Dessert
3845 recipes found
Made-in-the-Pan Chocolate Cake
This surprisingly tender vegan chocolate cake is made entirely in an 8-by-8-inch baking pan: Just toss in the ingredients, stir until you don’t see any flour streaks, then bake. For flourish, add a small handful of chocolate chips before baking or sprinkle the finished cake with a little confectioners’ sugar. Adapted from Mollie Katzen’s “Honest Pretzels: And 64 Other Amazing Recipes for Kids Who Love to Cook,” this recipe was developed for kids, but adults love it, too. It’s an ideal snacking cake, or you could gussy it up with a simple ganache frosting.
Saltine Cracker Brickle
In December 2009, The New York Times asked readers to send photos and recipes of their favorite holiday cookies. About 100 people answered the call, and this one, from Kelly Mahoney in Boulder, Colo., was one of the 35 recipes chosen for online publication. It's got just five ingredients — saltines, sugar, butter, vanilla and chocolate chips — and it comes together in about 20 minutes, so you can satisfy those salty-sweet cravings in a snap. It also works with salted matzo.
Pumpkin Bread With Brown Butter and Bourbon
This hearty pumpkin bread is a sophisticated twist on the traditional version with the addition of bourbon (teetotalers can substitute apple cider), browned butter and cardamom.
Rhubarb Quick Bread
Beautiful pink rhubarb at the markets signals spring's arrival. A bit sour on their own, the stalks work beautifully with sweet strawberries and blueberries, and citrus. This buttery loaf is made with a bit of orange zest, which perfectly complements rhubarb’s pleasant tang. Dress the cooled loaf with a simple glaze of confectioners’ sugar and orange juice, if you like, or serve fat slices with vanilla ice cream. Leftovers are nice toasted in a skillet with plenty of salty butter.
Giant Almond Croissant
Crisp and buttery puff pastry is filled and smothered with fragrant frangipane, just like an almond croissant, but in an extra-crunchy, sharable format. This fun treat is easy to pull off for a festive breakfast or brunch. Bake the puff pastry and make the almond filling in advance, then assemble and bake once more just before serving. All-butter frozen puff pastry will have the best texture and flavor, but takes longer to crisp through, so be sure to bake it until deeply browned.
Pumpkin Bread
Moist and tender, delicately flavored with pumpkin and cinnamon, this humble loaf needs no bells and whistles. If you want to go big, throw in more spices, like nutmeg and cloves, a hearty handful of chopped bittersweet chocolate or a tablespoon of orange zest. Stir in some chopped walnuts or pecans for added crunch, or scatter some pepitas or crushed gingersnaps over the top. My favorite adornment is a simple cream cheese glaze. Mix together four ounces of cream cheese, a couple tablespoons of warm milk, a tablespoon of confectioners’ sugar and a pinch of salt. Drizzle it over the cooled loaf.
Lemon Raspberry Cornmeal Cake
This rich and tender cornmeal cake is punctuated by bright, tart raspberries and lots of lemon zest. The whole thing is topped with a drizzle of puckery lemon glaze, but the cake is also great on its own, so you could just as easily leave it off. Serve this cake as is for an afternoon treat, or add more fresh raspberries and whipped cream to dress it up for dessert.
Cinnamon Apple Quick Bread With Apple Cider Glaze
Warm spices, applesauce and a shredded tart apple make this homespun loaf comforting, but the gooey apple-cider glaze makes it stand out. You might want to double the amount of glaze, and drizzle it over ice cream, pancakes or maybe even your morning oatmeal.
Shortbread Jammers
With a shortbread base, these pretty cookies are akin to a linzer but a whole lot easier to make-- people will think you've gone through a lot more fuss than you actually have. Use a thick, quality jam or preserve but not jelly, which is too runny. Rice flour in the dough helps keep the cookie very tender, but it's fine to use all-purpose flour in its place.
