Dessert recipes

Only 3 ingredients: bittersweet chocolate, butter, and eggs. This flourless truffle torte bakes in 15 minutes and sets into pure, dense chocolate silk.

Five spice plum sorbet purees canned plums with dry sherry and Chinese five spice powder, then churns into a fragrant Asian-inspired summer sorbet. Five ingredients, no added sugar.

Dense, moist persimmon spice cake with cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, walnuts, and orange-lime zest. No baking powder needed. Freezes beautifully for make-ahead dessert.

Whipped shortbread cookies that practically melt on the tongue. Beaten with cornstarch and powdered sugar for a cloud-light, almost feathery crumb. Top with a candied cherry or pecan half.

Fudgy chocolate brownies built on bittersweet chocolate, sour cream, and a final fold of chopped chocolate chunks. Dense, gooey center with a thin crackled top.

Chocolate fleck frozen yogurt creates tiny shards of dark chocolate throughout a tangy vanilla yogurt base. A lighter alternative to chocolate ice cream with the chocolate technique that creates the fleck effect.

Award-winning ginger cookies built on a cooked sugar-and-spice syrup base. Roll, cut, paint, or hand-mold this stiff gingerbread dough into any shape, then bake into crisp golden spice cookies.

Sugar and spice apple nut cake, a one-bowl single-layer cake loaded with chopped fresh apples, warm cinnamon and nutmeg, and crunchy nuts, baked in a square pan.

Flaky crescent roll pastries stuffed with a sweet cream cheese, vanilla, and lemon filling. Just 5 ingredients, 25 minutes, and 16 golden little bites that vanish the moment they hit the plate.

Double chocolate mint chip cookies with melted mint chips in the dough plus whole chips folded in. Rich, fudgy, and intensely minty with chopped nuts.

Authentic Scottish shortbread is a four-ingredient classic of unsalted butter, sugar, flour, and cornstarch baked low and slow into pale, sandy wedges. The traditional petticoat tails for tea time.

Paper bag apple pie: a vintage baking trick that wraps the whole pie in a brown paper bag during baking. Tender apples, golden streusel top, and an evenly browned crust without scorching.

Light-as-air angel food cake gets crowned with fluffy boiled icing in this classic dessert where vanilla and almond extracts perfume both the cake and the glossy meringue-style frosting.

Chewy brown sugar cookies studded with white chocolate chips and bright maraschino cherries. A patriotic twist on the classic drop cookie that bakes up in under 10 minutes.

Ultra-moist chocolate zucchini cake with buttermilk, brown sugar, cinnamon, and chocolate chips on top. Baked in a 9x13 pan, this one-bowl cake stays soft for days.

Frozen graham custard is a retro no-churn freezer dessert with whipped evaporated milk, lemon, and vanilla custard layered between buttery graham cracker crumbs. Six ingredients, no ice cream maker, pure midcentury nostalgia.