Dessert
3895 recipes found
Doolsho (Cardamom Sponge Cake)
While doolsho is simply translated as “cake” from the Somali language, this cardamom sponge cake is perhaps the most well-known cake among Somali people. This light cake gets its airiness from egg whites, which are whipped until cloudlike. Doolsho is an integral part of the Somali casariyo (afternoon tea) tradition, in which thick, cardamom-dotted slices are served alongside homemade cookies, sticky bright red xalwo (Somali-style halwa, an intensely sweet cardamom-scented dessert) and steaming cups of spiced shaah (chai) or gingery qahwo (coffee). It’s not only a coveted afternoon snack, but also a beloved dessert and the star of the to-go boxes that are a fixture of traditional weddings. While this cake is served plain without any bells and whistles such as frosting or glaze, its simplicity allows the floral flavor of the cardamom to bloom.
Sgroppino
Traditionally, a Sgroppino is an Italian palate cleanser, though it’s equally as suitable served as a cocktail or dessert. Whatever time of day you choose to make this boozy, lemony combination, you’ll want to drink it quickly once it’s in front of you. The slushy, lightly fizzy texture comes from a combination of sorbet, vodka and Prosecco — but, if you have another dry, light sparkling wine, that works well, too.
Citrus and Coconut Ambrosia
Many know the kind of ambrosia with marshmallows and whipped topping, called ambrosia salad. This, on the other hand, is an elegant, simplified (and perhaps closer to the 19th-century original) version of dessert-style ambrosia. It can and should be prepared up to several hours before serving. The main thing is to let the citrus fruit sit in its juices for a while. It’s worth the wait.
Lemon Bars With Pecan Crust
Lemon bars, with their buttery shortbread crust and their tart-as-you-like curd, have become one of the great American desserts ubiquitous to the 20th century cookery canon. These have a little twist with a rich pecan short crust, making them just a bit more well-rounded, the toasty nuttiness serving as a counterbalance to the tart lemon zing. While there are some official notations of its origins in print — most notably in the Chicago Tribune in 1962 — it remains one of those desserts that has seemingly lived in the hearts of modern Americans for as long as we can remember. As a friendly harbinger of spring and a favorite for every summertime cookout or picnic or backyard hang, these bright bites are a great option to make ahead; chilling them overnight makes them easy to cut and sugar right before you plan to serve or carry them to your festivities. For all these reasons and more, lemon bars will likely keep their rightful place as a great American standard for many years to come.
Chew Bread
For many families growing up in North Carolina, chew bread was commonly served as dessert or a snack, especially after a Sunday church service. This recipe is from Doretha Mitchell, the mother of Ed Mitchell and grandmother of Ryan Mitchell, longtime pitmasters in Wilson, N.C., who now help run True Made Foods, a food company making barbecue sauce and other condiments. She sold the chew bread, along with other desserts, in the 1980s at a supermarket she owned with her husband. Adapted from “Ed Mitchell’s Barbeque” by Ed Mitchell and Ryan Mitchell (Ecco, 2023), this recipe is significantly chewier, denser and less sweet than a blondie. The snack likely originated from sharecroppers who made it with leftovers they received from white families. It also has different names throughout the South, like cornbread cake, or chewies in South Carolina.
Chewy Lemon Cookies
These cookies have an Italian-inspired taste and an American texture. The flavors of lemon, polenta and rosemary may remind you of biscotti, or a lemon-polenta cake, but the cookies are as crisp-edged and chewy-centered as they come. The recipe uses Sarah Kieffer’s pan-banging technique, which requires quite a specific dough-ball size and wide spacing on the sheet pan to work. Make sure each round of dough is 3 ounces, and don’t bake more than four balls on one pan. These giant cookies are even better when they’ve cooled slightly — they become chewier and the rosemary emerges.
Spice Bun
Widely believed to be a descendant of hot cross buns, this Jamaican spice bun soars with vibrant spices. It boasts a moist, tender crumb, and a rich, earthy hue thanks to the inclusion of molasses and stout. While this anytime snack is enjoyed year-round on the island, it’s also a beloved Lenten and Easter tradition for many. Typically, it’s served with a generous slice of sharp Cheddar cheese, but spreading a small pat of good salted butter on a piece of the warm, straight-from-the-oven loaf also delivers a special kind of pleasure.
Chocolate Doughnut Muffins
These supersoft, pillowy chocolate muffins are reminiscent of your favorite chocolate doughnut, but with no fussy frying necessary. Packed with sour cream and just a drop of oil, they stay moist and delicious for days. They come together quickly in one bowl, so you can mix them up for a morning treat or afternoon snack without much effort. The cinnamon-sugar coating gives them a crunchy and lightly spiced exterior, which is a pleasing contrast to their soft centers, but they are just as tasty with a heavy dusting of confectioners’ sugar instead.
