Purim is a raucous celebration complete with drinking, costumes, parties, and sweets that falls on March 13 and 14 this year. Traditionally, trays or baskets of holiday treats like triangle-shaped hamantaschen, candies, and bottles of wine were made at home and delivered to neighbors and those in need. Today, these packages, called mishloach manot, are sold everywhere in Israel. Still, we prefer to bake our own, wrap them up, and hand deliver them to friends and family to wish them a happy holiday.

In this collection, you’ll find 500-year-old Sephardic recipes like those for orange sponge cake from a community that now calls Zimbabwe home, coconut cookies from a family with roots in Iraq, and yeasted hamantaschen from our partners at the Jewish Food Society. There are also recipes for a poppy seed tart and presburg cake, which celebrate the blue-black seeds that are a staple of the holiday.

All of the pastries in this collection pair well with tea — or something stronger.