Dessert
3896 recipes found
Sugar Cookies
What sets drop-style sugar cookies apart from classic cut-outs is that you don’t need to roll out the dough or dig deep into drawers in search of cookie cutters. Simply scoop and roll the dough into balls, then slightly flatten and bake. The dough needs to chill in the fridge for at least an hour so the cookies don’t spread too much during baking, but this can be done up to a day in advance. Follow this approach and the cookies will be irresistibly soft, yet chewy in the middle and a little crisp around the edges. They are fantastic as is, but you can top with extra sugar or sprinkles, or exchange the vanilla for a little almond or lemon extract to play around with the flavor.
Baklava
Baklava is an iconic pastry that defies borders: It’s beloved in Turkey, Greece, Central Asia, the Balkans and beyond, and each of these regions boasts its own variety. This version, with its honey syrup, leans into the Greek version. Store-bought phyllo makes preparing a pan of homemade baklava much easier, but it does require a little patience. There are no cutting corners when it comes to buttering every couple of sheets of phyllo, but your efforts will yield shatteringly thin layers of pastry. Making and chilling the syrup in advance of pouring it on top of the pastry is an important step, as it allows the baklava to fully absorb the sticky sweetness, reducing pooling on the bottom of the pan.
Key Lime Pie
Key limes, with their distinct tartness and slightly floral aroma, lend a delightfully sharp flavor to this classic American pie. They can be hard to find, especially out of season and outside of Florida, and juicing the diminutive limes can sometimes feel like a big effort. This recipe allows you to choose your own adventure: fresh fruit for Key lime purists, bottled stuff for shortcut seekers, or a blend of Persian lime juice (from the limes most commonly found in grocery stores) bolstered with a little lemon juice, for those seeking a solid substitution. The amount of salt in the crust may seem like a lot, but it offsets the tart curd and rich whipped topping. Try adding ¼ cup of unsweetened shredded coconut to the crust for a fun twist on the classic. This pie freezes like a dream, providing a great make-ahead dessert and a taste of the beach any time.
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Fifteens (Northern Irish Digestive Biscuits and Marshmallows With Cherries)
Fifteen digestive biscuits, 15 glacé cherries, and 15 marshmallows comprise this quick and easy no-bake “traybake."
Dump Cake
Dump cake is a classic American dessert that became popular with the production and marketing of store-bought boxed cake mixes. But it’s more like a cobbler than a cake — it’s filled with fruit and, as the name suggests, all the ingredients are “dumped” in a dish and baked in the oven. Canned cherry pie filling mixed with crushed pineapple is traditional, but feel free to swap out with other canned fruit, like peaches or strawberry pie filling. For a little crunch, add some nuts, such as sliced almonds or chopped pecans. Dump cake is best served warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or whipped cream. This truly low-effort dessert is an easy way to feed a crowd any time of year.
Pistachio Macarons
Most of the pistachio flavor in these macarons comes from the filling, which contains pistachio spread (sometimes called pistachio cream), a sweetened mixture of ground pistachios and sugar. Look for it in specialty food stores or Italian grocers.
Chocolate Macarons
Chocolate macarons are beloved for a couple of reasons: First, the bitterness of cocoa and barely sweet ganache is a good foil for the sugariness of the meringue shells. Second, the cocoa in the batter masks any color the meringue might take on during baking, so there’s a wider margin of error for your oven temperature compared with other flavors.
Raspberry Macarons
Just a small quantity of pulverized freeze-dried raspberries in the batter of these macarons adds a surprising punch of tart fruitiness. Just know that it can also encourage the shells to brown rather quickly, so turn down your oven by about 25 degrees for the second batch if the first turns a little golden.
Peach and Chile Galette With Pistachio Frangipane
This peach galette is sweet, flaky and topped with a wonderful kick of chile. As the galette cooks, the peaches nestle themselves into the pistachio frangipane, flavoring the rich, nutty filling as they release liquid. Lightly crushed cardamom seeds bring bursts of flavor to both the frangipane and the chile syrup, adding even more warmth to the dish. Using almond flour and buttermilk in the pastry imparts a wonderful nuttiness, and acidity too. For a perfectly flaky pastry, a scale provides the most accurate measurements when weighing out the butter and flour. Try to resist taking a slice as soon as the galette comes out of the oven: The galette develops in flavor as it rests, which is worth the wait.
