Dessert
3839 recipes found

Coconut & Pistachio Cream Pie
There's nothing quite like a generous slice of pie to end a late-night diner run, and this Coconut & Pistachio Cream Pie is my personal gold standard.

Chocolate Amaretti Cookies
A platter of cookies is always a welcome sight, and these chocolate amaretti, made with almond flour, cocoa, egg whites and a dash of almond extract, are so simple to prepare. These almost beg for an espresso as accompaniment, or a small glass of dessert wine. With their crisp exterior and chewy interior, what’s not to love?

Buttermilk Pie
Buttermilk pie is one of those desserts that can be made with pantry staples whenever the fancy strikes: a make-do pie, if you will. It belongs to a category of pies, also called desperation pies, that home cooks turned to when ingredients were scarce. Start with a store-bought crust or your favorite pastry and then fill it with a deliciously simple custard flavored with the appealing tang of buttermilk and lemon and the creamy richness of butter. Blind baking, or baking an empty crust with pie weights, is an important step for many custard pies. The baked custard slightly softens the underlying crust, but blind-baking sets the crust and gives it a head start towards crispness. Be sure to fill the empty, chilled crust with enough pie weights, beans, or rice to come all the way up to the top so that the edges don’t slump down while it bakes.

Éclair Cake
Lush and creamy, éclair cake is a dessert popular in the Midwest and beyond that’s perfect for any gathering, celebration or potluck. Inspired by the flavors of the classic French éclair pastry, this no-bake American iteration is reminiscent of an icebox cake. Typically, graham crackers are softened under layers of a pillowy smooth mix of vanilla pudding and whipped topping, and covered with rich chocolate. This version uses homemade crème légère (a fluffy mix of pastry cream and whipped cream) and a simple homemade semi-sweet chocolate ganache. The crème légère might sound fussy, but the preparation here is streamlined (no tempering of eggs required) and makes for a just-sweet-enough creamy filling. (Of course, in a pinch, you can swap in store-bought pudding and whipped topping.) Éclair cake needs chilling time, which makes it a great make-ahead dessert, and is best served after 24 hours in the fridge.

Salted Cashew Brittle
Candy making can be intimidating, but this sweet and salty brittle is actually easy to make, no candy thermometer required. With a few basic ingredients and about 20 minutes, you’ll have a perfect, giftable treat. Sugar is cooked with butter and lots of salt until fragrant and the color turns a deep amber. Then, a little bit of baking soda is stirred in to create air in the candy, making it easier to bite through, while the addition of plenty of vanilla maximizes flavor. Buttery cashews make delicious brittle, as they are soft and yielding in contrast to the deep crunchy caramel. Use roasted and salted nuts for the best taste. This brittle recipe is quite salty as written, so scale back to 1 teaspoon of salt or use unsalted, roasted nuts for a less salty version. To avoid getting splashed by hot sugar, use oven mitts and a long-handled utensil to stir.

Best Apple Pie Recipe
Our best apple pie recipe perfect for Thanksgiving.

Chewy Brown Butter Cookies
Chewy, yes, but these big cookies still have that essential crisp ring around the edge and also include crunchy bits of pecans throughout. Cooked in browned butter, the nuts take on a toasty depth and taste even richer if you start with Elliot pecans, a sweeter, fattier variety grown primarily in Georgia. It’s worth seeking out very dark maple syrup too, which is labeled as such. Intense and complex, it’s ideal for baking because it’s strong enough in taste to act as a seasoning. Even with standard pecans and other shades of syrup, these thoughtfully salted cookies come out caramelly.

