Dessert Recipes

Buttery spice cookies with crystallized ginger, cinnamon, cloves, and a dusting of powdered sugar. Pressed thin and baked until light golden, these make-ahead cookies keep for a week or freeze for a month.

Diabetic-friendly pecan oatmeal cookies made with egg whites instead of whole eggs, plus bran flakes for extra fiber. Crisp edges, chewy centers, and lighter than traditional oatmeal cookies.

Florida Keys bread pudding made with homemade coconut milk, day-old sponge cake, crushed pineapple, and a silky dark rum sauce. Tropical Caribbean comfort dessert.

Chocolate brownie macaroons with melted chocolate, whipped egg whites, shredded coconut, and condensed milk. Fudgy centers with crisp tops, crowned with a blanched almond.

Three-layer chocolate cake with cocoa, buttermilk, and a rich cocoa icing made with melted unsweetened chocolate. A towering, old-fashioned celebration cake.

Meringue madeleines made with whipped egg whites, cake flour, and melted butter. Light as air with crisp edges, best eaten warm straight from the oven.

Lavender angel food cake with 12 egg whites beaten to stiff peaks and dried lavender folded into the batter. Light, fragrant, and fat-free. Ready in about an hour.

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.

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.

Cherry divinity is the pink church-cookbook candy: hard-ball sugar syrup whipped into beaten egg whites with cherry Jello, then loaded with chopped nuts and coconut. Old-fashioned, fluffy, festive.

Fat-free chocolate cake with cocoa powder, egg whites, and corn syrup for moisture, finished with a quick cocoa glaze. Surprising richness with zero added butter or oil.

Raspberry mousse folds Italian meringue made with hot sugar syrup into whipped cream and seedless raspberry purée for an airy, intensely fruity dessert. Served with extra raspberry sauce drizzled over the top.

Low-fat Dutch apple cake spreads a thin, biscuit-like batter under overlapping cinnamon-sugar apples. Egg whites and skim milk keep it light, more fruit than cake in every slice.

Basler Brunsli are flourless Swiss chocolate almond cookies spiced with cinnamon and cloves, cut into festive shapes. A traditional Basel Christmas cookie, chewy inside with a crackly crust.

Cloud-light chocolate angel food cake that's fat-free and cholesterol-free, leavened entirely by whipped egg whites and flavored with cocoa. An airy, guilt-light dessert with deep chocolate flavor.

Old-fashioned chocolate cream pie with a silky stovetop cocoa custard and a high-piled toasted meringue. The Sunday-supper dessert dads have been requesting since the 1950s.