Blackberry Slump
A berry slump is a member of the crisp, crumble and cobbler family, but one that doesn’t require an oven and takes less than 30 minutes from start to finish. Lightly sweetened fruit is cooked in a skillet on the stove and then topped with biscuit dough. Once the pan is covered, the steam created by the bubbling fruit helps cook the biscuits. This recipe calls for cream biscuits, simplifying the assembly process and bypassing the need to integrate cold butter into flour. It also calls for blackberries — but you may substitute any berry you’d like, though you might need an extra teaspoon of cornstarch if your fruit is extra juicy. An optional run under the broiler provides the biscuits with additional color and a crispier cap.
Funnel Cake
This nostalgic carnival treat is surprisingly easy to make at home. Funnel cake, thought to have been popularized in the United States by the Pennsylvania Dutch, gets its name from its method of using a funnel to pour batter into hot oil. For home cooks, a glass measuring cup with a spout does the job just fine. The simple pancake batter is drizzled into the oil in a circular pattern, fried until crisp and golden, then topped with confectioners’ sugar. If you want to dress up your funnel cake, finish it with whipped cream and a pile of diced fresh strawberries. This recipe doubles easily, though you may want to have extra oil on hand for the pan.
Panna Cotta
Though panna cotta means “cooked cream” in Italian, this pudding-like dessert actually spends very little time on the stove. Gelatin and sugar are dissolved in warm milk before being mixed with heavy cream and vanilla, then poured into ramekins to chill and set. Surprisingly simple and ideal to make in advance, this recipe makes a traditional vanilla-flavored panna cotta that can be dressed up any number of ways, with fresh berries or diced stone fruit, raspberry sauce or fruit caramel. Serve directly from the ramekins for a more casual dessert, or unmold the panna cottas for an impressive and elegant end to any meal.
Upside-Down Peach Cobbler
This juicy pastry crosses a peach cobbler with a caramel-coated apple tarte Tatin. To make it, the peaches are caramelized with sugar in a skillet just like apples are in a classic tarte Tatin. But then, instead of being covered with pie dough or puff pastry, the fruit is topped with fluffy biscuit dough. While baking, the biscuits rise and brown, creating a golden, tender pillow on which the jammy fruit lands when it’s all unmolded. The whole thing is a bit more cakey in texture than the usual crisp-crusted Tatin, with the allure of fresh ripe peaches.
Peach Crisp
Peach crisp is one of the joys of summer, and honey-sweet peaches need very little adornment, aside from this buttery crisp topping. Choose peaches that are just ripe for baking, as super-ripe peaches will turn into mush during this dessert’s long bake time. In this crisp, the peaches are peeled for the most luscious texture — and you can do so using a standard Y-shaped peeler (no need to boil a pot of water). That said, if you don’t have the time or energy to peel your peaches, you can leave them on for a slightly more rustic dessert. You may notice there aren’t any spices in this recipe, but vanilla, cinnamon and nutmeg all pair very nicely with peaches.
Raspberry-Nectarine Icebox Cake
Chilled, creamy and not too sweet, this simple, no-bake icebox cake is a perfect dessert. In truth, it’s even a bit like tiramisù, but with ripe summer fruit. Store-bought ladyfingers make it easy; shop at the farmers’ market for the best fruit. Make it a few hours or even a day in advance of serving for effortless entertaining.
Blueberry Crisp
Fragrant with the sunshine of lemon zest, the crackly almond roof of this summer-in-a-dish dessert gives way to jammy berries begging to be swirled with ice cream. To make this dead simple treat even easier, the crisp topping is simply stirred with melted butter, which binds together the dry ingredients while giving the mixture a sturdiness that holds up against the juicy fruit. Sliced almonds require no chopping and add a delicate crunch, but chopped pecans would be delicious here too, as would pinches of spices, such as cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom or even black pepper. The topping can be refrigerated for up to 3 days ahead of time. Pro potluck tip: Ask the host if you can use the oven, and if you can, bring the berry mixture in the baking dish and the chilled topping in a separate container. When you arrive, scatter the crumbs over the filling and bake to perfume the house and enjoy a warm dessert.
