Dessert
3885 recipes found
Pączki (Jam-Filled Doughnuts)
Biting into freshly prepared, pillowy soft pączki is among the joys of life well worth indulging in. Pączki (pronounced ponch-key) are Polish doughnuts typically filled with plum or wild rose jam and dusted with powdered sugar or drizzled with glaze, and sometimes topped with candied orange peel. In Poland, they are a traditional food eaten on Tłusty Czwartek (Fat Thursday) — the Thursday before Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. Pączki are less sweet but richer than typical doughnuts. They are also a deeper brown in color with a light ring around the middle. It takes time, patience and a little practice to prepare pączki at home. If you have a stand mixer with a dough hook, it will do most of the dough work for you. It is important to watch the oil temperature when frying pączki to ensure they cook through on the inside without turning too dark on the outside. Traditionally, spirytus, a high-proof alcohol with a neutral taste, is used in the dough so the pączki don’t absorb too much oil while frying, but other higher-proof spirits like vodka also work well. Pączki are best shared and eaten right away.
Microwave Nutella Pudding Cake
This warm, gooey, flourless chocolate cake requires just three ingredients, five minutes and a zap in the microwave. Nutella does the heavy lifting here, standing in for sugar, fat and flour and offering its milky cocoa sweetness and toasty hazelnut flavor to every spoonful. This cake is best slightly underbaked so the center is molten like a lava cake. A dollop of vanilla ice cream or Greek yogurt is optional, but a wonderful way to balance the richness of the cake beneath.
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Strawberry Cupcakes
Topped with a rosy pink buttercream and freeze-dried and fresh strawberries, these vanilla-scented cupcakes are light, tender, and speckled with fresh strawberries. They'd make a delightful contribution to a picnic, potluck, or special occasion.
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Singaporean Fudge Cake
In Singapore, people flock to Lana Cakes for a taste of their famous chocolate fudge cake. What sets it apart isn’t just the cake’s tenderness and intense chocolate flavor—it’s also the dessert’s unique frosting, which resembles chocolate pudding. Here's how to make the cake at home.
Stovetop Berry Crisp
You don’t need to wait for summer’s ripest fruit to enjoy a fruit crisp. This quick, small-batch version delivers jammy fruit beneath a crispy topping any night of the week, no matter the season. Start by making the topping in the microwave, then as it crisps, simmer the berries on the stovetop. Once they resemble a compote, add more berries for pops of freshness. You can use a mix of berries or just blueberries, and they can be fresh or frozen — no need to thaw the frozen ones first. Because the topping is already cooked when it’s scattered on the fruit, it won’t get soggy, delivering a brown-sugary crunch in every bite.
Microwave Sticky Toffee Pudding
You’re just 10 minutes away from a bowl of soft, date-flecked cake draped in a brown sugary sauce. This speedy take on sticky toffee pudding is made for one or two people and doesn’t require turning on the oven — just the microwave. Topping your warm cake with cold ice cream, whipped cream or sour cream is a welcome contrast and helps temper the sweetness. A few toasted pecans on top would add a nice crunch.
Fairy Bread
If you go to a children’s birthday party in Australia or New Zealand, you are very likely to find fairy bread: triangles of untoasted white bread covered with margarine or butter and “hundreds and thousands” (you can use round rainbow sprinkles stateside). Fairy bread is a much-loved treat with fairly murky origins; one variation is hagelslag, a Dutch treat that uses chocolate sprinkles instead of rainbow-colored rounds. After one bite of fairy bread, it is clear why the combination of soft bread, creamy butter and crunchy, sugary sprinkles is beloved by so many — and may be soon by you, too.
Triple-Chocolate Brownies
Featuring a terrazzo-esque contrast from a melted bittersweet-chocolate batter studded with shards of white chocolate and milk chocolate, these luxurious brownies owe their rich flavor and nuanced texture to a few essential details. The batter employs both melted dark chocolate and cocoa powder, a combination that provides complex flavor and a fudgy bite. Snappy chunks of milk and white chocolates get folded into the bittersweet base, creating a multidimensional celebration of chocolatiness. Both dark brown sugar and granulated sugar are key to obtaining that hallmark shiny surface and a velvety soft interior. About midway through the baking process, the baking pan gets tapped on the counter, resulting in a brownie that deflates until desirably gooey but not dense, which will please just about every type of brownie lover.