Pantry Crumb Cake
More of a snack or breakfast than a showy dessert, a homey crumb cake doesn’t need the oohs-and-aahs of any guests. It’s the kind of thing a small family can devour in a few days, and a single person can freeze in slices, at the ready whenever the urge for brown sugar and butter hits. (Just wrap each slice up separately and store them in a container in the freezer; a slice will thaw in under an hour on the counter.) This cake is also extremely adaptable: Use whatever spices you like. If you don’t have oats, use more flour or chopped nuts. And feel free to use whatever fruit, fresh, frozen and thawed, or canned, you have on hand.
Browned-Butter Rhubarb Crisp
Making a crisp is one of the best and easiest ways to highlight seasonal fruit. Crisps come together quickly with no special equipment, and they are a great way to use the odds and ends of fruit in your refrigerator. This recipe highlights one of spring’s finest flavors: rhubarb. It is often paired with berries, but here, rhubarb shines on its own, with tart, puckery flavor and gorgeous color. Browned butter and almonds add toasty, nutty notes to the topping, making this an almost-effortless, high-impact dessert. You may notice that 2 tablespoons of the butter aren’t browned; they are added to the hot browned butter to cool it down a bit so that you can use it immediately. Feel free to swap an equal amount of rolled old-fashioned oats for the almonds in the topping. Serve this cozy dessert with whipped cream or ice cream, if you like.
Spiced Orange Crumble Cookies
Citrus in three forms — fresh zest, juice and preserves — gives buttery baked goods a nice bright flavor. This crisp brown sugar cookie is baked with orange marmalade, then topped with a grating of orange zest after it comes out of the oven for layers of citrus freshness. With a dash of clove and black pepper, it’s reminiscent of the piney, spiced scents of winter fir. You’ll love the aroma that fills your kitchen while they bake, and enjoy them with tea and coffee.
Peanut-Butter Chocolate-Chip Cookies
These superquick, easy cookies come together with just a few pantry ingredients, and no electric equipment required. They are gooey and chocolatey straight from the oven, but they stay chewy and fudgy for a few days on the counter. They call for organic brown sugar and vegan chocolate chips, but you can use their conventional counterparts if you aren’t avoiding animal products. You can also use natural or conventional peanut butter, but cookies made with natural peanut butter will have a slightly nubbier texture. Use a ripe yellow banana for the strongest banana flavor; a speckly black one will result in sweeter cookies.
Almendrados (Almond-Lemon Macaroons)
Almendrados, which date from the 15th century or earlier, are cookies made of ground blanched almonds, lemon zest, egg and sugar. They are left out to dry for a day before baking. (In the recipe given here, I’ve called for 12 hours in the refrigerator.) I have tasted this type of cookie in many guises, and often the dough spreads out too thinly. But with the cookbook author Ana Benarroch de Bensadón’s method it kept its shape perfectly.
Chocolate-Cherry Ginger Cookies
These are the kind of cookies that make you want to cozy up under a warm blanket with a cup of tea and a good book. Packed full of warming spices, they have soft, chewy centers and crisp edges, and are punctuated by melty puddles of milk chocolate and tart dried cherries. They come together quickly too; no need to soften butter or chill dough. Feel free to substitute dark chocolate for a more deeply chocolaty cookie, but in either case, use chopped bar chocolate and not chips for the meltiest, tastiest bites. You can also substitute dried cranberries for the cherries.
Rose and Almond Ghriba
These delightful cookies, which are adapted from "Casablanca: My Moroccan Food” by Nargisse Benkabbou (Firefly, 2018), are like a cracked and caky rose lukum, a jelly candy often referred to as Turkish delight. Ghriba is a specific type of cookie that Moroccans bake all year long. Recipes vary depending on the region or the family, but they all have one thing in common: They are cracked on the outside and chewy on the inside. When it comes to ghriba, the flavoring possibilities are endless. The most popular varieties are almond, coconut and walnut.
Vegan Frozen Coconut Lime Bars
Inspired by frozen Key lime pie, this simple summertime treat is for vegans and dairy-lovers alike. The no-bake graham cracker crust gets topped with softened store-bought, dairy-free ice cream mixed with shredded coconut and fresh lime juice for a dessert that’s as easy to put together as it is delicious. Be sure to use unsweetened, finely shredded (also called desiccated) coconut for this recipe; regular shredded or flaked coconut will be too coarse.