Easy Peanut Butter Fudge
This simple method for making homemade fudge takes only 15 minutes to throw together, and it calls for just five basic ingredients. This fudge is smooth, creamy and sweet, and it’s packed with peanut butter flavor. Because of its high butter content, fudge is best stored in the refrigerator, and it’s easiest to cut into squares after it’s been thoroughly chilled. The fudge can be served directly from the fridge, but for optimal creaminess, let it sit at room temperature for a half hour. While this recipe calls for an 8-inch-square pan, a 9-inch-square pan or rectangular pan with a similar volume works, too.
Lemon Bars
The best lemon bars are just sweet enough to temper lemon’s acidity while heightening its heady tang. Adding zest to the curd would have detracted from its comforting smoothness with chewy bits. Instead, the wisps of lemon peel bake into the cookie, which is snappier than classic shortbread to provide a contrast to the filling’s softness. Rather than cutting cold butter into flour and powdered sugar for a crumbly bottom as many recipes do, this version combines melted butter with flour and granulated sugar for a sturdy — and simpler — dough. After setting in the oven, the base is covered with the just-as-simple lemon mixture while still hot. Doing so ensures that the layers meld together into a textural ombré so that each bite starts with melt-in-your-mouth curd and ends with a satisfying crispness.
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Peach Melba
With tender poached peaches, bright raspberry sauce, and vanilla ice cream, peach Melba is the fancy-feeling and low-effort dessert to make all summer long.
No-Churn Salted Caramel Ice Cream
Yes, you can make excellent ice cream without an ice cream machine — and with just two ingredients. This salted caramel version has a buoyant, velvety texture thanks to whipped cream and gets toasty butterscotch notes from prepared dulce de leche, a richly complex substitute for the more commonly used sweetened condensed milk. Adding a pinch of flaky sea salt to some of the dulce de leche before swirling it into the ice cream base gives the whole thing crunchy, savory pops, balancing out the sweetness. And if you want to go one step further, swirling in a few tablespoons of chopped nuts, shredded coconut or chocolate chips along with the dulce de leche adds texture as well as flavor.
Strawberry Basil Key Lime Pie
A night of cocktails inspired Maya-Camille Broussard’s strawberry basil Key lime pie, a signature pie at her Chicago pastry shop, Justice of the Pies. After tasting a vodka cocktail with puréed basil, lime and bell pepper crafted by her cousin Peter, the pastry chef recreated the mixture as a pie filling, nixing the bell pepper, adding juice from Key limes and balancing the sublimely sour taste with the creamy sweetness of condensed milk. If strawberries are out of season, you may top the pie with macerated strawberries for an additional dose of sweetness.
Lemon-Blackberry Shortcakes
Berry season is the time for shortcakes, a classic dessert with berries, whipped cream and freshly baked sconelike biscuits. Here, a bit of sweet-tart lemon curd, prepared up to a week in advance and perfect with blackberries, makes these particularly special. Serve these assembled, on individual dessert plates, or, if you prefer, set out all the elements for guests to build their own.
Cherry Pie
In this classic and adaptable cherry pie recipe, you can use either sour cherries or sweet ones, fresh or frozen. Lemon zest and juice are mixed with the sweet cherries to add brightness and tang. But you can skip this step with sour cherries, which have their own natural acidity. Serve this pie warm or at room temperature, preferably within 24 hours of baking for the flakiest crust. Ice cream or whipped cream are optional, but very nice with the syrupy filling.
Strawberry Pudding Cake
Studded with jammy strawberries, this pudding cake requires just one easy batter but yields three pretty, textured layers: crisp golden topping, tender cake and a saucy, pudding-like layer. It’s like a (delicious) science-class experiment: As it bakes, cake batter rises above a surface of hot, syrupy liquid to brown and create a crust, while that liquid forms a custardy sauce below. Every oven is a little different, so baking time is an approximation, making it important to consider doneness by looks, too — overbaking this will result in a firmer, bread pudding-like texture. This cake is best enjoyed within a couple hours of baking. Though this dessert begs to be eaten directly out of the skillet, served warm, family-style, with a handful of spoons, it’s also delicious in a bowl with whipped cream.