Whether you're planning this week's dinner menu, a small weekend gathering for family and friends or a birthday bash for 30, choose from our selection of superb make-ahead dishes for the best recipes that double as tasty time-savers.

Here, our favourite make-ahead recipes include party appetizers and finger foods, refreshing soups and salads, flavourful main course marinades and layered desserts and cakes.

A flurry of kitchen activity awaits with these delicious recipes!

Great make-ahead recipes: appetizers and sides

Cauliflower with Parsley Sauce
This dish improves after a few days of marinating and tastes best when served at room temperature.

Make-Ahead Green and Waxed Bean Bouquets
Green beans are a lovely vegetable, but if your budget permits, you may want to substitute thin lengths of asparagus for the beans.

Shrimp Toasts
These fragrant, crispy, Chinese-style shrimp toasts will be a surefire hit with all your guests.

Potato and Portobello Casserole
Use a fragrant extra-virgin olive oil, as it provides much of the flavour in this layered casserole.

Arugula and Artichoke Cups with Roasted Red Pepper Dressing
This sensational salad looks impressive and is very easy to put together.

Small Vol-au-Vents
Serving salads in miniature vol-au-vent pastry cups adds a timeless touch of class to a buffet table or hors d'oeuvre tray.

Won Ton Crisps
As satisfying as a crunchy potato chip but almost fat-free.

Golden Onion Chutney
This sweetly spiced, tangy chutney complements smoked or cured ham nicely. The flavour is even better if you make it a couple of days ahead.

Squash-Stuffed Pasta Shells
Try this elegant squash-stuffed pasta as a substantial starter, a vegetarian main course or as an accompaniment to a roast.

Island Coleslaw
West Indians love cabbage salad, and the sweet and tart flavours of this coleslaw with pineapple go perfectly with the piquant tastes of the grilled items.

Great make-ahead recipes: soups and salads

Presto Black Bean Soup
When made with frozen or rinsed canned black beans, this soup can be prepared in about 15 minutes.

Chilled Avocado Soup
For a sit-down dinner, serve this soup in soup cups on lined plates. For easy service on a buffet, ladle soup into juice glasses and present in a bowl of crushed ice.

Spring Chicken Soup with Pasta
The base of this soup is the poaching liquid used to prepare the chickens for the main course. Cutting the fresh lasagna noodles approximates the look of homemade pasta.

Watermelon, Radish and Cucumber Salad
This novel salad tastes as great as it looks.

Cold Blueberry Soup
Blueberries are full of the antioxidants that many of our diets lack. This easy, healthy soup makes a refreshing finish to any summer meal.

Roasted Tomato and Olive Pasta Salad
All the sauce ingredients are roasted together and mixed with cooked pasta and mint for an eminently simple and exceptionally tasty pasta salad.

Great make-ahead recipes: main course meals

Two-Cheese Baked Penne with Roasted Vegetables
This full-flavoured pasta dish can be made ahead, so it's appropriate for weeknight entertaining as well as for taking to potluck dinners.

Deep-Dish Pub Pies
Take stodgy meat pies to exciting new heights with these individual make-ahead casseroles of beer-braised beef crowned with puff pastry.

Poached Chicken Breasts with Parsley Sauce
This dish is traditional enough to appeal to guests of all ages and so easy to prepare that you can make it for a crowd!

Chicken Drumsticks with Indian Flair
Tandoori-spiced skinless chicken drumsticks with a crisp crumb coating are just as appealing at room temperature as warm.

Mojito Rack of Lamb
Mint and rum define this famous Cuban drink; here we infuse lamb with rum, garlic and spices, then top it with a fragrant mint chutney.

Red Chili-Roasted Turkey
This is an easy make-ahead main course - you can roast the turkey the day before, carve it, cover it with its sauce and refrigerate it in a roasting pan covered with foil.

Great make-ahead recipes: desserts

Swiss Leckerli
There are many styles of leckerli, but the Basel style inspired these cookies, which are about as close as you can get to those found in the city's bakeries.

Viennese Lemon Cake
This four-layer cake is rich and relatively simple to make. It has a denser and slightly drier crumb than the average Canadian cake.

Vanilla Rice Pudding with Strawberries
Arborio rice is especially good in this pudding because its fat short grains withstand long cooking without falling apart, lending the pudding an exceptional texture.

Spiced Gingerbread Women and Men
Crystallized ginger gives these well-spiced gingerbread cookies a real flavour boost.

Maple Truffles
Enjoy these tasty morsels of creamy maple fudge rolled in chocolate and walnuts with a glass of Quebec's unique apple ice wine as a sweet ending to a meal.

Apple Baba Babka au Rhum
Baba au Rhum is a French dessert of individual yeast cakes baked in specialized baba moulds then soaked in syrup and rum.

Swiss Lemon Butter Cookies
These are simple Christmas cookies; use cultured unsalted butter for the most authentically Swiss flavour.

Great make-ahead recipes: snacks and drinks

Almond Granola
The heart-healthy monounsaturated fats found in almonds and almond butter are essential to a healthy diet.

Grape and Cheddar Cheese Loaf
Serve slices of this decadently rich loaf warm and accompanied by green salad dressed simply in vinegar and oil.

Hazelnut Chocolate Sandwich Cookies
The Demerara sugar, with its crunchy crystals, gives these luxurious cookies a special texture.

Rum Punch
Before mixing the punch, keep the rum in the freezer and the juices and fruit chilled in the refrigerator, so you won't need too much ice.