Vegan Banana Bread
If you’ve never tried to bake anything before, this is a great place to start. (You don’t even need a cake pan!) And if you’re an expert in the kitchen, you’ll be delighted with this quick bread that’s as tender as cake. Overripe bananas not only deliver their deep sweetness, but also bind together the batter made from pantry ingredients. With neither dairy nor eggs, this treat tastes like the purest form of banana bread and also ends up being vegan. You can skip the crunchy topping or swap in your favorite nuts, or black or white sesame seeds. You also can stir a cup of mini chocolate chips or finely chopped chocolate into the batter before baking to take this from breakfast treat to dessert.
Birthday Cake Blondies
Think of these as a starter birthday cake to make for friends — they travel well and feel like a party wherever you’re handing them out. Despite the sheet of sprinkles coating the top, these blondies aren’t cloyingly sweet. The batter has just enough brown sugar for a gentle butterscotch richness and a good hit of salt. Toasted at the edges and chewy in the center, these bars also have tiny crackles of caramelized sprinkles throughout.
One-Bowl Chocolate Cake
Fluffy and tender, this chocolate cake comes together quickly in one bowl. It’s a friendly little birthday cake with its dead simple frosting (or a really great snack without). A blend of oil and buttermilk or yogurt keeps the crumb moist, as does a nice pour of hot tea. Oolong gives the cake a floral aroma, while using coffee instead highlights the cocoa’s bittersweetness. Plain hot water gives this an old-fashioned chocolate cake flavor. The two-ingredient frosting – essentially cream and chocolate melted together, then cooled until thick enough to swoop and swirl – can be made in the same bowl used for the cake batter. You can sprinkle flaky salt, chopped toasted nuts or sprinkles on top too. But, frosted or not, this cake welcomes coffee, tea or ice cream.
Chunky Chocolate Cookies
Crisp at the edges and soft in the center, this chocolate cookie is lumpy with hooks of broken pretzels and melty chocolate chips. Built on a foundation of beating an egg with sugar until pale and full of tiny bubbles, it combines all the satisfying richness of a brownie with an almost airy lightness. Baking soda also helps lift the dense, dark dough in the oven. Once out, the craggy rounds deliver the irresistible pair of salty crunch and creamy sweetness in the tender, chocolaty cookie. You can switch-up the mix-ins with whatever you like: chocolate chunks, peanut butter chips, toffee bits, nuts or a combination. Just use a cup total for this amount of dough. And do consider keeping the pretzels no matter what else you throw in. Those little hits of salt turn perfectly good cookies into great ones.
Fruit Crumble
The buttery blend of oats and nuts in this easy, warm dessert stays nubby and crunchy while baking over the juicy fruit. (It also happens to be gluten-free.) A chai spice blend is especially nice in the mix, but other sweet-leaning spices like cinnamon and cardamom taste just as good. Any blend of fruit works, and keeping the peel on apples, pears and stone fruit not only streamlines the preparation but also adds a pleasant chewiness. If you want to go all berry, stick with fresh options; frozen fruit ends up too wet. (Thawed frozen berries work just fine with a mix of sturdy fresh apples and pears, though.) You don’t have to serve a warm bowl of this crumble with ice cream, but you probably want that creaminess swirling into the jammy fruit.
One-Bowl Molasses-Chocolate Cake
This simple recipe, rich with chocolate chips and earthy molasses, is both forgiving and budget-friendly. It gets much of its moisture and fat from oil, which has a number of benefits. First, oil-based cakes also keep wonderfully, staying moist and delicious – sometimes even tasting better – after a few days at room temperature or in the refrigerator. But, best of all, its reliance on oil means that the batter comes together in one bowl and quickly. Bake it today, and serve it alongside a milky tea or coffee.
Irish Cream Coffee Cake
This playful twist on a classic crumb cake adds a generous pour of Irish cream liqueur to the batter. While it’s often served with coffee, Irish cream is not coffee-flavored, but made with whiskey and cream, along with hints of chocolate and vanilla. It lends a rich vanilla flavor to this simple cake, and its boozy edge cuts the sweetness. Use an Irish cream liqueur that tastes good on its own, because its flavors will shine through. A simple crumb mixture, flavored with cinnamon, nutmeg and chopped pecans, forms both the streusel topping and a spiced ribbon running through the cake. The cake isn’t complete without the Irish cream glaze. Cut this coffee cake into big squares and serve with coffee; extra Irish cream is optional.
