by Catalogs.com Info Guru Angela K. Van Winkle

Desserts and our favorite holiday meals go together in everyone’s vision of the perfect celebration.

If you’re planning for the holidays and looking for some serious crowd-pleasing options for the end of the perfect meal, here are ten of the best selling desserts for every occasion.

10. Cookie Bouquet

The cookie bouquet is really art in cookie form, so it can work for just about any occasion. You can dress it up for graduation, Mother’s Day, or even Easter and you have still outshone every other standard confection on the table.

9. German Holiday Stollen

Stollen is a traditional Christmas dessert packed with dried fruit and nuts, but don’t you dare call it fruit cake. It is more of a fruit bread, less dense and less sweet than its oft ridiculed cousin.

8. Chocolate Covered Strawberries

For decades people everywhere met each Valentine’s Day with a mixture of fear and joyful anticipation at the thought of digging through the customary “box of assorted chocolates.” But now we have shed the fear and embraced pure deliciousness. No longer does your sweetheart have to risk biting into some weird orange flavored nougat, because chocolate covered strawberries are Valentine’s Day’s new preferred confection. Fresh juicy fruit dipped in chocolate. Thank you, chocolatiers, for saving romance once again.

7. Flag Cake

No 4th of July or Memorial Day spread would be complete without a flag cake. These showy beauties are typically made of layers of white cake between strawberry filling, iced in white, and bedecked in strawberries and blueberries to represent the red, white, and blue. Patriotism has never been so sweet.

6. Gourmet Brownies

Gourmet brownies are one of those crowd-pleaser desserts that complete any holiday table. They make a great gift for Father’s Day or a birthday, and can make a pleasantly unexpected addition to a batch of Easter goodies.

5. Fruit Cake

Steeped in tradition and scorned in popular culture, say what you like but there is good reason why fruit cake has become synonymous with winter holidays. When made right, with lots of real fruit, nuts, and real butter, this stuff tastes like Christmas in a loaf. Dense, rich, and sweet, it travels well, ships like a dream, and makes any festive table feel like home.

4. Caramel Apple

Nothing says fall like caramel apples. And you can make them as simple as warm caramel on the stove for dipping, or as fancy as these special caramel apples from Mrs. Prindables. These are sure to garner some oohs and ahs for your Halloween party table.

3. Cookie Cake

Some people just don’t like cake, or they want something different for the odd celebratory occasion. Enter the ever-popular cookie cake. This ingenious dessert fills that odd niche for not just birthdays, but imagine one graced with Rosy the Riveter for Labor Day, firework sprays for 4th of July, a beautiful blue and gold Star of David for Hanukkah, or one in the shape and decorated like and Easter egg for Easter. Pairs well with a healthy scoop of your favorite ice cream.

2. Pecan Pie

Everyone knows Thanksgiving is all about the pie. And no pie is more quintessential to this holiday table than pecan pie, especially in the South. Those crunchy toasted nuts, that sweet gooey filling; you can’t properly give thanks until you know there is a slice of this tried and true tradition in your immediate future.

1. Red Velvet Cake

Red velvet cake is a show stopper. Working equally as well for Christmas as it does Valentine’s Day, the layers of deep crimson cake between snow white frosting need almost no extra embellishment to please the eye. And, since it is actually chocolate, after all, its crowd-pleasing abilities make for its enduring popularity.