Junkberry Pie
Underneath a firm, thick layer of sweet and tart cream lies a deep sea of berries, a combination known as “Junkberry” at Royers Round Top Cafe in Round Top, Texas. Husband and wife owners JB and Jamie Royer added the fruit pie to the menu in 2011 after Mr. Royer’s father’s 60th birthday, when the cafe’s baker at the time brought a pie with a similar topping to the party. That dessert inspired the junkberry version — a mix of berries, peaches and apple — which became one of the top sellers at the small town restaurant, located about 90 minutes east of Austin. Utilizing frozen berries and peaches makes this pie accessible year-round, but fresh fruit can be used in their places. Follow the cafe’s lead and serve it with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Doughnut Shop-Style Apple Fritters
The joy of eating these doughnuts comes as much from the flavor of the apple and cinnamon in each bite as from the texture – the crunch of the sugar-glazed fried exterior and the soft, pillowy pull-apart pieces of a buttery, yeasted doughnut. One doughnut-shop secret to the perfect apple fritter: use a lot of cinnamon. It is going to seem like a mistake, but fried doughnuts (see Tip) require a lot more apple, cinnamon and salt for the flavor to punch through than if they were baked. The second trick, which achieves that crispy but melt in your mouth texture: chop the dough. It might seem a bit fussy but they don’t have to be exact cuts, you just need 1/2-inch pieces. The texture will be like monkey bread but in an amazing apple fritter doughnut.

Kalakand
This no-bake dessert, or mithai, is commonly found in sweet shops across South Asia. Kalakand is typically made by cooking milk and sugar until the milk almost solidifies — a process that takes many hours. This version uses a shortcut: condensed milk and grated paneer. The use of these two ingredients cuts cooking time down to about 10 minutes. Top with any mix of nuts to balance the sweetness and add texture. The result is a milky, decadent, soft and chewy dessert that is fantastically and complexly sweet. Kalakand does need a minimum of 2 hours in the fridge to set, which requires some planning ahead. It keeps in the fridge for up to a week in the rare case of leftovers. If soft, crumbly paneer is not available, opt for ricotta.

Peanut Butter-Banana Bread With Chocolate Chips
Peanut butter and bananas make a delightful sandwich. Why not put them together in a loaf? The peanut butter gives the banana bread a pleasant savory edge. Be sure to use sweetened, conventional peanut butter, but the texture — chunky or smooth — is up to you. The chocolate chunks already give this bread a dessert vibe, but if you’d like to go all out, finish the cooled loaf with this salted caramel glaze (stirring in a tablespoon of peanut butter along with the sugar).

Ice Cream Peda
Peda, a fudgy, milky South Asian sweet, is a staple of mithai shop cases. In this recipe, the founder of Malai Ice Cream, Pooja Bavishi, smartly uses melted ice cream as a base, incorporating milk powder, cardamom and salt for a snackable treat that’s toasty and nutty in flavor and aromatic with spices. The melted ice cream gives the peda its rich texture and subtle, sweet undertow and makes the dough easy to handle and shape. If the dough starts to dry out as you are shaping the balls, just knead it again until smooth.

Badam Burfi Bark
This modern take on badam burfi, from the latest cookbook, “Desi Bakes” (Hardie Grant, 2024), by the food writer Hetal Vasavada, layers the classic South Asian almond confection over tart, Barbie-pink, ruby chocolate in bark form. The chocolate is not only a photogenic topping; it — along with freeze-dried strawberries — also tempers the sweetness of the burfi and compliments the cardamom. This recipe sidesteps the hardest parts of making burfi — it gets pressed into a pan, meaning no need to do any individual shaping — while still producing a beautiful, portable treat. A little salt brings out the best from this nutty, fruity, floral confection.
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Custard Creams
These sandwich-style cookies feature a silky, pale yellow custard powder–flavored buttercream between two crumbly rectangular biscuits.

Prasad
Popular during Diwali, prasad or parsad embodies the evolution of religious food in Indo-Caribbean communities. Sweetened clumps of farina with the texture of very moist pound cake are garnished with a combination of coconut, raisins, fruits and nuts. Served in small paper bags that turn translucent with ghee, prasad is punctuated with the crunch of almonds, cashews and roasted chickpeas. The addition of mixed essence, a flavoring in Caribbean desserts that is available at Caribbean markets or online, and evaporated milk makes this an Indo-Caribbean version of the confection.
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Pumpkin Spice Latte Tiramisu
This creamy tiramisu evokes the bittersweet, autumnal flavors of a pumpkin spice latte.