Strawberry Fool
This Minimalist recipe is as basic as dessert gets, and especially in strawberry season it’s just perfect. It is essentially fresh strawberries and whipped cream (substitute heavy cream, sour cream or yogurt). It can be eaten right away or refrigerated. Only a fool would pass this up.
Vegan Zucchini Bread
This dairy- and egg-free spin on a cozy classic loaf cake comes together quickly in one bowl without much effort. Be sure to give the grated zucchini a good squeeze to release any excess liquid before you add it into the batter to avoid an overly dense, soggy cake. For a slightly more wholesome loaf, feel free to substitute 1/2 cup whole-wheat flour for 1/2 cup all-purpose flour. You can also add a handful of chopped chocolate or nuts, or both. Don’t skip the sugar on top; it gives the finished loaf a wonderful crunchy crust. A note on sugar: Some sugar is processed using animal products and is not considered vegan. If you want to use vegan sugar, look for a brand that is U.S.D.A-certified organic, which ensures animal products are not used.
Instant Pot Rice Pudding
Rice pudding prepared in an electric pressure cooker is both speedy and simple — the kind of thing you can whip up in minutes in between other kitchen tasks. This version calls for short-grain rice, which turns plump and pleasingly sticky as it cooks in a combination of milk and heavy cream. Adding a vanilla bean lends deeply aromatic notes, but if you don’t have one, just stir 1 tablespoon vanilla extract into the pudding along with the egg yolks. Or skip the vanilla and add a teaspoon of whole cardamom pods to the pot to round out the spicy flavor of the cinnamon. Whipped cream might be overkill on a pudding this rich, but only in the very best way.
Pressure Cooker Chocolate Pudding
Dense, creamy and fudgy, this pudding is meant to be made in a 6- to 8-quart electric pressure cooker like an Instant Pot. You can bake this recipe as one larger pudding or as individual servings. It can be made in a stovetop pressure cooker, by trimming a few minutes off the cooking time, or you can also bake the individual servings in a water bath in the oven. To do so, heat the oven to 300 degrees. Set the filled, uncovered custard cups in a large roasting pan positioned on the oven's center rack. Add hot tap water to the pan, halfway up the sides of cups. Cover the entire pan with foil, and use a fork to prick holes in foil. Bake until edges are lightly set (lifting the foil to check) but the centers are still jiggly – they will set as they cool – 30 to 35 minutes.
Japanese Soufflé Pancakes
Japanese soufflé pancakes start with the same ingredients as American varieties — namely, eggs, flour and milk — but they tower above traditional diner versions thanks to the addition of extra egg whites. A meringue mixture is beaten to stiff peaks, then folded into the batter, which cooks directly in metal pastry rings to help the pancakes attain their distinctive height. The key is to cook the batter at a very low temperature. If your stove has a small burner, or an especially low heat setting, use it here to create these custardy pancakes, worthy of breakfast, an afternoon snack or even dessert.
Upside-Down Caramel-Apple Muffins
I’ve never been much of a muffin maker. If I’m going to bake, I’d prefer to make a whole cake. But there is one kind of muffin that I heartily embrace — an upside-down fruit muffin. Its small, individual size encourages the fruit to condense and caramelize as it bakes. Then, when you unmold the muffin, the fruit transforms into a glistening crown of an irresistible sticky topping.
Frosted Sugar Cookies
In 1994, Lofthouse Cookies hit American grocery store shelves like a frosted meteorite. If you grew up in the suburbs, then you may have had one: soft, cakey, melt-in-your-mouth. Unlike their clamshell counterparts, which contain margarine, these homemade versions are made with butter and cream cheese, both of which add wonderful flavor that margarine alone does not. Be sure to freeze your dough for the full 15 to 20 minutes: Not only does this chill the fat, helping the cookies maintain their shape in the oven later, but it also allows the flour to hydrate and the flavors to concentrate. A relic of childhood shored into the present, these cookies are not unlike the tops of vanilla cupcakes, devoid at last of their dry, frosting-less bottoms. Freeze-dried raspberries lend a welcome tartness to the buttercream, not to mention a plush, candy-pink hue. (Watch Eric Kim make his Frosted Sugar Cookies here.)