Chocolate Crepes
These cocoa-infused crepes are delicious rolled up and eaten as-is, but for a more celebratory dessert, dress them up with your choice of chocolate-hazelnut spread, whipped cream, powdered sugar and berries. Making crepes isn’t complicated, but it does require a bit of patience. Letting the batter rest for the full 15 minutes (or up to overnight) allows the flour and cocoa powder to hydrate, which contributes to a tender and slightly bouncy texture when cooked. To minimize frustration while cooking, use a good nonstick skillet and avoid cooking the crepes too hot and fast—medium heat is ideal.
Persian Love Cake
The origins of Persian love cake, a fragrant and tender cake adorned with rose petals, are shrouded in a romanticized story of unrequited love. Set in bygone lands with the scent of cardamom and rose wafting through the air, the tale tells of a Persian prince and the girl who won his heart by baking him this magical cake. It’s unclear from where this tale first sprung, but the timeline is certainly recent: The earliest mentions of Persian love cake do not date back to ancient or even modern-day Iran, but possibly to a chef in Australia in the early 2000s who prepared an almond flour-based cake and called it Persian love cake. Perhaps the combination of almonds, cardamom and rose water, ingredients typically used in Iranian baked goods, inspired the name. This version uses a combination of almond flour and all-purpose flour, which makes for a delightfully light crumb. The perfume of lemon and rose water in the cake is echoed in the syrup that drenches the cake, as well as in the icing that drapes it. Like every good romance, this take on Persian love cake will keep you coming back for more.
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Red Velvet Brownies
Topped with a tangy cream cheese frosting, laced with bittersweet cocoa powder, and flavored with rich white chocolate, these brownies taste like a fudgier version of classic red velvet cake.
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Water Ganache
Water and chocolate are all you need to make this luxurious dark chocolate ganache, which you can use to glaze cakes or fill pastries or turn into truffles.
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Chocolate Pot de Crèmes
Chocolate pot de crèmes—rich, velvety French custards—are easy enough to make on a weeknight, and luxurious enough for a special occasion like Valentine’s Day.
Red Velvet Cookie Bars
These bar cookies have all of the flavors of your favorite red velvet cake, in a cute, compact form that is quick and easy to make. Their flavor and texture falls somewhere between a vanilla sugar cookie and chewy brownie. A generous layer of fluffy cream cheese frosting is a tangy and delicious cap to the bars, but feel free to reduce the frosting as you like. Enjoy these at room temperature or cold from the refrigerator. The food coloring in the recipe brightens their warm, chocolaty tone, but you can add extra for a more vibrant hue.
Chocolate Cheesecake With Raspberry Swirl
Raspberry and chocolate are a classic pair in this rich and decadent dessert fit for a celebration. Use a high-quality raspberry jam for the most vibrant flavor. Baking the cheesecake at a low temperature until it is just set around the edges prevents cracks without the need for a water bath. Make sure to give the cheesecake plenty of time to cool, first in the turned-off oven and then on the countertop, then chill before serving. It keeps beautifully in the refrigerator for a few days, so don’t hesitate to make it in advance.
Pear-Almond Cake
This simple cake comes together with little fuss: It’s just sliced pears baked in an easy almond flour batter, but in flavor and texture, it’s so much more. Feel free to make it early in the day, or even the day before serving. It keeps well. Use firm, slightly underripe pears if possible.
Chocolate Pound Cake With Strawberry Whipped Cream
This deeply chocolaty pound cake is simple to make but so much more than the sum of its very straightforward parts. Dutch cocoa lends its rich color and flavor to a cream cheese–infused pound cake batter. The cream cheese adds a tangy depth of flavor and gives the cake a soft, velvety texture. Make sure your butter, cream cheese, eggs and sour cream are at room temperature to ensure the cake batter emulsifies properly and bakes up tall and even. The cake is delicious on its own, dusted with a bit of powdered sugar and sliced into tidy slices, or with a dollop of perfectly pink strawberry whipped cream, which makes use of freeze-dried strawberries that are perfect year round.
