies with raisins, cinnamon, and nutmeg. A spiced, crispy oat cookie made the traditional way with a cookie cutter.

Copycat Hostess Ho Ho cake in sheet form: chocolate cake topped with cooked-flour vanilla cream filling and finished with a glossy cocoa-fudge glaze. Childhood snack-cake nostalgia for a crowd.

Wheat-free applesauce cake made with ground oats, cinnamon, nutmeg, and raisins. A moist, spiced cake with no wheat flour that improves after resting overnight.

Cloverleaf refrigerator rolls: soft, tender potato yeast rolls shaped three balls to a muffin cup so they pull apart into clover-leaf petals. The make-ahead dough chills overnight for fresh-baked rolls on demand.

Pane di Mattina alla Siciliana is a sweet Sicilian breakfast bread enriched with eggs, butter, lemon zest, fennel seed, and Marsala-soaked raisins and currants. Sicily's answer to morning brioche.

Baked doughnut puffs with nutmeg, chopped walnuts, and a cinnamon-sugar coating. No deep frying needed. Drop batter into mini muffin pans, bake until golden, then dip in butter and shake in spiced powdered sugar.

Gulaschsuppe, a traditional German-style goulash soup with beef cubes, paprika, green peppers, caraway, and lemon juice in rich beef broth. Tastes even better reheated the next day.

Old-fashioned chocolate sheath cake with cocoa, buttermilk, and a hint of cinnamon, frosted while still hot from the oven. A classic Texas-style sheet cake with a fudgy topping.

Chocolate cookies shaped like pine cones with melted chocolate and overlapping toasted almond slices. A show-stopping holiday cookie project that looks like woodland art.

Deep-dish chicken pie from scratch with poached chicken, carrots, celery, baby lima beans, and mushrooms in a creamy half-and-half sauce, under a hand-rolled egg-washed pastry lid. Sunday supper royalty.