the editors of Martha Stewart Living

To give almond shortbread cookies the pastel treatment, dust them with tinted confectioners' sugar blended with finely ground freeze-dried blueberries, raspberries, and mango.

The textured end of a meat mallet is gently pressed into the dough of these cardamom- and rose water–scented cookies to form a grid pattern.

Baked in a pie dish, this simple butter cake gets topped with fresh strawberries just before hitting the oven. Serve it warm—and make sure you have some whipped cream on hand.

Barbecue purists may claim that pulled pork has to be smoked in a pit to be the real thing, and we won't quibble with that. But this recipe, prepared right in your kitchen (on the counter, no less), is one deliciously simple variation on the theme.

We use a slow cooker with a browning option to crisp the chicken skin for this Moroccan-flavored dish. The stew is great on its own but couscous would be an easy and fitting side dish.