Homemade Pop-Tarts
These adorable D.I.Y. Pop-Tarts are a bit more work than the original toaster pastries, which were created by Kellogg in the 1960s as a sort of all-in-one, portable toast and jam, but making them at home means you can customize the fillings and toppings to suit your fancy. You can use two rounds (about 14 ounces) of store-bought pie dough for the pastry, but this cream cheese version is easy to put together and even easier to work with. If it starts to get too soft while you’re rolling and cutting it, pop it into the freezer for 10 to 15 minutes and try again. This recipe includes a quick berry jam for the filling, but you can use about 3/4 cup store-bought jam, too. Peanut butter and jelly would be pretty great, as would chocolate-hazelnut spread. These keep well stored in an airtight container for about a week. Wrapped tightly in plastic wrap, they also freeze like a dream for up to 3 months.
Four-Layer Surprise
Is there anything more evocative of childhood than chocolate pudding? When dressed up with a salty pecan crust and a fluffy cream cheese layer, that nostalgic lunchbox treat becomes the kind of dessert that is an absolute pleasure to eat and to share. It is great for a crowd, it is fun and easy in its presentation and it is absolutely delicious. Originally made with store-bought whipped cream and chocolate pudding mix, this dessert (sometimes called delight or four-layer delight) deserves to be resurrected from scratch, using freshly whipped cream, rich dark chocolate and toasty nuts, for a new generation to enjoy.
Walnut Sponge Cake
This tender walnut sponge cake is gluten-free, risen with egg whites and containing no wheat flour. You can substitute other nuts, like almond or hazelnut, with no problem. Served with soft whipped cream and seasonal fruit — it never fails to please.
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Pengat Pisang (Malaysian Banana Coconut Soup)
Lightly sweetened with palm sugar, pengat pisang—a delightful Malaysian dessert with pleasantly chewy sago pearls, bananas, and rich coconut milk—is the best kind of afternoon pick-me-up.
Sopapillas
Crispy, golden-brown pillows that are sweet or savory, sopapillas are a traditional New Mexican fried dough made with only five ingredients: flour, baking powder, sugar, salt and shortening. The dish is rooted in the American Southwest, where Hispanic, Spanish and Native American cultures converge. Sopapillas, also spelled sopaipillas, can be stuffed with braised meat, New Mexican chiles or cheese and served as a meal or snack, or the entire pastry can be drizzled with honey for dessert, as it is here. To ensure maximum puffiness, roll the dough out thinly, and the oil should be very hot. Sopapillas are best served right after frying.
Gelato
This Italian frozen dessert looks almost identical to ice cream, but has a few key differences: Compared to its cousin, gelato is made with more milk than cream, and uses fewer or no eggs, instead leaning on other stabilizers to keep it from becoming icy as it freezes. Here, cornstarch is the stabilizer for this easy at-home version, providing a smooth, creamy texture. Because gelato has a lower butterfat percentage than ice cream, it’s best served slightly warmer; for best results, let it soften on the counter for a couple minutes before serving. This recipe makes a basic vanilla gelato, but you can easily make different flavors by adding mix-ins such as chopped chocolate, dulce de leche, or chocolate ganache once the gelato is churned.
Granny’s Five-Flavor Pound Cake
Golden with a fine crumb, this pound cake smells amazing while it’s baking and tastes just as intoxicating once sliced. It’s comforting with its buttery softness and complex with its blend of five extracts (vanilla, rum, coconut, lemon and almond). The celebrity chef Carla Hall got this recipe, among other beloved soul food dishes, from her maternal grandmother, Jessie Mae Price. This family dessert was served at every Christmas celebration in Tennessee and wrapped and shipped off to the grandchildren as well. It’s a keeping cake, the kind that tastes even better over time, and meant to be shared. Ms. Hall wanted to recreate the tenderness that her granny achieved through sifted cake flour without sending home cooks to the store for yet another ingredient, so she swapped in some cornstarch instead. If you don’t have that in your pantry, using only all-purpose flour works just fine too, as does any combination of extracts you can find or have on hand.
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Eclair Cake
Super-size your éclair for a creamy, chocolatey dessert that's sure to impress.
Champurrado
This creamy and rich atole, or corn-based drink, is made with Mexican chocolate, cinnamon and raw cane sugar, then thickened with toasted masa harina for a soothing hot drink that is often served in cooler months and for holidays like Día De Los Muertos and Las Posadas. Piloncillo, a cone-shaped raw cane sugar, is usually added for sweetness, but you can use brown sugar in a pinch. If you’d like to experiment, add warm, whole spices, such as cloves and star anise, or orange peel to the simmering pot. Traditionally, champurrado is prepared in a clay pot and mixed with a molinillo, a wooden whisk, to make the drink frothy, but for a similar effect, continually whisk the champurrado, or use an immersion blender to froth it up right before serving. Champurrado is often served with hot, crispy churros alongside.