Photo: Food52

For those moments this season when your smartphone isn't either blaring Christmas carols or streaming videos of a calming ocean, these five apps will help you be a little more productive.

FOOD52 Holiday Recipe & Survival Guide, $9.99 for iPad.
This app, spun off of the crowd-sourced site Food52, has 75 recipes for Christmas, Hanukkah and New Year's, 100 minutes of video tutorials, plus extras like step-by-step photos of zesting, peeling and segmenting citrus; rules for reheating food; and a dish-washing game plan.

Baking with Dorie, $7.99 for iPad.
Cookbook author Dorie Greenspan gives more than 20 baking lessons via 100-plus videos in this app that's as useful as it is beautiful to look at. Learn how to make Dorie's All-in-One Holiday Bundt Cake (with pumpkin, cranberries, pecans and a maple syrup icing), Cinnamon Squares and more cold-weather treats.

Grocery iQ, free for Android, iPhone and iPad.
This app lets you build your food shopping list quickly by scanning the barcode for any product, or via predictive text (and its database contains millions of food items). You can create lists for multiple stores, sort your list by aisle, and find coupons for items you're shopping for.


Good Food Festive Recipes, $2.99 for iPhone and iPad.
With more than 160 recipes for drinks, appetizers, mains and desserts (and a big selection of vegetarian options), each one with a photo, this app from the BBC is one-stop holiday cooking inspiration. There's also a video demonstrating how to make chocolate truffles, which happen to make excellent stocking stuffers.

VintageChart+, free for iPhone and iPad.
Who knows if 2003 or 2004 was a better year for Napa Cabernet? Wine Spectator does, and this app (the magazine's first) will help you make an educated decision next time you're aimlessly wandering the aisles of your local wine store.

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