Dessert Recipes

Better than sex cake is a four-layer chocolate-pecan icebox dessert: a buttery pecan shortbread crust, sweet cream cheese, chocolate pudding, and whipped topping. A make-ahead potluck legend.

Morrison's mace cake: a classic hot-milk sponge cake fragrant with warm mace, finished with a crackly mace-sugar topping that bakes into the surface. Old-fashioned Southern coffee cake at its most aromatic.

Eccles cakes pack currants, mixed peel and warming spice inside flaky rough puff pastry, glazed with milk and crunchy caster sugar. Classic Lancashire teatime pastry from northwest England.

White coconut cake with a tender crumb from cake flour and folded meringue, covered in boiled white frosting and showered with flaked coconut. A classic Southern layer cake.

Easy DIY yellow cake made from scratch with cake flour, four whole eggs, and a creamed-butter batter for a tender golden crumb. The from-scratch answer to a boxed mix.

Fresh pineapple pie with dried apricots, macadamia nuts, and a splash of rum in a flaky double crust. A tropical twist on classic fruit pie with Hawaiian accents.

Southern peach shortcake with sliced peaches, almond extract, and cinnamon baked under a light biscuit topping. Diabetic-friendly with fructose instead of sugar.

Easter lamb cake baked in a two-piece lamb-shaped mold, using classic tender white cake. A traditional European Easter centerpiece that stands upright on the table and frosts into a fluffy white lamb.

Old-fashioned blackberry pudding with a simple batter that rises up around the berries as it bakes, finished with a sugar crust on top. Homestyle comfort in an 8x8 pan.

Black Forest oatmeal cookies with white and semi-sweet chocolate chunks, maraschino cherries, toasted almonds, and almond extract. A bakery-style drop cookie.

Old-fashioned looped jumble cookies with cinnamon dough rolled into ropes, shaped into loops, and topped with a poured chocolate glaze. A charming heritage cookie with a fun shape.

Chocolate-coconut macadamia pie: a Hawaiian-style dessert pie with semi-sweet chocolate chips, shredded coconut, and dry-roasted macadamia nuts in a brown sugar custard. Tropical pecan-pie territory.

Serve another kind of side dish with this tasty recipe that's extremely easy to follow.

Strawberry punch bowl dessert: pound cake cubes layered with glazed fresh strawberries and vanilla pudding, topped with whipped topping. A make-ahead trifle for picnics, potlucks, and showers.

Peanut butter cream cheese pie with a toasted peanut-chocolate chip crust and chocolate shavings on top. A no-bake freezer dessert that delivers dense, fluffy peanut butter mousse on crunchy nut base.

No-cook butterscotch ice cream beats eggs, brown sugar, milk, butterscotch pudding mix and half-and-half into a custard-style base, then freezes with chopped pecans.