The holiday season calls for festive dishes, shareable bites, and a lively blend of well-worn recipe classics and new additions to a home cook’s repertoire. And many cooks turn to the Internet to find their newest cooking adventures. When Southern Living fans in the South are searching for recipes in the days following Thanksgiving 2022, fun and travel-friendly desserts are at the forefront of their minds. The following treats are proving especially search-worthy to our readers.
Cookies were the biggest draw for pre-holiday recipe searches
Cookie swaps are a much-loved holiday tradition, so it’s no surprise that Christmas cookie recipes have been in high demand so far this season. Among all Dotdash Meredith (that’s the parent company of Southern Living) recipe searches in the Southeast region of the U.S., the top December spot for desserts goes to Easy Sugar Cookies, This straightforward recipe yields 2 dozen sugar cookies in just 15 minutes of active cook time, and these sweet, nostalgic confections are perfect blank canvases for icing, sprinkles, and other holiday-themed edible decorations.
Our roundup of 30 Easy Christmas Cookie Recipes to Bake With Your Kids is also garnering plenty of clicks this year; this collection is a one-stop shop for flavorful and engaging treats like Peppermint Meltaway Cookies, Peanut Butter Kiss Cookies, and Pecan Snowball Cookies, all easy-to-execute and ideal for party platters and giftable parcels.
A classic Southern cake also inspired a great deal of interest
Cookies may represent the most sought-after holiday dessert recipes among Southerners in 2022, but cake—an unquestionably festive sweet—also gets lots of love from Dotdash Meredith recipe seekers in the Southeast. Million Dollar Pound Cake, an endlessly-customizable vanilla almond cake recipe that can be garnished with chocolate syrup, fresh fruit, preserves, or even Christmassy sprinkles, has been a popular post-Thanksgiving search, as is White Cake with Cranberry Filling and Orange Buttercream, a stylish Southern Living recipe that features classic holiday fruit flavors and colors.
But the #1 cake search in the South this December goes to Hummingbird Cake, an absolute Southern dessert staple. This banana, pineapple, and cinnamon-flavored cake slathered in a perfectly-balanced cream cheese frosting first came to the American South in the 1970s by way of Jamaica, and in 1978, Southern Living published a hummingbird cake recipe that has become one of our magazine’s most celebrated recipes ever. Therefore, it’s fitting to see this iconic treat on our most-searched list for the holidays—it’s party-friendly, it’s crowd-pleasing, and it’s quintessentially Southern.
Collected by Cookingtom
Original Article
I’m Brian Danny Max, a chef and a writer at cookingtom.com. I’m here to talk about food and cooking, and to share some of my favorite recipes with you all! I’ve been interested in food and cooking since I was a child. My parents are both great cooks, and they taught me a lot about the kitchen. I’ve been cooking professionally for about 10 years now, and I’ve loved every minute of it! I specialize in healthy, flavorful recipes that are easy to make at home. I believe that anyone can cook a delicious meal, no matter their skill level. I’m here to help you learn how to cook, and to show you that it’s not as difficult as you might think! I hope you’ll check out my blog and my recipes, and I look forward to hearing from you!