Chocolate Pudding Cups
This grown-up chocolate pudding, which uses dark chocolate and a luxurious custard base rooted in European techniques, is served in small individual portions and nods to childhood indulgence. Perfect for a dinner party, you can prepare this the morning or day before your guests are to arrive, chill it and you’ll have a perfectly set dessert just waiting to be garnished and served. (Crème fraîche is a perfect accompaniment.)
Chocolate Raspberry Layer Cake
In this recipe, a rich and luxurious chocolate ganache enrobes an impressively tall chocolate cake with hidden layers of jammy raspberry filling punctuated by fresh berries. This cake is best served at room temperature so the chocolate coating is soft and easily sliced. If you like, you can also fill and frost the cake with chocolate buttercream instead of ganache; the buttercream is a bit easier to work with and less expensive to make. Fans of the combination of chocolate and raspberry may also want to consider this cheesecake.
Baked Lemon Pudding With Blueberry Jam
With a puffy, soufflé-like top covering a jiggly layer of pudding, this comforting dessert is balanced by the sharp tang of lemon juice and zest, while dollops of blueberry jam add sweetness and color. If you can time this to serve warm from the oven, you’ll be rewarded with the most ethereal texture, but it’s also excellent at room temperature, or even chilled, in which case it becomes denser and more curdlike.
One-Bowl Jam Doughnut Cake
Filled with fruity jam and dusted with cinnamon sugar, this easy Bundt cake resembles a giant jelly doughnut. Easily mixed in one bowl, it has a tender, cakey crumb that’s scented with nutmeg and vanilla, and its jammy core helps it stay moist for several days. Serve slices plain, with coffee or tea, or dolloped with whipped cream for a festive, simple-to-make dessert.
Chocolate Sesame Dumplings
Can you wrap just about any filling in dough and consider it a dumpling? These bite-size desserts prove you can. Lightly salted melted chocolate, creamy like a truffle, is stuffed into chewy homemade wrappers, naturally sweet from glutinous rice flour. Taking cues from black sesame treats often made for Lunar New Year, these sticky steamed dumplings include toasted sesame oil in both the filling and wrapper. Making dumplings from scratch is a fun group project and these are especially great for kids. The dough is the easiest possible kind to shape — it doesn’t require a rolling pin; it’s simply rolled into balls then pressed into flat rounds by hand.
Dubai Chocolate
This crunchy, creamy stuffed chocolate bar, created by Sarah Hamouda, has charmed sweet tooths worldwide. Inspired by her favorite childhood dessert, Mrs. Hamouda called her creation “Can’t Get Knafeh of It” and began selling it through her online store FIX Dessert in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. As it went viral globally, it became known as “Dubai Chocolate” and inspired many to create their own versions at home. And it’s easy to understand why — the confection is a dreamy combination of pistachio cream and delicate shredded phyllo encased in a snappy shell of silky chocolate. This rendition joins the many homespun recipes from near and far, and includes an exceptionally rich homemade pistachio filling with the ideal balance of salty-sweetness, and an approachable technique to tempering chocolate that anyone can accomplish. (You’ll need silicone chocolate molds and a pastry brush to make this recipe; see the Tips for more details.) And while you understandably may want to keep all four bars to yourself, they do wrap up beautifully for an elegant and impressive gift.
Applesauce Coffee Cake
This warmly spiced, moist apple cake is the cozy breakfast, afternoon snack or dessert that dreams are made of. The top is covered with a generous layer of crumble that’s spiced with cinnamon or your favorite pumpkin spice blend and caramelized on the edges, which adds delicious toasty flavor and wonderful crunchy texture. The topping is at its most crisp the day that it is baked, but the cake stays soft and delicious for a few days when stored in an airtight container at room temperature. Brew a cup of tea or coffee, slice a piece of cake and enjoy these cozy flavors in any season.