Giant Jam Bun
A cross between a tender scone, an almond-flavored jam cake, and a swirly cinnamon bun, this plush confection makes a sweet breakfast or teatime treat. You can use any flavor of jam here, just be sure it’s thick and rich with pieces of fruit, and don’t use jelly, which will liquify and leak out from the pastry layers while in the oven. Though this is best eaten the day it’s baked, it’s nearly as good a day or two later; store it in a sealed container at room temperature. This recipe was adapted from Erin Gardner’s giant cinnamon roll scone.

Pumpkin Oatmeal Cookies
Pumpkin purée and pumpkin spice make these chewy, cake-like cookies the ultimate cozy fall treat. The cookies are great on their own, but a cap of pumpkin spice frosting makes them even better. In keeping with the autumnal theme, the frosting includes a little bit of pumpkin purée, which imparts a creamy orange hue and well balanced flavor. If you don’t keep a pumpkin spice blend on hand, cinnamon is a great substitute.

Pumpkin Spice Cheesecake Bites
Easy to bake and totally gluten-free, these pumpkin cheesecake bites are inspired by Japanese soufflé pancakes, which fold in whipped egg whites to create a fluffy, cloud-like texture. For best results, there are a few things to note when making these cheesecake bites: The ingredients you use should be room temperature, especially the cream cheese. (This helps them blend together smoothly and keeps you from having a lumpy cheesecake.) This recipe also asks for a water bath, which will help the cheesecakes bake evenly. The results will be well worth the effort.

Apple Bread
This towering loaf is packed with applesauce and chopped apples, plus lots of cinnamon and nutmeg. Enjoy a slice with a cup of tea in the afternoon or turn it into dessert with a scoop of ice cream or whipped cream. Use tart, firm baking apples (such as Mutsu, Cortland, Braeburn, Northern Spy and Stayman Winesap) in this cake for best results. The bread is best enjoyed the day it is baked, but will stay soft and delicious for a few days when stored in an airtight container or bag at room temperature.

Plant-Based Bourbon Pecan Pie from Tourlami
A plant-based pecan pie made using Tourlami's very own All-Purpose and Premium plant-based butter.

Apple Cake
This cake is a bit of a choose your own adventure. Make it as is, without any topping at all, for a simple apple-packed treat, or pump up the flavor with a coating of cinnamon sugar (or pumpkin spice) that bakes up into a crunchy crust in some spots and gooey glaze in others. If you really want to take it to another level, add a drizzle of cream cheese icing that takes this cake into cinnamon roll territory. Use tart, firm baking apples: Mutsu, Cortland, Braeburn, Northern Spy and Stayman Winesap are all great options. We’ll leave it to you whether to peel or not to peel.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Bars
Deeply rich and slightly fudgy thanks to both cocoa powder and peanut butter, these bars live somewhere in between cookies and brownies. If crispy bits are your thing, opt for the edges — especially the corner squares — to get a little of that in every bite. This recipe is relatively speedy since there’s no chilling or rolling involved; after the ingredients are combined, the dough is simply pressed into a pan and baked. The cooling takes the longest, and it’s a necessary step to ensure the bars can be sliced without crumbling and to maximize the fudginess. Orange and yellow peanut butter candies like Reese’s Pieces offer a fun pop of color, especially for October celebrations, but can be swapped with chocolate candies for a less peanutty treat. For something extra-special, serve them à la mode.

Cream Cheese Brownies
What’s better than rich and fudgy cocoa brownies? Decadent brownies with a layer of creamy cheesecake swirled throughout. When making the cheesecake layer, the cream cheese should be just soft enough to incorporate with the other ingredients easily but not super soft. If it is too warm, the cheesecake batter will be too runny and will flow over the top of the brownies. Instead of creating a swirl, you’ll have two layers. If you want to take these brownies to another level, dollop a bit of your favorite jam or preserves on top of the cream cheese batter before swirling everything together.